Want More Ships? Get Better Arguments
Navy and acquisition-centric discussion ahead.
I tend to go nonlinear in this forum when I hear the periodic (like clockwork!) calls to “bring back the battleships”, or “build diesel subs”, and other such arguments that are full of sound and fury, yet signify nothing.
CDR Salamander has a potentially useful argument buried in “same-old-same-old” arguments that haven’t worked and will not work. If he wishes to achieve the goal to which he ascribes I humbly offer this lowly opinion in the hope it will kick him and some others in the head and force some new thinking.
Phibian’s upset that we aren’t building many ships. He starts with a reporter’s paraphrased quote of Senator Talent:
The dwindling fleet may be “imperiling the country,” said Talent.
In comments the discussion revolves around slagging LCS and the last CNO.
Okay, let’s take this into a little context. Talent is chair of the Seapower Subcommittee. That means he fought to take leadership of the thing that gives the money to build all the ships. The others on the subcommittee?
- Kennedy
- McCain
- Lieberman
- Collins
- Reed
- Chambliss
If you look at the House subcommittee you see more clearly that the guys with a vested interest in building more ships, not coincidentally, take the time to ensure their shipyards get the money love they need.
What Talent says is not new or unique. Talent’s a freshman senator but he’s been saying similar things for a while. So have the other members. As a matter of fact, the group over the last couple of years has been able to plus-up ships in the USN budget (asked for five, got seven) enough that others have gotten wise to the practice and are grousing about it. (On the other hand they groused in 2002, too, but nothing came of it.) SSGN? Only around because Congress went around the Pentagon appropriators and put the money in.
That said, there are only a few things you can do to get more ships out of the budget. Some of them are:
- Increase the topline. Ain’t gonna happen–there’s a war on, and the next dollar will go to the other services’ operational needs first. We’ve gotten used to extra appropriations, too (once is a gift, thrice is an entitlement), so we’re not going to do well even if the topline goes up.
- Increase the Navy slice of the DoD money pie. It’s not three versus one that will be why you lose this argument, by the way–it’s more like fourteen versus one, because the USN, USA, USAF, USMC also contend with a DoD pie slice (everything from DTRA to DFAS, the single-point agencies doing jobs for the services). Every one of those agencies have perfectly good, reasoned, and highly important reasons they want more money, too. Good luck with that one.
- Shifting what we pay for. CNO Clark had to contend with the personnel side of the Clinton-era defense spending holiday, meaning he had to spend more money on people. Medical costs have skyrocketed. (You know how many O-6’s in the Navy are medical/dental?) Pension costs are insanely high, using a model that business abandoned in the 1960’s as too expensive. No changes are likely to happen here–a retiree with lots of free time and lots of contacts and righteous indignation at losing what he thought he was getting can be a powerful force to contend with.
- Buy ships cheaper. To do that you have to build a little smarter, which is harder than it sounds or someone would have done it before; make ships with less capability, which means more vulnerable; and change how you buy them. One program to figure out how to do this was munged together, but you guys hated it–LCS. I like it and may well write that essay on why later–I had to be convinced, too.
- Change other gears in the shipbuilding process box. I’ll spend a few paragraphs talking about this.
Budgeting. DoD builds a budget every two years, but there’s an annual congressional budget cycle, and we’ve got the first five years and the outyears in every plan. As Gordon England put it in his public speeches, since the Soviet Union fell we’re the only ones still working on a five year plan. There’s enormous churn in this process, and it’s painful and broken and near-impossible to fix. Rumsfeld’s been working on trying to do such things–and I’ll talk about Crusader as an example in a moment.
What would it take to change how we budget? That’s one key to getting more ships.
Money. To put it bluntly, we don’t know what we need, we don’t know how much it’ll cost, we don’t know what we spent the money on, and we don’t have mechanisms in place to find and fix problems. Every couple of years Office of Management and Budget or the Government Accounting Office complains, and not much gets done. This is despite twenty thousand people working until 1800-1900 six or more days a week in the Pentagon.
That said, I’ve seen some innovation. Guys in the Engineering Duty Officer community grok process improvement and contracting better than the average pogue, the multiyear ship purchase idea allows long lead time components (like, say, training yard workers) to be more efficiently done, and shifting to a capability-based procurement strategy royally torqued off the operators but seems to have helped the programmers (money people for programs, sort of).
But it does not make sense that a guy can go to mast for taking a government van to McDonald’s at the wrong time, but the guys responsible for the multibillion dollar A-12 debacle get no comeuppance.
Shipyards. Workers are getting older on average. They have no job stability with frequent changes in orders from year to year at these small numbers–a welder leaves to work for Shoney’s and you don’t get him back when you want to build. You know how many people can, for instance, inspect a reactor vessel? It ain’t taught in shop. Hell, shop ain’t taught much these days.
Those yards are unionized, heavily, paralyzing change for good or ill. Management is loaded with folks who worked for the government–Mr. Dur was Vice Admiral Dur, and he’s running the Coke shipyard while someone else is running Pepsi.
Look at commercial shipping. How many merchants are built in the US? How many ships are even flagged American?
