HMCS Montréal part of navy trial to experiment with reducing crews

[Underway]

BTW, people here have mentioned the MCDV core crew as an example, but in my mind (and that of many that were around at the time of transition, it did not live up to its billing in the engineering side as a result of the engineering lobby's efforts. Here's what I mean:

The MCDV's were supposed to have unmanned engine rooms controlled from MCR by operators only, with no repairs/maintenance at sea - all of it being done under the service contract. Emergency repairs at sea, if any, were to be the purview of the CERA and A/CERA, who were not supposed to be from the NESO trade. In theory, for a one in four rotation of operators, you would have had a crew of seven engineers: 4 Watchkeepers, CERA, A/CERA and one Electrician. Instead, the Engineers lobby refused to operate with a single WK and forced a "ER roundsman" on the whole scheme, increasing the size to 11, just because they could not let go of the concept of somebody walking through the engine room and checking things by hand once an hour.

Before any one crucifies me with examples where they "needed" these extra hands (and please remember the original concept behind the MCDV was: if anything fails, the operators shuts it down and we limp back in harbour without it to get it fixed), remember that the Brits are doing exactly that with the River class OPV's. Not only does it have a single operator up only for the engineering, but the actual controls are duplicated from MCR to the bridge and the engineer on watch sits his/her watch on the bridge with everybody else (very Star-Trekish  ).
 

I think you mean the engineering mafia not lobby.  I understand that for a steamer with boilers the safety precautions this was really important but now.... not so much needed.  And the MARS community is a bit afraid to take them on, mainly because they don't "really" understand their own equipment.

MCDV's are not perfect.  My last ship in the reserves, the bridge crew on the MCDV's were often up their with their eyes bleeding from fatigue because they were on 1 in 3 with their normal day work and exercises... thank god for senior staff stepping in to help out when they saw the problem (XO, Buffer, Coxn taking the odd watch spot to break up the worst of it).

 

[Stoker]

I was thinking as the ordinary "on-watch" situation, not planned heavy maneuvering periods. 

You mean become continental Europeans? All exercises during the day, with a break for lunch, then you need only one for each operational position; you have a small cadre of maintainers, that do nothing else as their day job, and at night, you just steam around with a watch of five.  ;D

BTW, people here have mentioned the MCDV core crew as an example, but in my mind (and that of many that were around at the time of transition, it did not live up to its billing in the engineering side as a result of the engineering lobby's efforts. Here's what I mean:

The MCDV's were supposed to have unmanned engine rooms controlled from MCR by operators only, with no repairs/maintenance at sea - all of it being done under the service contract. Emergency repairs at sea, if any, were to be the purview of the CERA and A/CERA, who were not supposed to be from the NESO trade. In theory, for a one in four rotation of operators, you would have had a crew of seven engineers: 4 Watchkeepers, CERA, A/CERA and one Electrician. Instead, the Engineers lobby refused to operate with a single WK and forced a "ER roundsman" on the whole scheme, increasing the size to 11, just because they could not let go of the concept of somebody walking through the engine room and checking things by hand once an hour.

Before any one crucifies me with examples where they "needed" these extra hands (and please remember the original concept behind the MCDV was: if anything fails, the operators shuts it down and we limp back in harbour without it to get it fixed), remember that the Brits are doing exactly that with the River class OPV's. Not only does it have a single operator up only for the engineering, but the actual controls are duplicated from MCR to the bridge and the engineer on watch sits his/her watch on the bridge with everybody else (very Star-Trekish  ).
 

When we originally commissioned the first MCDV's we had 1 Chief Eng, 1 Sr ET, 1 NET , 4 EOOW and 4 Roundsman. This lasted about 6 months.  This was the concept of manning for the ships at the time, not sure where this other stuff came about however back then lots was talked about, no tools, contractor did everything, unmanned engine room and that didn't last long. It wasn't the Engineering mafia that doesn't want unmanned engine rooms, it was simply a matter of safety. Originally the ships were supported to have a IMCS, however that went by the wayside and a more more simpler system was installed to save money, hell it took them over 10 years to install a CCTV system in the machinery spaces. Most of the machinery do have a double redundancy and a "return"home capability, however if we replied on that we wouldn't actually be deployable to some of the places we're gotten, such as the Arctic. As well the amount of teething problems we had with the Main Alternators and resultant catastrophic failures it was fortunate we had the 1 and 3 rotation we have. Its easy to say make it a unmanned engine room with the proper equipment, but when things go sideways and they will the less engineers you have could make the difference between getting home and not arriving at all. I am here to tell you that the demands placed on the ships company and engineering department we need more than less.

