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Proceedings editors Fred Rainbow and John Miller recently talked with the Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon, reviewing his first year in office.
Proceedings: You have challenged the people who work for you to think boldly—to be revolutionary, not evolutionary. What are some of the revolutionary results?
Admiral Boorda: What we’re doing at this stage is making it possible for people to think in a revolutionary way. The important thing is to know when it makes sense to improve something you already have, and—on the other hand—when it makes sense to start with something totally new.
In the case of the surface combatant ships we will need for the next century, for example, it makes sense to look at both sides of the issue. I’ve tried to encourage people to be revolutionary in thinking about the kinds of ships we will need. At the same time, however, someone must be evolutionary in thinking about it, so that at least one of those potential ship designs will be a straight-line evolution from the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.
I don’t know how all this is going to turn out, nor should we know at this stage of exploration. Right now we don’t know what the ships of the 21st century are going to look like. We may think we know what we want them to do, but we must validate that, too. This kind of thinking is pretty revolutionary in itself these days.
Proceedings: In our last interview, you mentioned that one of your biggest headaches was finding money for unfunded operations such as Haiti, especially at the end of the fiscal year. Admiral Boorda: You bet.
Proceedings: And a couple weeks later,
we interviewed General Mundy, and that was one of his leading problems as well. Has that situation improved any? Admiral Boorda: As we speak, we’re working on a supplemental appropriation bill. It’s going to the full House Appropriations Committee soon. That unfunded operations bill we have to pay is the number-one worry on every service chief’s mind. If you went to the Atlantic and Pacific fleet commanders or the Commander-in-Chief of our naval forces in Europe they’d tell you the same thing.
Admiral Boorda has committed to visit as many fleet units as possible— here, arriving on board the USS Inchon (LPH-12). Through February 1995—with ten months on the job— Admiral Boorda had visited 66 ships, seeing more than 60,000 sailors.
But we’re moving down the line and we’re going to get it fixed. The question will be: Will we get it fixed quickly enough—before we are forced to take money from areas that may be detrimental to our readiness? Personally, I think
we’re going to get the money pretty quickly.
Proceedings: Does the recently announced $25 billion give-back indicate that we 're bottoming out as far as the draw down is concerned—or is that just a small upward spike on a longterm downward curve?
Admiral Boorda: If you’re talking about a draw down in forces—no. On the other hand, if you’re talking about the draw down in budget reductions—it goes a bit of the way toward slowing that decline, but we are continuing to drop this year and the next year.
The lion’s share of the money will appear in the out years, but it has added some money to our budget already, and in that respect, it has been quite helpful. For example, that’s how we paid for the first two FFGs [guided-missile frigates] we saved from decommissioning in 1996.
Proceedings: A major impact of the draw down must be on readiness. Are we still measuring readiness in the same traditional way: people, gear, and training? Or are there new aspects being looked at—say, in measuring readiness for operations other than war?
Admiral Boorda: To be quite honest, we’re still measuring readiness in the same old ways as we find a better way to do it. The people either are there or they aren’t. Equipment either works or it doesn’t. People are either trained or they are not.
We’re measuring some other things too. Every month we have a meeting of the Senior Readiness Oversight Committee [SROC]. It’s the Secretary of the Navy, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and me from the naval services, and the secretaries and chiefs of staff from the other services.
Admiral Owens from the Joint Staff and the Deputy Secretary of Defense chair the SROC when we meet to look at military readiness every month.
We go a little bit beyond the traditional ways of measuring readiness. We ask: If
Admiral Boorda’s goal is to keep the Bottom-Up Review number of 346 battle-force ships in commission. Reaching that number will require keeping more of the Oliver Hazard Perry (FFG-7)-class guided-missile frigates—here, the John L. Hall (FFG-32) transits the Suez Canal to support Desert Shield/Storm—in commission than originally planned.
we had to respond to an MRC [major regional contingency] on a certain date, what are the war plans we would need to support our action? What forces would we have to send to what places? Could we actually do it?
