The Navy is not the Air Force

The Navy clearly has some tough challenges right now, shipbuilding is a popular topic in Congress, the media, and among industry observers, but shipbuilding is only one of several issues that draw the ire of observers regarding Naval leadership. When Air Force secretary Michael W. Wynne and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley were forced to resign on June 6th, we began to wonder how long it would be before speculation begins regarding replacing the current Naval leadership. As it turns out, it didn't even take a full week.

On June 12th we observed the first conversation pop up by blogger Westhawk. We aren't familiar with Westhawk, but his profile lists him as a former U.S. Marine Corps officer: infantry company commander, artillery battalion staff officer. Being that he is also on the blogroll of the Small Wars Journal, we observe Westhawk to come with highly credible credentials. Westhawk raises an interesting discussion.

Robert Gates has been Secretary of Defense for about 18 months. During that time he has fired the Secretary of the Army, declined to reappoint the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, fired the Commander of Centcom, and fired the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Chief of Staff. There are likely a few other notable executive service-level civilians and flag officers I have neglected to mention who have met Mr. Gates’s axe...

One would suppose that candidates for the axe would include Navy Secretary Donald Winter and Assistant Secretary (Research, Development and Acquisition) John Thackrah. If Mr. Gates wanted to be thorough, he could fire his own acquisition under-secretary, Mr. John Young.

Westhawk goes on to note that change at this time with only 7 months left for this administration will not do much good for shipbuilding, and it will be up to the next administration to take up the challenge. It is noteworthy Westhawk focuses in on the civilian leadership though, an important point we think.

It is at that point Mike Burleson picks up the discussion, both on his blog and in an expanded editorial today, looking beyond the civilian leadership Mike takes a hard look at what kind of leader he believes the Navy needs today.

The kind of leader our Navy needs for our current conflict, the one against terrorism on which Gates insists we must focus, is someone with an eye on the littorals. He would need to understand small boat operations like the Coast Guard, the operations of small teams in inland waters like the Marines and SEALs. He also needs a plan to deal with the epidemic of piracy around the world, transferring the Army’s proven anti-insurgent tactics to the sea.

Off hand we can think of no one in the navy leadership with such credentials which Gates might seek. Only the now deceased Admiral Arthur Cebrowski comes to mind: the father of the littoral combat ship and small navy advocate long before the start of the War on Terror. We can only hope the Secretary will appoint someone suitable in the time he has left, with the ability to salvage our magnificent but rapidly diminishing fleet.

Calling out the leadership isn't unique to Mike, in fact two days before Gates forced leadership changes in the Air Force, Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute put a broadside across the bow of Admiral Roughead.

If you think that having three surface warfare officers in a row at the helm of the U.S. Navy has created a bias in favor of surface combatants, then you must not be paying attention to news about naval shipbuilding. While a reasonably coherent roadmap has emerged for replacing cold-war aircraft carriers and submarines, plans for a family of future surface combatants are in disarray. That's a problem, because surface combatants -- frigates, destroyers, cruisers -- are the most common types of warship in the modern Navy. A growing chorus of critics is complaining that the failure of service leaders to provide a convincing rationale for next-generation surface combatants is putting the entire fleet modernization plan in jeopardy.

Loren Thompson was reacting to an article from late May by Christopher P. Cavas that was published in both Defense News and Navy Times. As we covered at the time, Christopher Cavas was hitting home an important point on naval leadership.

The current credibility problems are due to inaction in correcting the current course of the Navy by two men; Admiral Mullen and Admiral Roughead. This isn't about blame, one could easily go back before either of these men were in charge and pass blame around, blame is completely irrelevant at this point.

The bottom line on the credibility problem can be summarized thus: In the Navy, leadership is top down. There are only two men who can fix the credibility problems that the Navy is suffering from. The question isn't whether Mullen or Roughead could fix the Navy credibility problem, rather the question is will they even try? We doubt it, but time will tell.

The important point Chris Cavas was making is not blame, rather credibility regarding shipbuilding, a theme that gets extended to mean blame by those looking for accountability in shipbuilding. There is a tendency to compare the problems in the Air Force with the problems with the Navy, and find enough similarities between two services not fighting the current wars to a large degree to produce a mindset that if leadership change is a good idea for the Air Force, it could also be a good idea for the Navy. The Navy is not the Air Force, and rather than comparing the two and highlighting how different the situations of two services are, we will focus primarily on the Navy leadership.

The major current criticism of Naval leadership, specifically the CNO, includes not supporting the current shipbuilding plan. We ask the question, is that really a bad thing? We certainly don't support the current shipbuilding plan for strategic reasons, if the CNO isn't putting enough effort behind the shipbuilding plan in the opinions of the shipbuilding plan supporters like Loren Thompson, we only see this as a good thing. The CNO uses one word to discuss the future fleet constitution, balance. The current shipbuilding plan is not balanced, not even close, so we see consistency with the CNO not advocating the current shipbuilding plan. As we like to do, we point out the shipbuilding plan isn't his anyway, it is the plan of his boss, Admiral Mullen.

