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Sailors report footing bill for needs on ships

Chief Machinist’s Mate (SW/AW) Michael Seger was tired of his sailors being punished when they weren’t getting their work done on schedule. It happened over and over, and it wasn’t their fault, he said. They didn’t have the gear they needed to clean, paint spaces, or maintain their equipment by the command’s schedule.
So Seger took matters into his own hands. For years, first on the carrier Enterprise and then on the amphibious assault ship Nassau, Seger drove out to hardware stores and shopping centers to spend his own money on the stuff his sailors needed.
Between those two ships alone, Seger estimated he spent more than $4,000 of his own money “to buy everything from simple cleaning supplies that cost a few dollars to high-priced fittings for pumps that cost upwards of several hundred dollars,” he told Navy Times.
“Over almost 18 years of service, I know I am not the only one to do this, and honestly, it is simply pathetic,” Seger said.
He is far from the only one. More than 40 current and former sailors told Navy Times stories about paying for equipment with their own money, a practice they described as common and often necessary to keep ships in fighting shape. Many active-duty sailors asked not to be identified because they worried about being disciplined for discussing shortages or management problems in their current commands.
Navy Times heard mostly from senior petty officers and chiefs located all over the U.S., as well as a few officers.
Leaders were surprised when Navy Times told them what the sailors said, despite the fact that the problem was brought to Big Navy’s attention this spring, in a report filed by the service’s inspector general.
“The only time I’ve seen anything like that is back in the bad old days,” said Rear Adm. David Lewis, vice commander of Naval Sea Systems Command and chief operating officer of the Surface Warfare Enterprise.
“That’s not right. If that’s going on, we want to hear about it — we don’t pay our sailors to do that.”
According to the IG, sales have been slipping at the contractor-operated Super ServMart store on the waterfront at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., which sells more than 8,000 items to the fleet. “This may be indicative of the increasing budget shortfalls noted by the afloat units visited,” said the report, which was examining a number of issues in the Hampton Roads area.
IG investigators found one ship, which they didn’t identify, that had $1 million in unfunded consumable supplies. “Sailors of all ranks, including the supply officer, are buying supplies out of pocket to meet operational and certification requirements,” the report said.
Navy Times asked sailors to comment on the IG’s findings, and heard similar stories from all across the fleet. Some of the most common items were hand and power tools, bought to replace an earlier version that had disappeared, was broken or just wasn’t working right.
One sailor described needing to buy a Simpson 260 multimeter (about $230); a corpsman stationed at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif., needed to buy his own medical bag (about $300); and another sailor remembered venturing into town during a foreign port call to buy a replacement fuse for the Mk 13 missile launcher on a frigate (about $6). When he got back to the ship, his tools had been stolen, so he needed to replace those, too.
Over a career, one sailor said, these expenses add up.
“Nothing beats having your wife meet you at the door when you come home — except when she informs you that the money you have spent on your equipment rework over the last four months could have made an extra house payment,” said one aviation support technician first class.
The common theme: Although sailors didn’t have what they needed to work, their commanders still expected results. That included times when crews needed gear they couldn’t buy.
One aircraft carrier supply officer remembered buying his own paint, brushes and other supplies so sailors could get spaces finished on schedule. But what they didn’t have — and couldn’t buy — was the right personal protective equipment, to keep sailors from breathing in the fumes as they worked.
“I cannot tell you how many brain cells I have destroyed due to the fact of our ship not having enough respirators, and our deadlines not flexing for it,” the supply officer said.

WHEN YOU NEED IT YESTERDAY
Why would people working for a federal agency with a yearly budget of more than $150 billion spend their own money on equipment to do their jobs?
Sailors gave plenty of reasons.
Because not enough of that money trickles down to their level. Or because what did has dried up. Or because they can’t get what they need otherwise.
“Right now, because there is no budget in place somewhere, my unit cannot even buy toilet paper or printer toner, let alone a tool like a hammer or a saw,” one utilitiesman first class said. “It really wears you out when all you get is the answer ‘no’ for three months and one day they say you need to spend $10,000 today! And this repeats over and over again.”
Another big reason: Because an inspection, deployment or VIP visit is coming up soon, and work needs to be finished fast.
Senior Chief Cryptologic Technician (Technical) (SS/SW/AW) Scott Priest estimated he had spent $500 of his own money over two years, also aboard the amphibious assault ship Nassau, even as leaders discouraged sailors from buying their own gear.
“This, of course, was not expected by the chain of command. It was even looked at negatively. But in the end, there was no other option. Buying an air chisel from Home Depot for $40 and getting the job done with one sailor in one day was much better than handing five sailors a bunch of paint scrapers and wasting a week,” he said.
Over four years on Norfolk-based ships, former Hull Technician 2nd Class David Moyer estimated he spent as much as $2,500 of his own money on key blanks, picks, drill bits and other tools in his job as a ship’s locksmith. Moyer, who got out of the Navy last year, asked once to be reimbursed for a year’s worth of key blanks, to the tune of $240, but his supervisors were incredulous.
“I would usually get a chuckle of, ‘Ugh, no, what do you need that much money for?’ ” he remembered. “Um, because that’s how much that $20 a month cost me, little by little, per year.”
Moyer described a complicated philosophy when it came to buying his own gear, which he believes is pervasive in the fleet. He felt indebted to the Navy for sending him to locksmith school, so he viewed buying his own equipment as a kind of repayment, and he saw the same dynamic in other sailors who needed to resolve their own money and maintenance shortages.
“[These] are just sad realities of life in or out of the Navy,” he said. “It really is as simple as this: You cannot buy a $500 welder [when] a shop only got allotted $400 to buy shop equipment. I do believe a majority of these people are like myself and feel that they are just giving back what the Navy has given to them. They also do it because they know their ship, sitting pier-side, broken down, is a ship that’s obviously useless and cannot do its job to defend America.”

DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL
One reason that buying equipment out of pocket is so common could be that Big Navy seems to have few overarching, fleetwide rules addressing the issue. Spokesmen for Naval Supply Systems Command, Fleet Forces Command and Naval Surface Forces all said there was no official guidance. Lt. Cmdr. Phil Rosi, spokesman for Fleet Forces, declined to make a senior officer within his command available for an interview.
What’s more, officials sounded surprised when they learned what sailors were telling Navy Times — but to a person, they said they opposed it.
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy (SS/SW) Rick West said he hadn’t heard about the out-of-pocket purchases, but the notion distressed him.
“If this is happening, it’s unacceptable,” he said.
Retired Rear Adm. David Donohue — whose career included time in command of Norfolk Naval Shipyard and who now serves on the board of the American Society of Naval Engineers — was unequivocal in condemning out-of-pocket purchases.
“This is an abominable abuse of our personnel,” he said.
The high-level disengagement seems to have been caused by sailors’ hiding the purchases from division officers or commanders. Indeed, one element mentioned repeatedly was an old Navy management philosophy: I don’t care how you do it, just get it done.
“We needed a specific color of paint, not normally kept in the boatswains’ paint locker,” remembered one San Diego-based senior chief boatswain’s mate. He said that could have taken weeks to order. “Well, the CO didn’t want to hear that. I went to Home Depot with a paint chip, color-matched it, and purchased a half gallon of paint in order to get the job completed. Mission accomplished and the CO was off my back.”
The senior chief estimated he had spent as much as $2,000 of his own money on such jobs over his career in the Navy.
“If the [Defense Department or the Department of the Navy] is unwilling to properly fund for the proper care of their equipment, then it should not fall on the shoulders of the sailor. For me, it was easier to pay for it, get it done, keep my division and [work center] numbers up, than to keep taking shots from the CO or department head. ... if a sailor is pushed to get the job done, they will find a way to accomplish the task — just don’t ask too many questions.”

HOW TO FIX THE PROBLEM
Sailors had several recommendations — large and small — for changes the Navy could make to cut back on buying equipment out of pocket.
• Get division officers, executive officers and captains involved. One key recommendation — given that it’s an issue at the local command level — is for local commanders to be more involved with their supply situation, said Lt. Cmdr. Martin Thomas, a supply officer now serving with U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla.
“A distinct possibility is that there is a failure on the part of ship’s personnel to understand what a ship’s true needs are, a failure to prioritize those requirements, and a failure to communicate those needs to higher authority. Doing this accurately is a very difficult job, but also very crucial,” he said.
• Make it easier to buy things out in town. Chief Machinist’s Mate (SW/AW) Michael Seger said ships and work centers should be given more latitude to buy equipment on their own, as opposed to ordering from within normal supply chains. That would save time and money, he said.
• Do you really need those new TVs? Several sailors singled out one culprit they thought could be eating up dollars that was going elsewhere: Big, flat-panel televisions that have become ubiquitous aboard ships.
“On my last ship, my division needed an essential part to fix some of our gear. Supply department told us there wasn’t enough money for it, yet they could somehow afford two 50-inch high-def flat-screen TVs that they had in one of their spaces — supply support. Kind of makes you wonder,” Sonar Technician Seaman Heidi Welte said.
• Establish tool-control programs. Although sailors on ships and in aviation units told Navy Times they had supply and gear shortages, the aviation world may also have an answer: Many squadrons forbid sailors from buying their own equipment and maintain stringent “tool-control programs.”
“All of our work center’s tools are accounted for. All of the tools I have to replace that are broken, worn, or missing tools are accounted for. ... We are not allowed to buy our own tools, a big no-no,” said Logistics Specialist 2nd Class Joseph Nykaza, who is the tool-control program coordinator for Strike Fighter Squadron 14, the “Tophatters.”
“We must account for everything. So this whole buying your own tools thing is rubbish. It is wrong to let that happen at all, anywhere, anytime.”
The problem is that many ships have no choice.
“What the surface Navy needs is a good tool-control program like the aviation world has,” one petty officer said. “But, to do that, the ships need to be equipped to support it.”

Navy Times,
Posted : Monday Nov 30, 2009 6:19:14 EST