
DATE: Wednesday, October 29, 1997           TAG: 9710250637

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SERIES: FUTURE OF THE FLEET

SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY and DIANE TENNANT, STAFF WRITERS 

                                            LENGTH:  385 lines

THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOMEITS RANKS HAVE SHRUNK. ITS SHIPS ARE FEWER. BUT THE NAVY'S COMMITMENTS ARE ASFAR-REACHING AS EVER, STRAINING SAILORS' WITS, MARRIAGES AND FAMILY LIVES. AND THAT DOESN'T SEEM LIKELY TO CHANGE.

Gina Frickanisce figured it out once.

Her submariner husband had been away from home for 30 out of 36 months in the Navy. Mike Frickanisce, chief sonar technician on the Norfolk-based attack sub Atlanta, came home from deployment in June. Before a year is up, he'll be under way again, leaving Gina and the two children to do what they've pretty well mastered by now: get along by themselves.

In the Navy for 14 years, 11 of those on sea duty, Frickanisce's long days at sea and short visits home will not improve in the future, thanks to a dwindling fleet of boats and an increasing workload.

The number of Atlantic Fleet sailors and ships has declined by about a third over the past eight years, but the fleet has responded to more than twice as many international crises under President Clinton as it did during Cold War years.

The great unknown - and greatest challenge to recruiting top-quality sailors - is the pace at which tomorrow's sailors will work.

The operational tempo of tomorrow certainly will tax a work force already straining to perform more with less, and further burden families already wearied by six-month deployments and hectic between-cruise work schedules.

``Simple mathematics tells your sailors that fewer personnel and fewer ships available to meet the same operational requirements will have a significant, tangible and intangible human cost,'' John Hagan, former master chief petty officer of the Navy, told Congress in March.

``This cost is measured in long working hours, greater family separation and personal sacrifice.''

MORE WITH LESS

The military should not want for work in the new century.

A Congressional Research Service study in 1996 found that the U.S. armed forces were used beyond the country's borders 16 times during Ronald Reagan's two terms and 14 times under George Bush - and that they had been used 25 times under President Clinton.

During the Cold War, from 1946 through 1989, the Navy and Marine Corps responded to some 190 crises, more than four per year, the Navy said in a recent ``vision statement'' on naval aviation.

Between 1990 and 1997, they responded to more than 75, or more than 10 per year - more than double the Cold War rate.

``If we are at peace, why are we using these assets at such a high rate?'' Adm. J. Paul Reason, commander-in-chief of the Atlantic Fleet, asked a House subcommittee on military readiness this spring.

In his address, Reason noted that his fleet had 215 ships, 1,103 tactical aircraft and 201,000 personnel in 1989. Eight years later, it has 150 ships, 774 tactical planes and 132,000 people.

In 1989, the Atlantic Fleet Submarine Force operated 99 attack subs and 36 big ballistic missile submarines. Today it is down to 37 attack boats and 10 ``boomers.''

But the fleet's workload remains about the same. Reason still sends a carrier battle group and Marine amphibious ready group to the Mediterranean Sea - and, usually, the Persian Gulf - every six months. He's still required to send at least two ships every six months to the Middle East Task Force, which monitors developments in the Persian Gulf and helps enforce United Nations sanctions against Iraq. He still must dispatch three or four ships every other year to the six-month UNITAS exercise with South American navies, and another three or four to the Caribbean on overlapping four-month deployments to counter illegal drugs.

Reason is still required to keep other units ready for any contingency: Haiti, Bosnia, operations like last year's TWA Flight 800 salvage and recovery, evacuations from strife-torn foreign lands.

FAMILY STRESS

The pace of the job takes a toll not only on Navy men and women, but on their families. More and more sailors - about 58 percent now - are married. On the just-departed carrier George Washington, nearly half - 2,700 members - of the crew is married.

``That separation from the loved ones, that's the hardest thing,'' said Randy Bledsoe, command master chief of the guided missile cruiser South Carolina. ``You can't overcome it. You can just learn to ease the pain.''

``The average year for us, he's probably out to sea a good eight to 10 months of that,'' Gina Frickanisce said of her husband. ``It's a tough life. You're basically a single mother and a single woman, but you're married.''

She's handled Christmas alone, birthdays alone, homework and sports and Girl Scouts alone. Mike Frickanisce can experience them only through pictures.

The subject is one of growing concern to the Navy. The old chief's adage that ``if God had meant sailors to have families, he'd have issued them in their seabags,'' doesn't hold a lot of water with the brass.

``I think it is incumbent on the leadership to figure how to deal with this most precious resource, manpower,'' the Norfolk-based 2nd Fleet's commander, Vice Adm. Vern Clark, said.

