An article in Proceedings describes mountainous regulations, directives, and policies being piled onto ships’ leadership, all aimed at providing detailed guidance to commanding officers (COs) on how to conduct every aspect of each mission area. The article describes a culture of excessive rudder orders from senior officers not only on what is expected from every command, but also specifically how to accomplish success.
These issues likely sound relevant, as the Comprehensive and Strategic Readiness reviews hint at command-and-control structural inadequacies as a contributing factor in the recent surface force collisions. But the article is from 1977.
More than 40 years ago, Commander Robert Mumford asserted these issues were part of an ineffective organizational model that created an overbearing Navy culture.
Like today, in 1977 senior-level direction and guidance were expected and standard, yet the commander claimed it was not the mere existence of multiple policies and directives from the operational and administrative levels that were cause for concern, but that leaders at the waterfront and the unit level “felt overwhelmed and stifled by excessive direction.” He consolidated these concerns in what he termed “The Problem.”1
Mumford admitted there was no single root cause of The Problem, but he provided multiple contributing factors and observations for consideration that seem to be just as germane in 2018.
He believed the Navy was creating officers who would rely heavily on publications and senior directives as a means of judging success, instead of creating and executing their own personal visions of how to fight their ships. They would be slaves to administrative checklists and bosses who directed “how” processes should work instead of simply providing the “what” of the objective. He also observed an operational-level phenomenon he described as “a strong drive towards standardization”—a timely concept as the surface force today is seeing a push for more standardized ship documents.2
Commander Mumford was prescient in his examination of fleet and type commander goals by outlining an organization designed around “compliance with procedures” rather than outcomes.3 Fast forwarding to today, how many hours are wasted with ships’ crew searching through a training group’s online tool kit for the most up-to-date checklist and material inventory sheet? Unfortunately, as Mumford noted, we now are likely conditioned to accept written procedures and checklists as the essential requirement for “optimal” combat readiness.
Finally, Mumford said the largest contributor to The Problem was a downward spiral of mistrust of ships’ leadership, ultimately resulting in increased inspections and assist visits. To him, senior leaders had a knack for blaming subordinates for a lack of aggressiveness or failure to lead, instead of looking at a larger organization that may have been ill-structured.4
Just as Mumford observed decades ago, sailors today still are inundated by soundbites and senior leader talking points calling for khakis on ships to “do better.” And despite flag leadership expressing the value in appreciating the readiness situation through the eyes of the CO, those same leaders may be unknowingly allowing staffs to pile more operational-level requirements on ships under the guise of “commander’s business.”5
After outlining key aspects of The Problem, Commander Mumford offered potential solutions, including:
• Adopting a management-by-objectives approach
• Having operational evaluations at sea done by units outside the type commander chain of command (e.g., the Board of Inspection and Survey)
• Giving COs more control of ships’ at-sea schedules
• Reviewing the benefits and effectiveness of the personnel qualification standard/planned maintenance system on overall fleet readiness
The Problem 2.0
The issues described by the commander are still around. Unfortunately, they are now more advanced and complicated.
What was not part of the Navy of 1977 is the increased ability to communicate and quickly distribute guidance and policy. Fleet commanders and their staffs can reach out and touch any unit CO using various forms of electronic correspondence and messaging. If messages from superiors remain in the inbox unanswered for too long, expect a phone call. Commanders even have to assess the impact of chat access as part of combat effectiveness and warfighter proficiency.
In 2.0, ship leaders are expected to regularly access and use more than 40 web-based databases and systems—each with its own login requirements.6 Not only do ship COs continually have to assess and take action on their ships' readiness status, but they also are responsible for ensuring each aspect of that readiness picture is clearly articulated (in a timely manner) in a Defense Readiness Reporting System (DRRS) database. This redundant reporting may be helpful to higher headquarters, but time-consuming requirements shape a culture focused on “good enough” and “make it green.”
Today’s warships are multimission capable, and their portfolio is vast. Senior leaders and the public expect ships to be ready and lethal when called on, but the Navy’s model includes the added hindrance of detailed higher headquarters direction and tight command-and-control coupling for all missions. The number of Navy-wide operational tasks only grows, and each is accompanied by varying supplements from the fleet commander laying out his or her own unique “how to” for each ship to learn, train, and execute, regardless of conflicts with other guidance. While the Navy must adapt to new threats and mission sets, new requirements often do not align with other existing and competing policies.
