Reconstitution

[Colin Parkinson]

@Kirkhill I don't think there is a Navy equivalent. The way we run our ships everyone has to be able to contribute to damage control, which means training at the DC school plus time on a particular class getting to know the way around and where the emergency kit is. There are usually some random spots on the ships like scullery for a few folks like that but usually it's for additional QL3 people doing their OJT as that's the only 'training bunks' we have, and untrained folks are basically passengers that need escorts if something happens.

A bunch of random teenagers also won't change the lack of trained crew, insufficient time alongside to do repairs, and lack of people/resources ashore to properly support the 30+ year old ships. And given that the AOPs were delivered with some signficant design flaws those are also sucking up a lot of resources (and crews we don't have).

People would pay money to do the Navy DC course.

Broken record here: Run a naval SYEP,
1st week, how the military works, how to look after yourself. Introduction to your right and left foot and why they are different.
2nd week- basic boat work, knots, terminology, sailing, oars, and small outboards.
3rd week More advanced boat work
4th week Marine survival, Marine first Aid, basic firefighting
5th week basic Damage Control and introduction to big ships
6th week Basic weapons drill and safety, 1-2 day range time
7th week more big ship stuff
8th week tests and retests, graduation with demonstrations

Successful Candidates get a SVOP, MED 1,2,3 They are now employable in the marine industry. Candidates can be sponsored by other government departments (HRC). Recruiters attend the 8th week and try to sign people up.

Not enough Instructors? Contract out the day to day training to ex-CAF members.

 

[Jarnhamar]

The CAF leadership needs to find creative ways to get people trained fast.

We also need a faster more streamlined way to let members switch trades so we don't lose people who quit rather than stay in a job they hate.

 

[Navy_Pete]

@Colin Parkinson sure, but we are already running the facilities at capacity to keep up with training. The east coast DC school had a fire on xmas day and the buildings on both coasts are mid life so need some TLC and upgrades. It's not a great situation. Those buildings have been under-supported for years, and coming home to roost now. Things that have been on the books to do but not funded 'at risk' are now breaking. Weirdly risks carried over time tend to realize eventually, but the RCN is acting all surprised. It's a leadership failure or something something something that can be overcome with some elbow grease and 'doing more with less'.

We've been doing more with less for a long time, and probably now will be doing less with even less because things are just broken and people are run down.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

@Colin Parkinson sure, but we are already running the facilities at capacity to keep up with training. The east coast DC school had a fire on xmas day and the buildings on both coasts are mid life so need some TLC and upgrades. It's not a great situation. Those buildings have been under-supported for years, and coming home to roost now. Things that have been on the books to do but not funded 'at risk' are now breaking. Weirdly risks carried over time tend to realize eventually, but the RCN is acting all surprised. It's a leadership failure or something something something that can be overcome with some elbow grease and 'doing more with less'.

We've been doing more with less for a long time, and probably now will be doing less with even less because things are just broken and people are run down.

I know that you think the RCN leadership are feckless, you do realize that they have absolutely no say in how ADM(IE) prioritizes or spends building maintenance funds, right?

 

[Colin Parkinson]

You could rent other facilities to ease the burden, the really only unique thing I suspect you have is the full fledged flooding simulator. We have this out in Maple Ridge and is used for Marine firefighting training, certain good enough for a basic course and more.

 

[Navy_Pete]

I know that you think the RCN leadership are feckless, you do realize that they have absolutely no say in how ADM(IE) prioritizes or spends building maintenance funds, right?

DCTFs are a combo of ADM(Mat) and ADM(IE), with Mat doing the maintenance on the actual trainers and IE doing the building structure and services.

The Mat funding was short for years due to competing priorities, with the LCMM position being gapped/double-hatted/turned over annually over the last decade, so it's not really any one thing, but cumulatively hasn't happened over night.

The feckless bit comes from the RCN expecting more training than ever despite equipment being down and instructor positions being empty, and relevant supporting equipment limping along and needing TLC. When you run things until they break, you can't be surprised if they break.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

DCTFs are a combo of ADM(Mat) and ADM(IE), with Mat doing the maintenance on the actual trainers and IE doing the building structure and services.

The Mat funding was short for years due to competing priorities, with the LCMM position being gapped/double-hatted/turned over annually over the last decade, so it's not really any one thing, but cumulatively hasn't happened over night.

The feckless bit comes from the RCN expecting more training than ever despite equipment being down and instructor positions being empty, and relevant supporting equipment limping along and needing TLC. When you run things until they break, you can't be surprised if they break.

Alright, that is fair- especially when they kept on insisting on completely unnecessary team training that, as soon as one person got posted, invalidated everyone’s training.

It was madness.

 

[FJAG]

Yet another viewpoint

Army sees safety, not 'wokeness,' as top recruiting obstacle

The Army is trying to recover from its worst recruiting year in decades, and officials say those recruiting woes are the result of traditional hurdles

abcnews.go.com

 

[Navy_Pete]

Alright, that is fair- especially when they kept on insisting on completely unnecessary team training that, as soon as one person got posted, invalidated everyone’s training.