Contracting. I visited one shipyard VP who vowed that he would never again work a government contract because it was so painful. Here are some reasons:
- The guy on the Navy side does maybe 30 contracts in his lifetime. There is no effective method (besides the acquisition school they go through, which is good) for them to learn lessons from the hundreds of contracts in force or recently completed. So he’s experienced, good, but not as good as he can be.
- As mentioned earlier, he doesn’t really get whacked for a crap program. This is because responsibility is diffuse (is it because the idea sucked? Funding all messed up? Too much technical risk?), he rotates after a few years (except Naval Reactors), and it’s hard to fix that responsibility in that organizational culture.
- Conversely, getting rewarded for doing it right is equally hard to do. On the other hand I’ve seen it. By the way, every one of the really successful programs I saw (when I was looking) pretty much blew off the milestone requirements process. Coincidence? Maybe not.
- That contracting officer sits across the table from a contracts guy for the company. Guess whose mentor just retired after a successful career and was hired for his skills and Rolodex? Perhaps that’s a bit of a challenge for our hero?
- Technical risk and long lead time means things change. The requirements document goes obsolete or is impossible to test against. What do you do when your twelve year old program is not matching the ORD but lead ship is deploying in a month?
- Money does not easily flow to the smaller shipyard even if the contract is doing well. Even the chief of staff of the Army has completely screwed up pay right now, for an example with a slightly different pot of money. Glitches in the system prevent economization and can kill a small yard.
- Changes come fast and furious and painfully. As a junior E-4 precommissioning the Abraham Lincoln a few decades ago I asked why the ugly bunks were going in–turned out it was cheaper to put ‘em in and rip ‘em out months later than it was to get the change through the system. Oh now THAT’s effficient.
Design. If we build something we’ve done before we aren’t incorporating essential upgrades. If we build something new it might not work and will have mistakes. We go through boom-and-bust cycles in design, and never spend the money to give the designers make-work until the new ship comes along. A submarine example: Virginia. It had the benefit of the Seawolf pain, and the Jimmy Carter mod, before starting. The designers had recent submarine design experience. How long will it take before we need to build a new class of submarines–and who’s going to design them? Will they be starting from near scratch like we did for Seawolf?
This is one reason why LCS ideas from the yards are all leveraging (1) Euro designs and (2) previous ship design. The design benefit is useful, as is good program experience. Why, you ask? Well, Centurion was started about the same time as SC 21. Centurion became Virginia; there are several keels laid and the lead ship is on deployment as I write. SC 21 became DD21 became DD(X)/CG(X) then DD(X) and still only exists on paper. That paper ain’t cheap, by the way.
Capabilities. DDG51 was originally FFG51. Capabilities got added on until the thing was as big as a WWII cruiser. Why? Prisoner’s Dilemma logic. If you don’t have a defense against every possible threat, then you will make all the mommies cry when the sailors all die because the capability you left off is The Most Important Threat Ever. So we put everything on every ship. Why else is DD(X) about as big as a battleship?
We need a reconsideration of that process. No, scratch that, we need a way to organizationally force a different process to occur. One way is to consider modularization–which has tradeoffs; the War College’s concept of many little ships and a mothership, or the European frigates with gun mounts that swap out from ASW modules to gun turrets in literally minutes, require different logistic needs (where are the modules? How many do you build?) and operational needs (how do you change missions on the fly? Will you get caught in trouble because ‘x’ wasn’t on board?)
Capabilities change, too. It is entirely too hard to put a new thing on a ship. Submariners pretty much have it down with SUBMEPP, but they put real money into doing it and a culture they inculcated to make it so.
Killing Programs. ‘Bout near impossible. Especially once started. There’s a powerful consituency interested in getting the object, and not just the guys who stand to earn a paycheck from it. Every decision we make on acquisition has profound implications on a war we don’t know about yet. The classic comparison is Maginot Line versus Guderian’s tanks–but I would caution the French had tanks, too, just ones with fatal flaws and no effective doctrine for them.
Rumsfeld’s cancelling of the Crusader is instructive. Every retired general came out of the woodwork to pressure Congress or public opinion. The companies lobbied hard, too. That’s a lot of effort to kill one weapons system.
A while back I mulled a proposal to have one annual ranking of programs and running a board like we did personnel boards–put things in priority order, once, and stopping when the money ran out. This had the advantage of also prioritizing the next differential dollar automatically. I stopped when I figured out that the problem was not the prioritization but keeping a killed program dead. You’d have to take the first three or so guys who complained and immediately and publicly fire them, recall the first three retirees to active duty to prepare a presentation and then publicly humiliate them, ferret out the first three secret attempts to end-around the system and crush those, and other draconian measures to enforce such a radical change. I don’t know yet of a nicer way to handle the anklebiting, and that’s why I haven’t finished thinking such an approach through. But such a radical approach may need to be necessary. That is high personal cost and high risk; look at how Zumwalt regretted the aftershocks of the changes he did, although those were also necessary.
This depth of analysis is what Phibian and Skippy and the rest miss, what they don’t address in depth. I do not claim expertise. I’m just a dumb operator.
