I don’t have many heroes. But two of them passed away this past year. In September 2009, retired Rear Admiral Wayne E. Meyer, the father of the Aegis weapon system, died after a lengthy illness. Then, in July 2010, George Steinbrenner, principal owner and manager of the New York Yankees, was stricken by a massive heart attack and died suddenly.
Although they lived and worked in very different worlds, these two titans had something in common: They both took troubled organizations that were mired in mediocrity and built them into highly successful, world-class teams that delivered excellence—at sea and in the ballpark. And their legacies for the nation go well beyond the U.S. Navy and major league baseball, respectively. Their experiences offer lessons that apply to the Navy—and the nation—in the area of national defense against ballistic missiles.
Admiral Meyer’s success in developing Aegis was built on rock-solid systems-engineering principles. They were learned the hard way as the Navy went through technically challenging issues in the 1960s and 1970s, marked by the replacement of vacuum tubes with transistors and silicon wafers and the rapid growth of a Soviet Navy intent on challenging the U.S. Navy—any time, anywhere. The “build a little/test a little/learn a lot” process embraced by then-Captain Meyer spawned a true revolution at sea—from the uncertain and troubled anti-air warfare (AAW) capabilities of the Terrier/Tarter/Talos missile ships to the highly effective Aegis AAW system.
And Aegis, in turn, now serves as the basis for a highly successful ballistic-missile-defense (BMD) system. With the development of Aegis BMD under way, in 2002 the decision was made to shift the Navy’s BMD program office from within the Navy organization to the Department of Defense Missile Defense Agency (MDA).
There were initial concerns that the nation would lose the “Aegis heritage”—the world’s most effective fleet air-defense system—and the culture that made it a success. But the men and women of MDA—senior and junior, military and civilian—understood the potential implications of Aegis in the BMD world. In spite of periodic and continuing efforts to realign, change, modify, and revise the Aegis culture within MDA, its hassurvived and in many ways has profited.
In September 2009, President Barack Obama announced termination of the plan to place dedicated ground-based BMD interceptors and missile-defense radar sites in Poland and the Czech Republic. In their stead, he proposed a global sea-based capability centered on the Aegis BMD system already fitted out in Ticonderoga- and Arleigh Burke–class guided-missile ships. A land-based “Aegis Ashore” component could follow, providing enhanced BMD protection from both sea and land. As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates noted in The New York Times in a 20 September 2009 commentary on employing Aegis BMD, “The future of missile defense in Europe is secure.”
Aegis BMD is successful because it continues to be based on a set of fundamental elements that have been in place and proven time and again throughout some five decades of technical, engineering, programmatic, and operational excellence. Further, Aegis BMD has now survived—and grown—during almost a decade within the MDA organization. But in the offing are possible far-reaching changes for the Aegis BMD organization, structure, and processes. But, like a world champion baseball team, the Aegis team probably would fail if the changes are handled in an arbitrary way, by leaders who do not understand its heritage, culture, and potential.
My heroes would understand the importance of not breaking up a winning team. In 1927, the Yankees won baseball’s World Series. They did it the following year and again in 1932; starting in 1936, they won four years straight; then they won in 1941, 1943, and 1947. They did even better starting in 1949, winning five straight through 1953. They won in 1956, 1958, 1961, and 1962. Even in the six years through 1964 that the Yankees did not win the World Series, they won the American League pennant. In their heyday the Yankees ruled the league like no other club before or since.
They had a few setbacks, but they were the championship team, not just a good team. At times other teams and their fans demanded that someone had to “Break up the Yankees!” and level the playing field. The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) did just that: It bought the Yankees in 1965 as part of a broader policy of business diversification, building on the number-one news program in the market with Walter Cronkite in the anchor seat. One of the nation’s wealthiest firms, CBS purchased the Yankees and, as just a small piece in a huge empire, the team now existed to serve the larger interests of CBS—not just to win on the diamond.
As a component of CBS the Yankees did not have a principal owner. Instead, CBS used a corporate model and entrusted the Yankees to Mike Burke as the president. He had no experience in running a baseball team, but was earlier involved in show-business ventures like the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. After all, baseball was show business, right?
