Navy Returns to Compasses and Pencils To Help Avoid Collisions at Sea (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Urgent new orders went out earlier this month for United States Navy warships that have been plagued by deadly mishaps this year. More sleep and no more 100-hour workweeks for sailors. Ships steaming in crowded waters like those near Singapore and Tokyo will now broadcast their positions as do other vessels. And ships whose crews lack basic seamanship certification will probably stay in port until the problems are fixed.[...] The orders issued recently by the Navy's top officer for ships worldwide, Vice Adm. Thomas S. Rowden, drew on the lessons that commanders gleaned from a 24-hour fleetwide suspension of operations last month to examine basic seamanship, teamwork and other fundamental safety and operational standards. Collectively, current and former officers said, the new rules mark several significant cultural shifts for the Navy's tradition-bound fleets. At least for the moment, safety and maintenance are on par with operational security, and commanders are requiring sailors to use old-fashioned compasses, pencils and paper to help track potential hazards (alternative source), as well as reducing a captain's discretion to define what rules the watch team follows if the captain is not on the ship's bridge. "Rowden is stomping his foot and saying, 'We've got to get back to basics,'" said Vice Adm.

Comments

Sigh.

[ledow]

Please explain why US Navy warhsips have crews who "lack basic seamanship certification".

I mean.. I understand that they might not have the piece of paper, the same way they might not have passed the official driving test to drive a tank, but surely... surely at some point... someone gave them the equivalent skills and/or sent them on the same kinds of training such that it would be a cinch to acquire such certification?

Re:Sigh.

[DontBeAMoran]

Someone's "basic" is another man's "above expert".

Re:Sigh.

[D.McG.]

Being able to fly, lead a target, and shoot down a MiG, has no bearing on knowing the rules of the road, being able to shift gears in a standard, hill start, etc. Different skillsets.

The OP has a valid point. If someone is training to get certified and is shadowed by someone who is certified, that's one thing. But if the bridge is filled with people that are not certified, that's a huge breakdown in the chain of command. The gov't spends HOW MUCH money on defense, yet we have untrained people on deck looking after a billion dollar boat? That's not what the taxpayers are expecting.

Re:Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because technology is making us lazier and dumber, not more efficient and smarter.
GPS can be hacked (sidebar: Why the actual FUCK are signals from U.S. GPS SVs not encrypted to prevent hacking?); a magnetic compass, not so much (or at least, not at a distance).
Are we lowering the bar, in all aspects of our society and not just within the military? Very possibly.

Re:Sigh.

[JohnFen]

Please explain why US Navy warhsips have crews who "lack basic seamanship certification".

This jumped out at me, too.

Re:Sigh.

[hey!]

All I ask for is a tall ship and a satellite constellation to steer her by...

Re:Sigh.

[hduff]

Please explain why US Navy warhsips have crews who "lack basic seamanship certification".

This jumped out at me, too.

Reduced time and money for training are the culprits.

More training is the solution.

Re:Sigh.

[g01d4]

I'd say technology lulls management into a false sense of security by making production smarter and more efficient. Since the man on watch has less to do, he can work longer shifts and tours - until he can't (if that indeed was part of the cause) and there's a wake-up call. Unfortunately in the US Navy's case there seems to have been a few. Another wake-up call?

Re:Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not what the taxpayers are expecting.

As a taxpayer, I can assure you that for the past 15 years I expect nothing short of deception, negligence, and behaviors arguably interpretable as war crimes.

Re:Sigh.

[Grishnakh]

Please explain why US Navy warhsips have crews who "lack basic seamanship certification".

I read an article, I think on gcaptain.com, about this not long ago. Basically, it said that they just don't bother training them any more, because of cost-cutting measures in the late 2000s. They used to have some school they'd send them to to learn basic seamanship, but because of Congress's cost-cutting (Congress wants to spend lots of $$$ on weapons systems and shipbuilding, but they don't want to allow the Navy to spend any money on training), they closed the school and replaced it with a self-taught course on a bunch of CD-ROMs that sailors were expected to do on their own, *at sea*, while already way too busy with all their regular shipboard duties.

Ultimately, I think the blame probably lies with Congress. The military really isn't able to run itself that much and make its own decisions for how to do things and fund things; it's highly micro-managed by Congress.

Re:Sigh.

[Grishnakh]

has no bearing on knowing the rules of the road, being able to shift gears in a standard, hill start, etc.

