American Renewable Energy Is a Must
(See R. L. Misso and S. Kleeb, p.10, April 2013 Proceedings)
Captain Colin M. Jones, P.E., U.S. Navy (Retired)—Anyone with a modest understanding of the complex chemistry involved in production of biofuel understands that while it may well be a noble goal to wean our Navy from the use of fossil fuel, development of this technology is not the mission, nor should it be, of the U.S. Navy. The economics and science involved in the production of biofuel suitable for our aviation or other power plants is a long way off, and those who advertise it as something that is just around the corner remind me of the promise in the late 1940s that nuclear power would soon be so cheap utility companies could not afford to meter it. We know how to make biodiesel fuel, yet every attempt to do so on any commercial scale has quickly proven expensive. With the current trend in EPA regulations for disposal of chemicals, costs of such commercial-scale facilities is less than promising. To pretend we are going to get sufficient source material from deep-fat fryers is plain foolish.
Patrick C. Wider—Regrettably, the article by Lieutenant Misso and Mr. Kleeb is mislabeled and mostly irrelevant. It should have been titled “American Renewable Energy Is a Bust” and included the relevant facts. Unfortunately, the panacea of renewable energy and the savings brought about by economies of scale are not as simple, necessary, or easily achieved as this article maintains. Here are several pertinent facts ignored by the authors:U.S. monthly crude-oil production had reached a 20-year high at the end of 2012, exceeding 7 million barrels per day (bpd) in December—the highest level of domestic crude-oil production since December 1992. Since July 2011, U.S. oil output has increased by more than 1.5 million bpd, or more than 24 percent. Much of the increase has come from the shale-oil bonanza in North Dakota and Texas deposits. With the continuation of this trend, many experts predict that the United States will once again become an oil-exporting nation by the end of the decade.
Producing biofuels in industrial quantities to achieve meaningful economies of scale does not come without significant costs and unintended consequences. Regrettably, President George W. Bush signed legislation that required 40 percent of the U.S. corn harvest be slated for ethanol production to be paid for using massive subsidies (paid by U.S. taxpayers) to make corn economically viable as a source for motor fuel. From 2000 to 2012, U.S. ethanol production increased from 1.6 billion gallons per year (gpy) to 14.9 billion gpy. The infrastructure and energy required to fertilize, grow, harvest, distill, and transport the resulting product is both enormous and costly.
As the production of ethanol has increased nearly exponentially in recent years, so have the prices of feed grains. The overall effect of growing corn for use as a motor fuel is an attendant increase in food prices. As the demand for corn has increased and more U.S. farmland is used for growing corn and less for other crops, the prices of corn and the other animal feeds have soared.
So the authors would have the United States (and by extension the U.S. Navy) spend ever more money on biofuels in the form of subsidies and overall higher fuel prices to lessen the need for petroleum, which will be available in ever-greater quantities. And they promote these policies despite the adverse effects they have on food prices and availability in the American and global markets. While nearly a billion people in the world will go hungry tonight, this year the United States will turn approximately 5 billion bushels of corn into ethanol. That’s enough food to feed over 400 million people for a year.
It’s not accidental that the authors have to resort to using the U.S. Navy’s historical progress in switching to non-renewable fuels, from sail to coal to oil to nuclear power, to promote the use of “renewable” energy sources. Back then the Navy knew what it was doing. Today, politics trumps economic good sense.
Falvey Malarcher—I am all for innovation and scientific progress, but the article by Lieutenant Misso and Mr. Kleeb sent chills down my spine. Nature cannot be bought. All the money the federal government can print will not make or break a renewable-fuel project. Success depends on being able to develop a process that produces a gallon of fuel that has the same (or more) energy density as a gallon of the fuel you are trying to replace. If you can do that with the same or less production cost, you will be able sell your product in the marketplace, grow your business, be successful, and pay back your investors. Unfortunately, the Navy is not spending private-sector dollars to be later paid back. The government can throw money into research, but it cannot buy a successful outcome.
‘Like’ Navy on Facebook
(See W. B. Tisdale, pp. 81–83, April 2013 Proceedings)
Lieutenant Commander Sherwin Cho, Medical Corps, U.S. Navy—I read with interest Lieutenant Tisdale’s article on Navy commands using Facebook for more two-way communications to engage the public and stakeholders. I agree that Facebook is an incredibly useful service that would make such communications so much easier. I think that the use of Facebook for Navy commands, however, poses some risk to operational security. Facebook logs and archives vast amounts of data, including metadata on photos and videos that indicate the time, date, and GPS coordinates where the images were taken, IP addresses, browser types, computer operating systems, the time and date we log on, when and how often we communicate with our contacts, when and how often we travel to certain locations by tracking our logons from our smartphones, and so forth. This is in its data-use policy under the terms of service.
