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Comment by whoiscroberts | Hacker News Reader

I find it hard to believe that rust control isn’t mostly a labor problem, the navy has virtually unlimited low cost labor. Instead of posing for that photo every sailor in that photo should have been maintaining the ship, even the officers.

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The navy has done some absurd scheduling and cost cutting measures, to the point that most officers are running on 4-5 hours of sleep a day. Nobody's at their best.

Hasn't the military done like a million studies that all say everyone needs 8 hours of sleep a night?

I guess the same guy that decided open offices are the way for us got a job in the navy.

It’s sleep or rust-free decks, take your pick I guess.

I suspect it’s a mix of mismanagement and stretched resources, not strictly one or the other.

> It’s sleep or rust-free decks, take your pick I guess.

Apparently, they are doing neither

If you need to put a ship in dry dock to maintain it that might explain part of the problem. Scheduling that for an entire fleet would be a hard problem if dry dock facilities are limited.

I don't understand why they even need naval officers to do it... Hire some contract workers twice a year to scrub or paint or whatever it takes. Why does someone have to enlist in order to clean a boat?

Because doing your own basic maintenance is an outstanding way to identify issues that you might miss otherwise?

As an example, I swap my own winter and summer tires (mounted on separate sets for wheels; I have my limits) because it gives me a twice yearly opportunity to asses the condition of the brakes and suspension components while I'm mucking around with the wheels off.

Keeping your finger on the pulse of a machine by looking after it means you spot problems before they become disasters and inform how you operate it to make the most of its capabilities and avoid its weaknesses.

  Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: Love. You can learn all the math in the 'Verse, but
  you take a boat in the air that you don't love, she'll shake you off just as
  sure as the turning of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta
  fall down, tells you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens. Makes her a home.

They do extensively employ civillian "yard birds" to do maintenance. In WWII era, they had minority sailors and conscripts on government payroll to do chipping and painting. Since then, they have been steadily outsourcing an increasing amount of this work to civillian contractors.

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