That's pretty normal. You get people on watch for 4 to 6 hours at a time. They can't leave. The bottle is sometimes the only option.
You can try and get a relief so you can go to the head, but it's generally frowned upon if your that guy that always needs a head break, and in the middle of the night, no one wants to wake up so you can go pee.
As I said, that's poor management. You will loose to an enemy who does it properly. The US was once envied for their officers training and education.
Edited to add: Also, what will people do? They will drink less than they should to avoid the humiliation. On top of a tired crew you will get also a dehydrated one. This is a surefire recipe for bad things to happen.
> You will loose to an enemy who does it properly.
I agree with the need to always keep training in top shape.
There is no naval enemy on earth that is even remotely competitive with the US in any regard.
Iran? North Korea? ISIS? What enemy?
Russia has no global naval projection, it can barely sustainably push beyond the Black Sea with its surface ships. Their sub fleet is a medium threat. The US is also not at war with Russia, they aren't actually an enemy. There is no war coming with the Russians, they're only good for boogeyman status. They've got a perma stagnant economy (Australia will surpass it soon) and melting social-economic position (see: pension cuts making Putin unpopular), crimping their ability to continue to spend on anything military (most of their military is badly dilapidated, so they've taken to focusing very narrowly because they can't field a high quality force across the board any longer; this is also why Putin puts so much effort into screaming about his magic super weapons that are unstoppable, their conventional military is rotting).
Could China one day be a naval enemy? Sure. At some point in the next 20 years there could be a naval conflict near Chinese territory. The US isn't winning that near-shore conflict short of going to a WW2 level output of ships. The dumbest thing the US could do from a navy perspective is get into a naval conflict with China close to their shores 10-20 years from now. It wouldn't matter how well trained the officers are, it's an inherently losing position.
> There is no naval enemy on earth that is even remotely competitive with the US in any regard.
I find this hilarious in the context of the incident,
Who would win: the greatest navel power on earth operating a highly sophisticated and technologically advanced destroyer, or one container ship?
Just because there isn't an enemy now doesn't mean that you can just forgo training. They shouldn't sink to a lowest common denominator, but rather strive for a higher standard. They're hardly in top shape according to the report
>There is no naval enemy on earth that is even remotely competitive with the US in any regard.
>Iran? North Korea? ISIS? What enemy?
It's a good thing the US is still friendly with Europe. Everything I've read about their (admittedly much smaller) navies is that they're far more professional and better run, and look at the Americans as unprofessional and even dangerous when they have to do training exercises with them.
Of course, this shouldn't be too big a surprise; just take a trip to Europe and see how much better day-to-day stuff is run. Public transit is excellent and much larger in scope, unlike America where the subways are falling apart and Amtrak is a joke. Airports are smoothly run, unlike America where they aren't even paying the security people (TSA) to come to work. Bridges in Europe aren't dilapidated and literally falling down like they are in America.
> It's a good thing the US is still friendly with Europe. Everything I've read about their (admittedly much smaller) navies is that they're far more professional and better run, ....
Good point about the Norwegian ship, but I have no idea what you're talking about with the German Navy. They have over 60 ships, including 10 frigates, 5 corvettes, and 6 submarines, plus various other support ships. Their close allies in Italy have 2 light aircraft carriers, 3 amphibious assault ships, 4 destroyers, 12 frigates, 8 attack subs, 1 corvette, plus others. Their other close allies in France have 1 aircraft carrier, 3 amphibious assault ships, 14 frigates of various types, 6 attack subs, plus some other frigates and corvettes, as well as 4 ballistic-missile subs. I haven't even gotten to the other powers in continental Europe (Netherlands, Denmark, etc.). All together, they seem to have a pretty sizeable defense force.
Japan also has a pretty sizable Navy with over 120 ships.
Ships afloat does not mean they're operational or combat effective. Some of those ships are quite old and are badly in need of replacement or upgrades. Many of them are under crewed. The numbers of ships are a starting point, but really don't tell much of the story.
None of Germany's 6 subs were operational at the beginning of last year. That may have changed since, but the underlying reasons, poor planning and lack of spare parts, are still there. Only 9 of 15 Frigates were operational and the lead of their new class of frigates, the F125, failed sea trials. The Navy subsequently refused to commission the ship. Admittedly, these are not necessarily crew training issues, but crews without operational ships are not likely to maintain a desirable level of combat readiness. These issues aren't just limited to the Navy; ground forces are also in a bad state.
France and the UK are in better shape, but the Royal Navy in particular has holes in its capabilities where the US Navy is expected to fill in. They're regaining some capabilities with their new (and only operational) carrier, but it's not even clear if it has a functional air wing yet as the F-35B's they purchased only began carrier operations this past September. Another carrier is under construction, but it may be awhile before their carrier based naval aviation becomes combat effective.
The remaining European Navies are pretty small and pretty limited in what they can do. They tend to focus on ASW with some surface warfare capabilities, but are again dependent upon one of the larger Navies for air defense.
Japan may well be the most combat effective of the bunch, but that's a completely different theater of operations.
This isn't intended to be a rah-rah, USA forever sort of rant. Everyone, including the US, seem to have let things slip to the extent that combat effectiveness is becoming questionable.
Also, ballistic missile subs don't really matter unless you're planning to throw nukes at someone, in which case the makeup of surface fleets quickly becomes irrelevant.
Funny, but it's not devolution of a comment thread, I'm pointing out that things are falling apart in the US, and the problems in the Navy are merely one facet of a much, much larger problem with the way the government is operating (at both federal at state levels, but most of these issues have a lot of federal involvement, e.g. bridges, and public transit usually spans states because most of our major cities span states, and long-distance trains necessarily are a federal issue).
There is no naval enemy on earth that is even remotely competitive with the US in any regard.
Ship to ship maneuverability and tactics, even? How can you be so sure? Do you think that it's impossible for a US ship to lose a "dogfight" at sea in Asia as tensions escalate? If the lack of training is as bad as they say, I have a hard time imagining them winning one.
If our naval superiority is that vast, perhaps we should retire a few warships, pick commanders for the remaining vessels from the competent members of the officer corp, and force-retire those that no longer have ships to command.
If, in the United States Navy, a peacetime crew on a vessel doesn't have time to use the head without pissing in a bottle, we are doing something wrong.
Isn't most of the point of military training and operations to always run an operation as if though it was wartime?
Otherwise if there's a war what are these crews going to be doing? Pissing themselves on the bridge, or have a bottle in one hand and their dick in the other while trying to man their station, possibly while undergoing hard maneuvers?
This seems to be some fundamental failure of crew management. Crews should be allocated in such a way that there's time for toilet breaks.
Presumably they don't run realistic exercises all the time - that sounds like a military equivalent of always being in crunch mode and we all know how well that works out!
Wartime can last years, you can't rely on only being able to withstand that for a couple of weeks or months.
I can't say I have any experience with the military, but from listening to "Life and Work on HMS Enterprise"[1], they are constantly running realistic exercises (in their case, mostly simulating fires and people overboard, since it's a research vessel).
Not always - we don't have everyone at a military base going around with rifles 24-7 because the risks of doing so are higher.
But yeah it is a failure of crew management certainly - at very least there should be a solid "relief" procedure that can handle it - and even stable in the long odds of a crewman getting killed out of line of sight by say a glancing hit.
You can try and get a relief so you can go to the head, but it's generally frowned upon if your that guy that always needs a head break, and in the middle of the night, no one wants to wake up so you can go pee.