thedrifter
06-20-04, 06:23 AM
Issue Date: June 21, 2004
Where’s my mattress?!
Budget cuts have some wondering why they’re still suffering on ship
By Mark D. Faram
Times staff writer
New, cushier mattresses that promise quality rack time for sailors and Marines are heading to Navy ships. But not as fast as expected.
In 2000, then-Navy Secretary Richard Danzig sent a shock wave through the ranks when he said the Navy could — and should — do better for its sailors and Marines. He promised that by 2003, every ship in the fleet — from oilers to carriers — would be issued modern, coil-spring mattresses. Officers and enlisted sailors and Marines would finally get a break. It was a welcome change.
“The question is not whether we will make these improvements, but how fast can we bring them to the fleet,” Danzig said in a statement that summer. “I am in a hurry.”
The hurry has slowed, it seems.
With summer 2004 fast approaching, those who remember Danzig’s promise are wondering just where their new mattress is. Or if they’ll ever see one.
As of May 31, nearly one-third of the fleet was still tossing and turning on the old foam-core mattresses famous for losing their spring in the middle.
The hold-up? A slip in service member priorities from Navy leadership in Washington, observers say, as well as a lack of funds coming from cash-strapped Navy coffers.
Thanks to Danzig’s push, the Navy received $2.8 million in fiscal 2000 to outfit the Harry S. Truman carrier battle group with new mattresses. Lawmakers handsomely padded 2001’s budget with another $13 million.
The plan was to keep the funding flowing with $12 million annually in 2002 and 2003. But that plan soon went awry. The 2002 budget included no fleetwide appropriation for mattresses.
Instead, Navy leaders put the financial responsibility on the Atlantic and Pacific fleets to come up with the cash to ensure all of the estimated 180,000 racks in the fleet had the new mattress, said Michael Dropik, habitability program manager for Naval Sea Systems Command.
“In 2001, the administration changed. Secretary Danzig was gone, so there wasn’t that much of a push,” Dropik said. “We were seeing if anybody essentially was going to pick it up after Secretary Danzig left, and it never got picked up. There was never a — I guess you could say ‘advocate’ — after Secretary Danzig, so it dropped in 2002.”
Despite the unfunded bureaucratic handoff, fleet commanders began buying the new mattresses. Sailors and Marines wanted them. The problem: juggling war-fighting priorities with creature-comfort purchases — a budgetary decision no ship commander really wants to make.
“There was so much demand in the fleet,” Dropik said. “They picked it right up.”
Still, the money the fleet contributed could not compare to the $12 million pouring in from previous congressional appropriations acts. Hence, the slowdown. Each mattress costs $230, compared to $136 for the old foam style.
The initial mattresses weren’t as fire retardant as the Navy wanted, which also contributed to the delay. Production was temporarily halted while new materials were found, Dropik said.
That’s the explanation that Danzig’s successor, Gordon England, offered for the Navy’s failure to meet previously promised deadlines.
“The initial timeline was adjusted to ensure the mattresses met safety requirements,” said Capt. Kevin Wensing, England’s spokesman. “It’s important to get the mattresses out to sailors, but it’s equally important to do it right.”
Commanders’ decision
So when can sailors and Marines expect their new mattresses? It’s up to the individual type commanders to make that call, officials said. Each coast has an admiral in charge of surface ships, submarines and aircraft.
“They set the priorities and send the orders to us,” said Debbie Maggio, a mattress specialist at Defense Supply Center Philadelphia — the sole issuing source for Navy bedding. “If you’re not on the priority list, your orders won’t be filled.”
All new mattress orders are sent from individual ships to their type commander and eventually on up to Fleet Forces Command, which schedules mattress delivery for the entire Navy.
“It’s kind of a gatekeeper operation to make sure the swap-out goes as scheduled,” said Cmdr. Robert Bestercy, fleet logistics policy officer at Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk, Va. “What we don’t want to happen is a Johnny-come-lately to throw an order into the system and throw off our schedule.”
At the moment, the National Industries for the Blind, the organization that assembles the mattresses for the Navy, is cranking out nearly 5,000 a month to fill the fleet’s swap-out needs.
“We’re expecting to issue somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000 this year, and at that pace, the swap-out should be completed by the end of calendar year 2005,” Bestercy said.
But to make that goal, he must issue mattresses based on a priority system.
“New construction gets the top priority. If we’ve got several hundred sailors scheduled to move aboard a new [destroyer], they don’t have any mattresses. We need to fill those orders first, because those sailors don’t have anything to sleep on.”
