The skilled radio officer: Key resource for at-sea maintainability

Large-scale fitting on ships of modern radiocommunication devices such as satellite, selective calling, and other equipment for communication and radionavigation, requires an assurance of availability for real-time continuous operation under the wide range of physical stresses encountered by maritime mobile units in the hostile ocean environment. Availability is a function of the reliability/maintainability of such apparatus. Since 100-percent reliability cannot be assured at this state of the technological art, the maintainability side of the formula must necessarily provide that the availability will be 100 percent, before the large capital-intensive vessels that constitute present-day merchant marine units, can depend on these modern sophisticated devices for their safety, navigation, and business telecommunications. Maintainability, in turn, results from the application of many resources (spares, test instruments, tools, technical documentation, technician personnel, etc.) for at-sea maintenance, both preventive and corrective. The key resource for the application of all the other is the technician, the skilled radio officer who must possess training and ability for in-depth analysis of malfunctions that arise, and practical maintenance and repair skills that are broad and adaptable enough to service the wide variety of new radio-electronic devices, as they are fitted. The development of such a technician-seafarer type, known as the radio-electronic officer, is discussed both historically and functionally; international actions that have been taken are delineated, and implications considered.