This is very tangential, but might be slightly relevant: in cars, a lot of those skills are largely obsolete. For instance, not many cars in the US come with a manual transmission any more: they're much harder to resell (unless it's a sports car), and automatics now have significantly better fuel economy than sticks (largely due to differences in gearing: automatics have taller gears at the top end, so the city economy is about the same but highway is worse).

Also, starting on hills isn't a necessary skill any more much of the time: many cars have some kind of "hill-holder" mechanism. Subarus had a form of this way back in the late 80s I think, but modern cars have it as standard, provided by the ABS system (just hold the rear brake pressure on a hill until the car starts moving). Consequently, people learning to drive won' have to deal with these things, unless they get stuck in an older car unexpectedly.

There may be a component of this to the Navy's problems: they have lots of high-tech systems, but they don't seem to teach any of the fundamentals any more, so sailors are dependent on the systems, but also don't understand how they really work and when not to trust them. (So, for instance, an older driver with a new car doesn't *need* to cover the brake when starting on a hill, but if there's someone right behind him, he might do so anyway out of precaution, in case the hill-holder system happens to fail at that moment, unlikely as that may be. The young driver won't, and will roll back into the other car.)

Re:Sigh.

[The Snowman]

After all, if the military could make its own decisions about how to spend money, it'd be "wasted", so it "needs" Congressional "oversight". That's the root of the problem.

Article I Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution has not one but three clauses that enumerate Congress's authority over the military, including this one:

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

Back in the 18th century, military coups were more common than they are today. In fact the Articles of Confederation that predate the Constitution were even more restrictive than the Constitution: we barely had any military for the first decade. The compromise was to have a stronger military, but have a bit more oversight, especially with the budget. The goal was to have a military where commanders could focus on doing what they do well, killing shit, while Congress could regulate them (e.g. UCMJ) and pull the plug on relatively short notice and dry up funding if required.

Of course, ever since the end of WW2 and the start of the Cold War, the military budget is just a pork buffet. I seriously doubt there is any risk of a military coup in the USA, or any other concerns that prompted the budget micromanagement that we have today.

I also blame Bush 2 for a lot of the military problems we have, including the one called out in the article. Back in the mid-2000s, he insisted we needed more "boots on the ground" (i.e. Army and Marines) without increasing the overall military size. He gutted the Air Force and Navy. Probably half of those cuts were necessary regardless, the other half hurt. The lack of training called out in the article is a symptom of the larger issue of "doing more with less" - not necessarily a bad idea, but it has to be implemented correctly. Skimping on core training such as "navigating and piloting naval vessels" and "working 100 hour weeks and getting insufficient sleep" is not doing more with less: it is doing less with less. Source: I was active duty in the mid-2000s while Bush 2 was President.

Re:Sigh.

[rickb928]

Sure. And you should expect competence in the military, at the level of basic training, marksmanship, transport, and seamanship where appropriate, and discipline. The Navy has a problem with this - bridge crews not paying enough attention, captains not on the bridge when the ship is in congested waters, and the obvious problem of the bridge command structure failing. Time for a reset.

Going back to paper, pencils, compasses, etc. is a good step. Get the sextants out and take sightings. Throw the sounding line.

Military personnel should understand this. When you fail, you should expect consequences such as retraining, strict adherence to procedure, double shifts, the whole gamut of realigning behavior and performance with expectations. This is better, in every way, than dead sailors because someone wasn't paying sufficient attention. The loss of life is not merely inexcusable, it's criminal. Captains that lose crewmen in accidents suffer loss of promotion and shortened careers, as they should. Their subordinates who failed should also suffer. None of these sailors deserve even the dubious honor or duty of notifying the families of the dead, for that is both honor and duty, and these failed officers have failed at both.

Re:Sigh.

[freeze128]

All modern cellphones have GPS in them. What they *NEED* are apps that emulate a sextant.

Re:Sigh.

[Darinbob]

It's good the Navy does this, but the corporate world is just as bad. Hiring people based on some certificate covering simplistic skills but which don't certify for competence of deep understanding, versus hiring someone with expertise who knows the fundamentals and can build on top of those.

Re:Sigh.

[hey!]

And will those apps simulate the sun as well so you can bring it down to the horizon?

