The U. S. Navy today faces a struggle in the area of personal communications which could be more decisive than any naval action in world history.
A breakdown of tactical communications can have fatal results for a ship or a fleet. A failure of personal communications can have equally disastrous results. It is a deadlier threat because it is more difficult to recognize.
The message of the increasingly vital role of sea power in the nuclear missile era is clear, logical, and irrefutable. Failure to pass this word effectively to our own personnel and the American people can ultimately reduce the United States to the status of a second rate naval power.
We must attract and motivate competent, high-caliber young men to a Navy career.
We must effectively communicate the Navy’s budgetary requirements to the Department of Defense and Congressional committees concerned.
We must impress the general American public with the vital importance of sea power to Free World survival. We must do this to obtain public understanding and support.
These are essentially communication problems, and we can solve them if
a. We recognize that such problems exist primarily because of ineffective communications.
b. We devise a new (and consistent) approach to the personal communication problem.
c. We compile, maintain, and disseminate the current Navy “posture.”
d. We are able to inspire an all-hands effort to pass the word.
Prior to any communications effort, there must be a decision as to what is to be communicated. What is the Navy message? Admittedly, to get an agreement on this at the Tariffed levels would seem somewhat of a feat, but as long as we remain a military organization, this can be done.
The Navy Message
Reduced to essentials, the Navy message is simply this—that the key to the destiny of our nation lies in the world’s oceans.
There are three areas of discussion included in this message:
a. The Threat We Face.
b. The Problem of Free World Survival.
c. The Navy as the Primary Factor in Free World Security.
The Threat We Face
The reality of the inexorable projection of the threat of International Communism must be clearly understood. The broad range of this threat with its nuclear war, limited war, and cold war must be set forth. The implications of the Soviet ICBM efforts while maintaining a massive limited war machine must be recognized. Particularly significant is the unprecedented naval build-up which has moved the Red Navy into the number two position. We must all be well aware of the strategy behind the construction of a fleet of more than 400 submarines.
The Problem of Free World Survival
It is a human tendency to look for the simple answer to the complex problem. There is none. For a while, we may have thought we had it in a foreign policy based on the doctrine of massive retaliation. We know now that this is only a decreasingly important part of the over-all solution.
The enemy is also well aware of this as evidenced by this recent news item from the Wall Street Journal—“While the Soviets flaunt missiles they focus on little war weapons. The Russians are talking at the top of their lungs about their budding capacity to launch a push-button war. They and their Chinese partners are quietly devoting the bulk of their resources to preparation for an utterly different kind of a war.”
This disclosure does not mean that we can afford to let down our nuclear guard. It does, however, properly focus attention on the real challenge, small wars and local crises.
The Navy as the Primary Factor in Free World Security
The Fleet Ballistic Missile system is emerging as our most promising nuclear deterrent while each lesser crisis clearly demonstrates the primacy of naval power to furnish limited war capabilities required to control the seas, put troops ashore, and strike precisely in the area of aggression.
So far so good for a rough draft. One might conclude that putting the message in final form would be a simple step. Not so! It is at this stage that the dozen or so nit-pickers from each of the half-dozen Pentagon navies experience their finest hours. In the process of straining for the last one per cent we delay the communications value of the ninety-nine per cent of the Navy’s basic philosophy.
The basic philosophy of sea power and its strategic application through the ages has changed very little. The details of its specific tactical applications are, however, under constant review. This combination of basic strategic philosophy and tactical considerations as it applies to our current national defense issues is known as official “Navy posture.”
At first glance, this matter of maintaining a consistent well informed Navy posture might seem to be a simple task; actually, it is not. In Washington’s bureaucratic jungle, the various offices are not well informed of each other’s programs, plans, and policies. Within the bureaus themselves, the divisions in some cases exchange very little information. At times, even one desk in the division is ignorant of what is going on at the next.
Before final decision, Navy posture on all major issues should be freely and honestly debated by all persons and offices concerned. Each officer involved should keep his sights on the over-all benefit of the service rather than jealously guarding the interest of his particular kind of Navy. All conflicting viewpoints should be fairly heard and carefully weighed. New ideas emanating in many cases from very junior echelons should be recognized and evaluated in their original context without the stultifying effect of progressive senior modification. It is extremely important that prior to decision such discussions be confined to the circle of interested parties within the naval establishment. It is equally important that the final posture decisions be rapidly and continually promulgated to the entire Navy within the bounds of security.
