Kitsap submarine commands underreported time personnel spent underway

With the Navy's fleet of tugboats in the Northwest moving in and out of port numerous times a week, it seems like there's always an aircraft carrier, submarine or destroyer coming home or going out to sea.

The Navy, however, isn't keeping close track of just how many days the servicemembers assigned to those ships and boats are spending underway.

For the past five years, a number of Naval Base Kitsap-based submarines have either underreported or failed to report altogether the number of days assigned personnel have spent underway, according to records recently obtained by the Kitsap Sun.

The Navy uses two key metrics to track the number of days sailors and units spend at sea.

Operational tempo, abbreviated to OPTEMPO, tracks the number of days an overall unit, such as a submarine or aircraft carrier, is underway for deployment, exercises or training.

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Personnel tempo, shortened to PERSTEMPO, tracks the number of days an individual servicemember is underway in addition to non-deployment events, such as individual training or service-related hospitalizations.

Collectively, the Navy uses both metrics to assess the overall readiness of sailors and the fleet and to determine when and for how long units and sailors are deployed.

In April, the Sun requested the past five years of personnel tempo data from Navy Personnel Command for all of the afloat commands based in Navy Region Northwest, including Bangor's submarines, Bremerton's aircraft carriers and Everett's destroyers.

Analysis of the received data, which is current up to April 30, 2018, revealed the number of reported PERSTEMPO events for crews assigned to Bangor's submarines did not accurately reflect the number of days those units were deployed within the past five years.

The submarine command's incomplete data reporting isn't just an isolated problem, either. It appears to be a widespread issue across the Department of Defense, according to a Government Accountability Office report published in April.

An estimated 145,000 servicemembers across all branches of the service are missing PERSTEMPO records for deployments between fiscal years 2014 to 2016, according to the report.

The report found unclear policies and a lack of a reporting enforcement mechanism has resulted in the collection of unreliable data department-wide, which in turn inhibits the Department of Defense's ability to effectively monitor personnel tempo and determine how the current high pace of military operations is impacting the servicemembers.

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"Without taking steps to emphasize the collection of complete and reliable

(personnel tempo) data, DOD will be limited in its ability to assess the amount of time

servicemembers are serving away from home for all perstempo events and in its

ability to use that information to assist in gauging the stress on the force," the report found.

The GAO decided to review the Department of Defense's PERSTEMPO reporting practices after senior-level officials expressed concern that the current fast-paced rate of operations was having a detrimental impact on the military’s overall readiness.

The report cited Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson’s testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in September, where he explained that the ongoing pace of operations contributed to the conditions that caused last summer's deadly collisions of the USS John S. McCain with an oil tanker and the USS Fitzgerald with a merchant ship.

Reporting requirements

All commands and units are required to track the number of days personnel spend underway, without exception, according to Department of the Navy and Department of Defense policies, as required by Congress.

For the most part, a PERSTEMPO event should be recorded into an unclassified reporting system through a web-based application anytime a submarine goes out to sea. In some cases, classified PERSTEMPO events are tracked in a separate classified system.

PERSTEMPO tracking begins the first day a servicemember is away from his or her homeport. The clock stops running the day servicemembers return.

The Navy's established PERSTEMPO threshold limits the number of days an individual sailor can be deployed to a total of 220 days in a year unless their command obtains a signed waiver from a senior-level official before the threshold is reached.

Commands must report PERSTEMPO events or report that no such event occurred by the end of each month to be in compliance with the Navy's requirements, said Navy Personnel Command spokeswoman Cmdr. Karin Burzynski.

However, no enforcement mechanism appears to exist to compel commands to report their data to comply with the requirement.

The breakdown

Submarine Group Nine's eight Ohio-class ballistic missile subs, which are capable of carrying up to 20 Trident II D5 missiles, are an integral part of the United States' nuclear deterrence triad, alongside long-range strategic bombers and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Two Ohio-class converted guided-missile submarines, which are armed with conventional weapons, are also assigned to Submarine Group Nine.

Each of the Ohio-class subs has two crews, Blue and Gold. While one crew is underway with the submarine for the length of an average 77-day deployment, the other crew remains ashore for training.

