Phib has a great post up musing on many things. Its all worth reading, but in particular if you care about the US Navy and its continuing slide into mediocrity and a fleet that will be “diverse”-but way too small, then you need to send this to your Congressman and also send it to a few useless 4 stars.
Navy:
—- We will have to run aground: The silence and vacuity of our present leadership makes me sigh and look around for gear adrift. SECNAV Winter made some noises for awhile and still does. Now and then you get one solid shot or comment by a 3 or 4-star; but then silence. We are soaking in a toxic stew of “Optimal Manning,” “Transformation,” and a wholesale abandonment of decades of Navy Best Practices that has left us with the Shipbuilding crisis we have now. The Air and Sub side are not as bad, but share some of the challenges – but to be honest, there are always challenges and I think their’s are withing the expected norm. We are top-heavy and suffer staff-bloat wallow. There are Officers who had the right attitude, but they all who I personally know topped out at 2-Stars – some at 3-Stars. The rest are some great officers, but who is out there taking the lead? Who is the Fleet Advocate? There is a fair bit of CYA and cautious musings – but no leadership. Where are the balls? Why be a 4-Star if you are going to go meekly into Retirement and Consultantism? Who is willing to talk openly about the failure of the status quo and take action? Who will refocus? Please send links – I find so few. You know those times were everyone knows a ship is sick – its CO/XO/CMDCM are so dysfunctional that everyone knows something bad is going to happen? No one ever does anything until the CO is found in the rack with a YN3 (either sex will do), or the ship runs aground or collides with another ship in broad daylight – then there is action. Well, that is the direction we are heading. Ships will have to sink and/or hundreds of Sailors will have to die at sea in a few hours for there to be a cleaning. Maybe we will just drift to 212 instead of 313 and embrace our graceless decline – perhaps.
—- This is the high-water mark: There will be no more money for shipbuilding than we have right now. Fact. Fevered plans for DDGN or huge nuclear Battle Cruisers with hundreds of SM-3 in VLS are just that, fevered. That will get you to 200 ships faster than you can say “Sea-Swap.” We are in a Land/Expeditionary period in our history and we need to build the ships to do that. LCS ain’t it. DDGN ain’t it. All SSN all of the time probably isn’t it. Besides the bastard step-child NECC – I don’t see any shift in focus of any measure since 2001 to reflect the new reality. We have an Army and USMC to build up and re-constitute. Less DDG-1000 and more MPF(F) – that is an interesting argument to make.
Spot on. I would add-that when people are promoted to flag officer based solely on their gender, or the guy heading up aviation detailing is placed there solely because of his skin color, without regard to whether he can do the job ( the current incumbent of the PERS-43 chair cannot)-then the service is quite far gone indeed.
We may have been male chauvinist, hard drinkers in the day-but at least we knew how to make a flight schedule.