The maintenance and rapid dissemination of official Navy posture both in the Navy Department and the Fleet requires painstaking preparation and constant top-level co-ordination and review—and most important, communication—with all who need to know. It is no longer sufficient to render factual information and supply valid supporting data. The fact that this information is true and significant is not enough.
We must effectively communicate.
To whom must we direct this communication effort? For practical purposes, the groups can be classified as follows:
a. The Officers and Men of the Navy
b. The Congress of the United States
c. The American People
The message for each group requires a somewhat different phraseology.
The Officers and Men of the Navy
How many destroyer skippers, carrier pilots, or minesweeper OOD’s could deliver an effective fifteen minute extemporaneous discourse on the “Increasing Importance of the United States Navy.” You know the answer. The answer is one which has serious implications to the writer.
Few people in the Navy have an appreciation of the broad subject of sea power. Fewer yet are able to be articulate about it.
Even more surprising is the lack of communications within the ship itself. Some may flatly declare that this doesn’t happen in their ship, but judging from the results of a recent survey, it does happen in too many.
How do we stand with regard to internal communications?
Of a group of destroyer sailors, it was found recently that
43% did not know the name of the Secretary of the Navy.
38% could not name the Chief of Naval Operations.
20% did not know the name of their ship’s Commanding Officer.
In the course of a series of interviews with junior officers of all types of ships, there was a genera] lack of understanding of the Navy’s roles and missions. This was definitely reflected in negative attitudes toward Regular Navy careers.
There was a surprising lack of understanding the purpose and importance of the current operations in which their ships were engaged.
Naval aviators did not know why the Navy needed carriers; officers from the Amphibs felt that their Force was obsolete. Grave doubts as to future command opportunities existed in the minds of a large number of destroyer junior officers.
This failure of internal communications is by no means confined to the Navy. It is a sign of the times which is of grave concern to the other military services, government agencies and large corporations.
Along with the unprecedented technological revolution which has occurred since 1935, a similar change has occurred in the make-up of our ship’s officer and enlisted complements. Consider, for example, the modestly armed, radarless, four-piper of the pre-World War II era. Compare this ship with its present counterpart. Consider at the same time the 1935 wardroom composed of Naval Academy graduates committed to a professional naval career. Contrast this with today’s situation wherein one is indeed fortunate to have a total of four regular career officers (including captain and exec). Similar changes have occurred in the forecastle.
We no longer have the career-minded dedication of our ensigns nor the tradition-steeped devotion of our senior petty officers.
The young officers and men of today’s Navy are more interested in the present and future than in the past. While tradition and heritage still have some significance, our personnel are primarily interested in where they are going. They are far more willing than their predecessors to face the competition of an alien civilian economy and security, which does not mean nearly so much as it once apparently did.
We must inspire in them the belief we have that the Navy is going places and has an interesting, challenging, and rewarding future.
As a submarine commander recently so aptly expressed it:
“We cannot expect to succeed in any inspirational program without positive leadership to start and carry on discussions of the Navy’s present and future. When we go outside of a person’s own experience, guidance is necessary. This is especially true when we relate the Navy individual to his own future which is shrouded in classified matter. Inspirational leadership is essential to prepare an individual for his future since most of the drive for this preparation must come from within. If we are to convert the jobholder into a professional man, we must convince him that we are ready and eager to receive and use the best of his new ideas. We must get him to thinking. We must provide for him a challenge to his intellect commensurate with his capacity. If we do not capture his interest, we cannot expect to keep his services when others are willing to pay more cash for them.”
Compensation itself is far from the crux of this problem of inspiration and retention. We must be able to communicate a complete sense of career satisfaction. Somewhere along the line we seem to have lost this ability.
Perhaps in our present maze of electronic circuitry we have wandered too far from the fundamentals of our profession—dedication to our country, to the sea, and to the Navy.
It seems strange and most unfortunate that these factors which are at the heart of the problem are so seldom mentioned. Only once in the writer’s experience did a senior officer ever bring himself to discuss these concepts from time to time with his ship’s company.
