I have a theory about organizations and signs of their decay. It is not based on anything scientific-just having led and been lead by people for approximately 32 years. My theory has been reinforced by my current experience working for a customer that is an organization that is : 1) top heavy and 2) totally corrupted by the personality of the psycopath who leads it.
I think a similar observation can be made about the current state of the United States Navy. Not that I am calling the CNO a psycopath, because he’s not; however he has clearly felt the need to pander to too many constituencies ( e.g. witness “diversity as job one”). And a good reason for that is that current US Navy is top heavy with too many flag officers.
How do I know this? Well I was looking at my recent edition of the United States Naval Institute Proceedings. It is the May edition, their annual Naval Review edition. This months magazine has some pretty interesting articles and it also has, as is their custom, the list of all serving and selected flag officers. All 425 of them.
Yes, you read that right. 425 flag officers for a Navy that constitutes 270+ ships. An average of 1.4 flag officers per ship.
That’s too many-and what is creates is a what they would call in my Six Sigma course, non value added effort. Due to something that they don’t label in the course, but should, “attendant baggage”. Flag officers require staffs for care and feeding-and they have to “vette”, “socialize”, properly staff, and respond to other-properly staffed taskers. Its a self defeating death spiral.
Plus it gets even more ridiculous when you look at some of the titles these erstwhile leaders of men and women hold: five of them for example are “Special Assistants” to some other flag. Another whole host of them are deputy chiefs of staff for something-or worse yet Deputy Commanders to two stars. There are reserve flags who are ostensibly Deputy Commanders for numbered fleets-yet ( and in this area I have personal experience) they bring little value added, and in wartime there is no way in hell they would be put in charge of anything active. Hell-most of the time their civilian jobs have no bearing on what their navy responsibilities are.
There are probably seven or so who are commanders of schoolhouses-positions that in the time of a much larger fleet, were held by up and coming O-6’s.
And then there is the staff creep.In the preceding section are listed commissionings and decommissionings. The majority of the commissionings were not for ships or squadrons-they were for flag staffs. Who in their right mind thinks that makes sense? 10th fleet? And a Cyber command? 4th fleet? How many ships do they own anyway? And then one looks at the number of Navy regions-all with a two star commander and one has to ask the question again. Why? What value added do they bring to running what is supposed to be an adjunct to fleet operations? Each of those comes with its own civilian mafia which hires only through cronyism it would appear. ( Sorry personal grievance there-but they clearly are not hiring on the basis of competence or experience).
As I sat eating my dinner-before going back to writing words to justify the selling of other people to work for these self same flags- I made a mental list of probably 100 billets that could be downgraded to an O-6. Or simply eliminated. I’ll not bore you with the entire list unless you want to hear it-but I’ll provide you one example: Rear Admiral Christopher Paul, Deputy Commander Naval Expeditionary Command. Why is this a one star billet exactly? Or why is Charles K Carodine the Deputy of the Naval Warfare Development Command? And what exactly is JTF-300? Why does Martha Herb serve as “Chief Secretariat, Military Agreement Joint Coordinating Body ISAF” ? Yes I know NATO has strange titles-doesn’t mean a flag has to fill them. ( Right now somebody somewhere is saying, ” But his counterpart is a flag from country “X”-did not used to be that way).
The list goes on, sadly. And lest anyone think I am too far off the mark-start asking around of people you know-who know about the Navy. I’ll bet you can get some agreement out of them.
When the Navy was a lot larger-a lot of these billets did not exist, and we were an organization that was 200,000 people bigger and 300 ships bigger. Yet we still got ships deployed. Why does it take so many flag officers to do so now?
It doesn’t-and you know it. More importantly they know it. They also know that unless they are issued a preferred customer card early-or start piling up sacrificial bodies like cord wood ( Yes Admiral Harvey that remark is directly targeted at you) they know they are finished at one star or two star. That’s not exactly a reformist proposition for people who have spent 30+ years on an ambitious track.
The Navy is out of balance and this problem begets other problems.
You current and former Navy folks know I am right. I think there are specific cuts that could be made in staff officers and staffs that would free up the actual personnel for more productive pursuits. I would be happy to detail ( in glossy powerpoint) for any decision maker that would listen. But this needs to change.
They were probably created because it was getting to be too much of a crapshoot filling these jobs with O-6s. You would think that an O-6 would be a reliable quantity, but I think you know better (ex. your psychopath boss)
And are the one stars any better? I’ve got more than a few who prove that theory wrong.
Value added? Why what about the smart business practices the current crop of 3/4 stars brought as 1/2 stars that have seen acquisition savings, improved readiness rates and efficient global opaque with whole new classes of ships and aircraft?
Oh, wait…
*operations* not opaque …crappy phone…
It happens in civilian government too. Can’t get rid of the boss? Create a position above him.
