CEO Notes

January 2015
Happy New Year to each and every Member of the Naval Institute as we enter 2015! I am very pleased to report the Institute had a highly successful 2014. Membership ...

Comment & Discussion

January 2015
Lessons in Stoic Leadership(See J. Burroughs, pp. 66–70, December 2014 Proceedings)Rear Admiral Sinclair Harris, U.S. Navy; Vice Director for Operations, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff—Ensign Burroughs’ prizewinning ...
U.S. Navy (Diana Quinlan)

Lessons Learned from the LCS

By Gregory V. Cox
January 2015
The Navy’s littoral combat ship (LCS) has undergone a stream of criticism since its inception in 2001. Instead of slowly diminishing, the criticisms—from Congress, the Government Accountability Office, the Office ...
U.S. Navy (Matthew Poynor)

Close the R&D Gap

By Alfred G. Stern and Robert E. Kaczmarek<p>
January 2015
In July 2007, all F/A-18 aircraft were grounded across the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps when a rocket in the ejection-seat system of an F/A-18D parked at China Lake, California ...
U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive

From Our Archive

January 2015
‘Oh give me the flashing brine,The spray and the tempest’s roar!’—Epes Sargent (1813–1880)Whether set in summer or winter, the palpable foreboding icy seas around the Korean Peninsula ...
Danno Mahoney

Naval Institute Foundation

January 2015
In His Own Words: Danno F. MahoneyMy introduction to the Naval Institute came through reading a wardroom copy of Proceedings in July 1960 at my first assignment, the USS Trathen ...
U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive

Lest We Forget - The Higgins Boat

By Lieutenant Commander Thomas J. Cutler, U.S. Navy (Retired)
January 2015
Andrew Jackson Higgins once publicly declared that students attending the U.S. Naval Academy learned “fancy dancing, football, fencing, boxing—things like that,” but that as officers in the Navy, they did ...
Hartmut Ehlers

Combat Fleets

By Eric Wertheim
January 2015
Russia has decided to purchase a second domestically produced Ivan Gren–class tank-landing ship now that delivery of two large amphibious-assault ships from France appears unlikely in the near future ...
U.S. Navy (Antonio P. Turretto Ramos)

U.S. Navy - LCS ‘Frigate’ Options

By Norman Polmar
January 2015
Outgoing Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has belatedly directed a path for developing the littoral combat ship-to-frigate effort for the highly criticized LCS program. Last February, in response to that ...

Book Reviews

January 2015
One Million Steps: A Marine Platoon at WarBing West. New York: Random House, 2014. 266 pp. Append. Index. Notes. $27.Reviewed by Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, U.S. Army (Retired) ...
U.S. Navy (Patrick Dionne)

Professional Notes

January 2015
Overconfidence Can Be CrushingBy Captain Steve J. Coughlin, U.S. NavyEvery once in a while, we get a grim reminder that there is no tenure in the business of ...

Editor's Page

January 2015
The U.S. Navy has a global mission to project power and protect the sea lines of communication that help keep our economy, and the world’s, running smoothly. That’s a tall ...
U.S. Navy

When Quality Slips

By Neil A. Pettigrew
January 2015
With nearly 300 active ships, the U.S. Navy is by far the world’s largest—larger, in fact, than the next 13 navies combined. Although the Navy does operate its own shipyards ...
U.S. Coast Guard (Jonathan Anderson)

The Power of Tradition

By Lieutenant Commander Brooke Millard, U.S. Coast Guard
January 2015
One evening in 2010, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Grand Isle (WPB-1338) let go her anchor in Salem Harbor, Massachusetts, to pass the night. At 29 years old and with ...
U.S. Navy (Rex Nelson)

Advancing Undersea Dominance

By Vice Admiral Michael J. Connor, U.S. Navy
January 2015
In a June 2013 Proceedings article titled “Sustaining Undersea Dominance,” I outlined the submarine force’s strategy in terms of “People, Platforms, Payloads, and Partners.” The essential themes of that strategy ...
U.S. Navy (Paolo Bayas)

A More Flexible Fleet

By Commander Jim Griffin, U.S. Navy (Retired)
January 2015
Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Navy has faced few challenges to its core missions of projecting power ashore, forward presence, and sea control. A relatively benign ...
U.S. Navy (Jason J. Perry)

Designing the Future Warships

By Rear Admiral William J. Holland Jr., U.S. Navy (Retired)
January 2015
Responding to now-outgoing Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s directive to the Navy in his Fiscal Year 2015 budget to “submit alternative proposals to procure a capable and lethal small surface ...
General Dynamics Bath Iron Works

'Distributed Lethality'

By Vice Admiral Thomas Rowden, Rear Admiral Peter Gumataotao, and Rear Admiral Peter Fanta, U.S. Navy
January 2015
Force ShiftA shift is now under way within the surface force. It is not subtle, and it is not accidental. The surface force is taking the offensive, to give the ...
U.S. Navy (John Joyce)

Now Hear This - Know Your Navy

By Lieutenant (junior grade) Carlos R. Rosende, U.S. Navy
January 2015
When a fellow naval officer, a pilot, asked me the following question, I was stunned. “Surface warfare is a community without a mission,” he said. “What do you guys actually ...
U.S. Navy (Matthew Riggs)

The Struggle for a Strategy

By Robert Haddick
January 2015
China is implementing a well-designed cost-imposing strategy in the Western Pacific that is inexorably undermining the position of the United States and its partners in the region. We need a ...

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