Let's be clear in any case what problem we're solving. A sextant is an essential tool (along with a chronometer) in determining latitude and longitude -- position on the Earth. This is where Mercator projection maps are handy: it helps you choose a heading that will get you somewhere you can't see.

What's going on here is that ships are running into each other in crowded sea lanes. So somehow the instruments available to the people piloting these ships plus their own eyes aren't enough to prevent a collisions that old-school pilots would have avoided. And I'm fairly sure this is not because it's not physically possible to process the information. It may be that reliance on technology to do most of the hard work has reduced the pilot's habitual engagement and awareness.

There is another solution, which is to have the ships completely robotically piloted. You'd still train pilots to handle ships manually for unusual situation, but you wouldn't count on having perfect human attention directing the ship 7x24.

Re:Sigh.

[arglebargle_xiv]

It's not just the training, the thing that really struck me is:

Ships steaming in crowded waters like those near Singapore and Tokyo will now broadcast their positions as do other vessels.

So when the entire world is relying on AIS to avoid collisions, the US navy isn't providing that in the middle of busy shipping lanes? It's a fscking aircraft carrier, how invisible is that going to be when it's going through the Singapore strait? Turn on AIS in busy areas and you won't need to go back to pencil and paper...

Re:Sigh.

[Teancum]

The fear is that somehow an enemy could use that positioning data to target a U.S. Navy ship and use it in a preemptive attack.

I agree with you in terms of a navy ship in the middle of a major shipping channel when they aren't in the middle of a war operation though. Sort of akin to a police car that shouldn't have his lights on or doing other thing than simply being an ordinary commuter in ordinary traffic when they are traveling from one point to another.

A similar situation happens with air traffic, where military jets often don't turn on transponders to indicate position or other normal transponder information if they are on a war footing. Yes, it is dangerous and something they need to deal with as well. On the other hand, the USAF does have times those military jets do turn on transponders if they want to have civilian aviation stay out of the way or if the military jets are trying to play nice and friendly with civilian air traffic.

Perhaps the last couple of decades of being in a continuous global war is something that is getting out of hand.

Ridiculous -- why not enhance the use AIS & ra

[swb]

Busy shipping lanes are too busy to monitor and track with paper and pencil.

Modern shipping works because ships are able to use technology like AIS and radar to track other vessels accurately and in real time. Navigation systems -- chotplotting, AIS, radar, autopilot, and weather information -- can be tied together in real time, allowing a ship's heading and course to be altered in real time based on actual conditions at sea.

I can definitely see the added advantages of humans with binoculars to spot closer in traffic and validate radar tracking and AIS data, but the idea that they'll just do all this in real time with paper and pencil is as silly as the SEC announcing it will combat stock fraud by switching back to pencils and paper spreadsheets.

Drawback of automation

[Solandri]

After the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, one of the surprising findings was that adding more inspectors could actually make things less safe. Each inspector figured if they skipped inspecting a part, the other inspector(s) would catch it. So they felt it was not that big a deal to be lazy at their job and skip a few of the harder inspections here and there. But when all the inspectors think this way, the chances of a bad part passing "inspection" increased compared to if there was only one inspector.

In the same way, if you know there's a computer system which tracks your ship's location and the location of all other ships, and automatically sounds an alarm if it detects a collision course, then you're more likely to slack at your job and start reading slashdot or the latest J.K. Rowling book. OTOH if there is no computer system, and you and ONLY YOU are personally responsible for tracking your and that other ship's position and course to make sure you don't collide, then you're going to have 100% of your attention devoted to that task. Double or multiple redundancy works for equipment, but not always for people.

Re:Drawback of automation

[bobbied]

However, there ARE ways to enforce accuracy.... Make the bridge crew enter their manual position observations and calculations and then routinely judge the accuracy of the manual log with the automatic position logs. If there are variances, they will need to be explained. If you are not accurate enough with your manual entries, you don't keep your qualification.

I always wondered why the Navy gave up the celestial navigation qualification requirement. Never made sense to me.

Re:Drawback of automation

[hey!]

In 3001, Arthur C. Clarke postulated a future in which nobody really understood how anything works.

