How lean manning saps morale, puts sailors at risk

When the cruiser Port Royal ran aground in February off Hawaii, Navy investigators found a number of reasons for the failure. The ship’s navigational gear was broken. Watchstanders lost their situational awareness. The fathometer wasn’t working, so the ship had no way of assessing depth.

But the investigation also found two other problems that have become all too common in the surface fleet: The captain had barely slept, and qualified lookouts who could have spotted the disaster in time were stuck doing jobs in other parts of the ship.

Both problems — too much work to do and not enough people to do it — are byproducts of the fleet’s years-old practice of “optimal manning,” slowly whittling the number of bodies in each command throughout the fleet.

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