If Facebook’s database is ever breached by hackers or foreign intelligence services, it may be possible to identify with relative ease key personnel, their supervisors, their work locations, their family members, the schools their children attend, their personal email accounts, the type of smart phone or computer they use, their personal home network and Internet service provider, and other information that is not public but still available and exploitable.
Despite these disadvantages, Facebook and other social networks can serve the Navy and the citizenry well just as long as necessary precautions are taken to protect sensitive information.
The Danes Have the Answer
(See T. X. Hammes, p. 12, April 2013 Proceedings)
Captain Anthony Cowden, U.S. Navy; author of The Naval Institute Almanac of the U.S. Navy—The Navy originally built the littoral combat ship (LCS) for the following reasons: (1) Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Vern Clark wanted to be more transformational to the new Secretary of Defense than the other service chiefs; (2) big Navy hates frigates; (3) the surface-warfare officer community hates the mine-warfare mission; (4) and the LCS conceptually fit into the idea of “network-centric warfare.” Here, with one ship, Admiral Clark could address all four issues and make tons of friends in Congress by expanding shipbuilding to new yards, sub-contractors, and congressional districts all over the nation.
LCS (FFR—frigate reconfigurable?) will make up a significant percentage of the surface combatants in the U.S. Navy for the next 30-plus years, so we had better figure out how to make it work.
Show of Force—or Just for Show?
(See R. C. Rubel, pp. 16–20, April 2013 Proceedings)
Captain Murdock M. Moore, U.S. Air Force (Retired)—As Dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies, Captain Rubel seems remarkably unread when it comes what a single carrier can do.
World War II Japanese Vice Admial Jisaburo Ozawa’s Bay of Bengal single-carrier commerce-raiding task force sank 23 merchant ships in April 1942. His over-the-horizon “ghost” kept the bay closed for six months.
Almost 30 years later, in 1971 India’s World War II–era Vikrant and her Sea Hawk straight-wing jet fighters sank or heavily damaged 32 Pakistani naval and logistics vessels, closing East Pakistani ports to reinforcement and begetting an indepedent Bangladesh.
It’s not the number of carriers that count, but their usage.
Position of Influence
(See W. H. Bishop, pp. 81–82, March 2013 Proceedings)
Chief Operations Specialist (Surface Warfare) Mario T. Majors, U.S. Navy (Retired)—I believe that Chief Bishop missed two crucial ingredients that directly contributed to the past successes of the Navy’s Chief’s Mess in his otherwise excellent article.
I am referring to the seasoning and experience that come when spending an appropriate time in rate, honing professional skills and leadership abilities. This is regrettable because the old time-in-rate requirements not only gave each sailor a chance to gain valuable experience but also afforded the chain-of-command a chance to accurately gauge an individual’s abilities.
Currently, time-in-rate requirements are waived for sailors who receive “early promote” marks on their evaluations. This process is flawed, because in many cases a stellar evaluation simply reflects the particular sailor’s ability to politic effectively on his own behalf or how well liked he is by his superiors, rather than being a true indicator of talent and abilities.
I have seen too many sailors who received great marks on their evaluations simply because they were able to finagle their way into high-visibility community-relations projects. Usually these endeavors occurred during working hours, did nothing to increase mission success, and only served to boost these uniformed politicians up the ladder.
Too often, failures of leadership have occurred that can only be laid at the door of the Chief’s Mess, and I believe that this is attributable to the practice of promoting individuals too soon and for the wrong reasons. Seasoning and experience are only achieved with time, and both factors have always been two of the most crucial elements in the success of the Navy’s Chief’s Mess.
To the best of my knowledge, the average time to make chief used to be 12 to 16 years. I distinctively recall that when I entered the Navy in 1986, virtually all chief petty officers seemed to be older than the junior enlisted sailors and junior officers. After all, the reason why the Chief’s Mess was called the “goat locker” was because the chiefs were older than most of us.
A clear sign of that experience and maturity was patently evident when those chiefs put on their dress uniforms and displayed their ribbons. Not only were they older than we were, their Sea Service, campaign, and unit ribbons were clear evidence that they had made their way around the block a few times.
Inversely, in today’s Navy I see chiefs who look like they are barely older than their junior sailors and officers. I recall seeing a chief at the Norfolk Naval Station that only had two hash marks on his left sleeve. I find it hard to believe that particular chief can draw on a wealth of experience while training, leading, and developing junior enlisted sailors and officers simply because he lacks seasoning and experience. The time has come to reinstate time-in-rate requirements.
On page 117 of the May issue, General Norton A. Schwartz was misidentified as still being Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force. The current Air Force Chief of Staff is General Mark A. Welsh III.