This is entirely plausible to me given my experience growing up along with computers. I started learning about computers in the 1970s by messing around with primitive ICs; I learned to do stuff like build adders out of flip-flops. And I learned about each new technology when it came in; I programmed in assembly language on some of the earliest popular 8 bit microprocessors, but also in FORTRAN and LISP on early time sharing systems like Multics an Unix v7. I set up very early networks (back in the coax ethernet days) and configured some of the earliest network firewalls. I've been using Linux since Debian 0.93 -- the release that introduced dpkg. I was using HTML before cgi-bin was introduced, and have followed developments in web application and security ever since.

I have closely followed computers, networks, software and systems for forty years, giving me an abstraction-down-to-nut-and-bolts understanding of computers that no millennial will ever have. And you know what I say?

Big deal. It's almost never a practical advantage. There are millennials who have developed an understanding of the emergent behavior of high level systems that I'll probably never match.

Re:Drawback of automation

[Brett Buck]

That theory is axiomatic - the more people checking the less likely that errors made up front will be caught. We have know that for decades, but "adding another review" has such appeal to management that you never get rid of them. "Let's get more eyes on the problem" just ensures that the mistakes are codified forever, because it becomes so onerous to change something (and take weeks/months/years to get through the review process) that you try to work around it somehow, even if you find the problem.

      There's another level of the same thinking that is all the vogue here, now -- "AI". That is an even larger step along the same direction, also one I have seen in various guises for decades now. That's why perfectly capable people drive their Teslas into the side of a truck.

Re:Drawback of automation

[bobbied]

Sure, but the idea here is to make a system that requires two or more people to concur that the activity got done. This is commonly done for critical activities.

I fully get that no system is fool proof and that a sufficiently motivated group could bypass it. However, my point here is that there are effective ways to make the gaming of a system harder than compliance and/or design a system that makes it nearly impossible to get away with gaming the system because eventually you will be detected. Such systems need not be complex or time consuming to implement.

Remember, this is a risk management technique. One needs to gauge the risks and costs of any system like any other risk management effort.

Navy regulations are written in blood ...

[perpenso]

An uncle who served on destroyers long ago told me that "Navy regulations are written in blood". That regulations and training say this is the proper way to do something and you will do it in no other way. That the "proper way" was determined by people dying when it was done otherwise. That some ways of doing things are more than "tradition".

Re:Ridiculous -- why not enhance the use AIS &

[D.McG.]

In the case of espionage, if the nav systems are compromised, it would be good to know how to navigate by hand; to know what the computer is automating. Relying solely on the computer to steer the boat is a point of failure. I'm fine with them learning how to navigate manually. If their data contradicts the computer's, then identify which is wrong, and if it's the computer, that's a huge discovery. It's a backup AND check. TFA does not state that the nav systems are being replaced or shut down.

B52 pilots and Cessna 150 pilots

[perpenso]

When the navigation computer has to reboot on the B-52 bomber, the crew breaks out the slide ruler and map to figure out where they're going.

Yes, but the E6B slide rule is not something that ever went obsolete like traditional slide rules. The E6B was still used in ground school in the 1990s, might still be used in classrooms today. And many pilots still carry one in their bag, next to the paper chart and a flashlight, just in case. Its not a B-52 or a military thing. We're talking Cessna 150 pilots too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:And how many weekend hikers know how to use a m

[TheRaven64]

I'd not come across that before, but it's a pretty poor code. In English, the frequency of the letter e is 12.7%, yet it's 6 taps in that code. In contrast, f is only 2.2%, yet is 3 taps. The five most common letters in English are (in order) e, t, a, o, i. In tap code, they are 6, 8, 1, 7, and 6 taps: of the five most common letters, only one requires fewer than the average number of taps. In contrast, in Morse, they are 1, 1, 2, 3, and 2 taps.

Re:Ridiculous -- why not enhance the use AIS &

[swb]

What if you can't trust your electronic instruments?

Presumably part of the reason you have lookouts is for this reason, but if you *always* believe your instruments to be unreliable then your navigation is limited to what you can visually see.

I'm not saying they should only rely on AIS & radar, obviously a military ship should validate those systems' targets which should be in visual range. But those electronic systems can actually do a great job of predicting potential collisions, especially AIS. It's literally a broadcast of a ship's position, heading and speed. Even consumer marine electronics can produce collision prediction and course plotting for these targets.

The Navy's problem isn't that technology doesn't work, it's that they're not using it.

Re:And how many weekend hikers know how to use a m

[SScorpio]

So it's the qwerty of the code world. Maybe it was designed to prevent printers/typewriters from jamming to.