Some ownership functions were diffused throughout the larger CBS corporation, and a clear chain of authority and responsibility ceased to exist as many executives could overrule the Yankees president. The corporation made only token attempts to continue close connections with the players and the culture of the past. The team rapidly lost its winning focus. In 1966, the Yankees finished last in the American League for the first time in 54 years. After finishing next-to-last in 1967, the team’s fortunes improved somewhat, but the Yankees would not become contenders again until 1974. The bottom line was that no CBS-owned team won the American League pennant, much less the World Series. CBS had destroyed an excellent, winning organization.
In 1973, the network sold the team at a loss to an ownership group headed by Steinbrenner. He was a Cleveland-based shipbuilder who, while he had played some sports, knew almost nothing about baseball. For the next 23 years he ran the team as he had run all of his other businesses, implanting his own culture.
But soon realizing the situation, Steinbrenner reestablished the old Yankee ownership model. He also had departed significantly from the Yankee culture, however, alienating older players and concentrating on newspaper headlines at the expense of team unity. Managerial “churn” was almost constant. He changed managers 20 times during the next 23 years, and general managers 11 times during the next 30. Despite this chaos, he refocused the organization on winning and produced champions in 1977 and 1978, with two other World Series appearances in 1976 and 1981. Then the team went on a 15-year championship drought––never appearing in the World Series.
Eventually, Steinbrenner began to appreciate the wisdom of real baseball men and the value of the “Yankee Way.” He made amends with retired players and linked new players to their rich past. By the mid-1990s, he was deferring more to his baseball people, sticking with and empowering his manager and general manager, and, for the most part, staying out of their way. The result was the modern Yankee dynasty that won the World Series in 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2000. The team has been at the top or close to the top of the standings ever since, winning the World Series again in 2009. With Steinbrenner’s death, the team has been taken over by his sons. It is too early to tell whether they have the wisdom to continue relying on baseball professionals and preserving the Yankees culture or whether they will “break up the Yankees,” as CBS did. The margin of success in baseball can be very fragile, indeed.
I knew Wayne Meyer well; I never met George Steinbrenner, but had been a Yankees fan since elementary school. There is a direct link between these two men. The Aegis BMD program is unquestionably one of the most, if not the most, successful of the nation’s several BMD initiatives. Much of the success of Aegis BMD can be attributed to the intensive, comprehensive, seven-year test program involving 23 live-firings between January 2002 and the end of 2009, with more increasingly challenging tests planned for the future. Since the first Aegis BMD intercept test, the U.S. Navy’s element of the national BMD system has enjoyed unequaled success: 19 target missile intercepts, including dual intercepts by two interceptors during two test events, against only four misses (and those misses yielded valuable information that advanced the program).
Additionally, the 2007–9 tests involving missile destroyers of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force demonstrated the promise of linking the Aegis capabilities of several allied navies. This linkage also is crucial for European Aegis BMD, as several European navies are procuring the Aegis weapon systems, presaging potential partnering opportunities for mutual self-defense and greatly enhanced coalition interoperability. In several respects the nascent Aegis BMD global enterprise epitomizes the “1,000-Ship Navy” and Global Maritime Partnership championed by several recent Chiefs of Naval Operations.
One of the more striking examples of Aegis BMD effectiveness was the historic shoot-down of an inactive 5,000-pound reconnaissance satellite. There were major technical and operational challenges in the shoot-down, and a comprehensive and integrated system-engineering and planning approach was required. Aegis BMD leadership galvanized a proven and veteran Navy-industry team to make the necessary changes to the ships, systems, missiles, and crews in record time. On 20 February 2008, the USS Lake Erie (CG-57) destroyed the satellite with a single Standard Missile-3. It was an outstanding accomplishment made possible by a remarkably competent––indeed, a championship––team.
The historic successes of the Aegis BMD system can be attributed in large part to the management of the programs through direct lines of control (and accountability) to the MDA director and chief engineer. But recent and proposed process and organizational changes within MDA undoubtedly would dilute this line of strict accountability. If put in place, the proposed changes would result in a dilution of authority and the loss of control over the myriad details needed to field focused-BMD capabilities in multi-mission warships.
(Continued in the December issue.)