Retaining Our Most Talented . . . to Fight and Win
How to Make Flag
(See B. Cooper, pp. 42–48, and K. Eyer, p. 16, January 2016 Proceedings)
Captain Bill Hamblet, U.S. Navy—I thoroughly read and enjoyed the January issue. I thought the article by Captain Cooper about new surface-warfare officer career paths was quite good, and I was struck by how it contradicts the piece by Captain Eyer on “How to Make Flag.” One would hope that very good junior and mid-grade officers could still make flag even if they weren’t on some secret (and “probably illegal”?!?) list from an early point in their career and even if they weren’t “fully supportive of Navy policies, whatever they may be.” That sounds rather Orwellian to me. While I can see the need for some “company men,” one would hope there’d be room in our Navy for mustangs who challenge conventional wisdom, think outside the box of accepted policies, strategies, and tactics, and lead the Navy to the next big thing. I also hope there’s room among the future admirals of the Navy for some who took advantage of the new career flexibility to make good family—not just career—choices. I applaud Captain Cooper’s comments that:
We have also codified paths for officers to pursue extraordinary opportunities that have historically been difficult to support through a legacy career path, like the Olmsted Scholar program.
How do we know who is talented and who should pursue which option? We have decentralized the detailing process . . . away from Millington, Tennessee, and toward the captain’s cabin. Nobody knows our wardrooms better than our commanding officers, so we have empowered shipboard leadership to “make the call” and shape the future of their junior officers.
Is it just me, or do those logical, sensible policies seem at odds with “secret lists”? Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz ran his ship aground when he had command as a junior officer—a mistake he was allowed to recover from but one that certainly would have kept him off any secret list of potential flag officers. I also applaud the recent USNI Blog post by Lieutenant Roger Misso, who eloquently answered “How to Make Flag” with a poignant commentary titled “How to Make a Difference, Not Flag” (see http://blog.usni.org/2015/12/30/how-to-make-a-difference-not-flag).
Robert M. Rosenthal—I once discussed the promotion to general with a retired Army colonel. He said that the cadets at West Point knew by the end of their first year who would make general and who would not. There were usually two groups of students; one were the cadets who viewed being an officer as a job, the other were the cadets who viewed the Army as a career. The job group usually had fun and enjoyed life. The career group slept with their backbones straight as a ramrod and tended not to have fun. He said that when he returned for reunions, he found that the cadet opinions at the end of year one were usually right.
The Well-Educated Officer
(See W. R. Bray, pp. 56–61, January 2016 Proceedings)
Lieutenant Commander James B. Craven III, U.S. Naval Reserve (Retired)—Captain Bray’s piece took me back to my plebe year, 1960–61, at the U.S. Naval Academy and the two courses I had as a midshipman that had the most lasting impact on me. Certainly the STEM curriculum is vitally important and essential. I understand that, even as I wait, slide rule at the ready, for this technology fad to pass. That said, no academic experience can top the survey courses in American and British literature, taught by the best teacher I had, then-Captain Earl Whipple, U.S. Marine Corps, Naval Academy Class of 1954. He taught me to appreciate Milton, Shakespeare, and the like, and what a privilege it was.
Rethinking Survivability
(See R. Hilger, pp. 36–41, January 2016 Proceedings)
Alex J. Daverede III—Lieutenant Commander Hilger has written a thought-provoking article about ship survivability. He rightfully observes that history gives us such potent lessons learned with much treasure, sweat, and, unfortunately, blood. His retrospective look at shipboard survivability begins with the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal; however, I must disagree with his assertion that serious examination of ship survivability began with World War II. Combat survivability became a growing concern with naval constructors as soon as iron and steel replaced wood as the primary construction material of warships in the mid-19th century. Compartmentalization, armor, anti-torpedo protection, water-excluding material, and more were in place to protect warships well before 1939.
The author also sells short the USS San Francisco (CA-38) during the November 1942 encounter he relates. Actually, the heavy cruiser tackled not one but two Japanese battleships, the Hiei and the Kirishima, as well as some destroyers. And the ’Frisco was not really intended, as the author states, to “take a beating if designed to close with and engage an enemy.” Her design was a compromise of speed, ordnance, and protection that could best be accommodated under the tonnage restrictions of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1923.
Ship survivability depends on many different factors besides design. Crew training and competency play a major role. As Commander Hilger mentions, the modern epics of survival of the USS Stark (FFG-31) and Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58) depended very much on their heroic crews. Contrast these success stories with World War II failures such as the loss of the Japanese fleet carrier Taiho, where the crew’s lack of familiarity with damage-control procedures doomed a new ship after only one survivable torpedo hit.
Luck also plays an enormous role in a ship surviving battle damage. The December 1941 loss of the battleship HMS Prince of Wales was primarily due to a torpedo hit on an outboard propeller shaft and strut that caused fatal damage far from the actual site of the torpedo hit. This happened to a modern ship with a well-trained and experienced crew and with an effective torpedo-protection system.
These days I fear designing for ship survivability is more a function of cost than any other factor. There will be a need for brave and skilled crews, as well as a little luck.
Flash Mob in the Shipping Lane!
(See T. McGeehan and D. Wahl, pp. 50–55, January 2016 Proceedings)
Charles B. Warren—The Allied attack on the Dardanelles in 1915 was stopped by mines. It may be that the five (three sunk, two damaged out of ten) battleships detonated almost all of the mines available to the Turks.
