Recent ship collisions, crashes suggest the need for military preparedness

Military high officials and the council have long alerted the government of a possible readiness crisis as budgets for training and military preparation had been used up for operations.

Mishaps on seas

The head-on wreck between the Navy ship USS John S. McCain and a merchant ship on Monday has raised a lot of questions on the military if they were really prepared for non-combat Ship accidents.

Aside from this, three other major collisions involving Navy ships had happened this year, according to CNN.

The readiness issue of the military is nothing new to them, as they are not the only one seeing and considering this as a problem. The McCain ship accident has resulted in a single casualty and nine other missing sailors who are presumed to be dead.

An Illinois Republican and Air Force veteran, Representative Adam Kinzinger believes that these series of accidents is slowly turning into a readiness crisis. For example, having a highly professional and fully operational US Navy, but lacking the training and deprived of time to train; and having an equipment, but not investing anything for maintenance of the equipment, causing it to fail.

“These are all concerns when it comes to this,” Kinzinger added.

After the McCain collision, the US Navy stopped the operations of the entire fleet to investigate the series of ship accidents. Then later, the commander of the seventh fleet operating in the Pacific where the recent ship had a collision was dismissed.

Preventing the crisis

Even though this issue mainly revolves on the US Navy alone, the threat of a readiness crisis has been extended to other military groups. The Marine Corps also paused the operations of their troops for a day after experiencing two crashes in just one month.

The Joint Chiefs General, Joe Dunford also warned, “the United States military competitive edge is slowly deteriorating.” He has said this during the June Senate Armed Services hearing.

The reason for this impending crisis revolves on many issues. 16 years of war in Syria and Afghanistan held a tight grip on the United States’ military budget, limiting the amounts that can be spent for future use.

To compensate with the constrained budget, the military has chosen to deduct military training and maintenance, which is viewed as the main reason for the series of accidents and the readiness crisis.

Naval Vice Chief of Operations William Moran stated in the February House armed services committee, that the military is experiencing an imbalance between demand and resources. “Every year, we are forced to answer the duty we can do today and sacrifice long-term readiness,” Moran said.