The U.S. Navy commissions ships of yesterday, unable to bring new ship designs quickly to fruition or alter production pipelines effectively in an age where emergent terrorist networks, rogue states, and rapid technological development can disrupt existing warfare paradigms in months.1 The root causes of these systemic issues are numerous but lie predominantly in: an excessively layered, consensus-building culture; a human-resources system that does not properly empower or apportion talent; and an imprecise fleet-planning paradigm that attempts to serve too many purposes to the disservice of all. Together, these factors significantly limit the country’s ability to create, evaluate, and commission future combatants.
As HMS Dreadnought and the aircraft carriers of World War II revolutionized their ages, so now will cyber, drone, and electronic warfare overhaul warfighting in the future. The Navy must be able to create and field these cutting-edge advances better and more swiftly than its adversaries.
Understand the Barriers
Originally, bureaucracies elevated governmental organizations above aristocratic vestiges, cronyism, and human whim. By organizing, standardizing, and promoting based on merit, bureaucracies attempt to take the fallibility of humanity out of the equation, or at least mitigate it, with high-quality structures staffed by high-quality individuals. In time, however, excessive layers of oversight, contemplation, and redundancy have diluted the clarity and effectiveness of each organizational unit.
This trend has been compounded by the U.S. Navy’s slide into a leadership-by-consensus model in which verdicts are rendered slowly across many commands, all parties’ desires are incorporated, and decisive decisions are avoided for fear of disrupting organizational politics. In trying to appease all involved and their varying interests, compromises are often Frankensteins with no fathers. In some instances this consensus model works, but when coupled with endless commands, committees, and rubber-stamps, its results are often byzantine rules, tribalism, and the necessity of personal work-arounds to the existing structure. Ironically, the current structure prevents the very end goals that congressmen and admirals designed it for: effective decision-making and high-quality, timely products.
These organizational structure issues are compounded by the incorrect alignment of personal and institutional goals. Risk-aversion is rampant in the Navy. Yes, risk must be mitigated, but it cannot be eliminated. Almost all officers understand this individually, but collectively everyone knows that one major incident leads to one major negative fitness report (FitRep)—i.e., the kiss of death. Rather than trying to be exceptional and taking bold risks that could reward the institution, and possibly the individual, a risk-reward spectrum and promotion process are biased toward the ever-cautious manager who ensures that essential policies are executed and risks are negated.
Simultaneously, the Navy seems to have prioritized at-sea command over all else in the formation of flag officers, leading to staff and rear-echelon billets being unjustifiably derided and avoided by officers aiming for flag rank. Star officers must be able to go to staff and shore billets by choice and still be competitive for promotion. The best talent must be distributed throughout the fleet, not just in frontline units. Those better suited to organizational planning and resourcing must be allowed to thrive and advance away from the front lines but in their service. Warfighting involves more than combat, and the Navy should allow for flexible promotion paths and the subsequent optimization of talent allocation as leaders choose billets based on their skills and interests rather than their billet-based career prospects.
Pivoting to force composition, there is a constant focus on building an entirely new, homogenized battle fleet, of constructing a handful of highly technical, 30-ship classes that will serve for the next half-century against all enemies. The Force Structure Assessments, while important in understanding present asset use by combatant commanders, do not properly assess or anticipate the threats and ambiguity of the coming decades. Today’s time horizon and production models are out of sync with today’s technological and threat environments. These large classes are often prioritized because of perceived economies of scale and to improve interoperability and interchangeability of parts across the fleet. Such goals also could be accomplished through interchangeable, modular mission packages that could be used across multiple platforms.
In pursuit of the current Swiss-army-knife classes the Navy often takes a flawed design—the littoral combat ship (LCS), for example—and continues it in spite of major issues, violating every economic maxim by focusing on sunk, irretrievable costs in a justification for continued production. The Navy needs a more precise planning construct, a reconceptualization of shipbuilding aims, and the ability to significantly update platforms and systems. The Navy’s inability to delineate and prioritize fleet requirements adequately explains the failure to develop replacements for the Avenger (MCM-1)-class minesweepers and Cyclone (WPC-1)-class patrol craft, both of which are well beyond their anticipated lifecycles and rapidly eroding without replacements. Not being able to field the LCS in numbers before losing the Oliver Hazard Perry (FFG-7)–class guided-missile frigates was a similar planning and acquisition misstep. Such delays cause direct operational damage, compelling main battle fleet assets such as guided-missile destroyers and cruisers to pick up unsophisticated missions such as anti-piracy and presence operations.
