As the cost of sailors rises, Navy finds ways to get them off ships.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: IN FOCUS: DEFENSE AND TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Navy ships in the future may go to sea with fewer, but perhaps happier sailors.

Or so goes the thinking behind the Navy's new warship designs, which will make it possible for vessels to deploy with less than half the number of sailors that current ships require.

Aboard next-generation ships, Navy officials say, leaner crews will have "better quality of life," as they will be spared from much of the grind and drudgery that sailors endure, especially on older, high-maintenance ships.

Then there are financial pressures.

The shrinkage of the Navy started several years ago, when leaders decided that it was time to embrace the efficiencies that technology had to offer. The service is now on track to reduce its ranks to 322,000 by 2013. That will be 43,000 fewer sailors than it had in 2005.

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By all estimates, sailors are becoming alarmingly expensive. Unless the Navy continues to downsize, the service's budget planners fear that personnel costs, over time, could bankrupt its ambitious modernization of the fleet.

Personnel costs are overwhelming not just the Navy, but the other services as well. The expense of recruiting, retaining, training and providing medical benefits for service members and retirees is growing faster than anyone had predicted, so even though the Navy is eliminating people from the ranks, its personnel costs still are expected to rise by 5 percent a year. The cutbacks help contain escalating personnel costs in the near term, although, in the long run, the Navy will save billions of dollars by operating ships with smaller crews.

"Over the past couple of years, we've drawn down about 10,000 sailors, just to stay apace with the increased cost of pay raises and bonuses," says Rear Adm. Stan Bozin, director of the Navy's budget office.

Admirals are quick to point out that the downsizing is not entirely a budget drill, but a logical step in order to take advantage of improvements in technology. Ships have become so sophisticated, officials assert, that many duties can be automated without compromising operations or overloading the remaining sailors with extra work. The intent is to have sailors in the future do less manual labor and acquire more specialized skills, which ultimately should lead to improved job satisfaction and higher retention rates.

About a decade ago, the Navy began to experiment with "smart ship" technologies that aimed to reduce sailors' workload. But officials concluded that crews could not...