This agency has caused more damage to equipment in the engineering plants of ships than any other U.S. Navy effort. Because of its unchecked authority to pass or fail a ship, it has created a world where automation is totally misunderstood. Instead, PEB routinely goes on board ships and asks for drills that have no engineering value - for example, loss of throttle control, fire in the consoles, timing sequences for the lube and fuel oil automatic sequences, or even worse, simulating a wavering meter on a console and asking the operator to respond. Automation can shut down an LM2500 in less than one microsecond. The human in front of the console should never have been put there to prevent damage, because he never has had even a chance to beat the control systems.
Automation takes care of things.
The only problem is that PEB does not really understand this. So, the sailor again comes into play doing routines that have little engineering value, because PEB has dictated them. It is because automation has worked. In a sense, we already have smart ships, but we do not have an engineering management system able to comprehend what the control systems do on these ships. Now the surface Navy leadership is trying to convince us that things need to be improved, but instead of buying simpler and more manageable control systems, the Navy has bought the smart ship - which is not really all that smart.