It was madness.

The training is all necessary, but when things are in bad shape, you ask someone to take it easy until you can fix it, and they actually start using it more they shouldn't be surprised when it breaks. Telling someone 'if you do this, there is a risk x will happen', and then x happens, and then they get mad is puzzling.

For context, this is on par for the Navy. The 280s had pretty severe sea state restrictions at end of life due to structural failures, so the obvious thing to do is sail it into a storm and trip a bunch of longitudinals. It's something else to see 10" steel beams twisted like plastic.

Edit to add: there is a massive reluctance on the engineering side to place operational restrictions on the ships, so when there are it's usually a really bad sign, but made under the assumption the operational side will reasonably stay within those restrictions. Crossing the Atlantic wasn't in the intention of a sea state 2-3 restriction on ATH at end of life, as it was expected to stay in close coastal waters and head in with weather. Spoiler: they exceeded SS 2-3 during that crossing (and then broke down in London anyway for other reasons so participated in Ex Joint Warrior remotely as CTG). The RCN keeps trying to greasy-lawyer around restrictions, and I think both ATH and IRO had structural failures as a result of the RCN ignoring them and driving them as per normal. Fortunately they were local, and not the kind of ship breaking apart thing, but those types of failures cascade as some structure fails and overloads others, so if you are in a storm you are foxed.

 

[Halifax Tar]

For context, this is on par for the Navy. The 280s had pretty severe sea state restrictions at end of life due to structural failures, so the obvious thing to do is sail it into a storm and trip a bunch of longitudinals. It's something else to see 10" steel beams twisted like plastic.

If we have people willfully and needlessly damaging/destroying equipment or material, why aren't they being held accountable ? In the instance you're mentioning its not only damaging material is risking the lives of hundreds of people.

Outside of war or SAR I cant seen a reasonable excuse to play that fast and loose.

 

[Navy_Pete]

If we have people willfully and needlessly damaging/destroying equipment or material, why aren't they being held accountable ? In the instance you're mentioning its not only damaging material is risking the lives of hundreds of people.

Outside of war or SAR I cant seen a reasonable excuse to play that fast and loose.

They had 'accepted the risk'. Which always sounds good until things happen, and then it no longer is enough of a CYA, but imagine any BOI would be buried anyway under a 'confidential' classification, and the navy would just unofficially kill some careers instead (which is bullshit IMHO).

In both cases the ship structure was being monitored pretty closely, so they were inspected after exceeding the SS restrictions with repairs required before sailing(which is good). Again though, surprised pikachu was theme of the day on the operator side.

Personally I don't think risk assessments where a real possibility for the outcome is major loss of life is reasonable for normal peacetime ops is an appropriate dice to roll for your people when it can be avoided with minimal actual impact. But how many ships deploy on HR ops without having functional/proven CBRN, and enough functional equipment to recover from battle damage? If a ship just meets MBS, it doesn't include any of those capabilities, as those are beyond basic safety to get from A to B.

Sure, in wartime, you do what you have to, but having ships without a citadel floating off Syria doing patrols when they are gassing their own people, or ships in the Med ready to go into the Black Sea now with what is happening in Ukr, if they aren't battle ready it's too late if things kick off. But I guess at least ships have wifi.

 

[Rifleman62]

Not trying to be funny, but how often is Abandon Ship practiced, intensely?

 

[Halifax Tar]

Not trying to be funny, but how often is Abandon Ship practiced, intensely?

Survival Stations, before I left the fleet in 2010 was the last task during the old month long bag drive WUPs. You would fight the ship until it was simply broken. Then the ships coy would practice survival stations. Get in immersion suits, muster on the flight deck in divisions, move casualties, emergency destruct of sensitive docs, lowering boats ect ect ect.

When I came back to the fleet in 2016 it had become a simple walkthrough of your escape plan from your mess deck/cabin to the flight deck.

 

[stoker dave]

Not trying to be funny, but how often is Abandon Ship practiced, intensely?

In 2.5 years posted to Protecteur many decades ago, I remember one 'abandon ship' drill that went as far as having everyone on the upper decks in life-raft capacity sized groups lined up around the life rafts. I don't recall any other drills at any other time on any other ship (may have occurred but I don't remember). Anyone with more recent experience?

 

[Rifleman62]

Reading Navy_Pete's posts, I think the requirement should be an absolute necessity. It would shock Cdns if one our ships sunk, for whatever reason.

My Grandson, Army, did a tour on HMCS Toronto fairly recently. He just returned from Latvia.

 

[Navy_Pete]

I had the same experience as @Halifax Tar; previous WUPs we did a slow time walkthough as part of the prep lectures, then actually went all the way to everyone mustering at the survival stations during a scenario (with folks on watch staying at the consoles, and I think getting swapped out to make sure they also knew where to go).

The last set was just the walkthrough and kit muster.

