CLASSRON Stands Up in San Diego

The newest Class Squadron (CLASSRON) was formally established for Guided Missile Cruisers (CG) on Naval Station San Diego June 1. The new CG CLASSRON will be engaged in the training, maintaining, manning and logistics processes for the entire class of 22 CGs.

“What we do is we look at issues from two sides,” said Commander, Cruiser Class Squadron Capt. David Matawitz. “One, we look at: readiness; we analyze [a] matrix across the class, we examine trends, we look for root causes across the entire class and then we bring those up to the surface warfare enterprise and the main ship training process." "So we are looking from the top down. We also go out to the ships and look for problems on the individual deck plates, and push problems up. If one ship has an issue we look across the class to see if it’s on other ships, and frankly, you will often find that one ship with a problem is not all by itself ... often it will be across the entire class.”

Regardless of where a ship is homeported, the CLASSRON staffs will be focused on providing combat ready warships to the operational commanders. “Our primary goal here is to make war ships ready for tasking across all of the positions: logistics, manpower, training and maintenance,” said Matawitz. “They [CG] are getting the latest and greatest equipment and one of the things that we have to do is to make sure that the training, maintenance, and the manning is properly identified as these new systems get installed.”

The CLASSRON will not replace the existing Afloat Training Groups or Type Commands (TYCOM). They will provide the Immediate Superiors in Command and TYCOM with the ability to find process inefficiencies and to apply resources to achieve desired results. “This command is going to bridge the gap between the surface warfare enterprise, afloat training groups, immediate superiors in command and other ships in finding ways to increase productivity and reduce redundancies among the cruiser class,” said Top-side Warfare Officer Lt. R J. Angeles. “This allows us to take an analysis of the current issues and provide solutions that are current among the class. We are able to investigate different issues that exist which allow us to provide recommendation analysis to higher commands to resolve these problems.”

CLASSRONs are functional command organizations specific to particular ship classes, which execute processes that ensure all ships with that particular class are at the right levels of combat readiness and available for tasking by combatant commanders. They use metric-based analysis to assess readiness, examine class trends and provide recommendations and solutions. Currently there are eight CLASSRONS established as part of the Surface Warfare Enterprise.

From Commander Naval Surface Force Public Affairs