While time is certainly going by fast, Admiral Roughead has not even served his first year as CNO yet, so we find it more than a bit premature to suggest he has somehow failed to do his job. If we take an objective look, we tend to think Admiral Roughead is doing a very good job, and also noteworthy, he is doing so under much different and more difficult circumstances than other recent CNOs.

Taking an outside perspective, we note that Admiral Roughead has done an excellent job his first year. Where has his focus been? All indications are he has spent his first year focusing on the most important aspect of the Navy, which is not shipbuilding, rather it is the men and women serving in the Navy. While not the most popular discussion, we are seeing everything from a new uniform to a new approach to training, and the new initiatives tend to reflect priorities of the Navy that will make long term meaningful impact to the service. We also think it is worth noting that the Fleet Response Plan has been implemented successfully, and under Adm. Roughead the Navy is at the highest level of readiness since World War II. With this in mind, lets review the report card for Admiral Roughead's first year:

Focused attention to quality of life for sailors...check
Executed Maritime Strategic Concept Early delivery...check
Managed soft power mission focus transition...check
Adapting the Navy mission profile to be relevant to our time...check
Supported Global War on Terror Operations....check
Expanded submarine construction...check
Rationally approached Naval Aviation Stopgap planning...check

Now lets review what Admiral Roughead hasn't done:

Pushed a flawed shipbuilding strategy...nope
Rushed Naval Aviation spending for JSF...nope
Expanded UV plan prior to technology availability...nope
Fostered a "Next-War-Itis" mentality in the Navy...nope
Disregarded the submarine service...nope

From our perspective, Admiral Roughead has done a pretty stellar job in his first 10+ months as CNO, concentrating on culture which is much more important than resources at this point in time. Change takes time, and only happens when people are onboard for adjusting. One cannot simply change equipment priorities and expect change to take place. We are seeing positive signs all over though, it is news reports quoting Navy officials bringing up discussions regarding Sea Basing and 100 ft corvettes. These are very new ideas, but ideas take time to develop if they are to be implemented successfully.

Finally, we note that Admiral Roughead is dealing with some rather unique challenges previous CNOs, like Mullen, never really had to deal with. Every decision Adm. Roughead makes is under a much broader microscope than the decision process of previous CNOs this century. There are several reasons.

First, under most of this administration, the Congress was controlled by the same party as the President, meaning whatever the President's budget suggested for the Navy was essentially rubber stamped by Congress.

Second, the hyper partisanship of the nation at large, combined with a war that is now five years old, adds extra scrutiny to all defense purchasing decisions. One cannot simply begin a new military project today without justification that carries with it broad bipartisan support and a strategic rationale. It seems to us that Roughead not fighting Congress on shipbuilding allows him to offer counter proposals later, because he has not created any confrontations yet between himself and Congress. We observe there has been a lot of talk about setting up the FY10 budget, the next administrations first budget.

Finally, unlike just two years ago where every new idea was filtered through Proceedings, new media has changed the discussion and expanded it dramatically for the Navy. When Geoff Fein or Christopher Cavas writes an article on an event taking place in the Navy today, the story can get filtered through any one of dozens of places online exposed to thousands, distributed not only via news websites, CHINFO, or industry internal news clips, but also with near instant responses on blogs and messageboards.

Today the GAO, CBO, CRS, and the non governmental organizations are producing research content specific to the Navy that is being cycled, exposed, discussed, and examined by a much broader audience than it ever has. Some think the challenge the Navy is facing is adapting to the blogs, but we contend the true challenge for the Navy is adapting to the exposure of so much raw researched data that contributes to a broader, more educated audience that is no longer limited to periodical publications for analysis. That challenge goes well beyond blogging.

Under these conditions, facing immense challenges in the resource acquisition aspect of the Navy, we see Admiral Roughead doing a pretty good job. We also note that Admiral Mullen, Gate's own choice for CJCS, is not going anywhere, so the 313-ship plan will not be changing anytime soon anyway. Westhawk names the right names, although we personally believe Winter has done a good job. We can't say we are much impressed with Mr. Young's "innovative" acquisition approach to the Littoral Combat Ship, although we tend to agree with Westhawk that doing something about it now is too little too late.

If you are looking for change in the Navy, particularly with shipbuilding, looking towards leadership to force the change is not a good bet. If change will happen in the near future, it will come with the 2009 QDR and managed under the next administration. This is the process of change, and there is no reason the process won't be followed.