Reconstitution

[SupersonicMax]

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

Accepting risk is definitely something we, the military, need to be able to do. You need a deliberate and established process with clear authorities commensurate with risk levels but we can’t always operate per the established standard, nor can we operate to a civilian standard. We have a very well structured risk management process in the Air Force (it actually applies to all aircraft, regardless of environment) and it works fairly well. People at the tactical level are consulted to establish the risk level and propose risk mitigation. The risk is approved and accepted at the Col level for Low and Medium risk, and at the GO level for above. People accepting the risk have airworthiness training.

 

[ballz]

Accepting risk is definitely something we, the military, need to be able to do. You need a deliberate and established process with clear authorities commensurate with risk levels but we can’t always operate per the established standard, nor can we operate to a civilian standard. We have a very well structured risk management process in the Air Force (it actually applies to all aircraft, regardless of environment) and it works fairly well. People at the tactical level are consulted to establish the risk level and propose risk mitigation. The risk is approved and accepted at the Col level for Low and Medium risk, and at the GO level for above. People accepting the risk have airworthiness training.

Breaking policies is not accepting risk. This is basic combat estimate stuff you start learning in, literally, the Basic Military Officer Qualification course and continue training on every career course you do until, evidently, you're past the rank of Captain - which funny enough is where people seem to start forgetting the difference between "risk management" and "constraints/limitations."

The mission analysis has you list your constraints and limitations. Policies, rules, regulations, etc. are constraints. No different than having a left and right boundary on an advance, a no-fire zone, etc. If you back-briefed your boss "my plan is to accept risk by engaging the church my ROE specifically says I can't engage," he should rightfully bust you down to 2Lt and have you repeat BMOQ.

That senior officers have confused risk management practices with the application of constraints and limitations is fucking amateur hour. If you need to go outside your constraints, only the person who put them in place (or someone they may have delegated the authority to) has the authority to relax the constraint. You can't just say "I accept the risk that I won't get caught," that's just disobeying a lawful command and hoping you don't get caught.

 

[Navy_Pete]

I think risk acceptance is fine, and definitely also needs tempered by a 'why am I considering accepting the risk'. For a SAR, sure. For wartime, sure. For a dog and pony show, maybe want to seriously question why we won't meet safety standards.

I fully agree we need to be able to accept risk to do our job, and it's inherently risky, but my fundamental issue is the breadth, scope and amount of risk being accepted is significant, and if anyone thinks they are actually aware of the risk with 2,000 ish defects (plus the ones not in DRMIS), they are kidding themselves.

The challenge is that we tend to treat everything like it's wartime operations, and there will be a crises if the ship doesn't sail at 0800 on Monday (or whatever). It drives me crazy that we don't do things sometimes where it would cause a minimal delay, but actually fix the problem, as doing the actual risk assessment properly can take a lot of time (especially when you already have a whack of relevant defects). Maybe for normal operations in peacetime during a global pandemic we should slow things down instead of speed up?

Our risk acceptance is also very miopic; lot of things we 'accept' right up until it hits a news paper, then it gets fixed. If the 'Globe and Mail test' means you would change your mind, why not go that way initially? And sometimes letting defects ride turns into bigger, more expensive defects with much longer lead times, so it's very short term. Running a pump to failure vice switching it out when the vibration analysis indicates an issue drives costs from 10s of thousands to hundreds of thousands, and repair time goes from weeks to months (or turns into a write off, with a several year procurement time). At a larger scale that can lead to an entire platform being rendered unsuitable for purpose and unavailable as a strategic asset for years.

The LOE that goes into continuing to run old broken stuff is enormous, and also directly impacts the same people from trying to source new supportable alternatives. Running old broken stuff, on a dirty ship, without heating, running water etc when you are short people can't help retention. High attrition means we don't have enough people to maintain equipment so it breaks, meaning people don't have things like heating, running water etc... so it all accumulates, but you need to do operations, so you accept more risk.