``I've got to make sure I am not wasting any of these young people's time.

``I've got to keep that under control.''

FUTURE DEPLOYMENTS

Precisely forecasting the Navy's future requires a crystal ball, Clark said earlier this month. It is guesswork he is not willing to attempt.

There are, however, a few aspects of today's Navy life that are almost sure to remain in the future. First, lengthy overseas deployments, long the bane of Navy families, will continue to separate sailors from their loved ones for months at a time.

Clark believes the Navy's commitment to six-month deployments, buffered by home stays of at least 12 months, will stick.

``I see absolutely not turning our back on that,'' he said.

Whether they will deploy in traditional 12- to 15-ship formations as they do now remains to be seen. Each battle group is reassessed as new technology does the job more efficiently

Recently retired Marine Corps Gen. John J. ``Jack'' Sheehan, who led the U.S. Atlantic Command until September, suggested some time ago that the Navy quit sending carrier battle groups to the Mediterranean every six months, suggesting instead that the Navy dispatch them only as needed.

And retired Adm. Harry D. Train II, former commander-in-chief of the Atlantic Fleet, believes a case can be made for adjusting today's traditional carrier battle groups, which typically consist of cruisers, destroyers, frigates and submarines.

Clark said that future flotillas might, indeed, differ from today's in number and type of ships, depending on the task they're called on to perform.

Sailors, rather than ships, could deploy in the next century. Some senior officers have mulled deploying the Navy's warships for two to three years, and sending a fresh crew to meet them every six months.

``Is it more difficult for sailors to do that, in terms of family and stability and career progression?'' asked Rear Adm. John B. Foley III, assistant director of the Bureau of Naval Personnel.

``And what are the cost implications? You have to have an extra crew. Maybe not an extra crew for each ship, but an extra crew for each three or four or five ships.''

Clark said that anything shorter than six-month deployments - say, four months - probably won't make economic sense. ``If you have to go halfway around the world, you can't do a four-month deployment because that would allow you only a few weeks on station,'' he said.

Four-month deployments are being used by the Western Hemisphere Battle Group, a new 16-ship formation based out of Mayport, Fla., and Pascagoula, Miss. But their travel distances, to the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, are far shorter, Clark noted.

TRANSFERS - A FACT OF LIFE

Senior Chief Tom Douglas, based in Norfolk for the past five years, recently spun a globe for his three children and pointed out his next duty station - Guam. His fingertip more than covered the tiny black dot on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean.

Douglas and his family face another aspect of Navy life that is unlikely to change much in the coming years: transfer.

They are moving to a more remote base than most sailors face, but the problems are the same. Like generations of sailors before him, Douglas has orders that will force his family to give up its home, its friends, its schools, its church and the network of relationships it has forged. Everything that is comfortable and familiar.

Douglas was ready to spend two years alone in Guam because he refused to put his children in the island's substandard schools. But the Department of Defense recently opened a school for military children there, so all five Douglases are beginning to sort their belongings for an overseas move.

Much of their furniture, clothing and other possessions will be put in storage before they leave. What goes with them will take 60 days to arrive at their new, cinderblock home.

``My second child thinks we're going to an island and live in a hut and fish,'' said Ana Douglas. ``I keep saying, `No, no, no, you'll still live in a house, you still have to go to school.' ''

The jungle pushes up against the Navy base, Douglas said, which thrills his son but dismays 6-year-old Heather, who fears Christmas will never come there.

``I've been married for 16 years and I have never been anywhere longer than five years,'' Ana Douglas said. ``But I knew he was in the Navy when I married him. Probably just about half our married life, he's been gone.''

The children, she said, are used to it. They consider every move just a new experience.

``I think it's how you put it to them,'' Ana Douglas said.

``They'll adapt,'' Tom Douglas added.

Transfers like the Douglases' are such a universal experience for the children of those in the armed forces that last year saw the debut of ``Nomad, the brat journal,'' a magazine geared to children constantly on the move with their uniformed parents.

The Navy has attempted to remedy the overwhelmingly negative reaction of Navy families to constant transfers with ``home basing.''

The program, begun in mid-1995, attempts to keep sailors in one geographic location for most of their careers. It involves at least two tours spent well away from home, with a guaranteed return to home base in between. It applies only to enlisted personnel - 76.8 percent of the entire force..

In Hampton Roads alone, there are about 86,000 sailors, or 21 percent of the entire Navy.

While enabling sailors to buy homes and stabilize families, home basing also increases the Navy's number of ``geographic bachelors'' - officers and enlisted men and women whose families choose to stay put while their sailors relocate to satisfy new orders.