But this I do know. They will never get what they want with the arguments they have. They’re painting over rust and complaining about the bumps.
24 Responses to “Want More Ships? Get Better Arguments”
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October 10th, 2005 at 12:37 pm
Damblit Chap. Kick me in the face and still make me love you.
I actually think we are in violent agreement. I agree with just about all you say. I can’t speak for Skippy, but perhaps my “shoot and scoot” post hit that same sore spot many of us have…..the old arguments will not put ships pierside, but they are arguments that need repeating for those that are hearing them for the first time and they are new arguments – and noticed when those that pay the bills talk about them. The system as it is, is broke. We need accountability, money, and some direct words from on high followed by action.
As for LCS, I would hate it less if we would give it an honest designation and quit trying it to be a master of all. It can’t and won’t. Call it a Corvette, call it a Frigate, call is sweetiepie, but don’t call it an outdated buzzword.
I looked at my post, again, and I don’t see all that much space between our arguments. I’ll still buy you a beer, though I may be tender for awhile.
Now, I’m going to go have a good cry.
October 10th, 2005 at 2:01 pm
Sir,
Very kind words–apologies for the low number sandpaper; I think I’d been spoiling for this kind of post for a while. I also think we’re both pointed in the same direction; I once had a year at work to go watch senators preen and shipyards work and requirements guys build Power Point and NAVSEA guys try to figure out how to get this testing program to work and so forth. I don’t think many people have had the chance to look at it in that kind of holistic way.
I do need to write about LCS but right now this article’s tapped me out. Short answer–Euros have figured out that platform niche enough that we can learn from things they did right and wrong, we have to figure out new ways to build betercheaperfaster and might as well with a smaller goal than a bigger one, and we really do need something small, fast, shallow draft and lethal, preferably with something like a helo pad–and the challenge is employment and the second squadron being built after Clark went away. I needed convincing, and I eventually was…
October 10th, 2005 at 2:39 pm
Chap-
What you essentially are asking is for the bureacracy to stop is momentum toward one objective (efficiency, all things to all wars) change direction and pursue another goal (actual seapower, SLOC interdiction, yeah, traditional navy stuff). Think about it for a sec…..
October 10th, 2005 at 6:08 pm
Actually, what I’m asking for a fasterbettercheaper way of getting capability to the field in the form of seaborne platforms. This requires a different way to design, buy and build craft. What craft to pick is a different but intimately related discussion.
October 10th, 2005 at 6:13 pm
Chap,
Reading this post got me so fired up, that rather than beat the computer screen, I went and ran a mile and half. Thanks for the exercise!
A lot of your points are very valid. It was the part about personnel costs that got me fired up though. I am sick to death of retirees being portrayed as a bunch of freeloaders. I served 27 years to get what is left of my retirement pay and I know I earned it! Retirement pay and medical care are the payments on a contract. A contract that required a lot of real sacrifce and potentially the loss of my life. You cannot have a civilian style system to compensate one for that and that is why Congress should wisley resist Rummy’s machinations to screw future generation retirees out of what is owed them. Personnel costs are able to be bounded though, so our response to Rummy should remain the same. Shut up and pay me!
The blaming of Clinton is overdone in my opinion too. George W. Bush had the ability to rectify that on Jan 20, 2001. History shows however, that his minions in defense were at work to literally rape the Navy in the QDR, then in what can only be considered Providence 9-11 intervened. We had a golden opportunity to get to the chalkboard and make some good arguements for more force structure. Vern Clark blew that opportunity and for that he deserves my scorn and the scorn of every other Sailor who loves the Navy. He sold his soul to the devil ( Rumsfeld).
It would help if the US Navy would remember why we have Navies to begin with. It is to project national power and prestige to the four corners of the globe in defense of the Empire. We do not have just a blue water Navy or a littoral Navy we have to have a Navy that can do both. That to me is the fundemental flaw with FRP, which is really just a means to make Navy decision makers comfortable with reduced ships becuase they no longer feel guilty about screwing over the ships and Sailors left behind. For OIF the Navy had the ability to generate 5 carriers with no loss of readiness. Why did we go and change an IDTC system that worked?
What is really behind this loss of ships and numbers is the war, plain and simple. What is left of our Navy is being bled white, just like it was during the years 1968-1974, under another Republican president who said one thing, but did another. Optempo is high with on average 55-60% of the fleet underway on any given day. Yes we are doing things to save money, but I’ll be h0nest I do not believe the costs are being used for the Navy. They are going to pay for OIF, OEF, and keep the Army afloat. By doing so DOD is masking the real cost of the war.
The war costs money and in the end the topline will have to rise. Please do not tell me the money is not there, it is. If GWB can promise the moon to Louisiana and Texas and still not raise taxes, then the money is there to increase the current shipbuilding programs by 1 ship per year per class. We could also not be decommissioning perfectly good Spruances and FFG’s and Submarines trying to reap “savings”. These ships can serve as the bridge to getting the Navy back on track.
