‘It Is About Being Combat Ready’: An Interview With Navy Secretary Del Toro

Midn: When you were a midshipman, what were your perceptions of the role of the Secretary of the Navy?

Del Toro: When I entered the Naval Academy in 1979, Edward Hidalgo was Secretary of the Navy, the first Hispanic to serve in that role. As a lieutenant, I came to know him personally, and he became a mentor of mine. How ironic that he and I, the second Hispanic American and the first Cuban American to serve as Secretary of the Navy, would have crossed paths in such a way.

Edward Hidalgo cared deeply about diversity. He cared deeply about equal opportunity. He cared deeply about giving everyone the chance to succeed to the best of one’s abilities. And I have no doubt that some of the policies he put in place in the Navy and at the Naval Academy benefited me. Certainly, I benefited from the wisdom of his leadership later on as a lieutenant. And I think of him often as I walk the halls here at the Secretariat and see his portrait in the hallway every day.

Midn: Are there any other leaders throughout your career who you’ve come to look up to who left an impact on you?

Del Toro: Oh, very much so. Admiral Chuck Larson, whose name is on the administrative building of the Naval Academy Superintendent, is another. I had the privilege of serving as a White House fellow from 1998 to 1999 in the Office of Management Budget with then-director Jack Lew. Admiral Larson had been a White House fellow as well, and I remember when I was applying to the program, out of the blue I got a call. I picked up the phone, and they said, “Standby for a call from Admiral Larson.” I was like, oh, my, what have I done? I don’t even know Admiral Larson.

He had discovered I was going into the finals, and he wanted to spend a little time talking with me about what the final selection process is all about. He wound up spending almost an hour and a half with me on the phone. He was an extraordinary leader who truly exemplified the characteristics of good leadership taught at the Naval Academy. I have a tremendous amount of respect for him.

I did become a White House fellow, and later president of the Alumni Association. I have many fond memories spent with Chuck Larson and his wife. The admiral passed away and is buried next to John McCain at the Naval Academy Cemetery, but I still keep in touch with Mrs. Larson. When you ask about experiences that are special, that draw from the Naval Academy, that is certainly one of them.

Midn: Sir, you’ve held a variety of distinctive positions in your career, including White House fellow and president of the Alumni Association, service in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and commissioning commanding officer of the USS Bulkeley [DDG-84]. Which experiences do you think have best prepared you for serving as Secretary today?

Del Toro: I have to say, collectively, several of them. I might be the only Secretary of the Navy who served as the first commanding officer of a ship and actually built the ship itself. Perhaps you both could research and get back to me on whether that’s accurate.¹ In either case, the experience I gained building a Navy destroyer over the course of a year and a half in the shipyard and then sailing on sea trials for a year and a half was extraordinary. It serves me well every day, as I am now charged with responsibility for building all our ships and for the financing and oversight of shipbuilding programs, as well as aircraft and other platforms. So that has helped me tremendously.

My experience in the private sector also helps me tremendously. I spent 17 years building a small business. I learned the value of a dollar and how to put that dollar to use to grow my business. And I equate that today to understanding the value of a dollar the American taxpayer affords us to fund the things we have to do in the Department of the Navy. We have a responsibility as public servants to ensure we get the proper return on investment for that dollar in every possible way.

Midn: Is the role of Secretary what you expected it to be? And have your perceptions about the Pentagon changed from your previous tours here when you were in the Navy?

Del Toro: I retired as a commander, so I didn’t serve at the highest levels of the uniformed service. There were some things I just wasn’t exposed to. But later on, for example, working in the Office of Management Budget, I gained some insight into what government is like at the highest levels.

I came in with a pretty pragmatic expectation of what government is all about and the importance of the role of the Secretariat. I’ll have either two years left in the job or six, depending on the wishes of the American voters. But if it’s only two years, there’s an urgency to get things done right. There are a lot of things we need to move out on. It’s really about taking care of our sailors and Marines every day, about positioning the Department of the Navy to provide the best combat-ready forces to the combatant commanders so they can execute the vision of the Secretary of Defense and the National Defense Strategy.

I have a bias for action. And sometimes, working in large organizations, the bureaucracy can take hold, and it can make things more difficult to execute. So you have to find the right balance between respecting the checks and balances of the bureaucracy and trying to get things done on behalf of our sailors and Marines and the American people.

Midn: Sir, you wrote in your strategic messaging guidance about the importance of allies and partners. In fact, you say that the United States has a network of allies and partners that our peer adversaries can never match. Could you tell us more about your thoughts behind that statement, particularly with regard to some who might say that Chinese initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative or Confucius Institutes give them an advantage in attracting allies and partners?

