The Navy's Mania for Reducing Crewing Bears Bitter Fruit

The US Navy has discovered that the limits of human endurance have been reached, and surpassed, in the Littoral Combat Ship:

Did you ever work a job that required two people, but your stingy employer insisted that one was enough? Then you understand the problem with the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship.

One of the LCS’s supposed advantages is its much smaller crew compared to other vessels. Where a Navy frigate might have 200 sailors, the frigate-size LCS has just 40—although, to be fair, two different 40-person crews take turns running the ship.

LCS is a jack-of-all-trades warship that can carry different modules for various missions—anti-submarine warfare, surface warfare or mine-hunting.
The idea was that automation would enable fewer sailors to operate the $400-million LCS for all these missions. This saves on manpower costs as well as on precious shipboard space for crew accommodations.

But a new Government Accountability Office report proves what any Burger King worker already knows—cutting your workforce by 80 percent without also decreasing its workload … isn’t always a great idea.

When the GAO studied USS Freedom’s recent 10-month deployment to Singapore, the auditors found that crews worked too hard. “Freedom crews averaged about six hours of sleep per day compared to the Navy standard of eight hours,” the GAO stated.

“Some key departments, such as engineering and operations, averaged even fewer.”
And this happened despite the Navy temporarily adding 10 extra sailors to the crew and sending contractors aboard.

Also note that with short crewing like this, damage control is marginal, there are no reserves to allow the crew to continue operating the ship while performing repairs, so this ship is likely to have a glass jaw.

This is particularly troubling, as it will be operating in coastal waters, the threats are varied, everything from shore based defenses to guys in Zodiacs packing RPGs.