Although no one keeps statistics, the Navy acknowledges the growing numbers. ``There has been a significant increase in the population of geographic bachelors in the past several years,'' Hagan told Congress in March. ``I am greatly concerned with absolutely minimizing the potential for married sailors to serve full tours unnecessarily separated from their families. I am especially troubled by sailors who choose to serve their shore tour in this status.

``We must not forget that they are separated from their family in order to meet the needs of the Navy.''

And complicating the process is the lack of shore jobs in some locations.

``Norfolk, for instance, has a very large sea population, about 40,000,'' said Tom Tilt, who chaired the Home Basing Task Force for the Navy's Bureau of Personnel. ``Norfolk provides a lot of opportunity for people to stay, but when you're looking at 40,000 sea jobs and 15,000 shore jobs, there are some people who have very little opportunity to stay for shore duty in Norfolk.''

NO SLOWDOWN AT HOME

Traditional six-month deployments and geographic bachelorhood account for only part of the pressure that Navy families endure.

What happens to sailors and their loved ones when they're supposed to be ``home'' causes a substantial amount of grief, as well.

A snapshot of the carrier George Washington's schedule for the past year gives a fairly typical picture of what happens to the Navy's ships and crews when they are not on a lengthy cruise.

The G.W. returned to Norfolk from its last six-month deployment on July 23, 1996. It spent the next 417 days home.

But that wasn't as it appeared.

While ``home,'' it was in the shipyard for 184 days; at sea conducting training for 101 days; and actually in port at the Norfolk Naval Station for 158 days - or little more than five of the 14 months that passed between that deployment's end and the start of its current cruise on Oct. 3.

For more than three months of its home stay, it was at sea - that time broken into a slew of small trips.

Yet, the ship's total time away from deployment conforms with the Navy's rigid rule of being ``home'' at least 12 months for every six months deployed.

At the subcommittee hearing this spring, it was such between-deployment schedules that military leaders cited as particularly damaging to quality of life in the ranks.

``I have heard it said,'' Clark acknowledged, ``we need to make sure we are not overtaxing today's sailor in the in-port phase.''

Simple mathematics are partly to blame for this busy ``home'' work tempo, particularly aboard the fleet's carriers.

There are six carriers on the East Coast, five in Norfolk and one in Mayport, Fla. One is always deployed, a second is preparing for deployment, and a third has just returned and is entitled to a year at home. A fourth is always undergoing an overhaul that lasts from six months for a routine, post-deployment checkup, to three years, in the case of a nuclear refueling. The fifth and sixth are in various stages of repair, training or rest.

The Navy maintains 10 air wings for its 12 carriers - five on each coast. They are not assigned to specific ships. On the East Coast, one of the five wings will make every fifth deployment, so their turnaround is consistent: Normally, an air wing that leaves for six months is home for 24.

But finding a place for them to train is increasingly difficult and taxing to the carriers at home. Lacking a carrier dedicated to training, the Navy calls upon its few operational carriers to fill that role in their spare time.

And such spare time does not exist, said Cmdr. Mark Seelenbinder, responsible for keeping the operating schedules of all six carriers in the Atlantic Fleet.

``They are spending a higher amount of time at sea to pick up the (training) commitment,'' he said. The East Coast ends up pulling more than its weight, because one of the West Coast's six carriers is forward-deployed in Japan.

Further complicating the picture is the ships' maintenance schedule, Seelenbinder said, calling it ``a big driver in this whole thing.''

``We have a bunch coming into major overhauls,'' he said. ``Enterprise just went through her (nuclear refueling). Nimitz is coming here next year for hers.

``When you have the major carrier overhauls and major nuke (refueling) overhauls, that carrier is going to be out of the rotation schedule for a significant period of time. That juggles other carrier schedules as the six-month deployments clip along, because you (must) pull someone out of rotation.''

For Seelenbinder, the scheduling of carrier deployments is a complicated game that can be upset by anything from political whim to a busted prop.

TOO MANY CHIEFS?

Perhaps the most difficult challenge to maintaining a reasonable work schedule is politics. Some senior officers fault the Goldwater Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, which put combat forces of all the services in the charge of several geographically organized joint commands scattered across the globe.

The commanders-in-chief, or ``CINCs,'' of these theater commands often place heavy demands on the military, but are not accountable for the toll their exercises and deployments exact in dollars and quality of life.

Plus, the Atlantic Fleet's Reason told the congressional subcommittee, they ``compete with each other for the forces.''