Del Toro: We have three guiding principles in that strategy: strengthening our maritime dominance, empowering our people to create a culture of warfighting excellence, and strengthening our relationships with our allies and partners. That’s incredibly important. An example of that is RIMPAC, an exercise that in 2022 involved 26 nations. Ships from South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, and other countries gathered to operate together in cross-fleet exercises. It’s a demonstration that we all have to work together.

We often talk about a 355-ship Navy. I like talking about a 500-ship Navy that includes the ships and platforms of our allies and partners working together for the common good. China may be a little bit more successful in financing the projects of other countries with its Belt and Road initiatives, but it doesn’t build true relationships and partnerships. Their actions are more transactional. Quite frankly, they’re financially driven. What we’re doing is building true partnerships with these countries where we care about the challenges that they face. We are trying to look for long-lasting solutions to work together.

Midn: Looking ahead, what naval partnerships or emerging allied capabilities give you particular optimism?

Del Toro: There are numerous opportunities in the coming months and years. In fact, as soon as I came into the Secretariat, there was an initiative called AUKUS, in which we’re working with Australia to build up its nuclear attack submarine capability. This is an excellent example of two allied partners working together to extend our capabilities—our mutual capabilities—into the Pacific and around the globe in a unique and special way.

AUKUS is a very important one, but there are numerous examples of working with allies and partners to build greater interoperability, whether in the Marine Corps or the Navy. So if you take a country such as Spain, which hosts four of our destroyers in Rota, there might be the possibility in the future of additional destroyers going there.  At the same time, Spain uses the AEGIS weapon system, which allows our fleets to be interoperable. We see the same collaboration with certain nations in cybersecurity and space and other domains as well. That’s extremely important for us to be able to operate like a coherent 500-ship navy.

Midn: Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo has said “our force is operating at the top of the stress curve” and that “we must think, act, operate every single day as if the PRC is going to make a move on Taiwan.” In light of lengthening deployments during COVID and the downsizing of the fleet—with the current plans to decommission most of the Ticonderoga class and a lot of the littoral combat ships in the coming years—how does the Navy plan to maintain readiness and the current operational tempo?

Del Toro: Every problem that rises to the level of the Secretary of the Navy and the Chief of Naval Operations or the Commandant of the Marine Corps presents hard decisions. As you just suggested, most of the decisions we make across the portfolio are interrelated in many different ways, and you have to constantly worry about all of these variables. We’re obviously always tempered by the resources we have available to us and how much money we can spend within that portfolio. Within these constraints we want to try to build the most modern, capable, lethal Navy possible.

So it’s not just about numbers; it’s about capability and capacity to deliver the right lethality where you need it most. This is a constant challenge, but as the CNO often says and the Commandant also faces: We can never sacrifice readiness. Not for anything else. Otherwise you create what is referred to as a hollow force. What good does it do to have lots of ships that you can’t afford to maintain and keep at a high level of readiness? They certainly aren’t going to be combat ready. So, sometimes it’s better to have a slightly smaller, more capable fleet in the right places, applying the right strategy to defeat the enemy.

In some circles, we talk about capacity as if capacity or even technology alone were the single most important factor in deterring our adversaries. That’s not the case; it’s actually strategy that matters most. I want to highlight the importance of strategic thinking, and I’m deeply committed to making major investments in professional military education at all our major institutions—the Naval Academy, the Naval Postgraduate School, the Naval War College. I want to develop future leaders who will go into the Navy and study strategy. They will study Sun Tzu, they’ll study Mahan, and they’ll understand that through strategy, perhaps we can prevent conflict from occurring. Not actually having to fight our adversaries is a far grander goal than anything else.

Midn: You’ve written about education previously as a “warfighting enabler.” I’d be curious to hear from your career; in what ways has your education made you a better warfighter?

Del Toro: Without question, I’m privileged as Secretary of the Navy to have gone to the Naval Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School, where I studied electrical engineering and space systems engineering. That education alone taught me the importance of cyber and the importance of our satellite communications networks and other things that made me a better warfighter. But it also made me better understand strategy and how you apply space capabilities to conflicts to hopefully avoid escalation.

And my time at the Naval War College studying history was incredibly important. It’s important to understand technology and be engineering astute because we rely on very sophisticated platforms, but the study of history is important to analyze and learn from lessons in the past. And so being at the War College and studying past wars, from the Civil War through World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm—and I am a Desert Storm veteran!—and Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, ideally can help us prevent mistakes of the past from occurring again in the future. This is so important, especially for our senior leaders. That’s why I’m committed to making a major investment in education.

