Program Executive Officer, Ships - Temporarily Relieved of Duty

It is often stated that one of the many ways to improve the cost problems surrounding naval shipbuilding is to keep people in position for longer periods of time, thereby adding some consistency to program development. This is probably not a good thing towards those ends.

A top shipbuilding officer was temporarily relieved of duty Thursday after the Naval Inspector General substantiated allegations of “personal misconduct” involving a subordinate, two Navy officials said.

Rear Adm. Charles Goddard was relieved as program executive officer for ships by Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Patrick Walsh.

Rear Adm. Frank Thorp, the Navy’s chief of information, said the inspector general substantiated personal misconduct allegations against Goddard. Thorp said the allegations involved “inappropriate personal behavior with a subordinate in a social setting while on official travel.”

A Navy official familiar with the allegations who requested anonymity said the allegations dealt with “the way he treated women” and involved alcohol.

We don't know Rear Adm. Charles Goddard, but we have covered him many times. This problem is well outside his scope of work, and whenever we read "travel", "women", and "alcohol" we see buzz words that raise a red flag towards speculation.

Although we know nothing about the Admiral personally, among the things we have observed about Admiral Goddard professionally is that he is a straight shooter when it comes to his job. While we almost never agree with what he says, to his credit we have never seen him read the brochure to us when describing a program. He also gave us one of our favorite comments on the DDG-1000.

“DDG 1000 is the Dreadnought of our Navy,”

We covered that comment in pretty good depth at the time, so no need to do it again here. All we really wish to say regarding this announcement is we hope he is able to find professional help for his alcohol problem. I've personally met dozens and dozens of Admirals throughout my lifetime, and none of them are average men or women. They always have some quality about them that was recognizable regarding why they made Admiral. This news serves as a reminder that alcohol does terrible things to the judgment of good people.