We look about two weeks back. Last month, we had the meeting toward the end of January, so we arbitrarily picked the date of 15 January and said, if a regional contingency in Korea or Iraq had broken out on that date and the war plan for that contingency requires certain naval forces, could we have provided those forces— trained and ready—by the date specified?
And then if another contingency breaks out 45 days later, could we also provide forces for that? That’s a very good way to measure your readiness for very specific contingencies. As things turned out, we could have provided the forces by the dates required in January—maybe even a bit earlier in some cases. That assumes everything goes according to thp plan, of course.
Readinessifor operations other than war can mean all kinds of things. They can be as easy as Rwanda—not necessarily an easy operation to conduct, but relatively easy to determine logistical requirements for the Navy and Marine Corps. On the other hand, determining requirements for Somalia was quite difficult for a while. There are many variables in operations other than war, and to say you’re ready to cover the full spread is a little risky. Therefore, I’d prefer to look at readiness for war fighting, and then look at operations other than war as lesser included operations when possible.
Proceedings: There’s been a lot in the press about the frigates. They were on the way out until you put on the brakes. How many frigates will you be able to retain, how long do you plan to keep them, and what are you going to do with them?
Admiral Boorda: It’s no secret that my goal is to keep about 15 that we had otherwise planned to decommission.
And my reason is basic: The frigates are good ships. Look where they are operating right now. They’re all over the world doing essential tasks.
The frigates have a lot of useful life left in them and a lot of capability. Obviously, they don’t have the same capability as an Aegis-equipped cruiser, so they’re not going to do Aegis-cruiser type work. But there is a lot of work they can do and do well while keeping PersTempo and OpTempo from being impacted too severely by unscheduled operations.
What I am trying to do is to go back to the Bottom-Up Review number of 346 battle-force ships. Recent budget figures had us going down to 330.
Proceedings: Continuing with the issue of forward presence, directly related to the number of frigates, we get into the aircraft carrier versus the land-based bomber issue. Part of that argument has hinged on the definition of an aircraft carrier. What do you say to those who count the amphibious warfare ships as carriers?
Admiral Boorda: They don’t understand. They really don’t understand. Any Navy man or woman who ever looked at an aircraft carrier and a large-deck amphib understands. An aircraft carrier brings a full range of aviation capabilities—an entire wing of capability and more: early warning, electronic warfare, strike, fighter, tanker, antisubmarine warfare, antisurface warfare, and so on. It’s all in the package. (The Air Force would call it a composite wing.) And that package is available to the naval commander—or the joint task force commander—in almost every war-fighting instance, today. That’s what an aircraft carrier brings.
Large-deck amphibs, on the other hand, are part of amphibious ready groups with Marine air-ground task forces embarked. They have the ability to help get troops across the beach, move inland, and—if required—hold the door open for follow-on forces.
Those are very different capabilities—apples and oranges. It’s like comparing an 18-wheeler to a convertible. They’re both wheeled vehicles, but beyond that the similarity stops.
The comparison between aircraft carriers and bombers also is an apples-and-oranges thing, but let me give you a different analogy for that one. That’s like comparing a Safeway and a Jiffy-Lube. They’re both places where you spend money and buy commodities you need, but they’re very different commodities. Bombers and carriers with their air wings don’t compete with each other. They do very different things most of the time.
The carrier is a very flexible platform with tactical air on it. It brings the complete package I just described. The carrier doesn’t require host-nation support and it can strike again and again and again.
The bomber, especially in its future configurations with precision-guided munitions, brings a large carrying capability. It flies relatively few sorties, but it can fly a long way. That’s why you want it—for its long reach. And when it does fly a sortie, it drops a lot of ordnance— all in the same place. These are vastly different capabilities.
The bomber doesn’t provide close air support; the aircraft carrier’s tactical aircraft can. So can Air Force land-based tactical air. I really think some people are making specious comparisons between things that just don’t match up very well.