We used to joke about 'talking it until it's blue' for RAs. Now it's 'talk it until it's yellow' and 'is it really red?'. On the Navy side, you have to prove something is unsafe, which is completely backwards from where we are supposed to be for certifying things. And if we do demonstrate it's unsafe, then onto 'accepting the risk'.

It's a real shame, because on the Navy side the CPF is fundamentally a really well done, well thought out design with a lot of redundancy, backups and failsafes built in, and a full crew of experienced people can deal with a lot, but we've undercut both significantly to the point where they wouldn't be allowed to sail under commercial rules, and our arguement that our personnel make up the delta is hollow.

I just find this all massively frustrating, as we have the knowledge, skills, people and tools to do some pretty amazing stuff, and I think we could be a lot more effective if we scaled back to a sustainable number of ships, but everyone is stretched so thin and things just get the bare minimum, I think we'd be useless in a real war at this point.

 

[SupersonicMax]

Breaking policies is not accepting risk. This is basic combat estimate stuff you start learning in, literally, the Basic Military Officer Qualification course and continue training on every career course you do until, evidently, you're past the rank of Captain - which funny enough is where people seem to start forgetting the difference between "risk management" and "constraints/limitations."

The mission analysis has you list your constraints and limitations. Policies, rules, regulations, etc. are constraints. No different than having a left and right boundary on an advance, a no-fire zone, etc. If you back-briefed your boss "my plan is to accept risk by engaging the church my ROE specifically says I can't engage," he should rightfully bust you down to 2Lt and have you repeat BMOQ.

That senior officers have confused risk management practices with the application of constraints and limitations is fucking amateur hour. If you need to go outside your constraints, only the person who put them in place (or someone they may have delegated the authority to) has the authority to relax the constraint. You can't just say "I accept the risk that I won't get caught," that's just disobeying a lawful command and hoping you don't get caught.

You can definitely break policies if you follow a published risk management process. For airworthiness, the MND assigned that responsibility to Comd 1 CAD as the Operational Airworthiness Authority, who further delegated that responsibilities to other officers, depending on risk levels. Sometimes, Force Generation is almost as important as operations themselves. For example, we had aircraft that were stuck in Iceland due to sea states. We needed to break rules to launch and recover the aircraft home. Within the established process, a waiver was issued to carry on with the transit at an elevated risk level. And it was fine.

One area where we need to be able to accept more risk is on the financial side… we’re willing to spend $1,000 to save $20 bucks. It is absolutely ridiculous.

 

[ballz]

You can definitely break policies if you follow a published risk management process.

That's not breaking the policy, is it?

For airworthiness, the MND assigned that responsibility to Comd 1 CAD as the Operational Airworthiness Authority, who further delegated that responsibilities to other officers, depending on risk levels. Sometimes, Force Generation is almost as important as operations themselves. For example, we had aircraft that were stuck in Iceland due to sea states. We needed to break rules to launch and recover the aircraft home. Within the established process, a waiver was issued to carry on with the transit at an elevated risk level.

None of that is breaking policies, what you are describing is literally just following them.

One area where we need to be able to accept more risk is on the financial side… we’re willing to spend $1,000 to save $20 bucks. It is absolutely ridiculous.

I agree that we need to accept more risk in finance but you'd have to be more specific. Most things I've seen where we need to "accept more risk," Commanders have all the written authorities to do so but allow incompetent staff make those decisions for them... and so, the CAF gets the incompetent financial management it deserves. I'm also not sure what that has to do with the idea of "accepting risk" vs legitimate constraints.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

I’m wondering if the army has a formalized process like the RCAF MALA before they cross the Line of Departure/depart the attack position.

I’m guessing not so army DEU people might not understand the process we use, for each and every sortie basically. And how there are variations to the scoring for things like FRMS that differ on something like a simple COREX (crew operational readiness exercise, basic FG stuff) compared to a PAT&E (type of testing) flight.

 

[ballz]

I’m wondering if the army has a formalized process like the RCAF MALA before they cross the Line of Departure/depart the attack position.