Of the Kitsap-based Ohio-class submarines, the Nevada Gold, Kentucky Gold, Maine Blue and Michigan Blue did not report any events that required personnel to be away from their homeport during the timeframe of the requested data.

While most of those subs underwent major maintenance periods at the Puget Sound Naval shipyard in the past few years, all those crews have all deployed at least once within the past five years.

The USS Maine started an ongoing maintenance cycle in 2016; the USS Kentucky was in the shipyard from 2012 to 2015; and the USS Michigan underwent a maintenance period from 2015 to 2016, said shipyard spokesman J.C. Mathews.

The USS Nevada has not undergone any major maintenance periods since 2013, Mathews said.

Other units, such as the Alabama Gold, Pennsylvania Blue and Louisiana Gold have reported PERSTEMPO events within the past five years, but the reported statistics are outdated by more than a year with more recent underway periods for each crew.

Within the past five years, neither the USS Pennsylvania nor the USS Louisiana have undergone major overhauls at the shipyard, Mathews said.

While all submarine commands are responsible for submitting their unit's data, limited network access while underway can result in delayed PERSTEMPO reporting since the data is filed via a web-based application, said Submarine Group Nine spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Michael Smith.

"Nonetheless, we're looking at local policies to verify submission and ensure required PERSTEMPO reporting data is timely and accurate," Smith said.

Despite the delay and gaps in reported data for the command's submarines, Smith said Navy Personnel Command has not contacted Submarine Group Nine for updated reports.

Although the command's currently reported data offers an incomplete picture on exactly how many days sailors are spending at sea, Smith said he was confident none of the crews for either the ballistic missile and guided-missile submarines assigned to the command had surpassed the Navy's PERSTEMPO threshold of 220 days spent underway in a year.

"Because of the operational cycle, even with patrol extensions due to unforeseen circumstances, no SSBN Sailors approach PERSTEMPO thresholds," he said. "Similarly, the two-crew concept for SSGNs maintains the PERSTEMPO for SSGN sailors well within (Department of Defense) guidelines."

The USS Pennsylvania Gold set the record for the longest patrol when it completed a 140-day strategic deterrent patrol from January to June in 2014. PERSTEMPO data submitted to the Kitsap Sun showed that same crew also completed the second-longest patrol in the last five years, at 115 days from September to December of 2017.

Bangor-based Submarine Development Squadron Five, which oversees the fleet's three Seawolf-class fast attack submarines, also has gaps in reported personnel tempo events.

The USS Seawolf's last reported PERSTEMPO event was a nearly three-week-long unit training event in 2013, although the submarine deployed a handful of times before it entered the shipyard for an ongoing maintenance period in 2015.

The USS Connecticut, which has no reported PERSTEMPO events since 2013, was in the shipyard for an overhaul from 2012 to 2017. In the past year, the sub has gotten underway a handful of times for sea trials and deployment without corresponding reported PERSTEMPO events.

Similarly, the USS Jimmy Carter, which underwent a maintenance period from 2013 to 2014, has no reported PERSTEMPO events since 2016, although the sub has since deployed in the years after the sub undocked from the shipyard.

Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet Command spokesman Corey Barker said Submarine Development Squadron Five is taking a closer look at the command's reporting practices.

"We expect only top-notch performance from all of our submarine units and we are reviewing procedures and requirements to ensure required PERSTEMPO reporting data is timely and accurate," Barker said.

Surface fleet reports

Comparatively, the Northwest’s homeported surface fleet vessels, including the two Bremerton-based aircraft carriers and the five Everett-based destroyers, are more up-to-date on their reporting than the region's submarines.

The last reported PERSTEMPO event for the crew assigned to the USS Nimitz, which is currently in dry dock for a year of maintenance, was the carrier's six-month deployment that concluded December 2017.

For those assigned to the USS John C. Stennis, the crew's last reported PERSTEMPO event was the carrier's deployment in 2016, which was followed by a six-month-long maintenance period at the shipyard that was completed last August. Since then, the carrier has gotten underway a handful of times in preparation for upcoming deployment later this year.