Obviously sheer sermonizing is worthless, but communication of deeply held patriotic convictions, combined with the power of personal example, form the foundation of an unbeatable and career-minded team.
Should the day arrive when patriotism becomes an outmoded concept and a Navy career just a seagoing Civil Service job, then we are in sad straits indeed. The trend unfortunately has been in that direction.
Here again the personal communication potential of the commanding officer assumes paramount importance. Here again the commanding officer has to hurdle an almost insurmountable roadblock—administrative paperwork.
Although we may have shown shortcomings in many areas of communication, here is one facet of administrative interest onto which we have unfortunately focused an almost hysterical attention.
Whatever the reason for the reams of superfluous instructions to implement instructions and reports reporting reports, we have become paper tigers prowling a typographical jungle. The skippers complain they can’t do their jobs because of the daily mass of letterhead trivia which engulfs their desks. The division officers don’t have time to run their divisions because of this paper snowstorm. If this situation were not so manifest, so tragic, it would be humorous.
In a sense we have become not seamen but notice and instruction composers, not naval commanders, but commissioned clerks. We don’t go to sea often enough for long enough, and when we do, some of us can’t wait to get back on the beach.
In many other respects the paperwork storm has obscured the true objectives of command and substituted other apparent ones. It is much more important that the report be legible than accurate; more important that it be prompt than significant.
This was often brought home to the squadron skippers, “be careful about the appearance of your ship’s paperwork because, after all, that is one of the best ways the Commodore has to judge you because of his limited time for individual shipriding.” Why? Because the Squadron Commander was required daily to dig himself out of the accumulation of eight ships’ worth of paper.
Nowhere is the Navy game of keeping the old man happy more assiduously played.
Any number can play and most do. The tragedy here is that if the old man is “worth his salt,” he doesn’t want to be kept happy. He merely wants the truth and in most cases he has to depend on his juniors to tell him.
Essentially the answer to the paperwork problem is a simple one:
Give naval operations back to the operators.
Give the command back to the captain.
Give the ship back to the seaman.
The Congress of the United States
The Congress of the United States bears the major responsibility in providing the necessary budgetary support for the Navy, present and future, which we know we need in order to survive.
Many of the military tragedies of World War II were aptly summarized by the phrase “too little and too late”—our Navy’s situation today—too few and too old.
Steadily dwindling from a World War II strength of 8,000, the U. S. Navy now numbers about 800 ships. Recent crises have stretched us almost to the breaking point.
The ships themselves are largely those designed in 1938 to fight a 1942 war. Their hulls are strained; their propulsion plants worn out; their guns ineffective. They have passed the point of no return where modernization is no longer feasible. We need new ships to replace the old—new platforms for newer weapons. We need assurance of continued Congressional understanding and support now in order to project our planning into the era of 1970.
The large, modern fleet we need to meet our constantly increasing international commitments costs money. It costs a lot of money-far more than we receive at present.
Our comptrollers, our planners, our top leaders know this. Congressional approval for our ships, weapons, and personnel programs is basic to their implementation. Members of the Congress for the most part are of logical and analytical minds. They are understandably skeptical and rightly, by virtue of their legal business and political backgrounds. If we have a sound and necessary program and fail to rally Congressional support, then we have failed properly to present —satisfactorily to communicate Navy needs.
Some of the reasons are obvious and easily recognized. A mere reference to the Congressional Record and Committee Reports of recent dates will disclose numerous discrepancies in the testimony purporting to represent official Navy postures. This is particularly noticeable in areas of ASW, R&D, and nuclear propulsion. Each of these differences cause damage far out of proportion to the magnitude of the specific discrepancy because the tendency is to cast doubt on the validity of the entire Navy case. On the Hill, the writer has often heard expressions similar to “If the Navy doesn’t know what it needs, how can we tell them?” In this area, as in no other, there is a demand for a consistent and articulate party line.
The American Public
The key to the stimulation of necessary Congressional support and hence a continuing combat-effective Navy is public understanding and support.
How do we rate in this department?