There are specific ways to waive every requirement in the Army. Sometimes people just decide the process is too onerous and that they will take it upon themselves to "accept the risk" instead of staffing the appropriate waiver and to the proper authority. That's choosing not to follow a legitimate, lawful constraint and hoping you don't get caught, in contract to following the policy as was outlined above by SupersonicMax.

And sure, sometimes (rarely) if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, that might be the best decision and you will probably be forgiven for doing the right thing at the right time afterward.... but when you're planning the conduct of a live-fire range, that's not the time or place....

 

[Grimey]

I only have second hand information from people I know who were there.

Pretty much from Day 1 on ship everyone was run through everything they needed to do on a ship in a combat zone, whether they were on a warship or a ferry under lease. This included all the action stations' stuff, firefighting, casualty management etc.

When they got to Ascension Island they spent alot of time on landing craft drills in arctic waters - even though Ascension is essentially tropical.

After they left Ascension it was 'all business' and they conducted themselves as if they could be attacked at any time.

The overall feeling I got was that it was very well handled, mainly by the Navy, and that they had the right training and equipment. The Navy was very highly regarded by the 'Brown Jobs' as a result.

When I got to my first ship (ok, Bay-class mine sweeper) on the left coast in early ‘88, “allowed” reading on watch that weren’t CFTOs were the Royal Navy engineering journals. This was 6ish years after all the fun and excitement down south so Falklands after action reports and findings were still being digested and openly discussed in the journals. Fascinating reading, including how HMS Plymouth survived an unexploded bomb lodging itself in the engine room and how the stokers still managed to steam the plant, for example. The feeling that you got was that although some of the ships were clapped out and il-suited for the role, and others so new they had shipyard mateys onboard working out the bugs, the crews were incredibly well-trained and just got it done.

 

[KevinB]

Accepting risk is definitely something we, the military, need to be able to do. You need a deliberate and established process with clear authorities commensurate with risk levels but we can’t always operate per the established standard, nor can we operate to a civilian standard. We have a very well structured risk management process in the Air Force (it actually applies to all aircraft, regardless of environment) and it works fairly well. People at the tactical level are consulted to establish the risk level and propose risk mitigation. The risk is approved and accepted at the Col level for Low and Medium risk, and at the GO level for above. People accepting the risk have airworthiness training.

There is risk daily in any activity - even getting out of bed.

The issue I find with a lot of Military Risks, is that quite often the Risk Assessment is confused with Risk Mitigation of a subset of the activities being conducted, or Risk Aversion, and sometimes general foolishness.
This is highlighted in joint operations with other services, as Needs of one service tend to bump into Needs of another, (and a lot misunderstandings of a true need, versus a want, or desire).

Sometimes people either denying the risk, or accepting the risk, don't have the experience or knowledge (or any common sense) to actually make the decisions they are entrusted to make.

 

[Navy_Pete]

There is risk daily in any activity - even getting out of bed.

The issue I find with a lot of Military Risks, is that quite often the Risk Assessment is confused with Risk Mitigation of a subset of the activities being conducted, or Risk Aversion, and sometimes general foolishness.
This is highlighted in joint operations with other services, as Needs of one service tend to bump into Needs of another, (and a lot misunderstandings of a true need, versus a want, or desire).

Sometimes people either denying the risk, or accepting the risk, don't have the experience or knowledge (or any common sense) to actually make the decisions they are entrusted to make.

I find that fundamentally it's even more basic than that; frequently they don't actually even understand what level of risk they are actually accepting.

On the surface ships we have so much degraded/broken stuff it's listed as a 'word heat map' (or word cloud) and we look at the big ones individually, but no one wants to even consider the amount of work to look at the overall cumulative effect because of how hard it is. And mitigations are only effective if actually implemented or feasible, and it's not uncommon to see so many concurrent mitigations required you actually run out of people before you can actually implement it. So really death by several thousand cuts, but we definitely aren't able to even quantify the overall risk for the things we actually know about.