 

[jollyjacktar]

:goodpost:

 

[Edward Campbell]

So, correct me if I'm wrong, please, but what I think I'm learning from this thread is:

  1. We can build warship to civilian standards, thus making big, Big savings in capital costs (my 80% of the capability for 20% of the cost thing); but

  2. We cannot crew our warships to civilian standards if we want (as we must) something like 80% of performance.

New question: are those "civilian standards" becoming more common for warships (other than in the USN)?

 

[Lumber]

New question: are those "civilian standards" becoming more common for warships (other than in the USN)?

I'm not exactly an expert on "civilian standards", and I certainly can't speak for any new warships that are being built, but in the 7 years that I sailed on CPFs (on and off), I didn't see anything like a reduction in crew demands or manning levels, other than the elimination of the requirement for an Aft Lookout.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

So, correct me if I'm wrong, please, but what I think I'm learning from this thread is:

  1. We can build warship to civilian standards, thus making big, Big savings in capital costs (my 80% of the capability for 20% of the cost thing); but

  2. We cannot crew our warships to civilian standards if we want (as we must) something like 80% of performance.

New question: are those "civilian standards" becoming more common for warships (other than in the USN)?

Not quite, Edward. Right now, we are going down a path of building vessels with military purpose to civilian standard (AOPs and probably tankers). The compartmentalizations, redundancy, state of quieting and probably the quality of the steel will all be inferior to what happens with CSC. That is fine- those vessels are unlikely to ever see high intensity combat. All of those things I mentioned are what starts to cost you money.

As for crewing- automation, wherever you can get away with it, is a good thing. It is no panacea, however. If (when) things go wrong, you may well find yourself without enough humans onboard to save yourself. But that all comes down to severity versus the probability of something bad happening. You cannot (obviously) account for every possible contingency.

As vessels age (say past the 20 year mark) unless you have been extremely diligent in your preventative maintenance and replacing gear as it becomes obsolete, your crew begins to get run off its feet just fixing the little (and not so little) things that break.

So- if I were in charge of buying ships, I would try to get the crew size as small as I could reasonably get away with (humans cost a lot of money over the life of a warship). I would also dispose of any ship after 18-20 years, as they become maintenance hogs after that point.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

The problem here ERC is that I don't know what "civilian" standard means, and I doubt if anybody knows.

Manning is much more a function of the duty of the ship at stake.

Take a modern bulk carrier. It gets out of harbour and basically, comes up to transit speed, switches over to heavy bunker, and stay at that speed (and almost on that course) for the whole transit to say Europe. It has a single medium speed diesel engine turning fixed pitch screw through a simple straightforward gearbox, a single diesel generator and one emergency generator. The chance of a breakdown in the engine room is pretty low, and if it happens, then you just drift while the chief engineering mate and his crew make the repair. A total engineering department of one Chief mate and two assistant, none of which stand watch, to deal with ongoing maintenance (limited really to cleaning the oil filters in rotation and the injectors sets) is more than enough. Same goes for bridge crew: one officer to plot the GPS fix every hour and otherwise keep an eye out for the one or two other large ship they may cross path with in any given watch (remember they are mid-ocean), 90% of which encounters require no maneuvering , is more than enough. As there is no "ongoing drills" all the time, and they have all the same watches all the time, six people are enough. Add the captain and the cooks and you get a crew of eleven. And that's enough for what is, in effect a truck.

But go onboard a cruise ship, where the seaman's crew is responsible for thousands of human lives, and suddenly, this truck like basic manning is far from sufficient. You will see bridge crew and engineering watches much closer in composition and number to the ones we use in the Navy, and the overall number of seaman goes up accordingly, with most cruise ships having "seaman" (i.e. excluding the "hotel" personnel) crew closer to about 120-150 members, about half of which are engineers of some description.

You have the same situation for, say, a deep diving support ship: crew of more than 100, in large part engineers, to make absolutely sure that nothing, underline nothing, breaks down or malfunctions while the divers are at depth.

And you have everything in between depending on the ship's task. So I ask again what does "civilian" standard crewing means?

Now, for the Navy, if all we ever did was drive around at constant speed going from A to B, (I am sure Lumber will agree here) we could reduce the number of people on watch, and with nothing else but watch keeping going on, we'd be standing one in six or seven with the numbers we have onboard. But that is not what we do. We are warships and when out of harbour, we are either on an operation or training for it. Either way, it requires more people and it takes a much higher toll on all the equipment - which is constantly and harshly solicited by our maneuvering - which in itself requires more maintainers and since we have a lot more equipment (read engines/gearboxes/mechanical devices) than the standard merchant ship that also means more maintainers.

