A package of investigations released this week about the carrier Harry S. Truman’s loss of three F/A-18 Super Hornets and collision with a merchant vessel in four separate mishaps on its last deployment to the Middle East is raising grave concerns about training gaps and sailors’ lack of focus and professionalism when fulfilling their duties.
Among the culprits, according to the investigations, were fatigue, stress amid an intense tempo of combat operations, undermanning and unit cultures that stressed a get-it-done mentality rather than ensuring competency or bandwidth for certain tasks.
But buried in one of the reports is another concern: that the arrival of readily accessible Wi-Fi onboard ships is reducing crews’ commitment to professional excellence.
The finding appears in the investigation into the loss of a Super Hornet on May 6 due to an arresting wire that broke as the aircraft was attempting to land — an incident attributed to poor maintenance and “eroding of standards” to the point of “abject failure.”
The jet’s pilots were able to eject before the aircraft was lost in the Red Sea and suffered only relatively minor injuries.
While that indictment is broad, the 56-page document notes one possible contributor to the breakdown.
“There is a lack of motivation among the [Truman] arresting gear sailors to earn their qualifications,” the investigation finds. “Witnesses attributed this lack of motivation to several factors.”
Among these, it adds, is the availability of Wi-Fi on the carrier.
“Many Sailors spend their down time on their phones rather than studying for qualifications,” the report notes.
Later in the investigation, it raises the issue of Wi-Fi driven distractions again.
“Sailors struggled to stand [under instruction periods] to earn higher qualifications due to lack of personnel to man watch stations during flight operations,” investigators found. “Sailors did not take the initiative to earn qualifications outside of their shift due to a lack of a comprehensive training plan, lack of a [delinquent in qualifications] list, low motivation, and Wi-Fi availability.”
Enclosures providing evidence for these findings are referenced in the investigation, but were not publicly released.
Wi-Fi on board carriers — a new development in recent years made possible, in part by the Starlink satellite network established by the Elon Musk-led company SpaceX — has largely been hailed as a welcome way to modernize ship deployments, raise morale and keep sailors better connected with their families and home life.
In late 2024, Navy Capt. Chris “Chowdah” Hill, skipper of the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, told reporters he’d seen great benefit from the service during a recent deployment to the Red Sea.
“If you’re a sailor and you’re having a bad day, you don’t always want to go to your chain of command,” Hill, who used social media during the deployment to highlight various sailors, said, according to a DefenseScoop report. “You go to your external support network — your mom, your dad, your spouse. And this offered an instantaneous way to do that.”
He contrasted what he saw as improved morale with the past reputation of the aging carrier underway, which Hill said had earned the moniker “Cell Block 69,” a play on its hull identifier.
A January report from The War Zone also found Wi-Fi brought morale benefits underway to the crew of the carrier Abraham Lincoln, though it alluded to concerns over sailors’ dependency on their connected devices.
“The next generation of sailors grew up with a cell phone in their hand, and they are uncomfortable without it,” Lincoln’s commanding officer, Capt. Pete “Repete” Riebe, said, according to the report. “I don’t necessarily like that, but that’s reality, and if we want to compete for the best folks coming into the Navy, we need to offer them bandwidth at sea.”
The recently released mishap probe found, in particular, that motivation to earn arresting gear qualifications among sailors was low, with just 14 out of 22 Truman sailors in ranks E-6 and below assigned to the arresting gear progressing beyond basic familiarization. Three sailors earned no arresting gear qualifications during the deployment, due in part to a lack of push from leaders to earn more qualifications, the probe found.
It also found that the leading chief petty officer for the arresting gear at the time of the mishap had a low knowledge level of the gear’s workings. The investigation found that he and had been trying to earn more qualifications, but a superior had tried to “throttle back” his progress so he could use the education to benefit his career development later on.
No recommendations regarding phones or Wi-Fi use were made public as part of the investigation.
“The hard reality is that multiple individuals at all levels of leadership were complicit in allowing the [Aircraft Launch and Recovery Equipment] maintenance program to degrade to the level of abject failure,” Rear Adm. David-Tavis Pollard, president of the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey, wrote in an endorsement of the investigation. “… The resultant failure put the lives of aviators and sailors at risk and only through luck did they escape grievous harm.”
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