There are hard choices to be made about programs. There are also decisions that could have been made by Navy decision makers 5 years ago that would have left us a lot better off today. Here are some examples:
1) Get the Navy the hell out of JSF! And the V-22! That moneyu could have been used to:
2) Get started on the EA-18G, E-2D, and MMA. All those decisions could have been made 5 years ago and the CNO could have gotten it rolling.
3) Phibian is right about LCS. Call it a Frigate, stop trying to make it so “modular” and get on with it.
4) We should have cut back on the Hornet buy and had Navy/ Marine Corps integration actually work.
5) We should close EVERY Naval Air Station and work only from USAF bases under a joint working concept. Offut, for example is way underutilized. There is so much unused ramp space there and hangar space you could fit 2 carrier air wings in and they would not be noticed. The money saved by not haveing redundant shore activities would be huge.
6) Do away with Vern Clark’s baby, CNI. Put what shore infrastructre remains under the TYCOMS and have a real system of single TYCOMS.
7) Which leads to a final point, want to cut personnel costs? CUT THE NUMBER OF FLAG OFFICERS! They Navy has more flags than ships right now. Does anyone other than me see something wrong with this?
The point is there was a lot that could have been done instead of being concerned about AIP, %5 vector models, having CMC’s wear pins where only CO’s should be wearing them, Task Force Uniform, more women in the service, diversity, transformation, “presence with a purpose” ( I REALLY HATE THAT PHRASE). DOD fiddled while Rome burned, and now the fat is in the fire.
October 10th, 2005 at 7:05 pm
Chap, great topic! A few points:
1) John McCain has never voted for meaningful submarine spending. During his Senate career he is on record describing it as wasteful even in the midst of the Cold War. Thank goodness he was outvoted. The man has Al Gore disease which never requires a logical explanation of position.
2) I must disagree with Skippy as regards the V-22 (no-brainer) which not only advantages our Marines, it disadvantages our enemy. Wait a few years and watch how the civilian version revolutions air travel from A to B (no more 2 hour waits at intermediate stateside airports).
3) Better justification? The Navy could threaten to compare its budget requests to NASA’s for Lunar / Mars exploration over the next 20 years. It is also about time we had a submarine named USS Pearl Harbor.
October 10th, 2005 at 7:07 pm
Skippy,
Sounds like I need a run too. I haven’t so I’ll I’m sure be more intemperate than usual; I rant because I love, sorry. Herewith my rebuttals:
–Hey, I plan to be collecting retirement pay, too; I know a good deal when I see one. However, we as taxpayers pay for it. I didn’t say freeloader, didn’t imply it, but I did imply that the hardest thing to do is cut benefits because of the political capital. 20 year careers and DOPMA don’t help, either. We reduce manning and add contractors–and contractors which we’re paying retirement money to anyway; not smart from the viewpoint of someone who wants to build more ships. You want more ships? Reduce other costs or raise topline. We are not getting a raised topline. As a matter of fact the Katrina bogey will need swallowed, and guess which agency got the most of that funding before the hurricane? DoD.
–Look at the personnel outlays pre-Clinton and first budget after Bush went in office; and look at them now. I get the conclusion I got; people are wicked expensive, especially the way we pay for them.
–”Literally”: I do not think that word means what you think it means…
–What would you like Clark to do? If he resigned he’d just get replaced, and if he pushed too much change the Navy anklebiters would kill it and make him useless. You look at the Army’s attempt to end-around Rumsfeld, what happened to Tom White and Shinseki? “Civilian control of the military” ain’t just a catchphrase. Clark’s bubbas did some innovative things to stop the trends from sucking louder. He changed what he thought he could and made those changes stick as well as he could. I’m not here to praise or bury Clark but what you’re saying doesn’t match how to get anything done in the E-ring. There is a range of do-able do’s, and that just heaping scorn upon Guy In Charge #47 for not taking your sage advice ain’t cutting it. You want change, then change how you approach the problem.
(If you had mentioned IT costs, comms too, I’d say I forgot to put it in the “infinite rise in resource sink” category and point to that as something to work on.)
–I don’t know how you thought the IDTC worked. I do know, actually; you’re in FDNF where there wasn’t really one, not with your schedules, and the Japanese help pay for your repairs. This is what really was happening in the fleets what weren’t Seven; skimmers would pull in from deployment, they’d take all the low-density high-demand crap off the ships, and all the sailors would transfer. Weeks after pulling in the wings and ships, they were unusable. Un. Usable. What a waste. I saw the numbers of how much it cost to get the ships back from all the way down to deployed again, and it was not tenable. We could not afford to continue to do business that way.
It was ridiculous to me because submarines don’t do that. We have a couple of items where “there are three in the Navy”, but we PLAN for that and ensure that the maintenance cycles sync so that every ship got the newest bestest before deployment, in time to train at least a little before going. Our manning is less catastrophic after deployment; we’re still ready to deploy after pulling in. There is no way Second Fleet could have done in 2002 like the subs did in the eighties where every boat not in drydock deployed in 24 hours. Submarines could do that today; surface ships and air wings couldn’t.