Re:And how many weekend hikers know how to use a m

[perpenso]

It wasn't devised for efficiency, for day to day use. It was devised for simplicity, for use in an emergency by nearly anyone. Its what would get used in the "movie scenes" with the "tap tap tap", when one sailor is trying to communicate with someone in the neighboring cell. It was a primary means of communications by isolated POWs in Vietnam.

Morse may have been standard training at the Naval Academy but I don't think all enlisted were taught morse. Signalmen and radiomen certainly, but others, not so sure. Two uncles served in the Navy long ago. When I asked one about morse he said to talk to his brother, that his brother was the radioman.

Ships are jokes nowadays

[nospam007]

"...will now broadcast their positions as do other vessels. "

So the 'other vessels' will have to take care of avoiding them, what about lighthouses and islands and other dangerous pieces of 'land'?
And they are supposed to notice missiles coming at them from hundreds of miles at supersonic speeds?

Re:Ships are jokes nowadays

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, my family was Air Force and not Navy. However I can imagine at least one reason why Navy ships might not have been transmitting position information.

During times of conflict you don't want to be doing this. It's great for your team and it's even greater for the opposition, during a war, to know where you are.

In places and at times when there is no conflict however, perhaps cooperating with civilian locator systems might be a good idea. Ultimately the Navy needs to determine how that will work.

Our "HUGE" push to automated control

[oldgraybeard]

Does make some sense to have humans in the loop, with both the knowledge and the manual tools to at the least double check and keep an eye on things.

So where does that leave the "RAPID AT ALL COSTS PUSH" to autonomous unmanned ships at sea, airliners in the air, heavy trucks on the roads and cars with no drivers or controls for manual use.

I am not against these things, I just think the path to get there is longer than most think. Since you often have to alter code for the exceptions that were not predicted or expected during the design and testing phases.

That got answered previously

[Anonymous Coward]

At least for officers, the basic navigational and shiphandling courses got replaced by a dvd set.

I'm not kidding.

Re:That got answered previously

[freeze128]

Are these DVD's available to civilians? I would like to learn how to handle a battleship.

Out of the box solution

[Nidi62]

How about we just stop with all the "war on X"s? When you are constantly on a war footing training takes a backseat and duty patterns change, leading to fatigue. In the Navy's case ships are kept out of port for much longer than they should, meaning many repairs are done underway which leads to a further reduction of training time and off duty time for the sailors. Stop wasting money on massively overbudget projects like the DDX/Zumwalt program (only 3 ships produced for a cost of almost $4 billion per ship) or the LCSs which are under-gunned, have engine issues, and have hulls so poorly made that one got cracked from a champagne bottle at the christening. $12 billion just from the DDX program would have gone a long way towards refitting ships and training current/more crews for said ships. And let's not even get started on the F-35 program.....

Re:Reeling and writhing...

[ISoldat53]

My CO required us to plot contacts (course, speed and intercept course) on the radar screen using essentially a crayon (grease pencil) and nothing else. This on the fishing grounds with more contacts than could be counted trawling in every direction in weather you can't imagine. This was with a three man bridge crew. I can't imagine a Navy ship having a collision at sea today.

Re:Ridiculous -- why not enhance the use AIS &

[Strider-]

With all that said, though, AIS & Radar massively improve safety by radically improving your situational awareness, especially in foul weather. I was sailing up in the Broughton Archipelago. On a couple of occasions we got stuck out in dense fog, where we could see maybe 150m or so. We kept an appropriate watch, with the other guy onboard maintaining a bow watch, emitting appropriate fog signals, etc... but the radar was a huge help, especially to ensure we remained in channel.

On that same trip, we were crossing Queen Charlotte Straight, and passed (in fog) within 2 nautical miles of the Crystal Serenity (largest cruise ship on the Alaska run this year), and the only reason we knew she was there was due to AIS, seeing her on radar, and her crew being active on the VHF. Had we not known she was there, our original course would have brought us too close for comfort.

So yes, it's doable, but done right, the modern aids are a huge improvement in situational awareness and safety.

Re:B52 Bombers...

[rjune]

No, good navigators always have CHART out. However, the navigator has been replaced on most aircraft with a GPS.

Where DOES the money go?

