He
assumed duties as the Navy’s 57th chief of naval personnel, Aug. 2, 2013.
Serving concurrently as the deputy chief of naval operations (Manpower,
Personnel, Training and Education) (N1), he is responsible for the planning and
programming of all manpower, personnel, training and education resources for
the U.S. Navy. … His responsibilities
include overseeing Navy Recruiting Command, Navy Personnel Command, and Naval
Education and Training Command. (2)
Here’s some bio information per the official Navy website.
As
a flag officer, he has served as commander, Patrol and Reconnaissance Group;
director, Air Warfare (N98) on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations; and
most recently as the 57th chief of naval personnel.
His operational tours spanned both coasts, commanding Patrol Squadron (VP) 46 and Patrol and Reconnaissance Wing 2. He served as an instructor pilot in two tours with VP-30 and as a staff member for Commander, Carrier Group 6 aboard USS Forrestal (CVA 59).
Ashore, he served as executive assistant to the chief of naval operations; executive assistant to Commander, U.S. Pacific Command; deputy director, Navy staff; and assistant Washington placement officer and assistant flag officer detailer in the Bureau of Naval Personnel.
Moran assumed duties as the Navy’s 39th vice chief of naval operations, May 31, 2016. (1)
His operational tours spanned both coasts, commanding Patrol Squadron (VP) 46 and Patrol and Reconnaissance Wing 2. He served as an instructor pilot in two tours with VP-30 and as a staff member for Commander, Carrier Group 6 aboard USS Forrestal (CVA 59).
Ashore, he served as executive assistant to the chief of naval operations; executive assistant to Commander, U.S. Pacific Command; deputy director, Navy staff; and assistant Washington placement officer and assistant flag officer detailer in the Bureau of Naval Personnel.
Moran assumed duties as the Navy’s 39th vice chief of naval operations, May 31, 2016. (1)
Patrol squadron, staff, personnel, executive assistant, recruiting,
education, placement officer, detailer …
What about this resume screams warrior?
Where’s the strategic and tactical expertise? Where’s the hands on command of ships,
carriers, and combat aircraft?
He sounds like a staff guy with a heavy emphasis in
personnel organizations.
Now, I don’t, for a moment believe that the only way a coach
can be good is if he was a former player – but it’s gotta help! – and I don’t
believe that a good CNO must have been a fighter pilot or ship commander – but
it’s gotta help! The thing is, out of
the entire Navy, is this the best we could come up with? What about him jumps out to make someone say
this is the guy to be CNO of a warfighting organization? This is the guy to lead a combat
organization? I’m not seeing it.
We couldn’t find a warrior?
The perfect CNO for an organization that is 60% procurement, 30% administration, 4% diversity
ReplyDeleteand 6% Navy.
That 6% will be the officers after week 3 of the China War.
At least the Victorian RN spent lots of money on paint & polish, the USN doesn't even look good.
Sadly, you're right. The last two CNOs were pathetic and this one looks to be right in line or, perhaps, he'll lower the bar even further!
Delete"We couldn't find a warrior?"
ReplyDeleteWhere would we go to look for one? We have managers, not leaders or warriors, running things. How else do you explain the decisions that have been made?
We have warriors. They're just not promoted to flag rank. If we look at our lower levels, we have lots of fighters. When a war starts, those people will rise to the top, as occurred in WWII. The shame is that we can't identify and promote those people during peacetime because they're the ones who would apply that warrior attitude to procurement, training, and readiness.
DeleteSorry, I probably should have been more specific. We have warriors, just not in positions at the top. We need to change the directive to selection boards to put warriors at the top, instead of politically correct paper-shufflers. Unfortunately, it will take several cycles for that to have a material impact. Maybe a few more collisions will cause a rethink of whom we are putting in command and whom we are promoting.
Delete"When a war starts, those people will rise to the top, as occurred in WWII"
DeleteI don't believe you. We've had a war for the last 18 years, and Navy leadership has been head-up-anus pretty much the entire time.
War will not solve the Navys' problems; it will rip the scabs open, shatter the fractured bones, and bring death to a dying organization.
Odds are good that the "reorganizing" you speak of will occur shortly after our ink on the surrender document dries. Hopefully our enemies will be benevolent enough to allow us to have a Navy afterwards.
"I don't believe you. We've had a war for the last 18 years, and Navy leadership has been head-up-anus pretty much the entire time."
