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In the space of three months, the U.S. Navy has been hit with two major scandals that have put a spotlight on its poor treatment of junior sailors. Compared with other recent Navy scandals like the long-simmering Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility water contamination crisis, the Navy has serious challenge in identifying and resolving “widely-known but unrecognzied challenges.” For junior sailors, naval leadership is far too often out of touch, either disinterested, unaware, or ineffective, only able to muster a viable response after sailors either die or go public with their frustrations.

A Navy that corrects chronic failures only when compelled by public notice is unacceptable.

The pattern is undeniable.

Earlier this year, after a fed-up sailor vented on the Reddit.com social media site, relating grim living conditions at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center barracks in Washington, D.C., both Congress and naval leadership were stunned. Junior sailors had gone “for years without hot water,” assigned rooms “without working fridges, thermostats or even locking doors,” and were “left to broil in barracks with broken air conditioning during humid Mid-Atlantic summers.” The Navy, stung by the public notice, lurched into action, fixing things.

But just as the Walter Reed scandal faded from the public eye, scrutiny turned to the USS George Washington, a super-carrier moored in Newport News, Virginia. The carrier is in the midst of a long refit—a refit that has run far longer than expected. After suffering a series of suicides, deaths accelerated, with three other USS George Washington sailors dying by suicide over the past month. In total, ten crew member deaths have been attributed—by one government entity or another—to suicide over the last two years of the carrier’s long refit.

As both the Navy and Congress rush in to assess conditions and the climate aboard the ship, it is clear the Navy, again, disregarded junior sailor welfare until the sailors themselves started to break down. In this case, the Navy’s response not only suggested that naval leadership is often totally unaware of basic sailor welfare, but that the Navy’s cultural challenges are so deeply embedded that junior sailors may be inured to mistreatment, struggling to articulate their challenges for an unaware or unmoved command chain.
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Maintenance problems with three amphibious warships kept a Marine Expeditionary Unit from answering urgent orders to Europe earlier this year, and a deputy commandant fears it could happen again.

On Feb. 15, the Joint Staff sent prepare-to-deploy orders to the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and to its associated Naval amphibious ready group. Their purpose: “provide bridging solutions” to Gen. Tod Wolters, the commander of U.S. European Command and NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, according to Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, the commanding general of Marine Corps Combat Development Command and deputy commandant for Combat Development and Integration.

The 22nd MEU was already prepared to go. However, the maintenance status of the three warships of the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group was “so bad” they were not prepared to leave then or after the invasion, Heckl told Defense One on Thursday. They were even late to meet their original deployment date.

“When you get within X number of days of your deployment date, you’re placed basically on a [prepare-to-deploy order] and the Kearsarge ARG failed that as well. Which is basically a violation of orders from my perspective as a Marine, right? If the joint order tells you to be ready on X day, then you’re to be ready on X day, and they were not.”

Marine Corps officials did offer to deploy the MEU by other means, Heckl said, something that should not have to happen to a naval expeditionary force.

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I feel for anyone who find themselves in a deep black well where they see suicide as the only exit. But on the other hand, I seriously wonder what could cause this - is it the spotty slow Internet???

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Originally posted by SIP2000GLO:
You can't blame them. Karen commandos gotta be trained on sensitivity, transgender surgery gotta be healed, and those ships are not environmental friendly.

Sheeeshh , people just don't understand the emotional impact of that.

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This is just another example of incompetence, neglect, and bad judgement displayed by naval leadership. Get rid of some of these Admirals, each one has a salary, perks, housing, staff costs that's close to $1M per year. There's plenty of money to take care of the junior enlisted that they're crapping on, its up to the Navy and Congress.

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Originally posted by PASig:
Why does it seem like the Navy has all these problems and scandals but we aren’t hearing this out of the Army or Air Force?

Better leadership there?

The whole “broiling in Barracks in humid summer weather” made me think of the poor Army guys we had interaction with as Air National Guard at Al Jaber Air Base, Kuwait in 2003. These guys were forced to sleep in basically empty warehouses with not even fans while we Air Force/Air Guard lived in “dorms” (AF speak for barracks) with AC and TV’s in each 4 man room. The Army guys were shocked when they found this out too.