Keeping the blogosphere posted on the goings on of the world of submarines since late 2004... and mocking and belittling general foolishness wherever it may be found. Idaho's first and foremost submarine blog. (If you don't like something on this blog, please E-mail me; don't call me at home.)

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

This Sounds Like It's From The Onion...

...but it's not. From a story on the actual, verified navy.mil webpage:
NORFOLK (NNS) -- In order to generate innovative ideas on how to best maintain the capabilities and capacity of the Navy and mitigate risks in an era of constrained resources, the Navy is hosting an online collaborative event to solicit input from a broad, diverse audience.
cap2con MMOWGLI - or Capacity, Capabilities and Constraints Massive Multiplayer Online War Game Leveraging the Internet - seeks creative ideas to spread mission requirements across the active, reserve and civilian forces to keep "warfighting first."
The game will be played in two phases: Phase I - an idea discovery phase - will take place Nov. 4 - 10. Phase II, which will focus on further refining the ideas from Phase I, will be played Dec. 2 - 8.
cap2con MMOWGLI is sponsored by the Chief of Navy Reserve, Navy Warfare Development Command (NWDC), Office of Naval Research and the Naval Postgraduate School.
"Some of the best ideas come from the deck plate," said Vice Adm. Robin Braun, chief of Navy Reserve. "I believe this exercise will draw out ideas that can help the Navy best leverage the talents of our active and reserve component Sailors."
Results of the game will be used to inform high-level discussions about future Navy force structure, strategies and capabilities across the active, reserve and civilian components.
The internet "card-based" game is easy to play. Root cards start off the game, and players build on, counter, refine or seek further information by placing their own cards on top of root cards.
Promising "card chains" form the basis for action plans that further develop the participants' ideas. Participants can play for as little or as long as they want, 24-hours a day, from any internet browser.
For those competitive "gamers," leader boards recognize players with special achievements and bragging rights, all in good fun.
"Internet crowdsourcing games are gaining traction helping the Navy to address some of its more challenging problems," said Rear Adm. Scott Jerabek, commander, NWDC. "The CNO's Reducing Administrative Distractions (RAD) initiative received nearly 1,500 ideas, had more than 7,600 comments posted on these ideas, and 91,000 votes casted to help easily identify the top ideas. We are looking forward to similar collaboration in cap2con MMOWGLI to address this very serious challenge for all of us."
Interested players can sign up at https://mmowgli.nps.edu/cap2con/signup anytime and will be notified once the game is open for play Nov. 4.
Anyone gonna play this newest version of Buzzword Bingo? They even have a blog so you can learn more! And a portal with a link to a video and a .ppt!

I'm guessing "we need to kill more enemy troops" won't be one of the major conclusions coming out of this one; I've got a sneaking suspicion the game is set up to yield results like "increase acceptance and celebration of diversity" and whatnot.

30 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's Ender's Game.

10/30/2013 10:46 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Blame TANG

10/30/2013 11:09 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Key phrase: "...all in good fun."

10/30/2013 11:29 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Card games have played a rich role in naval history when it comes to resolving conflicts...including McHale's Navy, Episode 33.

10/30/2013 11:46 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I can't help but think this idea came out in the same way as Sarcastiball.

10/30/2013 4:55 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

someone should ask how much the game cost...

10/30/2013 5:26 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

$100,000 not to mention up to 1200 man hours

10/30/2013 5:31 PM

 
Blogger tennvol said...

"The purpose of cap2con MMOWGLI is to identify potential Active Component (AC) mission sets that could be transitioned to the Reserve Component (RC) -- in part or whole -- to offset costs to retain Navy capability in this time of constrained resources."

I kind of doubt that either "we need to kill more enemy troops" or "increase acceptance and celebration of diversity" would be expected or desired outcomes.

10/30/2013 6:24 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

...in an era of constrained resources, the Navy has decided to spend some of those resources on a game, rather then to pay their sailors more, or buy more weapons.

Hopefully one of the deliverables from this game will be to not spend our money on gaming in the future.

Too bad sequestration didn't hit that office...

10/30/2013 10:34 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Joel: It looks like the Chinese boomer force is after you here, buddy.

11/01/2013 6:41 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What Might the Future Hold for U.S. Submariners?
Back to 4-hour watches (six watches in an actual 24-hour day), or stick with US sub's current convention (3 x 6-hour watches in an artificial 18-hour day that is possibly a problem for women's circadian rythms [WE CAN"T TALK ABOUT THAT yet]? NEW STUDY.

What? You had never heard about that recent (April 2013) study by he Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory?

11/02/2013 2:15 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Four hour watches would be terrible. You don't sleep a whole lot on a sub, but getting a possible 5 hours down every 18 or 24 hours is much better than getting 3 hours down every 12 or 20.

Six hours is what balances watchstander attentiveness with the ability to do all the off-watch stuff and still get enough sleep to function. The sub force keeps revisiting this topic and keeps arriving at the same answer.

11/04/2013 9:32 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Intuitive answers aren't always correct, and I suspect the 6-hr, "business-as-usual" watch duration falls in this category.

But the differences of opinion on this can and should be easily solved by actual cognitive and perhaps even physical testing.

While we're here -- a test of intuition.

Here is a simple puzzle. Do not try to solve it but listen to your intuition:

Q: A bat and ball cost $ 1.10. The bat costs one dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

A: See below.

.

.

.

.