DeleteWell, thanks for the vote of confidence! To be fair, while the various ground force components have been involved in conflicts for the last decade or two, the Navy has not. The Navy has not lost a single ship or sailor to sea combat. That's what will force a change and produce an appearance by warriors - lost ships and dead sailors - in other words, a real war.
Battle royale for promotions? No rules combat simulations with the victors getting advanced in rank and the losers demoted or forced into retirement.
ReplyDeleteSimulations could be both real world and virtual. Multiple simulations could be run with a composite score of the simulations determining the victors.
(I realize the Navy would likely cock up the definition of victor)
Well, Ike was once called the "one of the finest staff officers in the army" at the beginning of WWII.
ReplyDeleteI know, just kidding!
Beat me to it.
DeleteThe actual quote is from MacArthur. "He was the best clerk I had." Ike's admin abilities and his capacity to juggle strong and competent personalities made him perfect for coalition warfare.
Delete"What about him jumps out to make someone say this is the guy to be CNO of a warfighting organization?"
ReplyDeleteComNavOps, agree that it would be nice if a warrior were the titular head of this warfighting organization, but...
...in the wake of Goldwater Nichols, which gelded the Service Chiefs (especially the CNO, because of the Navy's interpretation of the act), the warfighting organizations are literally the CCDRS. That is where the warfighters absolutely MUST be. Is it any wonder that the CNO has devolved into a bureaucratic role? CNO has no operational control over forces, and had their supportive role to SECNAV AND the CCDRS explicitly emphasized (responsible in their Title 10 role to organize, train and equip the Navy for USE BY THE CCDRS!). The "equip" piece was further restricted by the Navy's interpretation of the law. Acquisition is specified as the "sole" responsibility of the office of the Secretary of the Navy. Navy interpreted that to mean CNO could be excluded from the process entirely, and a wall was built between Navy staff and Secretariat. The CNO and their staff don't understand acquisition, and are "shocked, shocked I say" when it goes wrong. And they are responsible for very little in an operational warfighting sense when one gets down to it. Could it be that the job would make an honest to goodness Warfighter mental, which is why we get what we get?
There is much truth in what you say, however, you miss a vital piece of the picture. The CNO has control over - and a huge amount of influence on - the vast majority of policy, training, maintenance, allocation of resources, budget allocation, force structure, manpower utilization, billet filling … in short, all the things that make a warfighting organization effective - or not. A good CNO, a warrior CNO, would drop or greatly de-emphasize LOTS of gender issues, sensitivity training, diversity, green power, and any other non-combat activity. I understand that you can't 100% eliminate them but a warrior CNO would hugely reduce them. A warrior CNO would use the freed up time to work on training, tactics development, maintenance, and readiness.
DeleteAlso, the Combatant Commanders MAKE REQUESTS for forces, they don't order them. The CNO supports and fulfills those requests as best he can, however, there is nothing that prevents him from saying, I can't fulfill your request because my ships are in training or maintenance and are not currently certified to deploy. The recent Burkes that collided, for example, could and should have been classified non-deployable as their various certifications had lapsed. Combatant Commanders cannot override those decisions.
There is MUCH that a warrior CNO could accomplish.
Do you not consider the Maritime Patrol aircraft community to be warriors? The P-3 and P-8 are definitely armed aircraft that are expected to fire upon the enemy in the event of war, and are exposed to considerable risks in doing this, even if the airframes aren't that "sexy".
ReplyDeleteFor the purpose of this discussion, no, I don't consider them warriors. During peacetime, patrol planes suffer from endless patrols that produce little or nothing, a complete disconnect from surface and aerial combat operations and tactics, no Tomahawk (our main offensive weapon) operations planning or execution, no air defense (AAW) operations or tactics, and so on.
DeleteThe P-3/8 isn't the pointy end of the spear. It's half way down the shaft.
The point is that, during peacetime, P-3/8 personnel haven't had much contact with combat tactics and execution that surface navy, carrier, Hornets/Growlers, and subs have had. In fact, one could make a pretty fair argument that the personality qualities that make for a good P-3/8 pilot (patience, persistence, slow to react, level-headed, etc.) are almost (not quite and not totally) the opposite of those that make for good combat warriors (daring, calculated, emotional to a degree, feisty, impatient to a degree, angry to a degree).
Now, come actual war, depending on what we ask the P-3/8 community to do, we may see aggressive, daring pilots and crew develop but those are not the traits that make good peacetime patrol pilots and crews.