But there are still ways to reduce personnel in the navy overall or reduce manning to face critical shortages. One way is to accept that, other than the ships deploying on operations, where you do need everyone (try do an Ocean Safari, for instance, without a full crew) when going out to train only, you could reduce the operations side to a single watch and do all the training during the work day only, then just steaming around with minimal watch on deck at night. You then augment such crew when it is about to go on operations somewhere.

A word of caution, however: This can work as a temporary measure when critical shortages exist or as mean to provide the non high-readiness ships with leave and sending personnel on career courses or easing the tempo for family reasons but it cannot be a long term plan. If all hell broke lose, you have to be able to fully man every ship in the fleet, so overall, you need to have the numbers available to do that. In the end, automation is the only way to go long term for crew reduction, as long as we accept that in case of breakdown it may reduce the ship's fighting efficiency.   

 

[jollyjacktar]

Best. Post. Ever. 

 

[Edward Campbell]

Best. Post. Ever. 

:ditto:  Thanks SKT and OGBD for keeping me on a sensible track. Some of these ship discussions are very informative for laymen (and landsmen).

 

[Underway]

So, correct me if I'm wrong, please, but what I think I'm learning from this thread is:

  1. We can build warship to civilian standards, thus making big, Big savings in capital costs (my 80% of the capability for 20% of the cost thing); but

  2. We cannot crew our warships to civilian standards if we want (as we must) something like 80% of performance.

New question: are those "civilian standards" becoming more common for warships (other than in the USN)?

There is another aspect to this (which was touched on earlier).  Many European ships have reduced their crew on warships.  They don't have a coast guard similar to the Canadian construction and their armed coast guard ships are labelled as warships.  They accept lower crewing requirements because they also accept lower readiness standards.  If something goes wrong in European waters then they are quite frankly very close to help from either their own country or a neighbour.  In Canada something goes wrong we are generally on our own far from help.  There is also the professionalism of the service we are living with.  We generally expect and get very high standards from our ships and crew in performance of their duties.  It's a point of national pride.  Other services have different levels of expectations and what passes for acceptable for them might be woefully inadequate for us.  This reflects back to crewing requirements.  Perhaps we need to take a look and reduce our expectations of the standards in order to save the fleet overall.

 

[Kirkhill]

...  Perhaps we need to take a look and reduce our expectations of the standards in order to save the fleet overall.

Can a plan be devised that adjusts the crew size according to the situation?

For example -

An individual vessel sailing on EEZ patrol out of Halifax

A pair of vessels sailing in company on EEZ patrol

A vessel sailing in an international taskforce on constabulary duties

A vessel sailing in an international taskforce in a high threat/open warfare environment

A Canadian Task Force sailing in a high threat/open warfare environment.

Is it feasible to man-up, up-arm a vessel according to task and environment?

 

[jollyjacktar]

I would say that a stumbling block could be that if you're always used to sailing in a reduced capacity and crew that it will be more difficult to suddenly have to sail with more expectations put upon you.  It's easier to let up than to pile it on.  As in they found in the past where there was a steep learning curve in both equipment, tactics and personnel requirements to meet the "new" situation, crews paid in blood and tears until they adapted to the new environment.

 

[Kirkhill]

It may be easier JJT but it is also more expensive.  It seems to mean fewer hulls and fewer missions and no way to spool up to a higher tempo.

 

[jollyjacktar]

It may be easier JJT but it is also more expensive.  It seems to mean fewer hulls and fewer missions and no way to spool up to a higher tempo.

Money, we can afford, when set against the cost of crew's lives and ships.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Money, we can afford, when set against the cost of crew's lives and ships.

Interesting discussion.  The CMDR was out for a visit last week and he touched on the "X" Ship (MTL) and what she will be trialing.

Quite honestly, and this is just my interpretation, to sum up it went like this:

We are approaching a manning crisis in the RCN. We don't see a potential influx of recruits in the near future, and we don't see a drop in our OP tempo, this is what must be done to maintain our Navy and our operational tasks as laid out by the government of the day and what our country expects of the RCN.

The key issue here is the "approaching manning crisis".  It is my opinion and only my opinion that we need to take a hard look at why a) People aren't joining the RCN and b) if they do join why we are unable to keep them in.