``Too many unified CINCs are placing demands on too few assets,'' the admiral testified. ``Maybe the answer is a vertical cut. Maybe we have too many CINCs competing.''

Reason is not alone in thinking so. ``You can't have ships everywhere at all times,'' retired Adm. Train said, then added: ``What that flies in the face of are the territorial instincts of the unified commanders in areas that are accustomed to enjoying carrier battle groups.''

One senior officer said that commanders whose forces are pulled too many ways, too often, find themselves asking: `` `Does anybody recognize the fact we are one-third smaller than we were six to seven years ago, and your exercise requirements and deployment requirements on us have not changed one iota?' ''

FAMILY FUTURE

Few foresee improvements forthcoming. There has been no reduction in the Navy's commitments overseas. Assets continue to be reduced.

So, with the future promising little or no improvement in its work tempo, the service has embarked on programs to assuage the pain wrought by its inevitable separations.

The Navy says it will continue to finance Family Service Centers at major installations. Those centers provide many dependent services, including pre-deployment sessions for children and spouses, that explain life at sea and how to cope at home.

When the dock landing ship Oak Hill was ready to leave port in October, Navy Family Services brought aboard a puppet show for children. The show, unique to Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base, covers the common fears of children: Will daddy get lost? Will he forget what I look like? What if he gets sick?

The children, while onboard, made cards for their dads. The messages carried a universal theme:

``Dear Dad: I am going to miss you vary much.''

``Dear Dad: I wish you diddn't have to go.''

Navy Family Services also offers workshops for singles, recognizing that while many in the service are married - and that the percentage of married sailors has been growing - a lot remain unattached. The sessions advise singles on what to do with their cars, apartments and belongings while they're away, how to handle bank accounts and bills from a distance.

Once at sea, sailors are able to stay in touch with loved ones back home with an ease and speed unimaginable a few years ago. More and more surface ships have e-mail. Those messages can be delivered in a matter of hours, rather than the two to three weeks a letter takes.

The carrier John F. Kennedy, recently returned from six months in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf, sent 3 million e-mails home. The carrier Nimitz, now in the gulf, last week sent 9,000 to 10,000 per day.

Phone calls from ship to shore now cost $1 a minute, compared to $10 a minute during Operation Desert Storm.

Finally, direct video hookups for special occasions - in particular, the births of babies back home - enable sailors to see and talk with their families in ``real time.''

Those advances have changed life in, and marriage to, the Navy. Not many years ago, Gina Frickanisce sent photos of one child's birthday to her deployed husband. The mail followed his sub from port to port, always arriving after the vessel had left. He finally got the photos a week after he'd returned home.

Mary Lou Andrews, who helps prepare families for deployment for Little Creek Family Services, remembers sending a Red Cross message to her husband, who was deployed to Antarctica, telling him of his daughter's birth.

``It still hasn't gotten there, 19.5 years later,'' she joked.

Staying in touch will only get better, faster and easier. The Navy views electronic networks as a key to its future warfighting strategy. And ``the electronics that support network-centric warfare also support dependent support systems,'' noted Rear Adm. Foley of the Bureau of Personnel

The 2nd Fleet's Clark imagines great leaps in the next 15 years. ``They will be on TV with one another,'' he said of sailors and their families. ``I am convinced they will be sitting at their computer and talking real time with home.''

Good as that might be, the bottom line is that Navy service, even in the 21st century, will retain much of its character of present and past. It will bring pain. It will require fortitude. Being a sailor will never be easy.

A good many sailors, and their Navy families, can accept that.

``This is what we do,'' said Command Master Chief Bledsoe of the South Carolina. ``I don't think the American taxpayer would be content with a Navy that sat by the pier. This is what we're paid to do and trained to do.

``This is when the patriotism comes in,'' he said. ``Who benefits? The United States. Democracy. They all benefit. That is often overlooked.''

Gina Frickanisce, one deployment just passed, another on the way, sees her job as tough - but one she can accept.

``My philosophy is that there's always somebody out there who's had it worse than you,'' she said. ``I chose to marry my husband and I chose to support his career.

``It's all worth it in the end.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

HUY NGUYEN/The Virginian-Pilot

...life goes on at the Frickanisce house. Gina...her children

Cassidy and Dylan...

Photos

TAMARA VONINSKI/The Virginian-Pilot

Ludwig Mantay, a corpsman on the Oak Hill, helps his son, Joshua, 5,

make a card that Joshua is supposed to send his father, who left for

a six-month cruise early this month.

George Swofford, right, a corpsman on the Oak Hill, talks with his

sons Evan Aaron, 13, left, and Casey Aaron, 10, during a

pre-deployment briefing for family members.