That may be, but it still takes a lot of OJT training and leadership, as well as good senior enlisted to run a ship, or submarine. If you have that, you can deal with morons from college who come aboard and will try to tell you everything (usually being wrong), but without it, the command is doomed. I have several books on WW2, written by veterans, covering all aspects, air, sea, submerged, and they all indicate the average joe was a newbie maybe, but quickly learned the job and how to survive. But then, people shooting and bombing you then to make that a priority in war, and in peace there is a lethargy that sets in, where people are more concerned about promotion and next assignment, than the routine day to day business.

Its easily explained, they were ORDERED not to engage and be passive if confronted.That patrol boat could have and should have easily blown the iranians out of the water. The only reason they wouldn't is if the order was from higher up.
It was a shameful display of O's pussification of the USN.

BTW, I too, was in the high 80's or so, they wanted me to go be a nuke, but had no openings for like 3 months. I went for Aviation and switched to submarines in boot camp. I never knew what others had, as most of us were more concerned with what rate you were and if you had ever been to "C" school. That was especially important for the A gang guys (who, a lot of them, started as recruits and then became a gangers after getting to the boat), since they fixed the CHT pumps (yes, they did as they sound) and without them, the toilets would not flush after a while, and it would be a real bad thing.

One would hope, and that is one of the great questions in these 2 debacles, no one has adequately addressed how that can happen, as well as, what happened when the 2 little patrol boats got caught by Iran. That was never adequately explained either. They love their secrets...

CG, were you ever in the military? Your comment indicates an absolute total unfamiliarity with how it works. You get a budget each year, and it takes a specific amount of money for each ship, plane and person, so when that money is cut, or diverted, or used for something else (invented in the 60's by McNamara, it is called "reprogramming") you now may have $500,000 less to run the ship than last year, and yet you still have a specific number of days required to steam for training, and testing and certifications. That is the first thing to be cut in finding that missing 500K. The military is run with business accounting, every bit of water, fuel people, repairs, parts, is costed, and entered in the ships "checkbook". Woe betide the CO who overdraws his account! So, when Congress, is not asked for money, they do not give it. If the President does not ask, they do not receive. If the President says "we should only give them XXX billion( so he can "reprogram himself for "poor people" or graft), you get shorted. That is what Obama did for 8 years. That is why we are short on ships, and all the things that go with them. That is why they never trained. That is why some are only 10% certified, because everyone was told to do more with less, and no one every reduced the "requirements", they just went along, just like Congress does, kicking the can down the road.

Yes, CG, there is an "establishment" that hates POTUS, it is all the establishment politicos, who suddenly have no leverage, it is all the whiner liberals who suddenly have no one in the white house throwing them crumbs and favors, and yes, they do hate the military. Hilarry Beast was famous as a bitch, but she was a Royal Bitch to the military.

"years of neglect our military has undergone"
This the content of this entire comment sounds like crap, and so does the original article.

I don't take the article seriously because it comes off as sensationalism rather than reporting.

But when I read people commenting on it as Ayn Rand fans, I try to give it the benefit of the doubt. I accept that even in a large organization with millions of people, a strong leader can set the tone that flows down layers of management.

My baloney radar goes off in a big way though:
- The president has an overwhelming impact on things like ship maintenance and the ratio of missions to ships.
- The presidents are cast as either saints or sinners.
- The saints/sinners, at least in this small sample, fall along partisan lines.
- A vague "establishment" "hates" the POTUS and does not care about people working in the military.

Assuming for the moment my "baloney radar" is actually right, her explanation of politics (not sure that's the right word) is what drew me to Ayn Rand. I'd seen politics, and I always thought that it was caused by people seeking an end goal for themselves but using deceit to get there. Fountainhead and AS got me inside the villains heads. They weren't playing politics out to get what they wanted. Rather they didn't have an end goal, and politics was an end in itself.

One reason I'm interested in policy is I'm far enough away from it that I'm not even tempted to think about politics. For the people in the thick of it, making one set of politicians look like saints and the other sinners is their entire life.

The NY Post article and some of the comments remind me of talking to someone with an agenda at a company after a merger. Everyone who came from one company is a saint, and the people from the other company are sinners. In an extreme case, they don't even hide the politics. It doesn't ring remotely true. They're not giving evidence, and don't expect anyone to believe the whole thing. They have some plan to get paid or to get whatever Peter Keating was after in life, and they're just going full-on naked politics, hoping some of it sticks.

So basically I think it's not only crap, but it seems to be evil too. I apologize for making a judgment based on my "radar", which could easily be wrong. 20 years ago I thought some really stupid things; so this could be something else I'm wrong about. Maybe some presidents push the Joint Chiefs to do more with less. They also might signal they want to cut corners, thinking they're cutting through red tape, not understanding the procedures are there for a reason. I don't know. I've only had remote connections to people and projects for the gov't. As an outsider, though, reading this, it's sounds like a window into a world of the evil manipulating the unsophisticated, reminding me of Toohey mentoring people to give up on their dreams.

Truth:

I scored an 83 on ASVAB cold, unaware of what it was for.When I reported to my ship I met folks (got to know them, drank with them, and stood by them for years) who scored 38 on the ASVAB.

