CNA Report on Sea Swap Exercises Gives Experiment Mixed Reviews

Concept Judged a Success, but Survey Reveals Morale, Retention Issues

By PATRICIA KIME
Sea Power Correspondent

The U.S. Navy’s Sea Swap experiment was “clearly a success,” according to a new report about the program, with the ships involved maintaining a high level of readiness during the roughly 18-month study period. But the same report questions whether the savings offered by the swaps — in funding and operations — are worth the burden the program places on sailors in terms of work and quality of life.

The Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) in Alexandria, Va., a federally funded research and development center, conducted a Navy-commissioned study of the Spruance-class destroyer USS Fletcher and the guided-missile destroyer USS Higgins, which began participating in Sea Swap exercises in 2002 and were deployed to the Persian Gulf and the Western Pacific. A summary of the report was released July 12.

The Sea Swap concept is aimed at increasing the on-station patrol time for ships without extending deployments for crewmembers or using more ships. During the experiment, the ships remained on duty for more than a year, providing a continuous presence while relief crews rotated at six-month intervals.

The study comes just as the Navy considers expanding the Sea Swap program. The service continues swapping crews on two coastal patrol ships in the Persian Gulf and is preparing to do the same on an East Coast-based destroyer. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark has expressed interest in enlarging the program beyond individual ships to perhaps an expeditionary strike group — more than 2,000 sailors, Marines and their gear.

“Sea Swap has been around for a long time. We’ve called it different names and different things, but it’s been around. With these experiments, we needed to prove the concept in the modern day. We are pleased and excited about its potential,” Vice Adm. Timothy LaFleur, commander of naval surface forces, said July 13.

The Fletcher and Higgins experiments have been closely watched to determine whether the Sea Swap concept is feasible and makes financial sense in the long run. The initiative considered a number of questions, including:

Could sailors conduct the turnover and do it in the time allotted?

How would the extended deployments affect the ships’ condition?

Could a swap be done safely amid force protection concerns?

Could sailors work on board a ship on which they’ve never trained?

And would they care about the ship as if it were their own — would they make it their own?

The Fletcher deployed in summer 2002 with its original crew, which was replaced six months later, in-theater, with the crew of the USS Kinkaid. The Kinkaid crew, in turn, was replaced on the Fletcher by sailors from the USS Oldendorf, who then were replaced by the crew of the USS Elliot. The Elliot group brought the Fletcher back to Pearl Harbor on May 25. The ship had been deployed more than 400 days.

The Higgins deployed in November 2002. The crew of the USS Benfold took over Higgins six months later, and that crew was relieved by sailors of the USS John Paul Jones. The ship returned to San Diego in April.

Initially, the Fletcher, like the Higgins, was to deploy for 18 months, but the Navy decided to extend its deployment, adding the Elliot’s crew to the lineup.

The CNA report concluded that, “Sea Swap proved to be a relatively comprehensive operational concept. The scheme was executed in different locations with different classes of ships, in peacetime, wartime and contingency circumstances. It proved relatively easy to implement, as evidenced by the ability to add another participant midstream.”

Initial concerns as to whether crews would succeed in turning over a ship in a compressed time frame appeared unfounded, according to the report. It added that the crews became more proficient at the actual swap as the tests continued.

“Apparently, the oncoming crews were comfortable enough that they just wanted to get started taking over, and the off-going crews were ready to get home,” the report said.

Cmdr. Roy Kitchener, commanding officer of the Higgins on its final swap, agreed.

“Once we got on-station and started getting our hands around the ship, the transition was pretty complete,” he said.

Force protection proved to be no more difficult to provide than at the average port call, the report stated. And with regard to maintenance, a detailed assessment of the Higgins found its condition comparable to that of a vessel that had returned from a six-month deployment.

“There were no material differences between the conditions of the Higgins after 18 months gone and the control ship, which was gone for six months,” LaFleur said.

The Government Accountability Office, the government’s watchdog agency, is doing its own assessment of Sea Swap and the ships’ conditions — a report that is likely to be out in September, LaFleur said.

In terms of overall operation and ownership of the vessels, the crews excelled, the CNA report found.

“In some ways, the amount of training and maintenance effort went beyond the levels for typical deployers. Moreover, in some cases, the crews did not reap the full benefits of their extra efforts because they turned the ship over to a new crew rather than enjoying the fruits of their labors,” the report stated.

The experiments generated “33 percent more forward presence than traditional deployers,” because the vessels stayed on-station so much longer than a normal rotation, but the swaps weren’t without consequence. The CNA study says Sea Swap could have a negative affect on morale and retention of the participating service members.

“Survey results indicated that the sailors protested the implicit changes in Navy culture and the extra work. … The strong, overall negative tenor of the survey results cannot be entirely discounted and attributed to a penchant for complaining,” the report stated.

The assessment reported declines in preliminary re-enlistment data for Sea Swap crews. But LaFleur said the experiments are too recent for those figures to accurately reflect the deployments.

“The actual data from all seven crews is exceptional and has not correlated yet to those results. Any time you have something new, it makes people think,” LaFleur said.

Kitchener said he plans to follow his crewmembers’ futures to see what happens in the long term.

“Am I concerned about the numbers? Sure. What we need to do is continually review it. At this point I haven’t seen [a decline]. We’re still enjoying good retention. In fact, I’m going to a re-enlistment tomorrow,” he said.

David Zvijac, an analyst who developed the report, said CNA did the survey to get a better picture of sailors’ opinions on Sea Swap. “It was negative and you can see their points. It was more work. They had to train harder. They lost port calls and it’s not clear what the payback was outside, other than job well done,” he said.

With the Navy considering expanding the program to larger units, it will encounter more challenges, especially when aviation assets come into play. One of the observations made in the CNA report hinted at the effects of extended deployments on aircraft. Onboard Fletcher, the Navy discovered that it had to switch out helicopters after 12 months on-station because of corrosion, at a cost of $1 million per craft. But LaFleur remains optimistic.

“With helicopters, we started out thinking six months was the max we could do and discovered 12 months was what we could do,” he said.

The Navy has been swapping out the 28- to 33-man crews of the patrol ships USS Firebolt and USS Chinook since the ships deployed to the Persian Gulf in February 2003. Those vessels soon will be replaced with the coastal patrol vessels USS Sirocco and USS Typhoon. The service will continue swapping the crews of those vessels during their 18-month planned Persian Gulf rotation.

The service is in the process of deciding which East Coast destroyer will participate in the next Sea Swap test.