Furthermore, there is a happy medium between recycling an aging design and building the starship Enterprise. It is difficult to discern the proper calculus between defaulting to proven, less-innovative designs such as the Arleigh Burke (DDG-51)–class guided-missile destroyers and taking leaps toward futuristic platforms such as the Zumwalt (DDG-1000)-class guided-missile destroyers. These two planning options, however, present a false dichotomy. Fundamentally, it is not that the Navy is pursuing the pragmatic or the futuristic excessively; rather it is that each extreme is flawed: the pragmatic is often too dated for long-term use and the futuristic is full of sticker shock and design issues that are improperly anticipated.
Instead of focusing on one or the other, the Navy needs to work toward versatile, modular platforms. The fleet already is busy with worldwide small-scale operations such as Russian hybrid warfare, Chinese A2/AD, and insurgents’ improvised attacks, all of which are likely to become more numerous and complex.2 And it is unlikely the future of warfare will involve massive armadas clashing in blue water. In such a world, using a $2 billion destroyer to patrol the coast of a failed state is a waste of taxpayer money and military capability. Eventually, the Navy must develop inexpensive baseline hulls and a range of modular warfare packages that can be easily deployed to match costs and lethality to the situation.
Right the Ship
To correct deeply ingrained cultural and structural issues, objective outsiders and knowledgeable insiders must be brought together and empowered with a meaningful reform mandate. The Secretary of the Navy should create a commission composed of political, industrial, and naval leaders of all ranks to comprehensively tackle the most glaring problems with designing and building a new force. The commission must remain small enough to function, never being so stacked with persons as to be rendered ungovernable.
This “Nimble Navy Commission” would be tasked with finding the low-hanging fruit—obvious errors and inefficiencies in our core development and acquisitions processes—and devising solutions within six months. At the end of the six months the Navy would have another six months to wind down the inefficiencies exposed and exploit the solutions promulgated. The Pentagon’s Defense Business Board’s 2015 study revealed more than $125 billion in unnecessary bureaucratic redundancy throughout the Department of Defense, so savings exist for those services willing to tackle the issue directly.3 Deadlines for enacting solutions should be tied to funding cuts in order to ensure swift compliance, and the absolute authority of the committee must be ensured to overcome resistance to change and the consensus-oriented culture that plague meaningful Department of the Navy (DON) reforms. The committee, however, must be a one-shot affair. This committee should signal to the fleet that its Navy is ready for difficult but necessary improvements.
Critical to the success of this approach, the Navy must streamline access to acquisitions and design-oriented career paths and boost training for those temporarily assigned to such billets. It should never be too late for a motivated officer to join the acquisitions world, and acquisitions professionals must be able to take brief fleet tours to tie theory to practice and receive first-hand feedback. Simultaneously, while these fleet tours should be available at any time, those detailed to acquisitions programs must serve tour lengths commensurate with the programs they will oversee
Just as the team designing the nuclear reactor for the Columbia (SSN-71)-class nuclear ballistic missile submarine has no set rotation date, so too should the Navy reduce turnover on modular weapon packages, platforms, and other projects critical to the future force. Ideally the same officers would lead the development process over its full duration when possible, providing consistent oversight and accountability in ways that are currently lacking. This will fuel collaboration, not consensus, as officer-experts, specialized in their projects, are better able to objectively debate the difficult nuances of their subjects while working to advance a better naval product.
Beyond individual systems, if the Navy is to have the best strategic minds guiding the future fleet’s development, shore duties must be valued as equal to operational billets. Excellent shore-based officers should enjoy similar promotion rates and career opportunities as do operators. Sea command does not inherently make a greater admiral than a shore command. In fact, though nearly 70 percent of flag officers are culled from operational commands, more than 80 percent of flag officers execute strategic and nonoperational, management roles.4 If shore positions can acquire more cachet and value, then they will be more sought after and get more passionate and skilled officers.
Detailers must align interests and competencies better and avoid assigning officers based primarily on what positions need to be filled and who is immediately available. Billeting should not be so spontaneous for such key positions with massive long-term impact. Detailing must be brought to contemporary standards with resumes, interviews, and the ability to apply for positions well in advance. Commanding officers should have more say in which officers the command gains, and officers should have more options to make their case for why they are best suited for certain billets. Finally, more honesty in FitReps, including explaining weaknesses as well as strengths, and 360-degree feedback reviews would augment the detailers’ ability to compare officers qualitatively for precise billeting.
Aspects of these proposals are included in the Chief of Naval Personnel’s Sailor 2025 initiative, but they need to be pushed faster, harder, and deeper if the Navy is to close the gap with private industry in talent allocation. The reforms proposed here will help ensure planning and development commands are led and staffed by the officers most interested in and best qualified for their critical work.
