I could have told them this years ago. In fact, I think I did.
"Surface Forces: LCS Gets A Bigger Crew And Lots Of Tweaks
Next Article → MORALE: Danger Pay Is Going Away
January 17, 2014: The U.S. Navy continues to shake out the bugs in its radical new LCS (Littoral Combat Ship) design. Basically a replacement for the older frigates (themselves replacements for the World War II era “Destroyer Escorts”) the LCS has many novel features which require a lot of tweaking to get working properly. The latest tweak is to crew size, with ten personnel being added. That makes a big difference, because both LCS classes have accommodations for only 75 personnel. Normally, a ship of this size would have a crew of about 200. The basic LCS crew was 40, with the other 35 berths occupied by operators of special equipment. In practice the original crew was usually 55. That was 40 for running the ship and 15 for the mission package. From now on the average will be 65.
The navy found that despite lots of automation, which works fine on commercial ships, there was still too much to do for the 55 man crew. For many uniquely military tasks everyone (officers and sailors) pitched in and that got the job done and was great for crew morale. But it left the crew looking exhausted when they came back from more than a few months at sea. So work logs were examined, crewmen were interviewed, numbers were crunched and it was decided that increasing basic crew size 25 percent would make it big difference."...
I have not been aboard any of the current LCS platforms yet. With a design intended for a crew of 40 to 60 I wonder if the increased crew will result in much more than hot racks and slightly more frequent underway re-supply missions.
Regardless, if a 10% increase in personnel makes the LCS platform that much more efficient and effective then I'm all for it!
I can explain it to you but I can't understand it for you.
"Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the Government take care of him; better take a closer look at the American Indian." - Henry Ford
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges; When the Republic is at its most corrupt the laws are most numerous. - Publius Cornelius Tacitus
otisptoadwater wrote: I have not been aboard any of the current LCS platforms yet. With a design intended for a crew of 40 to 60 I wonder if the increased crew will result in much more than hot racks and slightly more frequent underway re-supply missions.
Regardless, if a 10% increase in personnel makes the LCS platform that much more efficient and effective then I'm all for it!
