During the twilight of his Hall of Fame career, San Antonio Spurs power forward Tim Duncan realized that if he wanted to keep playing at a high level, he needed to start paying more attention to his aging body. So starting around 2012, Duncan began to lose weight to put less stress on his knees. His commitment paid off; in his last five seasons he averaged 28 minutes a game and played more than 60 games each year (the NBA season is 82 games long). He was instrumental in helping the Spurs win one more title, in 2014. He retired in 2016 at the age of 40, having played for 19 seasons.
The Navy should follow the lead of Tim Duncan and apply his philosophy to its aging ships.
Cruisers and destroyers, many of which were commissioned and placed into service in the late 1980s and early 1990s, currently struggle to meet the long list of missions for which they were created: antiair, antisubmarine, antisurface. Small boys were designed to be jacks of all trades. This is in addition to other enabling tasks such as damage control, communications, cyber, engineering, and so on. But these ships are not young anymore. Much as Duncan did, if the Navy can identify their limitations and material condition, it can prolong the lives of the old ships.
For cruisers, that could mean focusing solely on antiair warfare. Do cruisers really need to certify for visit, board, search, and seizure (VBSS)? Many other ships are more than capable of maritime boarding and actions. The same goes for antisubmarine warfare. Much of the equipment cruisers carry to hunt submarines is old and antiquated anyway. Sonar technicians on these ships can spend more time trying to find parts for and fix outdated equipment than actually hunting subs.
As destroyers age, different groups could be designated for certain warfare areas. Hull numbers 51–68, for example, could maintain their antiair and antisurface warfare capabilities. Hulls 71–99 could take over VBSS and antisubmarine warfare.
Limiting the warfare areas in which the ships certify would save time, as the training cycle would be significantly shorter. It also would save money, because there would be less equipment on board that sailors would have to maintain. In addition, the Navy could send sailors to ships on which their skills would be relevant.
Speaking from my own experience in Japan, maintaining a fully operational ship—particularly one that is 30 years old—is exhausting. Crews get frustrated and burned out when they have to struggle just to get their equipment up and running for deployments. Workcenter supervisors spend their time scrounging through the supply system. Life for sailors would be easier if the Navy narrowed the scope of the work for which they are responsible.
How ships enter their last years should be established while they are being built. The Navy should determine now which missions the new frigates will be capable of fulfilling once they are 15, 20, 25 years old. Life for these future crews will be improved if they are not trying to certify aging ships in all warfare areas. It also would make later shipyard availabilities more streamlined and coherent.
Ships’ careers could be prolonged if the Navy centralized bases for specific ships. If in the later years of a ship class’s service life, all units rotated through the same port, the Navy could pool the resources for that class in one place.
Tim Duncan’s longevity was part of what made him such a force in the NBA. Instead of stumbling toward ship decommissioning dates, the Navy should follow Duncan’s example and better prepare its ships for when they inevitably age.