So a submariner pushed the idea to the CNO of not falling apart after deployment on to the skimmers. That’s how FRP started. The skimmers then changed what FRP stood for and were trying out other stuff like Sea Swap and SURGEX and other things, but the point is that we were wasting a lot of resources doing what we were doing.
–JSF, V-22, E/A-18G, E-2D, MMA: They’re all programs. You’re looking at the surface and not in the gearbox. Every single program has champions and a constituency. Every program has people who think their program is worth giving up some other program. You want more ships? Then making your own particular choice on a program is not going to make a change. You are complaining about the effects, not the root causes. There are always choices about what to pick.
–LCS IS NOT A FRIGATE. The reason this comparison is made is that people like to put their paradigm on something they see. How do you operationalize something like Streetfighter? Is Streetfighter a frigate? LCS ain’t Streetfighter, either, but it is trying to not be a frigate. What is a sea base? LCS won’t succeed if the programmers and designers think “frigate”. If that’s what CNO wanted we’d just have built a frigate.
–Don’t know about naval air stations; no opinion because no knowledge.
–Single TYCOM: Let me put it this way. My current three star boss is in another state. The reason why is that the congressmen in that district would do terrible things if they lost that three star because they know what that means. Do you know how hard it is to lose a building with a flagpole on it?
There are like eight eyeglass factories in the Navy. CNO knew it and carped. SecNav knew it and carped. SecDef knew about it and carped. They would dearly love to make those billets go away and give guys chits to Pearl Vision or whereever–but they can’t get to execute that decision.
Do you really think CNO didn’t attempt to go to single TYCOMs before he got schwacked from the anklebiters and Congress? You want change, then change the root causes, not the effects.
–Yeah, too many flags. But they actually save the government money in some cases. They lose bonus pay, sub pay, command pay, et cetera when they get paid for one star. I understand the idea of cutting the flags is good but get your numbers straight. If you do it then you still need to find a way to maintain upward mobility in the lower ranks…and do the same to the other services because we know what happens when a Navy captain goes up against an Air Force two star.
–Your end rant shows you don’t get where these things happen. Who does the heavy lifting for chief stuff and uniforms? MCPON, that’s who. (Good luck with that pin thing, btw–some chiefs get outraged when I point out how they’ve subtly changed their uniform over the years to exactly match an officer’s, from khaki to the anchors on the Eisenhower.) “Presence with a purpose” translates precisely to “No, we are not deploying carrier X to the Med just because we always have this number of carriers in the Med, because that is stupid; we’ll flow assets to where we should have them.” Which is as it should be but had to be sold because every change generates legions of people who hate the change and want to destroy the leader too for proposing it.
You want change? Then change how you try to get that change.
It’s cold water, but I figure you deserve to be treated as an adult and given my best guess.
October 10th, 2005 at 9:00 pm
All valid points (except for your defense of MCPON who I have no love for………).
Please remember that I lived through “bathtub readiness” for some 15 years in Norfolk so I know a thing or two about it. I also believe that we robbed Peter to pay Paul more than we should have during those days. I only know Naval Aviation and we had definite points where in the IDTC where we were supposed to be investing in readiness. We did not, so we scrimped and saved. All 3 of the TYCOMS recognized that was not going to work in late 1999 (back in the bad old Clinton days). So they held the line on the readiness accounts and Vern Clark did as well when he became CNO. Things were getting better before FRP came along.
My primary objection to FRP is the throwing out of reasonable rotations of deployments, not where those ships go. Keeping to a six month rotation scheme is good, three deployments in 3 years is bad (like Lincoln did….exactly why did she have to stay out 11 months?).
Also my comment about V-22 only was about the 50 V-22’s the Navy is being forced to buy that it does not have a use for.
The Navy is reducing costs but its just not going to be enough. The Navy is cutting 65,000 people from its rolls (in wartime). At the same time we are signing up for things we have no business being involved with like more Navy boots on the ground in Iraq and Naval Infantry ( which by definition is the Marine Corps). They are doing away with production capabilities over seas, leaning up AIMD’s, and using other techniques to save money. Where do any of us seeing it benefit the Navy. We’ve been saving money for recapitalization for 4 years…when do we get to recapitalize? Oh I forgot, the war went a little longer than planned.
I’ve heard all of this before. The bottom line was that Colin Powell laid out a force structure plan that was correct for today. Both Republicans and democrats ignored it and now we are trying to do this “change” in the middle of a war. I believe you cannot do both. McNamara took us down that road once before.
Bring back John Lehman!
October 10th, 2005 at 11:27 pm
Skippy,
Concur with much of what you say; I think we’re not so far apart in our views either. Don’t know how MCPON fouled your Wheaties–what’s the story?
The rotations got fouled up when OIF hit; there were some required surges that got tough. Three deployments in three years ain’t fun–but frankly, I did worse on every sub in which I served, really. That five year count for OPTEMPO kills ya. I think it’ll settle out a little with the carriers when the squealing gets loud enough–but I haven’t followed it for at least half a year, so I don’t know.
I wouldn’t mind Lehman if he can do it this time without the Iowa coverup, “strategic homeporting” (not now, anyway; times changed), the Tailhook fiasco, the A-12 program fiasco, and do it without the free money Reagan minted for him. Maybe this time the submariners get the goat leather jackets.