Take, for example, protecting a ship in harbor. This is a major investment for ship’s company. The fleet has determined a ship can provide force protection and employ antiterrorism measures successfully only if it maintains all the specific equipment and weapons on board (regardless of their usage) and complies with prescribed organizational requirements that are not delineated in ships’ requirements documents. The ship then is expected to execute training and real-world security within a complicated task organization while providing updates through multiple command reporting requirements.
New requirements to support cyber defense (including reporting nine separate categories of cyber incidents) are another blanket laid on the ship’s work list with limited corresponding updates to manning requirements and documents.
The Department of Defense lives in a real-time, media-driven world. At the strategic level, getting ahead of events is critical to national security and controlling the narrative. But this new requirement has been shifted haphazardly to the tactical level, where ships are given multiple (and sometimes conflicting) guidance on how to report international incidents. The new imperative to capture events on video includes differing rules on how to capture the moment and later design a catchy storyboard. The CO must ensure all the data gets pushed to the various staff levels above so they can review, brief, and submit up the chain of command.
Even ship maintenance has evolved to hyper control. Ships are expected to find and pull updates for technical procedures and advisories from various outside organizations, hoping the information is posted and accurate. Simple workcenter assignments and maintenance completion reports are uploaded to multiple databases, and the crew must rely on a plethora of outside organizations to approve or comment on on-board maintenance.
A Matter of Trust
One of the responses to Commander Mumford’s article was from a recent cruiser CO who detailed the reduction in the commander’s role as an authority on his ship, noting that COs felt more like “local agents for higher authorities.”7 Captain James Kelly suggested flag officers and senior staff lack confidence in the competency of tactical-level leaders and, until satisfied otherwise, feel the need for increased guidance and inspections. If this is true, we must ask, as Kelly did in 1978, what is the state of our selection criteria for COs?
Navy leaders and their staffs cannot continue to say they support our new COs while their actions imply these leaders cannot be trusted to do the job on their own.
“The Problem” is still here; the question is “Now what?” We could just reframe it as whining and order ship leaders to turn to, but we have been trying that for at least 40 years. How far have we come? We (at all levels) need to continue the discussion through all means, no matter how uncomfortable.
Operationally, the Navy has built a reputation as an agile and adaptable organization that is willing to adjust when necessary to meet any challenge or obstacle. Following this, we must be able to provide and accept unfettered, unfiltered, and meaningful recommendations to address a decades-old issue that cannot be solved simply by telling ship COs to “do better.” We must move out of our comfort zone to identify systemic organizational areas for improvement, while also looking in the mirror and asking “What of this do I own?” and “How must I change?”
1. CDR Robert E. Mumford Jr., USN, “Get Off My Back, Sir!” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 103, no. 8 (August 1977), 18-23.
2. VADM Thomas S. Rowden, USN, “Surface Forces Are Refocused,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 144, no. 1 (January 2018).
3. Strategic Readiness Review 2017, Secretary of the Navy, 3 December 2017, 67.
4. During a January 2018 House Armed Services Subcommittees on Readiness and Seapower hearing, Congressman Rob Wittman quoted from James Holmes’ article “Who Watches the Watchers in the United States Navy”: “He indicated the Navy is quick in citing senior leadership’s loss of confidence in commanding officers but is, at best, circumspect when assessing fault to the system that drove these commanding officers to seek what he calls the ‘normalization of deviation.’”
5. ADM Bill Moran, USN, “Time Well Spent,” Navy Live Blog, 29 January 2018.
6. Data compiled by students at the Surface Commander’s Course 290, SWOS, Newport, RI, January-March 2018.
7. CAPT James F. Kelly Jr., USN, “Command Authority and Professionalism,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 104, no. 8 (August 1978), 26-32.
Commander Kruppa is a surface warfare officer and joint planner. A graduate of The Pennsylvania State University, Marine Corps University, and USMC School of Advanced Warfighting, he currently is in the PXO/CO training pipeline.