Simultaneously, the Navy must create more meaningful fleet engagement mechanisms for non-operational commands to reduce errors caused by disconnection from operational units. Senior Navy officials need to go to the deckplates and have significant conversations with sailors at an in-depth level. Admiral and captain fly-aboards with passageway banters and photo opportunities might be beneficial for morale, but they do not provide sailors the opportunity to express ideas and serious issues in a thoughtful setting directly to decision-makers. It is one thing to read a report on a substandard valve, and something entirely different to listen to a sailor earnestly explain his proposed solution to his daily leaky nightmare.
To create such robust feedback, the Navy needs discussion groups and channels that are valued, endorsed, and allow deckplate ideas to reach designers and planners . Such idea sharing will save millions of man-hours and countless dollars in errors foreseen by sailors who live and die by these systems. Massively scaling up feedback loops will save the Navy billions of dollars, lead to more robust designs and planning, improve morale, and foster the innovative impulse in sailors who feel truly valued for their contributions.
Sail into a New Future
The second force would free carrier strike groups (CSGs) and other main battle fleet assets for more critical national tasking. This also would allow for lower operational tempos for main battle fleet units, which would benefit morale and readiness: CSGs have been overtasked and under-maintained in the past decade.5 It would also support Secretary of Defense James Mattis’s unpredictable-deployments model.6 Secondary benefits of this low-cost fleet—such as increased opportunities for career-defining early command, more direct experience with foreign partners, and more presence for less cost—would enhance U.S. interests in littoral regions.7
Eventually, such a high-low force would be easier to outfit and scale in the face of changing challenges, because modularization will create the highly agile and capable Navy of the future. The most advanced and cutting-edge packages would be put onto main battle fleet units when high-end threats were present. In low-threat environments, these expensive packages could be reserved, saving precious life-cycle years, while more utilitarian packages could outfit the vessel in less dangerous battlespaces.
Such an approach will be a complex transition and take decades to roll out, as the LCS has shown. But to refine and master such a process ahead of other navies will ensure that U.S. hulls and their diverse packages rule the waves. Modularity means removing rigidity and fighting myriad conflicts with a single platform, unleashing innovation and tactical flexibility throughout the fleet. While at first the Navy will need to build a two-tiered force, eventually, with modularity, the force will be all things: perfectly optimized for threat, capability, and cost.
By identifying gaps and limitations and enacting solutions to them, the United States can recalibrate the Navy to out-think and out-develop all challengers—be they terrorists or great powers. This process, however, will involve intense self-reflection and self-criticism. It can and will overcome cultural and institutional barriers to innovate for the sake of the nation’s security and continued prosperity, as long as leaders are willing to have an honest reckoning and act unencumbered by the past.
1. Sam LaGrone and Megan Eckstein, “Admiral: Attacks Like Those on USS Mason Will Become More Common,” USNI News, 27 October 2016, news.usni.org/2016/10/27/22246.
2. Steven Stashwick, “A New War in the Pacific Could Be ‘Trench Warfare’ at Sea,” The Diplomat, 18 August 2016, https://thediplomat.com/2016/08/a-new-war-in-the-pacific-could-be-trench-warfare-at-sea.
3. Defense Business Board, “Transforming Department of Defense’s Core Business Processes for Revolutionary Change,” Report to the Secretary of Defense, FY 15-01, January 2015, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a618526.pdf.
4. David Barno et al., “Building Better Generals,” Center for a New American Strategy, October 2013.
5. Megan Eckstein, “Navy: Half the Carrier Fleet Tied Up in Maintenance, Other 5 Strained to Meet Demands,” USNI News, 4 November 2015, news.usni.org/2015/11/04/navy-half-the-carrier-fleet-tied-up-in-maintenance-other-5-strained-to-meet-demands.
6. David Larter, “Mattis Eyes Major Overhaul of Navy Deployments,” Navy Times, 7 May 2018, https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/05/07/mattis-eyes-major-overhaul-of-navy-deployments.
7. LT Alan Cummings, USN, “Create and Value Early Commands,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, August 2016, www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2016-08/leadership-forum-create-and-value-early-commands.
Lieutenant Stefanus is a surface warfare officer who commissioned from the Duke NROTC Unit. He is concluding his tour with Amphibious Squadron Six and moving to Arlington, Virginia, for shore duty. The current president of the Center for International Maritime Security, he won second place in the Naval Institute’s 2017 General Prize Essay Contest (“There’s Rot in Our Hulls,” May 2018 Proceedings); and first place in the 2016 contest (“Embracing the Dark Battle,” April 2017 Proceedings).