[rbrander]

It's hilarious to read comments and posts about how this is due to "budget cutting". These cuts are not perceptible at taxpayer level. https://www.statista.com/stati... ...yes, there's a "drop" in there from 2011-2016, but I believe that's in overseas adventuring. Far more importantly, the "drop" is to the 2008 budget, more than double the 2000 budget, when there were few of these collisions. It's now nearly $2000 per American citizen. Add up all spending on Pentagon, DOE (nukes), DVA, and the spy/surveillance services, debt servicing, and it's a trillion a year, nearly $10,000 per household.

And yet, there isn't enough money for the PEOPLE in the American military, not even enough for their really basic training. Is is really all blown on overpriced weapons systems? Can't you include training in the weapons-system budget or something? Sneak it in.

Celestial Navigation is being taught again

[Anonymous Coward]

on the Great Lakes.
caught that in an article last year, Celestial navigation has made it back into the curriculum. Now factor in a 3 to 4 year window before you see any results of that into the system (training enough people in the arts, & getting them in enough mustard in chief positions, yada yada. in other words it takes time for solutions to take effect, unlike. Hence it is gonna take a year or two before the navy finally changes course to a core competent naval force,,,, again. Because in the long run, nothing beats reinventing the wheel every two generations. (P.S. yes, yes it is Master Chief, but if you can't be creative you shouldn't join.)

The work gulag runs the bridge.

[i286NiNJA]

It's so much more than that. The bridge is manned by deck, which are the same guys who make the ship pretty and they also have their hands in a bunch of other shit.... but the most important thing to the pissbaby CO is how much paint he can get these kids to put on the ship so the admiral will say "OH BOY THE SHIP LOOKS GREAT". They make these guys sweep and paint nonstop until some of them kill themselves no joke.

The most relaxing times for these guys are lunch, watch, pooping, and the few hours a day they get for sleep.. and if they have watch during sleep time.. they simply get no sleep! For them free time is measured in minutes a day, they sleep and poop at the same time. It's an absolutely unimaginable way to live. Doing a watch that would be the same as a normal civilian workday might have been the only time these guys weren't doing hard labor in the past 24 hours.

Re:The work gulag runs the bridge.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me lay it out for you. If you join the Navy and get any kind of decent ASVAB score you will get assigned to a service 'A' school and become a technician. If you don't you get sent to a ship's deck division, where your job is to clean and paint and stand deck watches.
So basically the deck division consists of the least capable people on the ship. Every officer who stands Officer of the Deck has another job, except for the deck officer who is in charge of deck division. These other officers supervise cooks and admin types and technicians. The First Lieutenant supervises these guys.
Working hours on a ship is no joke. Basically you stand watch on a 4 and 8 rotation. Four hours on watch and eight off. Now if that 8 happens between 7 in the morning and 5 in the afternoon you're working. If your a tech you're doing periodic maintenance or troubleshooting. If you're in deck you are doing painting and cleaning, because that' all the skills you have. So a typical day is up at 4 am to stand watch. Get off watch at 8 and start working. (You got 20 minutes for breakfast somewhere in there.) Work until noon. 1 hour for lunch. 1 until 4 more work. Take the watch at 4. Watch 4 to 6. (Dog watch.) Off from 6 until midnight and then back on watch. (There's only three watch sections, remember?) Watch midnight until 4. 4-6 sleep. Reveille at 6. Relieve the 4 watch for 20 minutes so they can eat. Etc. You sleep (broken) about 8 hours a night, maybe.
What usually happens is that in that 6 to midnight time when you should be sleeping you find that there's some work the Department Head, Division Officer or Division Chief needs done that keeps you up until 10, so you only get 2 hours sleep before watch.
On a small gas turbine ship you have to refuel about every three days. That's usually done at night (like it would be during wartime) and that means everybody's up from midnight to 3 am, and you still half to get up at Reveille at 6 and work all day (when you're not on watch.)
100 weeks are common and Saturday and usually Sunday are workdays too. (On Sunday Reveille might be at 7 and if the ship is a carrier you might even get 45 min off for worship services, if you do that sort of thing.)
It pretty much sucks. Compare to working on a Merchant Marine ship where watches count as work time and anything over 40 hours is OT for enlisted.
No military reason for it either, other than to squeeze every last bit out of all the sailors.

The only solution...

[cyn1c77]

... is to make the Navy ship hulls and engines stronger, so they can just drive though any other boat.

Then they can just pilot around at ramming speed all the time!