Skippy,
The question that needs to be asked is why are we getting all these GOFO’s. I had a family friend point it out that this growth only seem to start after the Goldwater-Nichols Act. Because of that and some other silly measuring of ones love organ, we see a growth of GOFO’s because we can’t have a USAF O-7 running a USN O-6, so we push to have our Joint billet like that be a O-7 ourselves, which only seems to make a war tween the services with GOFO’s.
Hmmm…but the Navy.mil website only has 329 biographies. And that includes the USNR in with the USN.
And this website (http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/MILITARY/rg1103.pdf) has 256 (which I presume to be the AcDu folks since that’s the page title).
So, while I don’t disagree with most of your concept, it’s fairly easy to quibble with the details if you are mixing the active and reserve together, and are also somehow off by over 100 people.
The USNI magazine lists 385 lineal numbers and you get to 425 by adding in selectees ( and Staff Corps flags).
Since the reserves are mixed together in the respective staffs-its no harm IMHO to add them into the total here. They hold positions-many of which should more properly be held by active duty CAPT’S or not exist at all.
I was witness to many of the creation of these billets in my final years on active duty-in particular I watched a great O-6 command stolen and subsumed by worthless P-3 guys who didn’t and still don’t deserve having a flag in Japan. The lies Harry Harris and Tony Winns told to get that accomplished deserve an ariticle of their own. But hey Harris is a Fleet Commander now-how a P-3 guy gets to be a fleet commander is an indictment of the Navy in and of itself.
I shall be reading it when I get to my desk…but adding in the selectees needlessly inflates the numbers since they won’t be promoted until someone retires. A one for one swap.
So, tomorrow I shall compare two official sources to yours to see who is missing what.
Oh and by the way they are cutting the blue shirt leaders and CPO messes, http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=59966. So I would laugh hard to see what happens when there is some 1-star getting yelled at and seeing that they are the bottom of the food chain as to why some report wasn’t delievered to the 4-stars’ desk the day before. That or see some 1-star standing the CDO inport because we will eventually realize that a department head tour onboard a big deck is the only way to learn leadership. So we will have a slew of 1-stars doing thier DH tours on Carriers or L-class Aviation ships all the while there will be some 3 star as the commanding officer, because we can’t trust leadership anymore to O-6’s.
Am I jaded as seeing how our leadership is screwing us over? You betcha! If as the rumor control has it, we will be seeing the broadsword of cuts are coming to the defense budget then we are going to be paying hard for retaining O-7 and aboves while guting other leaders at some more important levels.
One thing I never figured out, and I was no where near the ranks of the “Beautiful People” that you all are talking about, was how the promotion system work. I was a SWO, and reached terminal paygrade due to the fact I was never selected for XO, thus not being able to get advanced at the next promotion board.
I understand billet structures, and it seems to me that they didn’t promote more O5’s than they had valid billets for (at least in SWO world), but yet I knew S-3 NFO’s in the same year group as me who were able to make O5. Never mind that they were decomming S-3 squadrons at the time.
I would present to the board, look at some of the backgrounds of some of the flags. Did they really do the “hard jobs” that should have pushed them to the Flag rank. It may seem like I sound bitter, but I’m not, just find it interesting on how they system works.
I was with you for the first few paragraphs, then MEGO with an innate failure to understand armed forces talk.
However in regards to psychopathic leaders, please evaluate the head of Thompson-Reuters and let me know what you think.
An excellent overview of the “baldy controversy” is to be found in reference #5.
Mike,
I am well aware of statutory limits-but you are missing the point. Even with your numbers there are too many flags and too many staffs ( and your numbers are low, the fact that we have to argue over that is a damning fact right there).
The examples are there-if you will put aside your misplaced loyalty to men who won’t give in return. Why do we have lead follow TYCOMS anyway? Why not have just one-and the equivelant of COMFAIR on the opposite coast. 1/3 the manpower required-and a lot of the day to day work can be contracted out. Why do we have CNIC? Give the shore stations back to the TYCOMS. Why stand down 2nd fleet? While standing up Fourth Fleet? Stand them both down.
It is frustrating enough to me to watch USN jump up and down to become lead service for Aegis Ashore, and then see they don’t have the gumption to man it properly or give the Sailors involved a good deal. The only thing they are thinking is about the money-not about the Sailors. That kind of thinking is replicated over and over again.
Maurice,
When the S-3 sundowned they had a transition program for folks who were still competitive. Most folks went to other squadrons-that was a direct result of what happened when they stood down A-6’s and threw a lot of really good guys under the bus. An S-3 LCDR still would have had to successfully complete a DH tour to make O-5 though, and I am betting their percentages dropped in comparison to the Hornet bubbas ( who manipulate the numbers anyway by only having 3 LCDR’s per squadron sometimes).
