How Did We Get Here?

After one of my posts, critical of the Navy’s performance and leadership, a reader asked me if I really believed that the Navy was that incompetent.  The question was asked in a mocking way, implying that the Navy couldn’t possibly be as incompetent as I portrayed it (despite the fact that I factually document and reference all my main points) and that, therefore, I was an idiot who had no idea what was going on with the Navy.  Well, the previous post regarding the Navy’s own investigative report showed just how systemically incompetent the Navy has become.  The question, now, is how did this reprehensible state of affairs come to be and why is it not only continuing but steadily worsening?  I’ll now answer that question.

There are two main reasons.

1. Priorities
2. Peace

Priorities – The Navy exists to fight wars.  You can dress that answer up with all kinds of qualifiers and descriptors like maintaining the flow of international shipping, fostering international maritime relations, etc. but when you boil it down, the Navy exists to fight wars.  That is its ultimate, end function.  Everything the Navy does, buys, or decides, should run through that filter.  Does whatever it is support or enhance the Navy’s ability to fight wars?  If not, we shouldn’t do it.  It really is that simple.

With that in mind, ask yourself what the Navy’s current priorities are.  They’re gender norming, transgender equality, gender integration, unisex uniforms, sexual assault, tattoos, green energy, diversity quotas, removing “man” from job titles, sensitivity training, etc.  Look at the number of departments, people, paperwork, and training sessions that are devoted to these priorities.

The Navy has completely lost its focus on warfighting and that leads us to the next reason.

Peace.  The worst condition for any military force is peace.  Peace is when you no longer are forced to run everything through the unforgiving and uncaring crucible of survival of the fittest.  In peacetime, the crude, rough, vulgar, impolite, warriors – the killers who excel in combat – are systematically weeded out.  The very people who should be the backbone of a warfighting organization become the new enemy.  They’re uncouth and an embarrassment and the peacetime hierarchy ruthlessly terminates their service.

In peacetime, new weapon systems are no longer subjected the impartial test of combat.  Instead, systems get adopted not because they are efficient killing systems but because they are efficient jobs programs, or they enjoy support from some influential Congressman, or they’re a pet project of some highly ranked admiral.

In peacetime, all the hard learned and blood-earned lessons and procedures are abandoned or ignored because there is no penalty for failing to follow them.  No one is going to shoot at you if you didn’t have time to service your weapon.

Peace is the enemy of the Navy.  Peace is the driving force for incompetence.

There you have it.  The Navy has arrived at this sorry state of affairs due to misplaced priorities and the extended peace that the Navy has lived with.

The Navy needs to find those few individuals, like ComNavOps, who have not forgotten why the Navy exists and have the courage to insist that the Navy behave like a warfighting machine and then promote them and follow them.  Will that happen?  No, of course not.  It will take another war to wake the Navy from its long peaceful slumber.  Unfortunately, a lot of sailors will pay for that slumber with their lives.

Fighting Ethos

ComNavOps has repeatedly stated that the Navy has become a purely defensive force rather than offensive, has become risk averse, promotes the wrong type of commanders, and has abandoned any semblance of tactical or realistic training.  Well, here’s the Navy finally beginning to recognize those facts.  The following is part of a written summary of the Distributed Lethality workshops and is authored by  Captain Joe Cahill, USN, Director, DL Task Force Commander, Naval Surface Forces (1).

“Finally, to realize a more offensive culture within the surface forces, the warfighter ethos must shift to a more proactive and ferocious fighting spirit. Offensive tactics and the requisite training need to be hand-and-glove in order to leverage lethality. Engraining within the surface forces such a fighting ethos with the training to back it up must be a top priority for the commander.”

There you have it.  Now, even the Navy is admitting that they no longer are a fighting force.  They’ve become a peacetime business organization that exists to build ships and promote careers.

Consider the type of command element the Navy is selecting for.  The main focus of command selection is on finding people who will not make waves, who get along – go along, who won’t appear in any headlines, who won’t reflect negatively on the Navy, who have a fine appreciation for gender equality and diversity (again, to avoid headlines), who have made no mistakes in previous assignments, and who won’t respond aggressively to provocations at sea.

Note that we’re selecting for negative qualities – things that the candidate won’t do, rather than things that they will do.

Despite this, we still wind up firing 20-30 commanders each year.

Look what we’ve created.  Our commanders cower on the bridge hoping against hope that no one will make a mistake during their command tour and micro-managing everything to try to reduce the chances of a mistake.  We fire commanders for some pretty innocuous things.  We’ve created a zero-tolerance for headlines.  If one sailor complains about something, real or imagined, it can destroy a commander’s career.