Getting into a liferaft is something you do once in a pool so think it's been almost 20 years for me personally. THey look pretty similar to the one below, with a thing that looks like a slide to climb up into it, and a rope ladder on the bottom to clamber onto so you can flip it over if it inflated upside down. You have to get dressed in the survival suit and essentially go down a ladder or jump over the side, so genuinely bad day all around. The RHIB has some equipment to actually muster the life rafts together, so is why it's required for SOLAS (and not just look cool for boarding party).

https://greatcircleliferafts.com.au/oceanmaster-solas-series/

The AOPs have the launchable solid ones, which I'm assuming they practiced as well.

Not to be chicken little about it, but was pointed out that FRE could have run aground if they didn't get the propulsion diesel up, and not uncommon for ships to sail with only the two GTs, or not have the same amount of working fire suppression as FRE. Murphy's law that was in the fjords in Norway in November during a storm at night, so it's not an abstract never could happen thing, and most other CPFs in the same scenario would have had a worse fire, and may not have been able able to get propulsion back.

The design has so many layers of safety built in, really shouldn't be necessary, but we've slowly undercut or risk assessed away a lot of that to the point where the cumulative risk is pretty significant.

 

[MilEME09]

The CAF leadership needs to find creative ways to get people trained fast.

We also need a faster more streamlined way to let members switch trades so we don't lose people who quit rather than stay in a job they hate.

If we are truly in a reconstitution phase, operations shouldn't be priority, all available instructors should be pushed to the schools, rent portable class rooms if you have to for a year, and just mass train troops

 

[Rifleman62]

https://greatcircleliferafts.com.au/oceanmaster-solas-series/

Twelve year guarantee. Do they check the rafts outside of the stowage cradle?

 

[markppcli]

They had 'accepted the risk'. Which always sounds good until things happen, and then it no longer is enough of a CYA, but imagine any BOI would be buried anyway under a 'confidential' classification, and the navy would just unofficially kill some careers instead (which is bullshit IMHO).

In both cases the ship structure was being monitored pretty closely, so they were inspected after exceeding the SS restrictions with repairs required before sailing(which is good). Again though, surprised pikachu was theme of the day on the operator side.

Personally I don't think risk assessments where a real possibility for the outcome is major loss of life is reasonable for normal peacetime ops is an appropriate dice to roll for your people when it can be avoided with minimal actual impact. But how many ships deploy on HR ops without having functional/proven CBRN, and enough functional equipment to recover from battle damage? If a ship just meets MBS, it doesn't include any of those capabilities, as those are beyond basic safety to get from A to B.

Sure, in wartime, you do what you have to, but having ships without a citadel floating off Syria doing patrols when they are gassing their own people, or ships in the Med ready to go into the Black Sea now with what is happening in Ukr, if they aren't battle ready it's too late if things kick off. But I guess at least ships have wifi.

Fucking “accepted risk” is such an absurd concept. We essentially allow mid level management / commanders to decide the CAF policies don’t apply because they will it so. Risk was accepted on a section attack range, and yet the person being court martial for negligence is the Cpl, while the accepter of risk had career implications. If you want to start looking at changing CF culture there’s a good start point. - rant off

 

[Halifax Tar]

I had the same experience as @Halifax Tar; previous WUPs we did a slow time walkthough as part of the prep lectures, then actually went all the way to everyone mustering at the survival stations during a scenario (with folks on watch staying at the consoles, and I think getting swapped out to make sure they also knew where to go).

The last set was just the walkthrough and kit muster.

Getting into a liferaft is something you do once in a pool so think it's been almost 20 years for me personally. THey look pretty similar to the one below, with a thing that looks like a slide to climb up into it, and a rope ladder on the bottom to clamber onto so you can flip it over if it inflated upside down. You have to get dressed in the survival suit and essentially go down a ladder or jump over the side, so genuinely bad day all around. The RHIB has some equipment to actually muster the life rafts together, so is why it's required for SOLAS (and not just look cool for boarding party).

Oceanmaster Solas Series | Great Circle Life Rafts

The AOPs have the launchable solid ones, which I'm assuming they practiced as well.

Not to be chicken little about it, but was pointed out that FRE could have run aground if they didn't get the propulsion diesel up, and not uncommon for ships to sail with only the two GTs, or not have the same amount of working fire suppression as FRE. Murphy's law that was in the fjords in Norway in November during a storm at night, so it's not an abstract never could happen thing, and most other CPFs in the same scenario would have had a worse fire, and may not have been able able to get propulsion back.

The design has so many layers of safety built in, really shouldn't be necessary, but we've slowly undercut or risk assessed away a lot of that to the point where the cumulative risk is pretty significant.

No issues.

Just a point of clarity, Sea survival is competency that is kept up by doing it every couple years years when posted to a ship. Just like FF, Small Arms, CBRN ect ect.

It also includes a pool portion of climbing into a life raft.

Having said that I cant imagine a real battle related survival stations being as orderly as we once practiced.

Does anyone know how the evolutions were conducted in the Falklands ? Were they mass chaos or no ?