A. Five cents.

"Many thousands of university students have answered the bat-and-ball puzzle, and the results are shocking. More than 50% of students at Harvard, MIT, and Princeton gave the intuitive— incorrect— answer. At less selective universities, the rate of demonstrable failure to check was in excess of 80%. The bat-and-ball problem is our first encounter with an observation that will be a recurrent theme of this book: many people are overconfident, prone to place too much faith in their intuitions. They apparently find cognitive effort at least mildly unpleasant and avoid it as much as possible."


Example from Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman.

11/04/2013 11:28 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why is OBAMA purging senior officers from the military

11/04/2013 8:44 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not only purging senior officers, promoting flub-a-dubs.

Did you know that the shipyard commander on watch during USS Miami's arson was replaced in May by a new O-6. The new commandant IS qualified in submarines. What happened to his predecessor (the skimmer)? He was promoted to Rear ADM and sent to D.C. as the Navy’s Chief Engineer and NAVSEA Deputy Commander for Ship Design, Integration and Naval Engineering (SEA 05)

11/05/2013 1:27 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The PNSY Commander is in the NAVSEA chain of command. The COs at PNSY report to a CSG-2 rep who reports to CSG-2 in Groton.

Unless you can provide an engineering flaw that the PNSY Commander negligently ignored that directly allowed a civilian shipyard worker to commit arson on a submarine, you're barking up the wrong tree.

11/06/2013 12:57 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Washington Times responds to the recent Chinese talk of submarine threats to the U.S. with a 9-page slideshow of U.S Navy nuclear submarines.

11/06/2013 5:23 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Unless you can provide an engineering flaw that the PNSY Commander negligently ignored ..... you're barking up the wrong tree." - Anon

You seriously believe a shipyard commander is responsible only for engineering flaws? If that were Navy's rationale, it was specious and flawed from the get-go. As the Navy's own 'get-well' recommendations for the incident attest (and all QUALIFIED SUBMARINERS already knew) fire on submarines always presents a potentially for vast devastation. The NEW shipyard CO is a SUBMARINER, and the ultimate fate of Rear Admiral L. Bryant Fuller remains dicey.

Something marginalized by the official inquiry that you may also find interesting is that it is S.O.P. at General Dynamics Electric Boat requires tradesmen to pass both a hair follicle drug test and a comprehensive BCI be able to attain a Government Secret Clearance. At PNS, however, Casey Fury escaped such due diligence in either the hiring process, the random monitoring process, or both.

11/06/2013 1:34 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The PNSY Commander's authority extends beyond 'just engineering,' but he is not in charge of hiring civilian shipyard workers (that's run by civilians, who answer to politicians), nor is he responsible for ensuring COs are properly executing training plans and crews are standing an alert watch (that's the boat COs jobs, who report to the CSG-2 rep).

There is nothing wrt the cause of the fire on Miami that can be traced back to issues with something the PNSY commander signs or is responsible for overseeing, just like the SUBASE Groton CO would not be responsible for such an event in Groton.

If you're going to call for his head, at least have a reason for it.

11/06/2013 7:17 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The shipyard commander has as much influence in hiring policies, though CAPT Fuller neglected that critical component of workplace quality and security, as the CEO of EB. Sorry, dude!

By the way, O-6 appointments and firings are political, too. Are you surprised? Taxpayers have been cheated by "civilians" (union bosses) again?

Pray tell whose civilian head rolled, and we don't just refer to Casey Fury's.

11/07/2013 10:55 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Off Topic - Sorry about this but I had to vomit.

We've got several commands now touting that they have "DCMC" positions. What's a DCMC? That's a Deputy Command Master Chief.

All of these @#@$% people hung up on titles but can't do their #$#@ jobs!

11/07/2013 2:12 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Reminds my of "The Office". Deputy to the Command Master Chief.

11/07/2013 7:26 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

@ anonymous 11/07/2013 10:55 AM:

Yes, firings are political,too. However, thankfully, cooler heads prevailed and people realized that you can't predict and prevent every psycho from doing harm to others.

If you think otherwise, you're just Monday night quarterbacking the event.

11/07/2013 8:45 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well Gents... Time for 0-7 boards next week..... Let the prognosticating begin. Thoughts on the who will get it and who will get snubbed?

11/08/2013 6:16 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"..cooler heads prevailed and people realized that you can't predict and prevent every psycho from doing harm to others."

Cooler heads, or the no one gets fired Obama administration?

11/08/2013 10:12 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Related Vanity Fair excerpt on the thinning of the herd in senior (military) ranks by the TOTUS:

"Just how someone wired the way Obama is got so far in politics remains a puzzlement. His aloneness is generally regarded as springing from a surfeit of self-confidence, a certitude that he really does know best. But at least one former senior administration adviser has argued that the trait springs from the opposite source: a basic insecurity on the president’s part, one that keeps him from surrounding himself with strong intellectual rivals in either the White House or the Cabinet. Competent they may be, but with Hillary Clinton gone there is no figure of unquestioned stature. He has quietly purged from his inner circle those most likely to stand up to him, and barely suffered the manful efforts of his latest chief of staff, McDonough, to encourage him to reach out to the remaining slivers of the Republican sanity caucus in Congress."

11/09/2013 1:22 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Link: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2013/11/barack-obama-loner-self-reliant-closed-off

11/09/2013 1:25 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Starting to sound like movie credits:

2nd Assistant to the Assistant DCMC.

In these new diverse times I guess we’ll have someone designated as Best Boy soon enough.

11/12/2013 1:26 PM

 
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11/22/2013 4:17 AM

 
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