More SSN 711 Fallout to Come

Well, I never claimed to blog primarily about submarines here, but man, I let the SSN 711 (USS San Francisco) story zip by! While I was paying attention to other things, the skipper was relieved of command and his permanent record given the poison pill of a letter of reprimand. Three submariner bloggers said everything I could have said (and more) better than I could have said it. In the vein of getting my own readers up to speed, I'll quickly point to each, as they represent the three main ways of looking at this that I observed when I went through a similar kind of situation back when I was a bubblehead. (This is why I was sure the CO would take the fall. This would also be part of why I didn't stay in.) At the risk of sounding sphinx-like, I'll say that the truth lies somewhere between these points of view. Hopefully by the end of this post, I'll have adequately explained that statement.

Bothenook expresses the anger any crewman loyal to his captain would have felt at this outcome. And, though I was an officer at the time of my experience, I was mainly of like mind back then.

[T]he navy has absolutely no history of standing behind and supporting its people. When we needed support in the submarine community, it came from the submariners, not the Navy.

[I] don't think the stupid in the case were punished (the ones in charge of providing accurate nav charts, and the ones that provided his plot from squadron). sad, really sad.

The part of this I agree with is something that has always troubled me about the Navy: Are its criteria for judging its officers actually rational? I used to think not, but the fact is that there is even less tolerance for error from reality during an actual wartime situation. In a way, demanding perfection of an officer does, intentionally or not, mimic this harsh reality. But one thing I fully agree with Bothenook about is that the way the Navy will judge you is something that should, at a minimum, make you think twice before you join.

Chap gives probably the best explanation for why the Navy found the captain at fault that I've ever heard when he uses his "switch" analogy. Think of the disaster as a light that requires an entire series of switches to be flipped on all at once before it will turn on. If a commanding officer permits them all to be flipped on, he has failed and is considered responsible. (Such an astounding series of coincidences would be a symptom of a systemic problem with the boat's culture and would thus reflect negatively upon the captain's leadership.)

An example: If Furd gets drunk right now, sitting in his house, he’s pretty much going to be okay. If he gets into a car’s driver’s seat while he’s drunk, that’s two switches shut. Wet road, old, bald tire–two more switches shut. Circuit’s complete–but it’s not like Furd will disappear in a puff of smoke instantaneously. Maybe he’ll get to my destination, maybe not–it depends on the opportunity that shows up at the time he’s driving drunk. Add an oncoming truck, and there’s an opportunity that causes the BAD light to go on (followed by the funeral).

In a risky environment you have switches naturally close and open all the time. Some of them are just not avoidable–the radar just broke!–and some are–hey, didn’t anyone notice that nobody’s checked the charts to see if they’re current? Some of them are active choices–we need to get into port by 0900 or we’ll be at sea another two days due to port loading. To mitigate risk, a leader has to instill a culture of finding those switches and opening them, driving out the devils that lurk inside the details and stepping back to ensure the big picture is watched. When an investigation happens, some of those switches get found, and the rest of the force gets the benefit of that investigation.

I wish I'd heard that from someone when I was in the Navy, or even before I had joined! (And notice that Chap himself was lucky enough to have been taught this by his boss.) I leave open the question of whether this is the right way to run the Navy, because Chap makes a more important observation.

The difference is the human aspect of leadership and the unique responsibility of command. Sure, there’s a bit of pour encourager les autres, but there is also the bargain a CO accepts when pinning on the sheriff’s badge. Bad things happen, you’re gone. Even if you collide with some fishing boat looking for the insurance money and it’s entirely not your command’s fault, you’re still responsible. You could be asleep in your bunkie and still responsible. It comes with the job, and you know it before you take the job.

I agree with Chap on this. The CO knew what he was getting into when he assumed command. Admiral's Mast after a grounding is part of the bargain. Without actual warfare to spur the captain on to make damn sure everyone does everything right, this should serve as a good substitute motivation. So while I admire CDR Mooney for getting his ship and crew through that terrible crisis, he lacks sympathy from me in one respect: He agreed to take such a fall when he agreed to take command.

(Another reason I got out: Social constructs like this motivate me poorly. This is simply a fact about my personality that I have learned over the years. In retrospect, it made me very ill-suited for the Navy as it was then and remains to this day.)

And finally, Willy Shake reminds us that we aren't the ones privy to all the information the investigation turned up.

In what way was he negligent, but not criminally so? Well, these investigations are extremely rigorous and thorough, as you might expect. Under such acute scrutiny, any ship--even a good ship (as it appears SSN 711 was)--will be laid bare, warts and all. Whether this investigation has been fair or not, I'm not in a position to speculate. Was CDR Mooney scapegoated for higher-ups? *shrugs* Can't say. Where do they find cause for blame?

And what of the fact that no ship will fail to turn up flaws when examined with a fine-toothed comb? See Chap's post above. And what else may have turned up? I can make some guesses, but I can't share them with you. Another aspect of this post echoes Chap: the punishment for the captain is simply the way it's done in the Navy. (And remember, the CO knew this going in.)

Sooo.... The Navy demands perfection of its officers, especially those in command. If something bad happens, the Navy will assume that the CO's leadership in general is what allowed this problem to occur -- and he as much as agreed to this by becoming a CO. What the CO does after a problem does not remove the fact that the problem (which the Navy will take to be caused by his bad leadership) occurred in the first place. Might this zero-tolerance-for-failure policy be used to cover an Admiral's stern? Probably has, maybe is, probably will. I don't know how well I agree with (or am really qualified to pass judgement on) this system, but if you have a better way to make ambitious men demand wartime performance of what is effectively a peacetime boat crew, don't tell me. Go straight to the Chief of Naval Operations.

So now you're all up to speed. (And maybe if you're a submariner, you think I'm not.) The latest news, unsurprisingly, is that some more bacon is about to be fried.

National media, including the New York Times are reporting that Navy investigators have found that officers on board the nuclear submarine failed to "Take into account a variety of danger signs before the vessel smashed into an undersea mountain in January." The collision caused the death of one sailor and injured dozens of others.

It will be interesting to see whether we get more details on these "warning signs" than this crew did on its nautical charts. We may well not, and for perfectly valid reasons.

But a whole host of questions comes to my mind. Despite the fact that I may have sounded flippant above, my remark about the warning signs indicates where the real tragedy might lie. Did someone aboard see this coming, raise his concern, and then get blown off? No matter who this was, all roads lead to the captain. Did a new quartermaster or some lowly Ensign point out the age of the charts and get laughed at? Whose boss tolerated that? Did the Navigator not worry too much about the charts because he'd gotten away with lax practices in the past? He reports directly to the CO. Did the CO himself note the age of the charts and decide not to raise the issue, or did, but backed down too easily?

One thing I am in absolutely no position to speculate on is this: Just how much could the captain himself have done against institutional inertia? Could he have refused to set sail without serious repercussions? Would such a maneuver have seen him get relieved of command, sent to admiral's mast, and then laughed off as a crackpot for worrying about some "imaginary" sea mount? In the meantime, would the Navy have found someone else willing to set sail with the very same charts? (And collide with the sea mount anyway?) I can see the captain taking the fall but for this one reservation.

On second thought, I can see it even then. If the captain was concerned with the charts and knew there was too much institutional inertia, why the flank bell?

-- CAV