Lack of sleep and manpower shortages continue to plague the Navy despite being identified a prime contributors to a pair of deadly collisions four years ago, a critical new audit has found.
Even though Navy commanders issued a new fatigue management policy after the two accidents led to the death of 17 sailors, but a Government Accountability Office survey contends the changes haven’t been sufficient.
The GAO inspectors said more than 60% of officers sleep for five hours or fewer during a deployment and only 14% get the recommended total of seven hours or more.
“Sailor effectiveness declines after prolonged periods without sleep, equating to impairment levels comparable to intoxication,” according to the report from the congressional watchdog group.
The USS Fitzgerald and the USS John S. McCain, both guided missile destroyers, collided with commercial ships within the space of three months in the summer of 2017. An investigation revealed that a lack of basic seamanship training was a contributing factor.
The Navy still “routinely” assigns fewer crewmembers to its ships than are needed to safely operate them, the GAO said. The Navy have manned vessels with an eye to budget constraints rather than the mission requirements, which understates shortfalls in crew size, the GAO said.
“The Navy has tracked crew levels based on what positions it could afford to fund instead of what Navy studies have determined are needed, masking the full extent of crew shortfalls,” the report said. “It is not accurately communicating to internal decision makers the number of personnel it will need as the fleet grows, which may prevent it from effectively mitigating current crewing shortfalls.”
A Navy survey showed that the top three factors impeding sailors’ ability to sleep were workloads, required meetings and drills. More than 80% of the officers who responded to the GAO investigators said fatigue hurt shipboard operations. It wasn’t uncommon for dazed and stressed officers to be seen on the bridge trying to safely navigate the ship because of their leadership’s disregard of sleep requirements, the report stated.
Seven sailors aboard the Fitzgerald died June 17, 2017 when the destroyer collided with a cargo vessel off the east coast of Japan. On Aug. 21, 2017, the McCain was struck by a merchant ship near Singapore, killing 10 sailors.
Several senior Navy leaders were relieved of duty following the collisions, including the commander of the 7th Fleet, and the commanders and executive officers of the two ships.
Investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board also pointed to crew fatigue as a contributing cause of the 2017 collisions. “In both situations, bridge watch-standers had little to no sleep the night before the collisions, which impaired [their] situational awareness and ability to react to an emergency,” according to the report.
While the Navy implemented a fatigue management policy after the fatal collisions, the GAO investigators said the service is inconsistent in how it manages the issue, primarily because it lacks sufficient data.
In their response, Navy officials told the GAO they concurred with their recommendations, including the need to gather more information about the negative impact of fatigue and lack of sleep to shipboard operations.