For the CNO job, I want someone who has seen combat (like Tomahawk launches) to the degree possible during peacetime, has exercised AAW defense, has flown strikes (the Hornet/Growler community), has commanded a Burke/Tico that has bumped noses with the Chinese, has planned strikes, has tailed Russian and Chinese subs (and, maybe, penetrated their territorial waters?), and so on. Sorry, but that's not the P-3/8 community.
Article today on BD says FORD has continued problems with the elevators. Maybe time for somebody to be fired or a comment from new CNO?
ReplyDeleteBecause we have had so many problems with new construction, I'm going to throw something out here. Back in the days that I operated with the Royal Navy, it was my understanding that they have a somewhat different line officer structure. They have deck/warfare officers who fight the ship, and engineering officers who run the ship. The XO, or 1st Lieutenant, is a deck/warfare officer who is basically co-equal with the Chief Engineer. Only deck/warfare types can attain command at sea. The career path for engineer types leads to command of shore bases and repair facilities and to design and development commands. It seems to me that a guy who comes from a perspective of making things work is going to have a better background for evaluating shiny new gizmos than a guy who just gets excited about what they might be able to do if they actually did work.
DeleteSuch a change would obviously be very disruptive to our current officer career patterns. I'm not at all certain that's a bad thing, but obviously it would have to be phased in carefully. I have sort of a sketchy memory that it was tried on a few ships, maybe a squadron, but I'm not sure what the results were or whether it got an objective evaluation.
Ike.
ReplyDeleteQuery (because I don't know)--Can a P-3/8 pilot get command of a carrier? The reason I ask is because I think command at sea should be a mandatory prerequisite for CNO. I would say for flag, but that might be too restrictive.
ReplyDeleteTheoretically possible, but he would have had to have had a stint in a carrier squadron at some point. IIRC only naval aviators who've flown off carrier decks can become carrier captains.
DeleteThat's what I thought. So we are getting a CNO who has never had command at sea, and who quite likely was never eligible for command at sea. Wonderful. Have we ever had another CNO who never had command at sea?
Delete"IIRC only naval aviators who've flown off carrier decks can become carrier captains."
Delete10 U.S. Code § 5942 - Aviation commands: eligibility
(a)
(1)To be eligible to command an aircraft carrier or an aircraft tender, an officer must be an officer in the line of the Navy who is designated as a naval aviator or naval flight officer and who is otherwise qualified.
It’s not just the lack of field command.
ReplyDeleteEisenhower wasn’t a hellbent for leather warrior but led well and understood his responsibility.
This guy is currently in charge of personnel and training according to that first official statement. How is he being given higher command when our sailors are not being trained well and retention and recruiting are sub-par?
Did he come on after the last two collisions and get us on track or was he in charge and let the buck stop several ranks lower? I’m genuinely asking.
Found an interesting blurb in a recent article about preparing for"grey area" conflict and peer conflict...
ReplyDeleteSays our current CNO:
“It puts a lot of responsibility on the fleet commanders who are writing orders for those forces to go out and do missions. It puts a lot of responsibility on the type commanders who are generating a lot of that readiness,” he said.
“So the dialogue between those two – type commanders kind of owning the readiness generation part to a degree, and then there’s an advocate for force-generation, readiness generation; and then there’s an advocate for employment – keeping those two in balance, that’s kind of the four-star business these days.”
So, what I drew vfrom this is that we
1) Have a CNO who spends his time coming up with generic and worthless statements full of vague yet meaningfull-sounding big words, and
2) The responsibility for having ships that can competently go to sea and fight resides at a handful of different Admirals desks...
So, whatever happened to COs ensuring that their ships are ready, their maintenance is done, and their crews are trained?? I understand oversight by squadron/fleet command, but it seems that there are too many cooks in the kitchen, ie too many flags and their staffs generating paperwork and "liasing" with the other staffs... It seems like big government has spread to the Navy. I remember being young, and my father saying that government never did anything well, with the military being the only reasonable exception. He wouldnt be happy with his Navy today. I know Im not.
We couldn’t find a warrior?
ReplyDeleteI fear we might have found a "warrior", but the wrong kind of warrior: a Social Justice Warrior. I hope not, but we'll see.
So Moran is out and Gilday is in. He actually looks like he might be a little bit of a warrior. At least he has had command at sea. They reached down to deep-select him, so somebody clearly has something in mind.
ReplyDeleteWe'll see. The problem is that he's part of the problem. He had to have witnessed all the problems the Navy has and did little or nothing about them. If he had, he'd likely no longer be in the Navy! Since he is, that probably means he's a team play, a get-along, go-along guy. As I said, we'll see but I'm not optimistic.
Delete