Not even talking about for worrying about battle damage, just basic everyday stuff. There are about 40-50 fires a year on the 62,000 marine vessels in Canada yearly (about 1 per 1500). We have around 12-15 for (generously) 68 ships (1 per 4 or 5). Even dropping that down to 1 or 2 major incidents per year it's still an insane statistical difference, and for every fire there are multiple near misses.

Fortunately we learn from our lessons, and all our previous BOIs on fires, collisions and allisions are widely available...

 

[KevinB]

Fortunately we learn from our lessons, and all our previous BOIs on fires, collisions and allisions are widely available...

 

[Navy_Pete]

@KevinB On the flip side, absolutely love the USN investigations, they are detailed enough to understand what happened, what went well, what went wrong, and where to do better.

They also provide enough context to take the same scenario, see if it applies to totally different ships with different designs, and figure out what is useful for a different context. For comparison, we blindly followed Protecteur BOI reccomendations while making no adjustment to a design that is 60 years newer to see if it still made sense in a totally different context and some fundamentally different design choices that massively change the practicality to the point where there may be some completely ineffective safety systems included as a requirement.

I think I prefer the general approach the RAN took for the Westralia BOI, where they use position names instead of people though, as the people's names actually make it harder to follow unless you keep a list of 'who is who' (but the RAN/RN/RNZN has the same basic org structure as us, so that helps too). That way I don't have to remember who the CO, XO, Engineer etc is (and I don't care anyway really), and takes some of the emotion of it as well so a bit easier to look at it objectively when they people are abstract position names. I think they named the fatalities (possibly in a dedicated section as a bit of a 'in memoriam'), which is I think appropriate.

But overall the USN is probably our biggest source of LL, followed by the RN, RAN, and more recently the Norwegians, with us somewhere a distance last place. Pretty sad.

 

[KevinB]

@KevinB On the flip side, absolutely love the USN investigations, they are detailed enough to understand what happened, what went well, what went wrong, and where to do better.

They also provide enough context to take the same scenario, see if it applies to totally different ships with different designs, and figure out what is useful for a different context. For comparison, we blindly followed Protecteur BOI reccomendations while making no adjustment to a design that is 60 years newer to see if it still made sense in a totally different context and some fundamentally different design choices that massively change the practicality to the point where there may be some completely ineffective safety systems included as a requirement.

I think I prefer the general approach the RAN took for the Westralia BOI, where they use position names instead of people though, as the people's names actually make it harder to follow unless you keep a list of 'who is who' (but the RAN/RN/RNZN has the same basic org structure as us, so that helps too). That way I don't have to remember who the CO, XO, Engineer etc is (and I don't care anyway really), and takes some of the emotion of it as well so a bit easier to look at it objectively when they people are abstract position names. I think they named the fatalities (possibly in a dedicated section as a bit of a 'in memoriam'), which is I think appropriate.

But overall the USN is probably our biggest source of LL, followed by the RN, RAN, and more recently the Norwegians, with us somewhere a distance last place. Pretty sad.

I’ve got no experience with the USN outside of SpecWar side of the house, and their BOI’s aren’t really great models.

Army down here is a hit and miss with incidents. I had to testify as a SME in one, and it was clear the issue was chain of command issue, failing to ensure proper drills where taught and adhered to - but the Board was having a tough time seeing it, as I don’t think they understood the issues. Most seemed to be eventually understanding but an O-6 was stubborn as all Fuck and really didn’t like me asking him if he needed me to draw him a picture, as he wasn’t following the causation or the testimony from the witnesses, and how they deviated from the US Army official drills.

 

[dimsum]

Again, where the RCN (and likely other folks) can learn from RCAF flight safety culture.

Almost like it should be uh…constituted into a “CAF Safety” culture…

 

[dapaterson]

Again, where the RCN (and likely other folks) can learn from RCAF flight safety culture.

Almost like it should be uh…constituted into a “CAF Safety” culture…

It's the difference between fixing a problem, and fixing the blame.