To be quite honest about it, I think we need bombers. I’m not an anti-bomber crusader. I am an advocate of a strong national defense, with all the many capabilities this nation should have.
Proceedings: In the February Proceedings, an Air Force officer writes about working the bombers and Navy carrier air together, based on his experience in working with one of the Navy fighter squadrons. . . .
Admiral Boorda: That’s exactly right. You know, we’ve been doing air defense
Those people who count the amphibious warfare ships as carriers “really don’t understand It’s like compar
ing an 18-wheeler to a convertible.” The aircraft carrier—here, USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72)—brings a full-capability wing to the scene.
suppression for the Air Force for a long time. When you start talking to the people who actually fly airplanes, when you start talking to people who actually drive ships, you begin to see these service differences melt away. The operators already know—or are learning—how to work together to get the job done. Sooner or later, we’ll find it out in Washington, too. We’re coming along, though. We’re actually educating ourselves. We are becoming more joint every day. The operators are ahead of us and that is probably good.
Proceedings: An impressive number of Air Force officers now are playing in the Open Forum, in the Proceedings forum. They’re picking it up and they are participating.
Admiral Boorda: Great!
Proceedings: You mentioned the electronic warfare role. The Department of Defense has canceled the Air Force’s EF-lll. The Navy now will provide electronic combat support to the Air Force. What challenges does that present to you?
Admiral Boorda: It’s not going to be too hard. It’s a money issue, really. If we get the dollars, we can come up with the airplanes and the aviators. What we can’t come up with right away is the money from our limited budget. So we’re working that with the Secretary of Defense at the moment.
In the next budget, we’re going to need some relief. Once we do that, I think we can provide electronic warfare services quite nicely. We’ve been doing it in the past. It is not unusual to see EA-6Bs flying in support of Air Force aircraft.
Just recently, the Marines sent a squadron of EA-6Bs to Sigonella to support operations over Bosnia—and they weren’t just supporting Air Force aircraft. EA-6Bs from carriers recently have assumed this mission. During a portion of the time, when the carrier was elsewhere, the EA-6Bs have accomplished this mission by flying from land-based fields in the area. In addition, they were supporting Navy aircraft—other than the EA-6Bs from the carrier—and also the aircraft of many nations who were contributing to Operation Deny Flight or doing humanitarian work in the region.
Proceedings: There’s been some talk about the Navy taking the lead in theater ballistic missile defense. What is the case for the Navy’s doing that? Admiral Boorda: I’m not really interested in who has the lead, and I’m not sure just what “the lead” means, anyway. There is a joint office, the Ballistic Missile Defense Office, which is truly joint. Right now, it has an Army three-star in charge, and that’s fine. A large portion of the funds comes to them, and then— consistent with the Defense Guidance and with congressional oversight—they allocate money for the various tests and demonstrations that need to be done. The services also budget for some of that, and we work very closely together. We have a rear admiral working there, and I recently added another ten people to that staff.
If you want to use the word “lead”— not in a budgetary or bureaucratic sense, but in the mission-accomplishment sense—I think that we are strong players. This is a tough problem and it’s a problem that needs to be solved because theater ballistic missiles are going to proliferate. There’s no question about that. We saw that as far back as the Gulf War. Many more countries have them now.
The technology of theater ballistic missiles will only move in one direction: toward longer ranges, greater accuracy, and more lethality. That’s how weapons evolve. As a nation we must be able to shoot down these things.
I don’t think it is too parochial to say that I believe the Navy has a potential capability that the nation needs. We’ve already bought the launcher system. It’s in the Aegis-equipped cruisers and the Ar- leigh Burke-class destroyers, which are vertical-launch capable and will be able to fire the missile that can shoot down Scuds or their follow-ons.
Our ships can do that without a need for foreign permission to bring our systems ashore. That’s very important. And we’re well along in our ability to do this. We’re going to do a test in early March. It is a test only because the technology is brand new, out on the edge of the envelope. We're going to intercept a Scudlike missile at very high altitude, outside of the atmosphere. Let’s hope it works. But even if it doesn’t, we’ll learn a lot from the test. This is a capability the country needs.