October 11th, 2005 at 1:19 am
Chap, between you and Skippy, my head is gong back-and-forth like a spectator’s at a tennis match. In regards to what you had said earlier about who will have to design the next submarine; I’ve always thought that the Navy screwed-up big time when we got rid of uniformed Naval Architects. Having the contractors who will build our ships design them as well has never seemed to be right to me–something about foxes and hen houses.
October 11th, 2005 at 6:13 am
Chap, An excellent piece of argumentative reflection and analysis, the best compliment I can give is to say that it’s postings like this that place your blog on par with Belmont Club, et al. Well done, and thanks for educating me on this.
October 11th, 2005 at 5:52 pm
Bad Bob,
Thanks for the kind words.
I seem to have implied animosity re retirees; wasn’t my intent, sorry. The point is that just like AARP is a powerful lobby, much more powerful than any other age demographic, the retiree demographic is also disproportionately powerful. If you wanted to cut the money now or in the future for something that affects that lobby, then the pushback would be intense.
There’s another retiree trouble for the current leader, and that is the retired flag/general who still wants to drive the bus. Rickover didn’t, thankfully; others did, with ugly results. The upside is that those guys can also be great mentors and guides–problem is when to listen and when not to.
Understand your point re Lehman–he’s definitely polarizing to many folks. A classmate died on Iowa, so I’m a little heavily invested in that time–and I’ve got some organizational theories as to why the improvement seen under Lehman mutated. If you’re interested I’ve written a bit about it here.
October 11th, 2005 at 1:56 pm
This is fun. No one is picking on me anymore!
One weigh-in on the MCPON. I have actually worked with the guy back when he was C5F Master Chief. Great guy – but I have seen WAY too much FOD production with TFU – which is AFU. Seems out of character.
October 11th, 2005 at 2:37 pm
Between this and the Prine interchange you’ve got me hooked Mr. Chapo. . You’re riding high. Good stuff.
re- “a retiree with lots of free time and lots of contacts and righteous indignation at losing what he thought he was getting can be a powerful force to contend with. ”
And don’t you forget it son. You’ll hopefully never have to find out how undervalued you can become to this nation because us retirees are such pricks.
re- “You’d have to take the first three or so guys who complained and immediately and publicly fire them, recall the first three retirees to active duty to prepare a presentation and then publicly humiliate them, ferret out the first three secret attempts to end-around the system and crush those, and other draconian measures to enforce such a radical change. I don’t know yet of a nicer way to handle the anklebiting, and that’s why I haven’t finished thinking such an approach through. But such a radical approach may need to be necessary. ”
Already been done – SuperHornet program mid-late 90’s. Trust me.
re- aquisition:
Right now, we are facing dozens of billions divided by each ” fair share” (ships/aircraft/subs) per year over the FYDP. This means that new starts (APN$) getting whacked or scaled back (JSF and MMA in aviation). Since when have you seen anyone recently get vertically cut- recently? Big Navy has already done that.
It’s all about the $$$. How fast you can obligate it (get it on contract) and how many years each variety needs to be spent in that hasn’t been horse-traded. The vendors knows whats been appropriated and they know the rules (set by Congress) for spending it., plus, as you layed out, they have our own folks working for them that recently retired or left govmint service who also know all the rules. It’s truly amazing how fast folks can go from being operators to businessmen.
Almost impossible to break even let alone win.
I have to agree with you on the overall critique. Shooting from the hip and too much emotionalism ain’t gonna get us mo/better ships or aircraft.
re- “I wouldn’t mind Lehman if he can do it this time without the Iowa coverup, “strategic homeporting†(not now, anyway; times changed), the Tailhook fiasco, the A-12 program fiasco, and do it without the free money Reagan minted for him. Maybe this time the submariners get the goat leather jackets. ”
You’re being a little harsh there Chapo on the older generation. I know y’all have become PC and had a taste of Koolaid….first of all check your timeline on Sec. Lehman. Speaking of goat leather jackets- I got mine and most resourcefull bubleheasds I knew got theirs, too. I understand they wear ‘em while they’re running nuc plants and designing ships!
B2
October 11th, 2005 at 2:39 pm
Uh oh. I posted 13. Short count 5-4-3-2-1. Out
October 11th, 2005 at 11:14 pm
Lehman was definately a person people either loved or hated. However I submit that it was not Lehman who created the Iowa cover-up, it was the Navy that did that to itself. Also if memory serves, he was not the SECNAV when the blast occurred, it was his successor.
The reason I do not like MCPON is that I think many of the changes in the CMC program are not in the best interests of E-9’s as whole. We are not developing our Master Chiefs as we should, we are simply creating haves and have nots. The CMC program as currently structured is not the best we can do IMHO.
And as for Tailhook, well Lehman actually went to a(1986 I believe) Tailhook convention. I’m told he was even on the 3rd floor for a while. That, for me , is what I want my SECNAV to be doing, leading from the front! I wish I could have seen it, but I was down losing money on the blackjack tables..