Next in line, he said, are ships scheduled to deploy the soonest followed by those coming out of the yard. Usually, those ships get replacement mattresses at the end of the maintenance period. But instead of a new foam mattress, those ships will get the coil-spring version.
For aircraft carriers, the swap-out takes a lot of planning, he said, and is usually conducted throughout a maintenance period. The carrier George Washington, for example, currently operating in the Persian Gulf, is expecting to swap out its 5,480 foam mattresses at a cost of $1.4 million during the next maintenance session, which hasn’t been scheduled.
For the Norfolk-based dock landing ship Trenton, the mid-May swap-out took 2½ days, said Marine Chief Warrant Officer 2 Tom Doty, the ship’s combat cargo and habitability officer.
“We swapped out about 930 mattresses,” he said. “We were able to speed up the process by removing and palletizing all the mattresses onboard from racks that weren’t being used.”
That way, he said, part of the work already was done, and the remaining old mattresses could be quickly removed and replaced, allowing the supply center to haul away their old scrap foam.
Deployments affect fielding
Bestercy admits the priority list is a moving target, because ship’s schedules can change, especially with surge deployments becoming more common.
“We have some ships that move up in the schedule for different reasons,” he said. That’s because some ships may have to deploy early or even discover that a large number of their mattresses no longer are usable. “So we’ve had to adjust our schedule slightly at times.”
It’s not just an emergency issue that reshuffles a fielding plan. A change in a ship’s schedule, such as an early deployment or a shift in the dates of its yard period, can speed up or delay the issuing of new mattresses.
“If it changes to a later date, then what we try to do is take [those mattresses] and redirect them to other ships, moving them up in priority.” With this fiscal year moving into its final quarter, Bestercy already has got an eye on next year.
In the meantime, sailors such as Navy Chief Warrant Officer 2 Pat Mahan, the amphibious assault ship Wasp’s ordnance officer, will have to continue toughing it out. The Wasp is on deployment in the Indian Ocean.
“I doubt that we’ll get the new ones anytime soon,” Mahan said by e-mail. “I’ll just have to be uncomfortable until then.”
Mark Faram covers the Navy. Staff writers David Brown and Christopher Munsey contributed to this report.
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=0-MARINEPAPER-2997206.php
Ellie
Where’s my mattress?!
Budget cuts have some wondering why they’re still suffering on ship
By Mark D. Faram
Times staff writer
New, cushier mattresses that promise quality rack time for sailors and Marines are heading to Navy ships. But not as fast as expected.
In 2000, then-Navy Secretary Richard Danzig sent a shock wave through the ranks when he said the Navy could — and should — do better for its sailors and Marines. He promised that by 2003, every ship in the fleet — from oilers to carriers — would be issued modern, coil-spring mattresses. Officers and enlisted sailors and Marines would finally get a break. It was a welcome change.
“The question is not whether we will make these improvements, but how fast can we bring them to the fleet,” Danzig said in a statement that summer. “I am in a hurry.”
The hurry has slowed, it seems.
With summer 2004 fast approaching, those who remember Danzig’s promise are wondering just where their new mattress is. Or if they’ll ever see one.
As of May 31, nearly one-third of the fleet was still tossing and turning on the old foam-core mattresses famous for losing their spring in the middle.
The hold-up? A slip in service member priorities from Navy leadership in Washington, observers say, as well as a lack of funds coming from cash-strapped Navy coffers.
Thanks to Danzig’s push, the Navy received $2.8 million in fiscal 2000 to outfit the Harry S. Truman carrier battle group with new mattresses. Lawmakers handsomely padded 2001’s budget with another $13 million.
The plan was to keep the funding flowing with $12 million annually in 2002 and 2003. But that plan soon went awry. The 2002 budget included no fleetwide appropriation for mattresses.
Instead, Navy leaders put the financial responsibility on the Atlantic and Pacific fleets to come up with the cash to ensure all of the estimated 180,000 racks in the fleet had the new mattress, said Michael Dropik, habitability program manager for Naval Sea Systems Command.
“In 2001, the administration changed. Secretary Danzig was gone, so there wasn’t that much of a push,” Dropik said. “We were seeing if anybody essentially was going to pick it up after Secretary Danzig left, and it never got picked up. There was never a — I guess you could say ‘advocate’ — after Secretary Danzig, so it dropped in 2002.”