I believe we also need land-based systems for this mission. We don’t want to put all our eggs in one basket, and we may even need an air-based system such as a boost-phase intercept. We need this capability urgently, and we should be trying every avenue to get it.
Think of it this way: If theater ballistic missiles are going to have longer range, and be more accurate and more lethal—and if I’m also right when I say that we’re not going to have a lot of troops stationed ashore most of the time in the places where the conflicts are going to be, because we’re bringing our land- based forces back to the United States— then we will need sealift and airlift to get those land-based forces into the areas where you are going to fight.
Sealift and airlift mean ports and airfields so the Army and Air Force units can get land-based systems into the theater. It may mean Marine forces going ashore first to establish the lodgments we need. Since we expect these Scuds (or a follow-on) to be very accurate, we need
As a Ship Handler
Proceedings: Is that pretty much a done deal now? And if it looks like production decisions are going to go forward, what kind of pressure will this put on Navy air dollars in terms of keeping our flight decks filled with the fast burners?
Admiral Boorda: The money for V-22 procurement is not in competition quite like that, where if you buy one kind of airplane you can’t buy another. I don’t think of APN (Aircraft Procurement Navy) dollars as a pot that can never expand. We determine which programs we want to fund, and then we try to get the money for those programs. An airplane would compete for funding against everything else—not just other airplanes. I think it’s important to bring along the V-22 now. The airplane is coming along.
Boorda’s reputation as a “people person" runs wide and deep through the Navy and in Washington, where for three years he served as Chief of Naval Personnel. Part of it is simply his charm, his ability to work a crowd, but those who have served with him at sea say his more interesting skills are those of a warfighter, captain, and battle- group commander.
What Boorda flat-out brags about is driving a ship. “I am, modestly, the best ship handler in the Navy—still to this very day,” he says, smiling. “There are some people who are very good. But nobody’s close.’
Boorda earned his commission in 1962 after being encouraged by a chief petty officer, George Everding, to apply for a “seaman-to-admiral program’ that was later dis continued. (Instituting an updated version of the program was Boorda’s first act as CNO.) Newly commissioned, Boorda served on board two destroyers, primarily as a weapons officer. His first two captains “let me drive a lot.” In his second ship, he says, “they called me the duty driver when conditions got hard.”
Boorda later commanded a mine sweeper and the guided-missile destroyer Farragut. Harbor pilots in Norfolk still talk of his daring in bringing ships in and out of port, says an
a way to shoot them down while our land-based systems are getting in place.
Proceedings: Pretty good argument. Admiral Boorda: If we're going to rely on sealift and airlift to deliver our people, then we'd better have a way to handle this missile threat while we re still at sea—at least at the beginning of the fight. It’s time for us to get on with our system, and so we’re doing that. Whether that gives us the "lead" or not, I really don’t care. I just want to do the best job we can in developing this capability. In the end, to be effective, it must be a joint capability with all the various systems working together.
Proceedings: One other aspect of the new technology, of course, is the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, and last summer the Deputy Secretary of Defense’s memo seemed to say that its funding was in some jeopardy. But since then, we keep seeing it pass milestone after milestone. . . .
Admiral Boorda: Yes, it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. . . .
officer who served under Boorda on the Farragut during the mid-’70s. Boorda often declined to use tugs to reach or leave the pier. This delighted his deck force, because tugs scratch paint.
“Great big ship, just drove it up to the pier,” Boorda recalls. “It became kind of a red badge of courage, which can get in lots of trouble. You’d get back down to your cabin”—he feigns wiping his brow—“and go, "Damn!”’
More impressive than his ship driving, say several former Farragut officers, was how Boorda trained his crew to fight. The Farragut fired its guns as often as possible and volunteered for as many missile shoots as the fleet commander allowed.
“His approach was to use all of our training allowance and all of anyone else’s,” says one officer.