Skippy, you are probably correct. But where I get steamed sometime is at the numbers game and how it was played. I remember going to a briefing by the Detailers once, and he informed us that everyday, he (O4 SWO Detailer) came to work everyday with 300 billets more than he had available O4’s. And that the O5 Detailer had the same problem (with fewer than the O4), and the O6 Detailer the same (SWO’s). Yet, they couldn’t promote anyone based on the critera that was set (i.e. to be assured a spot at O5, a SWO needed to have an XO ride, and at O6, at least a CO ride).
It seems that the Navy was so intent on getting top heavy, that they cut off the pipeline to keep up with the demand (at least from the SWO perspective).
Well the real issue is end strength. The Navy has plenty of billets to fill-it just won’t promote enough people to fill them. There have been any number of top to bottom “billet scrubs” to reduce billets-and then some one comes along with a bright idea to create more demand. ( e.g CTF IAMD).
Skip,
“…you are missing the point.”
– No, frankly, I am not. What I am telling you is that your argument is flawed because your facts are in error. That is the only thing I have brought up. I have not, yet, made a value judgment on the number of Flags Navy has.
“Even with your numbers there are too many flags and too many staffs ( and your numbers are low, the fact that we have to argue over that is a damning fact right there).”
– I counted pictures. 337. Still 100 below what you say Navy has.
“The examples are there-if you will put aside your misplaced loyalty to men who won’t give in return. ”
– You presume far too much with that statement. Like the facts that you created regarding the number of Flags, or the facts that I provided you that you ignored, you have no facts to be able to establish my “loyalty to men” of any sort. I am loyal to my oath, the Constitution, my Sailors, and my family – and there is no order that lasts more than a microsecond in any of those.
Now…for the rest…which is part of what your argument should be and that I continue to maintain was decreased in it’s efficacy when you gooned up the facts.
“Why do we have lead follow TYCOMS anyway? Why not have just one-and the equivelant of COMFAIR on the opposite coast. 1/3 the manpower required-and a lot of the day to day work can be contracted out. Why do we have CNIC? Give the shore stations back to the TYCOMS. Why stand down 2nd fleet? While standing up Fourth Fleet? Stand them both down.”
You ask good questions, but that’s all you do. You don’t support your assertions or questions with any rationale beyond “we have too many”. Why not ask it this way: Why have 4th Fleet in it’s own bastion instead of colocated with the Combatant Commander the way other Fleets are? That could reduce the admin support footprint, and make for a true Joint structure for the Fleet and Combatant Command it supports.
CNIC – that one I suspect you call out because you don’t know what they do today. Of all the organizations that you could downsize, they are about as lean as I think they can get. And they are needed since the previous process completely gooned up building recapitalization.
“…The only thing they are thinking is about the money-not about the Sailors.” That’s the way it has been for at least two decades, and likely more than that based on what Secretary Rumsfeld said at the MilBlog Convention.
In summation – all I have written is that you haven’t sufficiently made your case and that your facts are in question. If this post reduces down to a “rant”, then that’s fine. But if you want to make a real point, then you need to be a just a bit more tight, right, clear, and supported.
I answered you in the post above. Speifcally about the TYCOMS and CNIC-there is more than one way to look at it. Bottom line is that CNIC has made the process ten times harder than it should be.
Skippy,
As a person who works for CNIC, you are on point with your last post. As Junge pointed out, they are doing some good things in regards to infrastructure upkeep, but they seem to be making it much harder than it seems to be. What is really happening (at least where I am) is that the Region (CNIC) will take over the responsiblity for many of the programs (i.e. holding the money for things such as Housing), and the base CO is pretty much reduced to asking the region “Can I have funds to do my job.” The CO has his department heads still, but for things to get done, those DH’s must go to the region to get funding to do things vice the CO as it used to be.
Maurice,
The loss of CO authority is a big part of it. Thanks to regionalization the CO does not own his own: supply department, AIMD, fire department, and I think he doesn’t even own his ordies anymore. So what does that reduce him to? A manger of his MAA’s, his tower, and his BOQ and galley. That’s wrong and there are too many guys who worked too hard to get there not to have the authority to run their stations.
Skippy,
You summed it up perfectly. Imagine that you would have to go through some GS12 or 13 at the Region to run your own programs, who doesn’t even answer to you. It gets frustrating, and CNIC is holding all the cards.
The USN is going down the path of the other NATO Navy/Jokes. At one time a powerful fighting force, now just a bare shell of itself. Yet, as this article well pointed, more and more Admirals billets exists….only to ensure that upon retirement cozy jobs in Corporate Boards or Defense Contractors are obtained. These “Flag Officers” do not concern themselves with the well-being of the force or the needs of the nation, but have betrayed their honor for a paycheck so that their kids can attend private schools.