 

[NavalMoose]

"Fortunately we learn from our lessons, and all our previous BOIs on fires, collisions and allisions are widely available..."

While this may be true and we also learn from our allies and partners, there are times when we don't.

One of the "lessons learned" from HMS Illustrious's gearbox explosion and fire in 1986 was that the Halon release station for the forward gear room was actually in the small lobby above the gear room itself (access via a door and then a hatch to actual gear room). Crew had to fight their way into that lobby in order to close the manhole hatch on main gear room hatch in order to fire the Halon. The ship was in Yankee and the manhole was allowed to be open. The Halon release station was relocated during repairs.

Fast forward to 1993 and I am now serving in brand new CPF HMCS Toronto. As we learned our way around the ship etc, I noticed that at least 1 of the 4 engineering spaces ( can't remember how many exactly, pretty sure FWD AMR was one though) had a Halon pull station in the small lobby/airlock above the actual hatch going to the space, the same as Illustrious had. I should point out that this pull station was not the only way to operate the Halon, it could be fired from the MCR remotely. I told the EO of my concerns, relating my experiences in 1986, and that Toronto was possibly cutting our options in half for putting Halon into the FAMR. I was pretty much told that Halon could be fired from the MCR and that's the way the ship was designed, although I never understood why all 4 spaces weren't that way. As we all know, nothing ever goes wrong with remotely operated systems.

 

[Navy_Pete]

@KevinB I think maybe I mispoke; the USN incident investigation reports that are publicly released are what I was talking about, vice a BOI. Depends on what the incident was, but those are effectively technical investigations by SMEs, and for something like the McCain collision was done by the National Transport Safety Board (possibly because a commercial ship was involved).

We have the equivalent for fires, that feeds into a BOI, but can be hard to get to and aren't ever made public, and some are still confidential. The investigation into the collisions/allision was part of the BOIs so are buried somewhere. PRO fire investigation is separate, but that report is also not widely available. FRE fire report is unclass and is attempting to be widely available to reverse the trend but slow going. A draft was widely released the week after to the fleet though, so progress.

The BOIs are where the recommendations come out of though, so for PRO there was a whole number of recommendations, that were very specific to LL on PRO that got pushed out as recommendations in a separate 2 page letter, but a single sentence or two doesn't let you understand the 'why' behind the recommendation. Some of them have been abandoned due to no solution being available, and another has resulted in a fitted system on JSS that likely won't actually work or be used.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

@NavalMoose I think you missed the sarcasm oozing from @Navy_Pete post re: learning from BOIs

 

[NavalMoose]

@NavalMoose I think you missed the sarcasm oozing from @Navy_Pete post re: learning from BOIs

Lol, I think I probably did, but my story is another example

 

[Navy_Pete]

Not sure the details on Illustrious, but for context the 'local' switch is still actually a remote operation (but agree it should generally be outside the airlock if possible), but the airlocks are separate watertight zones with the hatch closed, so .

Manual activation at the bottles is the other options, if both IPMS and the local switch don't work. Those are deliberately located in different watertight areas to make sure that is accessible if remote isn't working. Not ideal, as manual activation takes time for someone to get there, but if the discoverer of the fire is in the machinery space they want to evacuate anyway (due to fire, not halon. That's safe for occupied spaces) and should include closing the hatch once everyone is out. That's what happened the few times we've needed it in that kind of scenario. The way it's wired though, if the hatch is left open and the switch/wiring burns up, you can still fire off halon remotely from basically any IPMS control station as well, so a lot of redundancy. On IMCS still had redundant remote options as well for fitted systems, so there are a lot of layers built in.

If the hatch to the airlock is open, the additional volume is pretty minimal so the halon system has additional capacity to beyond effective concentration for a safety margin.

I've spent time on a few classes of ships and get them confused, but some of the halon switches are definitely outside the airlock. There is usually a reason if they aren't.

Having said that, one of the new desings included some local activation switches inside the actual protected compartment which is just stupid and doesn't meet code, but somehow got signed off by class societies. Actively fighting that one.