October 12th, 2005 at 1:27 pm
Thanks, everybody. Looks like I hit a nerve that needed hit.
Lehman: My take is here. Roger the timelines; that’s part of what I’m talking about in that other post.
Retirees: See what I mean? Even mention something related to them and the responses come quick and furious!
Skippy,
Worst day for cynicism I ever had was the mandated sexual harassment training as an E-4, run by the LT who the previous night had been partying at the strip joint and spent the time bashing gays. Needless to say idealism took a hit….
October 12th, 2005 at 12:57 pm
Chap-
re- retirees : I’m on this, not on because I disagree with you 100% , but I want to expound a little for “entertainment” (yours) & education purposes. I am over 50 (not by much!) and I will never join the AARP. I don’t like their politics. Bunching up us military retirees with general AARP folks is like mixing Papaya with apples. We usually retire in our early forties and we have 20-30 years more of a professional life to go. That means we continue to contribute. If we end up working in the defense establishment as vendors, support contractors, GS-14 and up, whatever, that’s a natural. There is nothing negative about it. Win/win for all, IMHO. Sure, after I retired, I toyed with going to law school and putting away the bad for a living…didn’t work out..one has to be realistic and continue the cash flow. Not all of us can change lives and the pay we get paid, for something we know about, ain’t all bad.
Am I a drain on the budget for my medical & retired pay? Yes Sir, just as you are now and will be someday. You know something? In my estimation, you have earned every penny! Up above I said it is all about the money re acquisition, well it is really all about the people (they cost the most- check your NRE $) and the salaries of the AD,RES/G and RET force must be borne during this time of war. Without the people we’re sunk. Someday, after we win the GWOT and then go through a “sleepy” phony phase, like the Cold War seems to you young’uns, the government can let the retirement and active force pays fall behind that of the civilian sector. Sounds cynical but that is the cycle and hopefully, you’ll be around to see it happen- again.
re- Lehman and the not so old Navy. Skippy’s right on the timeline. Lehman was SECNAV until 1987. The Iowa explosion happened in 89. Additionally, Lehman didn’t have that much more to do on the A-12 either (I’ve read the same book-DSMC) except maybe he helped set the initial requirements (dependent on emergent technologies- always hi-risk).
Now that we have exonerated Sec Lehman (not- he still made many mistakes) for everything the 80’s gave us, let’s move on to the changing “culture” of the Navy.
This is what I saw and lived. In ‘75 when I was in flight training the Navy was really screwed up. I didn’t see that of course, being so junior ,but it was true. Vietnam had taken it’s toll like you’ve read. IMHO, ADM Z, while he did effect some positive change reflecting the times he ignored the history and the culture regarding discipline and the C-o-C. I will say he did a creditable job re race relations in the Nav. When I did my first cruises in 77 and 78 the troops smoked pot everywhere, drug use was rampant, officers did not inspect the barracks ashore much and we had what is called a hollow force. The Carter years (76-80) just exacerbated the situation. We were considered underdogs to the Soviets and Detent was in vogue. Not very conducive to morale or retention. In other words, we were on a slippery slope to mediocrity.
IMHO, Reagans arrival and subsequent build up you have heard so much about were generally true. He fixed a lot of things with big money but his CNOs fixed a lot of cultural things with leadership. Sure, it took a Prowler landing right of centerline on the Nimitz to display our drug problem for all to see- action was taken immediately. ADMs Hayward and especially Watkins reinstituted some of the old rules, created Zero tolerance drug testing, made us all get haircuts and got rid of beards (not popular w/Chiefs). They laid the leadership on and IMHO, for the most part, what we have today can be attributed to them. They were Vietnam vets who were gonna get things right. We were walkin tall under Reagan but regular civilians still probably thought we joined the service because it was the only job we could get. We actually thought we could take the Soviets blue water (probably true) and eventually under Lehman even take it to them on the Kola and Kamchatka peninsulas (let’s not discuss that, please). The motto was die before look bad or win at any cost in some aviation communities. This was the days of Grenada, Panama, Libya, Iran, Lockerbie, PO SteathamMarine Barracks, Lockerbie and Top Gun. Also, Tom Clancy books and the beginning of the GWOT. Some of the future problems we saw coming. There was a lot we didn’t. Hindsight is easy. Again, IMHO all of the above was positive change overall. Best times of my life…ever hear of the Miramar O’Club?
The next period was one of change good and bad. First was the breakup and fall of the Soviet Union. We don’t pay it much shrift today but that was big- real big. Somedays I feel like I’ve been brain washed into thinking it wasn’t that big. I know folks of your generation have for sure. Then came just Panama, Desert Storm, the Powell Doctrine, the Iowa explosion and Tailhook. I’m not going to go into a lot on this good/bad period. The link to Lex’s post from your’s pretty much covers it. After the Storm we were heroes …how could this happen?