One day the Farragut was invited to fire at an old Navy hull. Some A-6 attack aircraft got first crack at it. The ship was to finish it off with guns and missiles, beginning at 1700 hours—5 p.m.
“But at 1700 the aviators were saying, ‘Five more minutes, a couple more runs,”’ remembers an officer aboard that day. “We said no, but they keep coming. So the CO says, ‘Light ’em up.’” Missiles locked on approaching aircraft, setting off cockpit alarms. “They cleared the range in a hurry.”
T. Philpot
We’ve got authorization to have it in our budget from the Secretary of Defense— and now from the President, because his budget went over this morning with the V-22 in it.
I’m also happy to say that the Hornet funding is solid this year, for the buy of 12 F/A-18C/Ds this year and for F/A-18E&F research and development and the first procurement. We’ve pinned a lot on the F/A-18E&F project. It will fly by the end of this year.
Will both aircraft make it through the congressional cycle? I think they will.
Proceedings: It’s been a while since our last real surge in the Caribbean, but we have ah upcoming operation in Somalia to extract the U.N. forces, and we still have forces on station around the world. A while back, this was creating PersTempo, OpTempo problems.
Are those numbers beginning to look any better, or are they still pretty much staying on the margin?
Admiral Boorda: We are going to stick with six-month deployments. We’re just going to do that, barring a war—and at
There literally is a tug of war among many competing interests for qualified young people—here, South Carolina’s NROTC Unit takes on the cadets of the university’s Army and Air Force ROTCs.
that point, everybody would expect to be wherever the war was. But we’re also working hard to stay within OpTempo and PersTempo limits. Last year with Haiti and Cuba we had a hard time doing that and, for a short period, ships were going negative in those critical categories.
That’s one of the reasons I want to keep the FFGs. I don’t know when another crisis is going to occur, and our Navy is shrinking to the numbers where we soon may be getting stretched too thin.
Most of the time, we try to do nonroutine operations with ships that would normally be deployed. Take Somalia right now. If you look at the combined task force that is off Somalia—with ships of several nations—the U.S.
Navy contingent is composed of ships that would have been deployed at this time in any event. Instead of being in the Persian Gulf, they’ve been moved down off Mogadishu.
There’s one exception that our planning told us that they needed a little more force so we deployed a WestPac home- ported ship, the Belleau Wood, with a special Marine air- ground task force embarked, as part of the combined task force.
We will make up for the Belleau Wood's added OpTempo and time out of home port by adjusting her deployment schedule. Our Navy is big enough now to make those kinds of schedule modifications. However, we must continue to make sure that requirements don’t outdistance our ability to meet them without hurting our ships and our people.
Proceedings: Along that line, since the end of the Cold War we have been able to gap certain deployments that were unthinkable to gap before, such as in the Med and Atlantic. . . .
Admiral Boorda: Exactly.
Proceedings: Is there any chance of widening that gap window so we can keep more forces back in the United States and just send them forward on call?
Admiral Boorda: We really don’t want to do that. Right now we are trying to establish as much presence as we can within our OpTempo and PersTempo guidelines, and keep forces either in a theater—such as the Central Command— or close by in another theater, able to reach the Central Command’s theater quickly. We did just that last summer when we sent the George Washington carrier battle group out of the Persian Gulf into the Adriatic to take station off Bosnia.
When Saddam Hussein moved south in October, we brought the carrier right back out of the Adriatic, and sent her back to the Central Command area of responsibility. That more than doubled our combat air power in the region, and accounted for more than 80% of the preci- sion-guided-munitions-capable aircraft, which was an important contribution.
When we look at Operation Vigilant
Warrior—our response to Saddam Hussein—the Navy had a very large role. The Marine Corps played a very large role too, along with the Tripoli amphibious ready group. They took station off Kuwait by the second day.
You can’t do that if they’re not forward deployed and either in the area or very close by in an adjacent theater. And our plan is to keep doing that. That’s what . . From the Sea” was about. That’s what “Forward . . . From the Sea” is about. And that’s what our role in supporting the national security strategy is about.
