Vice Adm. Roy Kitchener, commander, Naval Surface Force, speaks with junior officers at the Mariner Skills Training Center, Pacific (MSTCPAC) on May 6, 2022. US Navy Photo
Surface warfare reforms crafted to improve mariner skills and manage demand for ships are trickling into the fleet five years after two fatal collisions in the Western Pacific forced the Navy to retool how the service trains the surface fleet.
Multiple investigations and criminal prosecutions found that basic failures in...
USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62) departs Huntington Ingalls Industries – Ingalls Shipbuilding’s Pascagoula shipyard to conduct comprehensive at-sea testing on Feb. 3, 2020. US Navy Photo
The Navy’s surface warfare community is weighed with a culture that values administrative chores over training to fight, ship commanders that are micromanaged and an aversion to risk, according to a new survey overseen by a retired Navy admiral and Marine general at the behest of a group of Republican lawmakers. That...
Sailors on the bridge of USS Antietam (CG-59). US Navy Photo
Surface warfare officers are leaving the Navy at a higher rate than other unrestricted line officers despite reforms in training the service has instituted since two fatal collisions in 2017, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.
Compared to aviators, submariners and the special warfare/explosives ordnance disposal community, “SWOs had shorter average careers and higher separation rates compared with...
The crew of USS Benfold (DDG-65) trains in the Combined Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD)/Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Trainer (CIAT) in San Diego, Calif., on March 5, 2020. USNI News photo.
The surface navy continues to expand and evolve its use of virtual trainers, as it looks to train and certify individual sailors and watch teams ashore so they can make best use of their time at sea.
The Navy now fields systems as simple as a microphone paired with a simulator display screen to...