I trust that Navy personnel, my brethren, can assess a threat regardless of their level of intelligence or common sense because they, the large majority, actually give a damn about this country and, more so, they care if they live.

I'll give our sailors the benefit of the doubt here. When WWII broke out, most of the enlisted men were college-age and late-high-school-age farm boys and low level commercial workers. Most of them stepped to the plate and took charge. Although I believe public education is the single biggest disgrace in this country, I think that, in a pinch, or young people have more going for them than you would expect.

First we must determine if this description of the navy is true. Is it the whole navy suffering from enforced malaise, or just this ship, or some percentage of the captain and crew?Is this the "Millenium Syndrome" where the graduate expects to be given a high ranking job upon graduation? I have the uncomfortable feeling that we may be witnessing the "cashing in" (an A.R. phrase) of the people whose training we have been allowing in the past few decades.Unfortunately I think that may be the problem. Once upon a time, it was expected that basic training is not a day at the beach, and duties are not expected to be taken lightly. A prison ship? Hmmm. Perhaps a week at a real prison just for contrast would be good.
Let's ask Carl.

My G.P. doctor's secretary who runs the business part of his huge practice has two sons in the navy. Their stories are far different than those of the "prison ship."

This is a one-sided article that does not cite specifics - we need to get the other half of the story and specific complaints.

In order to understand this situation, I need to know what the actual dangerous situations on board were; I would need a statistic on those people who made traceable legitimate complaints about dangerous conditions and whether they were restricted to ship; I would need to know what tools and options the officers had to remedy any dangerous situations.

Just going from this article, I can come to no valid conclusions.

Jan

We also have to include atmospheric conditions, electron flows, CME's, purposed electronic interventions, etc BUT! there is no excuse for not paying attention.

Save the same sex for the bunk and not the bridge!

Before you jump on the young men, let's not forget the years of neglect our military has undergone. A ship that has not been well maintained is a nightmare of "make do" and constant spit and bailing wire repair. All that in addition to regular duty, and little to no shore leave due to lack of available replacement ships (with two now out of service due to collisions) is a nightmare scenario.

Leadership (starting with the Clinton White House) is where the fault lies. Bush the younger tried to repair the budget damage, but he was dealing with Democrat led Congress, and Obama just compounded the neglect. Trump has promised to do everything he can to recover, but he isn't getting much help from an establishment that hates him, and doesn't give a rat's ass about our servicemen.

I served in the USN during Vietnam and then in the NY Prison system for 27 years after. YUP! both are very similar, you are locked in a box in both.
Out of fear of sounding harsh I think the best I can say is it appears some "Snowflakes" are melting.
The USN gets 3 squares a day and a bunk so how does this compare to our Army and Marines sleeping in a desert and dodging bullets. Fing cry babies.

Liberal college life and military life are 180 degrees apart. If they wanted a view of social communism they chose the best place to get it. The difference is that one can do the job required and move up whereas in social communism one will always be an enlisted surf.

Actually it was the CO and XO, although the root cause (which they are loath to admit) is too few ships, too many commitments, and so they are always deployed at sea or training, and the trainng time is very limited, and crew time off is also very limited. Add to that young college grads who are unleashed on divisions who think they have to be "superior" on the backs of their men and women, and you have a recipe for disaster. We have heard zip 0 on what caused it, they know, they have a real good idea, but they will not admit it until some individual is found to blame. Probably people fell asleep, systems turned off or alarms silenced, that sort of thing. The fact we have about 20 dead sailors should be a huge wake up call to them that you have to treat your people right, and having Captain Queeg on board trying to make the next grade is not a good idea.

I was glad to see those two ship COs fired for (if I remember correctly) the McCain crash. Just today incompetence, apparently. Unbelievable that the navy has gotten so low...

Thank you for this revelation.
This has to be only a small part of O's precious legacy of taking his worthy of only being apologized for despised USA down a notch or two or three.

Well, there are a lot of additional issues that need tending as well, and the years of Obamanation "cuts" has made it pretty hard to meet all the training requirements for certs, so a lot, lot of ships are barely 10% certified in their basics (seamanship, weapons, tactics). There is also a serious issue with aholes fresh from college with no idea what they are doing, showing up and becoming Captain Queegs in their divisions and departments, then moving up to command and doing the same. This issue is beginning to spread and the Navy is not going to come out well in the end. No one has yet to explain how 2 ships, with state of the art radars and look outs and sensors, get hit by 2 merchant ships in the dark, yet can shoot down a frigging ballistic missile? Not happening...

Trump says he is rebuilding the military. Me dino can think of a naval priority.
Quality service cannot be generated from poor morale.
I mean, that Navy crew is only monitoring a rogue nuclear power run by a crazy immature dough boy for a "rocket man," who says he wants to nuke the USA. No biggie there!

Old dino is right, it is just there are few, if any ships to replace them. The Navy has developed a bad habit of sending them there, and leaving them there, forever. They get overhauled in Japan, and the crews live there in Yokuska. The logic was it saves on deployments and fuel and time, but they seem to have become like the Philippines were in WW2, and we all saw how well that worked.

Appears to old dino that a rotation of ships if not crews is in dire need.