NORFOLK, Va. — To address the issue of mental health, the Navy has started installing free Wi-Fi on all Navy ships.
“When I joined, we were still sending letters to each other; there’d be a month wait,” said U.S. Navy Captain Chris Hill of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.
And a month without hearing from home can be brutal for sailors on long deployments, according to Capt. Hill.
"How to survive a 9 month deployment, you can’t do it on your own, “ said Capt. Hill.
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Following a string of suicides aboard ships, News 3 is following up on the Navy’s plan to install free Wi-Fi on all 280 naval ships to address mental health problems among sailors.
“We’re not machines, we need our break time, our downtime to recalibrate into the next working day so we can keep on continuing the fight,” said Navy Sailor Ikaika Yockman.
For the first time, the Ike had Wi-Fi on its most recent deployment earlier this year and sailors tell me it made a big difference.
“Once we got the Wi-Fi signal what a huge enhancement for quality of life in ways that we’d never seen before,” said Capt. Hill.
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“Having the ability to not only call home when I wanted to but FaceTime the family was definitely a huge plus in terms of morale,” said Navy Sailor Nicholas Peckett.
Peckett has a wife and school-age children at home. He says until Wi-Fi was installed on the carrier, he communicated through email which was slow and unreliable.
“Problems can be solved faster back at home; there’s more of an instant back and forth with your loved ones to solve issues that may be going on, that problems are going to be handled now instead of waiting for emails to come through,” said Peckett.
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And things civilians take for granted were nearly impossible for sailors until now.
“You pay your bills via apps, so having that app available so you can quickly pay your bills, that helps. Sometimes you are streaming music requires an update every month, which you can't get unless you're in a Wi-Fi network,” said Capt. Hill.
Capt. Hill says there were naysayers that felt Wi-Fi would take away from productivity but he has not seen evidence of that.
“Everyone needs some downtime and what are you going to do with that downtime? And if you're talking to your family what a benefit for your productivity when you go back to work, you're just more of a whole person,” said Capt. Hill.
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This is something retired Navy Officer Mike Ihrig knows well. He served thirty years in the Navy and now owns the Chesapeake company installing Wi-Fi on Navy ships.
“When they're down in crew birthing, or sitting in their rack area, or lounge area they can talk to folks, they can do whatever they wanted to do. They could never do before that,” said Ihrig.
“I was even sending memes to my 12-year-old daughter because that’s how we communicate, right? So it was a big game changer for me as well,” said Capt. Hill.
And what’s good for our Navy sailors is positively good for Hampton Roads, as they are part of the red, white and blue fabric that makes up our community.