I have nothing against firing commanders if it happens for the right reasons.  By all means, fire commanders for tactical incompetence or lack of warrior spirit.  Unfortunately, none of the 20-30 commanders fired each year has been fired for those reasons.

We have ruthlessly eliminated the warrior spirit.  We have weeded out any commander with a contentious, aggressive, abrasive, fighting personality.

The Navy is no longer a fighting force.  It’s a gender sensitive, diversity focused, environmentally responsible, social experiment of a business organization.

Somewhere, Bull Halsey is weeping for his Navy right now, as am I.

(1)USNI, “Essay: Taking Distributed Lethality to the Next Level”, Scott C. Truver, December 10, 2015

http://news.usni.org/2015/12/10/essay-taking-distributed-lethality-to-the-next-level

Peacetime Commanders - Prepared for War?

Once in a while I come across a book that warrants some additional attention.  Such a book is Destroyer Captain, Lessons of a First Command by Adm. James Stavridis.  Stavridis is currently Supreme Allied Commander, Europe and Commander, United States European Command.  The book is a summary of a journal he kept when he commanded the Burke class destroyer USS Barry during 1993-1995 and is intended to convey the author’s thoughts on the human aspects of command and leadership.



Ready for War?



This is not going to be a book review but, rather, an examination of one aspect of the Navy as it is revealed through the book and that aspect is the stark difference between peacetime leaders and wartime leaders.  The author reveals far more than he intended and I strongly suspect he has no idea that he has done so.  What the book reveals is a crystal clear description of the development and selection of a peacetime naval leader. 



A recurring theme is the author's complaints about long periods of time spent awake and on the bridge during what he considers high risk operations.  However, the operations aren't particularly risky (my opinion from a perspective of never having done them!) and consist of things like plane guard, UNREP, escort, formation sailing, etc.  What this is telling me is that he's a Captain who has either not trained his crew sufficiently well, does not trust them, or is overwhelmed by the Navy’s zero-defects mentality.

Repeated mention is made of weapon systems and sensors that fail at the start of exercise periods and how the crew has to scramble to get them working in time to complete the exercise.  Shouldn't a warship be verifying the operability of those things on a daily, if not hourly basis?  Sadly, the peacetime Captain has other, higher priority activities.

The lack of tactical training is also noteworthy.  Basically, the author is exposed to tactics during his pre-command workup and then participates in rare exercises thereafter.  This is confirmation that peacetime Captains just don't have the time to become tactical experts.

He describes some of the weapons training exercises and I'm struck by the extremely simplistic, set-piece nature of them.  For instance, he describes the CIWS training which consists of a Lear Jet with a tow target banner flying in straight lines back and forth alongside the ship while the CIWS shoots at the banner.  How's that for realism?  All that does is verify that the CIWS is mechanically functional.

In short, the book describes a perfect peacetime Captain functioning in a peacetime Navy and demonstrates that the Navy is not serious about being prepared for war.  The author didn't intend to convey this point but he very clearly does.  In fact, he confirms this himself without realizing it, with the following statement,

"To some degree we have become a navy that specializes in safety, communicating, inspecting, engineering, administering, retaining, and counseling.  There is too little emphasis on shiphandling, warfighting, battle repairing, and leading. ... we all need to know that the essence of why navies exist is to fight and win at sea.

As an example of how we are a bit out of whack is that if I charted my personal time, I suspect I spend virtually my entire day working the first list and precious little devoted to the latter."

He recognizes the problem but, firmly committed to the path of advancement, does nothing to change it.  I’m not criticizing this individual.  He’s merely a symptom and an example of the overall problem.

Presumably, all of the Navy’s leadership has followed this same model which suggests that the current crop of leaders are totally unprepared for war.  This is hardly a surprise.  Remember that many Captains and Admirals had to be replaced early in WWII until the peacetime leaders were weeded out and fighting men were found.  The disappointing aspect of this is that, given the graphic lesson of WWII, the Navy has forgotten the lesson already.  Navy leadership should be selected on the basis of combat skills not energy efficiency, diversity, retention goals met, public relations skill, paperwork filed, and boxes checked.  The zero-defect philosophy, both personally and professionally, is neutering the Navy’s fighting spirit.  A better set of promotion criteria would be to have a major ship handling accident on one’s record and at least one altercation with a superior thereby at least demonstrating an aggressive attitude!