As a practical matter, there seem to be two ways to get mines into use by the U.S. Navy. At the low end, allow the long-range patrol air squadrons to buy them on the international market out of petty cash or the morale fund. At the high end, figure a way to build the program up to the minimum perceptible to the Pentagon, a billion dollars or more.
All-Domain Access on a Budget
(See M. R. Harris, pp. 85–86, January 2016 Proceedings)
Remo Salta—Commander Harris states, “The Coastal Command Boat (CCB) brought the fleet a tactical, small-signature platform ideal for offshore critical infrastructure protection, extended-range high-value escort, intelligence collection, and a variety of missions in support of special-operations forces and explosive ordnance disposal.” He went on to say that the SAFE Boat MK VI would provide “more of the low-cost, low-signature, unobtrusive, adaptable, and combat-ready capability.”
Commander Harris then states that the MK VI would “give fleet commanders more options at a fraction of the cost of traditional gray-hull vessels—and in doing so will free up conventional warships to concentrate elsewhere.” He also mentions that “the MK VI could be used for littoral missions routinely conducted by warships, making them more available for technologically challenging tasks.”
This may sound strange, but isn’t this what the new $600 million Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) was supposed to do? Wasn’t the LCS supposed to be a low-cost, expendable warship that could effectively fight in the littorals and expand the tactical range of options for a fleet commander while, at the same time, freeing up larger warships for other blue-water duties?
To be fair, there are many things the LCS is that the MK VI is not. The LCS is a much bigger target, it burns a lot of fuel, it has a short range given its size, and it carries a lot of unproven “mission modules” that are still not ready for full fleet use. The LCS does carry a helicopter, although if an LCS were to fight close to land, it is hard to believe that it would not be given some form of air support, especially in this age of armed unmanned aerial vehicles. But the LCS can go really fast. Why? Nobody seems to know, because it can’t outrun a barrage of antiship missiles, let alone survive a hit from one or two of them.
Commander Harris goes on to say that “Small patrol craft like the MK VI could be used for littoral missions routinely conducted by warships, making them more available for technologically challenging tasks.” He concludes that “We can’t afford to ignore the already proven capability of affordable tactical craft in fleet operational design. At just $15 million per craft, MK VI is a bargain.”
The Navy constantly bemoans the fact that the size of its fleet is rapidly shrinking while, at the same time, ignoring highly economical options that would relieve some of the pressure on its larger fleet assets. If the Navy doesn’t stop doing this, then Congress will no longer listen to it when it pleads for more warships. Remember, the current argument on Capitol Hill is that the U.S. Navy, larger than the next 13 fleets combined, is big enough. Try telling that to the captain of a warship that’s sailing off the coast of Iran, North Korea, China, or in the Black Sea near Ukraine. I’m sure he would want all the support he could get.
The 21st-Century Space Race
(See T. Pham, pp. 68–73, December 2015 Proceedings)
Commander Charles Turner, U.S. Navy (Retired)—Kudos to Captain Pham for a well-balanced article on a mission area that the Navy, as an organization writ large, has long underemphasized. I offer two refinements to his keen observation that we as a nation require “a deeper, more balanced space posture or we risk losing our preeminent role in this vital warfighting domain.”
First, we must shift the leadership role for developing new space technology from the federal government to the commercial sector. Strategic documents such as the National Space Policy, the National Security Space Strategy, and the Department of Defense Space Policy insinuate that the federal government plays the primary role in developing space-based capabilities and that commercial involvement in space is an ancillary afterthought. Granted, government research agencies, academia, and venture-capital firms play pivotal roles in funding research for nascent fields where the initial return on investment may be too nebulous to lure normal commercial capital. That being said, companies such as Virgin Galactic and SpaceX have already taken the initial steps needed to take on those leadership roles. They are better structured and incentivized to rapidly develop and field a wide range of new solutions that can be used in both the commercial and government arenas. They can advance technology with an eye on agile development, efficiency, profitability, and the minimization of costs to an extent that is difficult to replicate in government projects. Since a career in either government service or the military is not necessarily everyone’s cup of tea (for a whole host of perfectly legitimate reasons), these companies are best positioned to recruit and retain the requisite skilled workforce. The taxpayer comes out ahead since the military, law enforcement, and intelligence communities will reap a legion of benefits from commercial advances as they already do in other fields—both in terms of equipment and brainpower—for a fraction of the cost of having the government fund this work entirely.
Second, Captain Pham cogently observes that “the other services relegated the space mission to the Air Force.” Space-based assets bring a suite of powerful capabilities that are critical force multipliers, yet the Navy places far too little skin into the game of advocating for and executing this mission area. Unlike the Air Force’s officer 13SX and enlisted 1C6XX AFSCs, the Navy’s Space Cadre is an adjunct designation secondary to one’s primary career path and is far from being a dedicated space-career field. Even though some segments of the Navy have a solid base of space expertise, the Information Dominance Corps poorly codifies and sustains this knowledge as it applies to naval and expeditionary warfare. An expanded naval space acquisition corps can provide the needed requirements and design validation. A solid service presence in this field will provide the contrarian views needed to ensure this nation retains its maritime-focused space capabilities in support of the broader holistic national-security posture.
CORRECTION
A sentence on page 39 of the January issue incorrectly stated that on 13 November 1942 the USS San Francisco (CA-38) “took 45 separate shell hits from a superior Japanese force, including the battleship Kongo.” The Kongo was not present at that engagement.