Proceedings: The end of the Cold War has hit the nuclear submarine community hard. With significantly fewer numbers of nuclear submarines, what kinds of things are being done to keep the nuclear power community healthy? Admiral Boorda: We’ll train fewer people in nuclear power school, but not a lot fewer. Basically, we were running a large
submarine force with fewer officers and lower ratios of officers per ship. Now, those billet ratios are going to return to parity with the rest of the Navy, and it will mean more variety in careers and maybe a little more time at home for some.
Competition for command will become much keener, because there are fewer commands to go around.We had nearly a 100% command opportunity, with no surplus officers. We were having to get each officer to do longer command tours and almost everybody who was doing a good job got a command tour. Now, the submarine community is finding that there is indeed competition for a command tour and that it is possible to do some other things like joint duty or Washington, D.C., duty or obtaining an advanced education. The new flexibility is good for everybody, and that’s the way we’re approaching it.
Proceedings: Traditionally, the major sources for naval officers are the Naval Academy, NROTC, and OCS [Officer Candidate School]. You've now widened the opportunity for enlisted professionals to become officers. What do you foresee as the mix of the commissioning sources—much the same as it’s been, or changing? Admiral Boorda: Well, it’s interesting you’d ask that. We just started the Seaman- to-Admiral Program this year, with 50 selectees who have absolutely eyewatering records. These people have everything it takes to succeed; now we’ll see if they do. I’m sure the vast majority of them will.
Just last week, the LDO [limited duty officer] and chief warrant officer selection board reported out. Again, really good people were picked, and we are still going to commission great young officers from the Naval Academy, NROTC, and OCS. The mix of all those commissioning sources needs to be reexamined, so I’ve asked Chief of Naval Personnel to take another look at all the numbers.
We recruit about 4,600 officers in a normal year. Do we have it about right, or do we want to turn up one valve a little bit or one down a little bit? My guess is that if we make some marginal changes, they’ll be small. I don’t want to make the Seaman-to-Admiral Program bigger than about 50 a year, but I want that program because it gives you a good seasoning of people who have lived the Navy experience from the bottom up, and that’s healthy. You don’t want your entire officer corps to duplicate that experience, but it’s good to have some who have.
The LDO community is fantastic, as are the warrant officers, and we need those people to get the job done. They provide a special kind of leadership for our enlisted people and add a flavor to the wardrooms of the Navy that is impossible to duplicate.
You still need the lion’s share of your people to come into the officer corps in the more traditional ways, through college-degree programs and through the Naval Academy. So if we move the numbers around at all, we may move them a percent or two, this way or that, not a great deal.
You have to remember that we’re tinkering with success here. This is already a successful Navy, and I don’t want to turn over anything less successful at the end of my watch.
Proceedings: How is the immediate NROTC scholarship program working? Admiral Boorda: That program is working. We must be able to compete for the highest quality young people at a time when colleges are recruiting hard, both in the United States and abroad, to keep their classrooms full.
Those who have high SAT [Scholastic Aptitude Test] scores, who rank in the top 10 or 20% of their class, and have leadership potential for the NROTC program or the Naval Academy are going to be wooed by recruiters from many universities. The last thing we need is a long application process that looks like a set of income tax forms.
We still have to do all the background work and check out the individuals to be sure they’re physically fit and morally sound and properly motivated. But if you assume that most people are honest and you verify their test scores and class standing, and they look physically fit— then you can stick out your hand (after making a quick phone call) and say, “You have a scholarship, if all the rest of the details work out!” That’s a very powerful recruiting tool.
Naval Academy recruiters can do that, too. Admiral [Charles] Larson and I have talked about it. What I like is that our applicants’ SAT scores are up, and we’re able to attract some really fine minority youngsters well within our standards. I think that both the Naval Academy and the NROTC program are going to benefit. Most important, the Navy and the nation will benefit.