Midn: Could you share anything with us about what may be coming down the road from your Education Task Force?

Del Toro: Over the past five years or so, there have been a lot of studies on education and how we might reshape professional military education in the Department of the Navy. But nothing seemed to take hold, and, unfortunately, there’s been a lot of turnover in the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, six secretaries in four years.

When I came in as Secretary, I put together an Education Task Force of high-powered individuals who have a lot of experience and education, both as civilians and military folks. I charged them with assessing all the studies that have been done in the past five years and instructed them to develop a clear, concise set of recommendations on investments to be made over the next Future Years Defense Plan. That group is concluding their efforts; I hope to have guidance for the direction we want to go and a set of concrete recommendations I can implement quickly to improve our education system across the department.² That includes the Naval War College, the Naval Postgraduate School, the Marine Corps Command and Staff College, the Naval Academy, and our Navy Community College as well.

Midn: Sir, also in your strategic messaging document, you write about the need to “build a force that looks like the nation we protect.” How do you assess progress toward that goal?

Del Toro: It’s important to have a clear set of metrics and data that show the composition of our Navy, both in the enlisted corps and the officer corps. The United States is a great country because of the diversity we bring to the table—diversity of all kinds, across a broad spectrum of backgrounds. And because we have an all-volunteer force, progress will be marked by our recruiting individuals from all backgrounds, whether geographic or ethnic or religious.

As recruits come together, it’s important for them to get to know each other and respect each other, treat each other with dignity. The goal is that all sailors and Marines trust each other. Whether you’re serving in the foxhole, on a ship, or in a squadron or battalion of Marines, you have to be able to trust each other, and the way to create that is by always treating each other with dignity and respect. That’s how you get to respecting diversity of thought and learning from each other. We all come from different backgrounds and experiences, so this is extremely important for a combat ready force. It is about being combat ready in every possible way.

Midn: You’ve written about the industrial base as critical to our strength and capacity. Do reports that indicate peer adversaries have more shipbuilding capacity concern you? And what actions can you take as Secretary to address that?

Del Toro: I’m very concerned about our supply chain and the challenges our supply chain faces, not just in this country, but in all free democracies. When you’re a dictatorship, sometimes it’s easier to do things such as build ships, because you treat your labor force like slave labor. You don’t have to pay them much. You can work them for 12 hours a day. There are insufficient labor laws. There’s little respect for human rights. You could argue that’s an advantage in being able to build ships faster and in greater numbers, but it certainly isn’t the morally right thing to do.

So it does present a disadvantage in terms of our adversaries’ ability to build ships faster and cheaper; I would not argue against that. But we build better ships than they do in every possible way. We build more modern, capable ships than the Chinese do. Having said that, however, we have serious challenges in this country with supply chain. Some of it is due to COVID-19, some of it is due to the lack of competition in the shipbuilding industry, and we have to fix that somehow. It’s an economic problem, it’s a whole of government problem, and we in the Department of the Navy are taking a very close look. We’re trying to reach out to small and medium-sized businesses across the nation, for example, asking them to participate in our acquisition programs and compete for the bids that we put out. Some of it is awareness, so you have to grow that industrial base in every way you can. I’m concerned about that every day, and the Chief of Naval Operations, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and my staff and I are constantly looking for ways and opportunities that we can grow that industrial base.

Midn: Secretary Del Toro, this has been a fascinating discussion. Thank you, sir, for taking time out of your schedule to speak with us.

Del Toro: Well, thank you both for being willing to serve your country. I have a tremendous love for the Naval Academy but also for all our NROTC and Naval Academy midshipmen and OCS candidates. You are the future of our Navy. People sometimes ask me what I hope will be my legacy. You’re my legacy. It’s the young people who serve in our Navy today. You are the future of our Navy, the future of our country. Along with the Commandant, the CNO, and all our senior leaders, I hope to build a bigger, better, stronger Navy for you all to continue to serve and for you all to benefit from the educational institutions I spoke about today. So, thank you for your service.

Additional Reading

• Task Force One Navy Final Report

• “Department of the Navy One Year in Review”

• A Concept for Stand-in Forces

• Chief of Naval Operations Navigation Plan 2022

• Climate Action 2030

• “Delivering Combined Seapower”

•  OPNAV N2N6W4 “Allied and Coalition Interoperability”

•  “Navy, French Marine Nationale Sign Strategic Interoperability Framework”

•  “Seahawk Maintenance Advances U.S. and Australian Navy Partnership, Readiness”

 • “Biden Administration Basing Two More Destroyers in Rota, Spain”

 • “Remarks by President Biden in Press Conference, Madrid, Spain”