After the end of World War II, thousands of American citizens representing a balanced cross section of all walks of life were asked the following question:
“Which branch of the Armed Forces do you think would play the most important part in winning another World War?”
The Vote:
AIR FORCE............................... 74%
ARMY......................................... 6%
NAVY......................................... 4%
Qualified or No Opinion.............. 16%
Within the bounds of security, the general public has both a right and a need to know where our country stands with regard to its national defense capabilities. At present, there is an appalling lack of information and hence confusion in this area on the part of the American public.
During and since World War II, the Navy for the first time seriously ventured into the inexact science of public relations.
For the first time, too, the Navy was forced to admit that in order to succeed, it must adapt itself to laws (variable and indistinct as they may be) other than its own.
Two primary factors have impeded Navy progress in public relations:
(a) The failure of many senior levels to understand the myriad ramifications and infinite potential of public relations. This resulted in the adoption of the attitude that public relations is a cross that we must bear rather than accepting it as a vital adjunct toward our ultimate goal.
(b) There is a woeful lack of communication, co-ordination, and unity of purpose between the public information officers and the operators in actual practice.
Somehow these factors have resulted in the adoption of the “if we never get underway, we never run aground” theory of public relations. Our public information hull remains in most instances intact, but we do not log many sea miles. It must be clearly and widely understood that what may be an outstanding maneuver in public relations today may not work at all tomorrow. The evolution which makes a public information officer a hero at 1100 can result in his professional suicide at 1500 the same day. Because we are dealing with a mass of intangibles, the rules themselves must be elastic and subject to varying interpretations. This is baffling to the officer who lives entirely by the book. There is no definitive chapter in this subject area. This is why intuition plays such a dominant role in this field, and why there is not always a positive correlation between rank and ability.
There are many other confusing factors in this mass communication game. Although not a public information officer, the writer has been told by those civilians who are foremost in the field (and this is a civilian game) that one must consistently gamble to win, i.e., in a given number of tries, there will be a number of failures. This also is unsettling to a career officer in whose mind the finality of running aground is second only to that of death itself. This general situation of hesitancy on the part of senior line officers suddenly catapulted into this field is certainly readily understandable as well as the adverse effect of such leadership upon younger, more imaginative officers.
This brings us to another extension of the “keep the old man happy” routine—the cold war between the public information officers and the operators. Ideally, perhaps, a naval officer should be qualified in both departments but we are not faced with an ideal situation. Much can and should be done however toward getting better understanding of operational problems on the part of public information officers while fostering a much greater command appreciation of the importance of Navy public relations—particularly among smaller units.
These remarks might appear to be an across the board indictment of the Navy’s public relations program by one who knows less about it than those who are engaged in the effort. It is certainly not intended as such. These problems or similar ones are faced by all of the Services and by most big business enterprises.
It is only because every American citizen has a personal stake in the success of this program that otherwise minor details assume major importance.
It is because the average American citizen does not realize the extent of this stake that it devolves upon the Navy’s public relations program to tell him about it.
It is because the maintenance of the Navy we know we need to survive as a free Nation depends basically upon public understanding and support that passing the word becomes an “all hands” responsibility.
Conclusion
Tactics, armaments, and propulsion systems have undergone radical change but the operation of the human machine largely remains the same. It is upon the performance of this most complex device that the combat readiness of our Navy depends. In this respect, the supreme challenge of command leadership remains unchanged through the ages.
Freeman’s unsurpassed definition of a leader—“Be a man, know your stuff, take care of your men”—assumes even greater significance in this missile age. Now as never before, the part personal communications play in “take care of your men” is paramount. With increased complexity of weapons, it is increasingly difficult to keep the basic necessity for them closely in mind. With the tendency toward automation and fewer key men, the importance of each individual in uniform increases.
We, in the Navy, bear a similar responsibility toward the citizens out of uniform. Any semblance of continuing combat readiness by our Navy depends squarely upon continuing Congressional and public support.
Each one of us as commissioned officers, particularly those in command, must constantly evaluate himself as to how well he measures up in this vital area of personal communication. We must recognize the problem; we must understand its importance; we must do something about it.
This responsibility for communications is an “all hands” evolution. It is a task of unusual proportions, as great in magnitude as the stake our country has in her Navy.