Proceedings: Doctrine has become a
hot-button issue recently with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff making joint doctrine authoritative. What does this change mean to the Navy?
Admiral Boorda: I don’t think doctrine can truly be doctrine if it’s not authoritative. Otherwise, it’s just information. And there has been some recent discussion and debate about just how authoritative should it be. We train commanders to assess the situation, using doctrine as a guideline, and ultimately to make their own decisions about what is right—but there are some parts of doctrine that need to be authoritative. For example, the procedures that go with air warfare must be followed closely. If you don’t get them right, fratricide is a definite possibility. Mistakes in the procedural part of warfare can be very dangerous.
Now, there are other kinds of doctrine, too. There’s doctrine for employment of forces—not the procedures necessarily, but the “how,” the basic tenets of employment—whether naval forces, air forces, or ground forces. There, the doctrine needs to be specific and, I think, reasonably authoritative.
The joint force commander needs to be able to deviate from doctrine if he sees that it makes sense to do so, but I think he should look at the doctrine closely and understand how it is written, why it was written that way, and what he’s risking when he deviates from it. After that, if he wants to deviate, he should go ahead—he’s in command.
If you will accept my words “reasonably authoritative” with respect to what doctrine should be, then I’m right on board with the Chairman.
Proceedings: We usually end an interview by asking if we ’ve missed anything that you would like to discuss. Admiral Boorda: We really didn’t talk about personnel matters very much, so let me cover a couple of those.
I am getting ready to make a decision on new fitness reports for officers and new enlisted evaluations. I’ve received all the inputs from the BuPers teams that worked this issue, and they have presented some good alternatives.
I’ll tell you and my fellow members of the Naval Institute that not one of the alternatives by itself was attractive to me, but features of each of the alternatives were attractive. I’ve been spending my weekends doing a little mixing and matching. BuPers did a fantastic job, and in briefing me they gave me three alternatives for both the officer fitness reports and the enlisted evaluations. I found great things in each of the three alternatives for each of those systems. I will take the ones I like best, make sure they fit together in a way that makes sense, and then give them back to BuPers and say, “Okay, make sense out of what I did and let’s see what you can publish.”
We want to get this done rather quickly. It’s time for our system to be overhauled.
Careers are at stake when you do things like this, so you have to be extremely careful to get it right the first time. You can’t make a mistake, then go back and fix it. That’s why I’m spending so much time raising my own comfort level before I decide.
We’re working on some other things too. In this latest budget there are good things for people. Pay raises are funded, so we’re not going to have to worry about where to get the money, which otherwise would come out of other personnel accounts. There also are quality-of-life enhancements in there. Some of the money that the Secretary of Defense reserved for quality pf life added to money we had already put in the budget. We also kept our pledge with regard to upgrading housing and child care and a host of other personnel and manpower initiatives that will truly make people’s lives better.
These upgrades are incremental. You won’t see a big change in any one year, but if you start adding up year after year, you can see a real difference in people programs.
Finally, I’m really excited about what we’ve been able to accomplish in the restructuring of training for deploying forces—and then in a related way, restructuring the deploying forces themselves. In doing all this, we hope to increase the time at home for people while they’re between deployments.
Despite this relief for the individual, I think we’re going to produce battle forces just as ready as the ones we have produced before. They’re going to be stressed a little bit less between deployments; they’re going to have a little more time for maintenance—on average, about 19 days more per ship per year—and I think it’s going to help everybody.
You’re not seeing big pronouncements coming out in messages. What you’re seeing,is a lot of work by the chain of command, trying to get it right—and then the program change comes. I think that’s going to be a good way to do business while I’m the CNO. We’re going to keep trying to do that.
You know, I’m sure that three years or so from now I’m going to sit down and say, “Boy, there’s a lot more I would have liked to have done,”—but for the first nine months I think we’re off to a pretty good start. And the nice part is that I’m not doing all that much of anything. I’m just keeping my eye on a lot of good people, showing their stuff.