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Sunday, December 22nd, 2019

Sailors Report Enduring Concerns About Navy Readiness and Leadership

Author:     Kengo Tsutsumi
Source:     ProPublica
Publication Date:     April 29, 2019 | 5 a.m. EDT
 Link: Sailors Report Enduring Concerns About Navy Readiness and Leadership
Stephan:   In fiscal year 2015, military spending accounted for 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending, totalling $598.5 billion. On March 16, 2017 President Trump submitted his request to Congress for $639 billion in military spending—$54 billion—which represented a 10 percent increase. And yet we have a military for which most Americans could not qualify (see the previous article), whose equipment is in poor condition, and service members who feel they are not properly trained. The only winner in this deal are the corporations which profit from all this money.  

Navy crew members of the USS Blue Ridge, the command ship of the 7th Fleet, stand on the deck as the ship is docked during a port call on April 20, 2019, in Hong Kong.
Credit: Anthony Kwan/Getty

The responses by the sailors — consistent, repeated — can be jarring to read:

Are you getting enough sleep? “No.”

Do you feel well-trained to do your job? “No.”

Have there been scenarios in which you or your bosses had concerns about the safety of the ship and crew but felt they could not say no to new tasking? “Yes.”

Please rate your confidence in Navy leadership in the Pentagon. “I am not confident.”

On Feb. 26, ProPublica published a callout aimed primarily at active-duty men and women in the U.S. Navy. We had published two stories about neglect, exhaustion and deadly mishaps in the 7th Fleet, the largest armada anywhere and once the Navy’s crown jewel. Now, we wanted to take a measure of the confidence in […]

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