Despite the unfunded bureaucratic handoff, fleet commanders began buying the new mattresses. Sailors and Marines wanted them. The problem: juggling war-fighting priorities with creature-comfort purchases — a budgetary decision no ship commander really wants to make.
“There was so much demand in the fleet,” Dropik said. “They picked it right up.”
Still, the money the fleet contributed could not compare to the $12 million pouring in from previous congressional appropriations acts. Hence, the slowdown. Each mattress costs $230, compared to $136 for the old foam style.
The initial mattresses weren’t as fire retardant as the Navy wanted, which also contributed to the delay. Production was temporarily halted while new materials were found, Dropik said.
That’s the explanation that Danzig’s successor, Gordon England, offered for the Navy’s failure to meet previously promised deadlines.
“The initial timeline was adjusted to ensure the mattresses met safety requirements,” said Capt. Kevin Wensing, England’s spokesman. “It’s important to get the mattresses out to sailors, but it’s equally important to do it right.”
Commanders’ decision
So when can sailors and Marines expect their new mattresses? It’s up to the individual type commanders to make that call, officials said. Each coast has an admiral in charge of surface ships, submarines and aircraft.
“They set the priorities and send the orders to us,” said Debbie Maggio, a mattress specialist at Defense Supply Center Philadelphia — the sole issuing source for Navy bedding. “If you’re not on the priority list, your orders won’t be filled.”
All new mattress orders are sent from individual ships to their type commander and eventually on up to Fleet Forces Command, which schedules mattress delivery for the entire Navy.
“It’s kind of a gatekeeper operation to make sure the swap-out goes as scheduled,” said Cmdr. Robert Bestercy, fleet logistics policy officer at Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk, Va. “What we don’t want to happen is a Johnny-come-lately to throw an order into the system and throw off our schedule.”
At the moment, the National Industries for the Blind, the organization that assembles the mattresses for the Navy, is cranking out nearly 5,000 a month to fill the fleet’s swap-out needs.
“We’re expecting to issue somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000 this year, and at that pace, the swap-out should be completed by the end of calendar year 2005,” Bestercy said.
But to make that goal, he must issue mattresses based on a priority system.
“New construction gets the top priority. If we’ve got several hundred sailors scheduled to move aboard a new [destroyer], they don’t have any mattresses. We need to fill those orders first, because those sailors don’t have anything to sleep on.”
Next in line, he said, are ships scheduled to deploy the soonest followed by those coming out of the yard. Usually, those ships get replacement mattresses at the end of the maintenance period. But instead of a new foam mattress, those ships will get the coil-spring version.
For aircraft carriers, the swap-out takes a lot of planning, he said, and is usually conducted throughout a maintenance period. The carrier George Washington, for example, currently operating in the Persian Gulf, is expecting to swap out its 5,480 foam mattresses at a cost of $1.4 million during the next maintenance session, which hasn’t been scheduled.
For the Norfolk-based dock landing ship Trenton, the mid-May swap-out took 2½ days, said Marine Chief Warrant Officer 2 Tom Doty, the ship’s combat cargo and habitability officer.
“We swapped out about 930 mattresses,” he said. “We were able to speed up the process by removing and palletizing all the mattresses onboard from racks that weren’t being used.”
That way, he said, part of the work already was done, and the remaining old mattresses could be quickly removed and replaced, allowing the supply center to haul away their old scrap foam.
Deployments affect fielding
Bestercy admits the priority list is a moving target, because ship’s schedules can change, especially with surge deployments becoming more common.
“We have some ships that move up in the schedule for different reasons,” he said. That’s because some ships may have to deploy early or even discover that a large number of their mattresses no longer are usable. “So we’ve had to adjust our schedule slightly at times.”
It’s not just an emergency issue that reshuffles a fielding plan. A change in a ship’s schedule, such as an early deployment or a shift in the dates of its yard period, can speed up or delay the issuing of new mattresses.
“If it changes to a later date, then what we try to do is take [those mattresses] and redirect them to other ships, moving them up in priority.” With this fiscal year moving into its final quarter, Bestercy already has got an eye on next year.
In the meantime, sailors such as Navy Chief Warrant Officer 2 Pat Mahan, the amphibious assault ship Wasp’s ordnance officer, will have to continue toughing it out. The Wasp is on deployment in the Indian Ocean.
“I doubt that we’ll get the new ones anytime soon,” Mahan said by e-mail. “I’ll just have to be uncomfortable until then.”
Mark Faram covers the Navy. Staff writers David Brown and Christopher Munsey contributed to this report.
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=0-MARINEPAPER-2997206.php
Ellie