The Navy as a Fighting Machine

by Bradley A. Fiske

Whenever one thinks of using skill, he includes in his thought the thing in the handling of which the skill is employed. One can hardly conceive of using skill except in handling something of the general nature of an instrument, even if the skill is employed in handling something which is not usually called an instrument. For instance, if a man handles an organization with the intent thereby to produce a certain result, the organization is the instrument whereby he attempts to produce the result.

If a man exercises perfect skill, he achieves with his instrument 100 per cent of its possible effect. If he exercises imperfect skill, he achieves a smaller percentage of its possible effect.

To analyze the effectiveness of skill, let us coin the phrase, "effective skill," and agree that, if a man produces 100 per cent of the possible, his effective skill is 100 per cent, and, in general, that a man's effective skill in using any instrument is expressed by the percentage he achieves of what the instrument can accomplish; that, for instance, if a gun is fired at a given range under given conditions, and 10 per cent hits are made in a given time, then the effective skill employed is 10 per cent.

From this standpoint we see that imperfect skill is largely concerned with errors. If a man uses, say, a gun, with perfect skill, he commits no error in handling the gun; and the smaller the sum total of errors which he commits in handling the gun, the greater his effective skill and the greater the number of hits.

The word "errors," as here used, does not simply mean errors of commission, but means errors of omission as well. If a man, in firing a gun, fails to press the button or trigger when his sights are on, he makes an error just as truly as the man does who presses the button or trigger when the sights are not on.

Suppose that, in firing a gun, under given conditions of range, etc., the effective skill employed is 10 per cent. This means that 10 per cent of hits are made. But it means another thing equally important—it means that 90 per cent of misses are made. To what are these misses due? Clearly they are due to errors made, not necessarily by the man who fires the gun, but by all the people concerned. If the correct sight-bar range were given to the, gun, and if the gun were correctly laid and the pointer pressed the button at precisely the right instant, the shot would hit the target, practically speaking. But, in actual practice, the range-finder makes an error, the spotter makes an error, the plotting-room makes an error, the sight-setter makes an error, and the gun-pointer makes an error. The sum total of all of these errors results in 90 per cent of misses.

Suppose that by careful training these errors are reduced in the relation of 9 to 8, so that instead of there being 90 per cent of misses there are only 80 per cent. This does not seem a very difficult thing for training to accomplish, but note the result: the hits are increased from 10 per cent to 20 per cent. In other words, by a decrease in errors in the relation of 9 to 8, the effective skill and the hits are doubled.

Conversely, if the errors increased in the ratio of 9 to 10, the misses would increase from 90 per cent to 100 per cent, and the hits would be reduced from 10 per cent to 0.

Suppose now that the conditions are so very difficult that only 1 per cent of hits is made, or 99 per cent of misses, and that by training the misses are reduced from 99 per cent to 98 per cent. Clearly, by a decrease of errors of hardly more than 1 per cent the effective skill and the hits are doubled.

Conversely, if the errors increased in the ratio of 99 to 100, the misses would increase from 99 per cent to 100 per cent, and the hits would be reduced from 1 per cent to 0.