The Iowa explosion on the navy.mil site says: “On 19 April 1989, an explosion of undetermined cause ripped through her Number Two sixteen-inch gun turret killing 47 crewmen….” This pretty much sums it up-”undetermined cause”. All the Navy Times stories, crappy movies and books can’t ever fix the shame and downright bad decisions people made. Hell, I submit that kind of stuff still happens- in inverse- Abu Ghraib?. I am sorry about your friend. He was serving on a ship I’ll bet he had to compete to get on and that he loved his job. Those BBs have that kind of loyal following- well you know. Let me add that I have lost nearly a dozen friends in flying mishaps. I have read every one of the mishap reports. I can tell you that some of them I didn’t agree with. We learn to live with it.
The Tailhook Fiasco (scandal?) we brought on ourselves. Talk about self-flagellation! Remember what happened the summer before the winter break of the scandal? That was the summer of the C. Thomas nomination to SCOTUS , Anita Hill and the pubic hair (not). The conditions were set. It was inevitable. You bring up Gregory Vistica in your piece. As far as I am concerned, he is a P.O.S. and in my book his book is a P.O.S.! I despise him as much as I despise the MSM in the world today- for all the same reasons. I lived in SD then and I was a CO at the time, so I observed a lot. While I didn’t go to Hook ‘91 (wife was having morning sickness…), I am familiar with all the inquisition tactics used in the witch hunt. Brave men used to flying in flak alley folded and LTs lost faith in the leadership. I’ve read a lot of the stuff about wHook 91 but I haven’t really read about it yet…… Maybe some day a real writer will step forward and tell what really happened and why, who sacrificed, who lost/won and who slipped under the radar. Nuff said.
After the Hook fallout came the election in 1992. You know the rest of the story. You have been around during the purges-(SERB, HYT, etc.), the PC police and the sensitivity training..I just went throught the motions throught the mid to late 90’s. So you know. As a matter of fact, in the big scheme of things, you sub guys have been exempt from a lot of the churn, in that you still don’t have women aboard and your values re command and naval professionalism haven’t really changed much since Rickover died. In that respect, I guess you guys ARE in a position to judge the rest of the Navy.
Chap, I’m not drawing any right and wrong conclusions here or judging today’s Navy and I’m definetly not slamming you! I’m just adding a little personal observation to how things went. We always look to the past to tout why we are so good in the present, but we need to understand the past to really tell it or at least wait until the folks who were actually there pass on. You may hurt our feelings! (nah that’s our problem- we don’t have any!). We were honest, we were honorable and we loved the Navy as much as you newbies do today. Our world was simpler but we tried to do the right thing, most of the time. We didn’t need value training because 99% of us had (still have) values from our parents and our religion. It was assumed in my day you had this ‘training’ before you donned a uniform. Isn’t that funny.
Sorry to e-bloviate this much.
Skippy- re Hook ‘86. yes he was there. I “was told” he was up on the 3rd floor, too. Despite all the booze, that was the year he told us we could wear our flight jackets off base. Remember?
B2
October 12th, 2005 at 11:06 pm
THAT I do remember and as I recall it got a standing ovation…….!
October 12th, 2005 at 11:17 pm
I also know Shifty. He is a Great American!
I also know a some other guys who got a similar shafting by the institution. They are not a philosophical as Lex makes out. They are bitter about how the Navy treated them. However they have also made the best out of the situation and moved on with their lives.
October 12th, 2005 at 11:24 pm
Oh and one final point. What’s so bad about going to a strip club? Sounds like clean, wholesome entertainment to me! Right up there with Wednesday nights at Miramar or Friday Nights at Tinker……..
October 12th, 2005 at 11:37 pm
Miramar and Tinker was definitely more entertaining from what I heard, but by the time I went O the fun light had been pretty much put out, and it’s not as if we were going to show up in our freshly pressed flight suits. (Once as a mid on a sub, when we pulled in the XO joked that we should show up on Wednesday in our working uniforms, just like those snazzy guys “fresh off the flight line”. Until somebody mentioned that we’d look like air conditioner repairmen and probably be sent off to the kitchen….)
As for that negative-leadership-example LT: Oh, yes, but this one was an “off limits” one (drug busts) he was attending with the enlisted students and he was a Direct Input Limited Duty Officer, and it wasn’t exactly a special occasion, more like a bad case of fraternization with some uh, favored students. The guy I went to boot with got thrown out of nuke school for failing his whiz quiz and wound up bouncing at that joint. This was back in like ‘86/87.
At the time I seem to remember there was a joint that didn’t sell booze, so the rules were a little different as to what they did, and it was off OBT so it was a little cheaper, and the ATM was right next door. A junior ET could become a millionaire if the money spent dollar by dollar was instead put into a good stock, although he’d miss out on some great Harley repair tips.
Or so I was told, anyway.
I was studying.
October 13th, 2005 at 1:05 pm
re- “Once as a mid on a sub, when we pulled in the XO joked that we should show up on Wednesday in our working uniforms, just like those snazzy guys “fresh off the flight lineâ€.”
Believe me, we would have made upa story for ya that you were wearing your “shit-hots” and you dudes would have been super stars! Except the gals may have figured it out you were bubbleheads from those great tans y’all got. LOL
Sorry couldn’t resist.
March 12th, 2008 at 7:45 am
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