Addressing these issues is the fix not reducing crew sizes.  Reducing crew sizes just enables the avoidance of having to deal with the reasons people don't want to join and/or wont stay in.

 

[Nuggs]

Addressing these issues is the fix not reducing crew sizes.  Reducing crew sizes just enables the avoidance of having to deal with the reasons people don't want to join and/or wont stay in.

Great post

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

[jollyjacktar]

Addressing these issues is the fix not reducing crew sizes.  Reducing crew sizes just enables the avoidance of having to deal with the reasons people don't want to join and/or wont stay in.

HT, great post and to the point.  But to be fair (and I hate to be so), the next generation of ships will have less demand for crewing due to automation being able to take up some of the slack that's be required by the meat interface.  But that is by design, not by the dilemma they find today's fleet in.  Two different drivers for the issue.  But you're correct, if they cannot correct the real reasons they can't get the crews today, they'll not get the crews tomorrow either.

For the great  :trainwreck:  that is coming to the engineering side of the house, I am hearing that at the coal face, nobody (myself included) is happy about it in all three trades.  As someone commented at the town hall about it the last week "taking three red trades and joining them together, won't suddenly turn them green".

 

[NavyShooter]

W Eng is 'fixed' and our solution is the perfect model to follow. 

We were at 108% last year, are at 102% as of end Jan, and the prospect is for a recruiting intake of 30/90....so we'll be in the yellow again by next year....

 

[Baz]

I would say that a stumbling block could be that if you're always used to sailing in a reduced capacity and crew that it will be more difficult to suddenly have to sail with more expectations put upon you.  It's easier to let up than to pile it on.  As in they found in the past where there was a steep learning curve in both equipment, tactics and personnel requirements to meet the "new" situation, crews paid in blood and tears until they adapted to the new environment.

There is also a tangential, but important, issue: "ship to shore" ratio; or, more correctly, the ratio of people on long deployments.

If you reduce man the ship's that are alongside in work periods and do local ops, but up the crew for long deployments, you have a higher percentage of people deployed at one time.  That isn't sustainable (the rest of the country isn't at war, so how are you going to convince just a few to be continuously "at war" and away from their families).

The basic problem is at the leadership level and the refusal to not properly brief that it isn't sustainable to have a higher op tempo with fewer people; the entire organization needs to take an operational pause and regen.  It's not just numbers, its also experience and the underlying professionalism.  No proper force development (like weapon system change and tactics development) is being done.

The Commander (maybe the DComd) of the RCAF, one of the last times I saw him at a town hall, said that it is obvious that Force Employment is going to be the biggest priority, everything else has to pigeon hole.  Colloquially though, what was the Allies biggest priority during World War II, for instance: Force Generation.  Even on 6 Jun the pipe still had to turn out follow on forces.  The signal that Germany was done was when they could no longer turn out follow on forces.  However, so that nobody has to say "if we do that we are going to break" the entire system is being brought to the breaking point.

More simply, I would submit: if the RCN is unable to recruit and train to meet it's operational appetite, then is that a sure sign that the appetite is not in tune with the wishes of the population?

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

More simply, I would submit: if the RCN is unable to recruit and train to meet it's operational appetite, then is that a sure sign that the appetite is not in tune with the wishes of the population?

An interesting question, and good starting point to further discussion, Baz. But there is a misleading aspect here. The RCN is not the one that recruits and train, at least at the basic entry level, its own personnel. The Recruiting system and Training system of the CF does that.

And this means that we are, Navy wide, stuck with the recruiting system's choice of where, when, how frequently and what content the advertisement runs, for instance (for example, is 5 seconds of scene not totally clearly of shipboard life in a 30 sec. ad enough to attract the attention of Canadian youth who might be interested, and if the Navy is in dire need but overall, the recruiting system is attracting a sufficient number of people through its doors, will they run ad more frequently?). And if the processing and then basic training takes forever, how many people do we lose. And should we have the same standards as every body else in the CF, etc. etc.

So here is another question: Would it be better for the RCN to take back full control of its recruiting and training (from scratch) from the CF machine? Is it time for an Admiral to put her foot down and say: "I will use part of my money to reopen (something like) HMCS Cornwallis, and concentrate my simulators / basic training / various fleet schools there and concentrate on modern training of all my people. I will also produce and run my own ads independently from the recruiting system with my own money and provide the recruiting centres with extra resources to process the future seamen. I will pay for this by laying up two thirds of the fleet, which will also give the sea going personnel time to breathe and regroup." ?