This is what terrifies me. Organizations like Navies do not change from within. Change is usually forced from the outside. And it is usually very painful.
On the other hand, Patton's turnaround of II Corps in two weeks is a case study that deserves more attention than it gets. High standards, hard training, and a CO who is FURIOUS at the performance (or at least fakes it really well)...they get results.
Patton was a warfighter. He understood the importance of maintenance, of training and making sure EVERYONE was doing their best job, correctly. Warfighters tend to be pragmatic and have a realistic view of things. The CNO position is due to change, I don't know all the candidates, however Adm Paparo seems to have certain instincts about knowing his future advisory and the necessary materials needed...perhaps he'd be better off as a COCOM rather than a Beltway dweller.
All the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters. Every single man in the army plays a vital role. So don't ever let up. Don't ever think that your job is unimportant. What if every truck driver decided that he didn't like the whine of the shells and turned yellow and jumped headlong into a ditch? That cowardly bastard could say to himself, 'Hell, they won't miss me, just one man in thousands.' What if every man said that? Where in the hell would we be then? No, thank God, Americans don't say that. Every man does his job. Every man is important. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the quartermaster is needed to bring up the food and clothes for us because where we are going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last damn man in the mess hall, even the one who boils the water to keep us from getting the GI shits, has a job to do.
Because the flaws become institutionalized. ie- The French Army leadership in WWI believed that the Spirit/Cult of the Offensive would overcome any equipment or tactical shortcomings. It took massive causalities and mutiny to change that. We have a military that is more focused on being diverse an celebrating differences, being a family friendly IBM with uniforms than a military with a unified organizational identity and unity of purpose. That translates into having 9-5 managers not 24-7 leaders which translated to troops/sailors who only identify with being troops/sailors during "duty hours". Hardly the mark of professionals
In the immortal words of one of my C.O.’s “When the sh*t hits the fan, I don’t need people to clean up up the sh*t, I need someone who knows how to turn off the fan.”
Once upon a time you suggested I was blind when I stated the Navy needs a very heavy and toothy lessons learned organization. Your words were “that is the last thing we need “ so I’ll say it again, you cannot/should not expect big Navy to learn lessons- they are not built this way. While the ships are still afloat let’s all push for an enterprise wide “Sub Safe” copy cat organization that makes Admirals learn and act accordingly. P.S What happened to the Navy’s last learning officer?
You did, how could I forget, but all is well and please keep the the pressure on our Navy leaders while being mindful that, as is, they do not really listen they just do head bobs. Again, all is well.
I understand, it happened about two years ago so I don’t remember the title of your post that prompted the back and forth, however, remember trust is a force multiplier.
More fun facts about WW2 service rifles: The M1, adopted in 1936, had to have a major redesign of the gas system. Fortunately, John Garand (the 2nd greatest War Department hire after John Hall) was able to do it. The 1903 was cheapened to the 1903A3, which had better reliability and better combat sights than the original.
In reluctant fairness to the FOGOs, Congress and the Executive Branch are as bad about shiny and new and sexy. Tankers, tenders, drydocks, shipyards, ammunition plants, Patrol Craft, and ASW frigates are only interesting as jobs programs. And they've been set aside for "bigger and better and shinier (at least until the corrosion becomes obvious)".
Whether or not the nation will produce the change in leadership remains to be seen.
A very thought provoking post (even more than usual), and I don't know if I really have all that much of an alternative theory or explanation to offer for your call to action at the end. I would offer, though, at least for the shipbuilding programs and the parallels that you drew between the Springfield and Garand, is that the problem for Navy leadership is that they didn't (or at least, saw themselves as not having) the resources to keep building the current stuff while designing the next generation. That is to say, it would be as if the Army in the 1930's didn't have the money to keep Springfield production going and fund the development and fielding of the Garand. The big difference of course that the Garand was great and the LCS/DDX/CGX were all stinkers. This also brings up a challenge that I think is unique to the Navy (and to the lesser extent the USCG); no other artefact of the Military Industrial Complex is as expensive on a per-unit basis as a ship. The closest I can think of are the gold-plated comms and ISR birds we park in GEO orbit. That translates into a lot less maneuver room when it comes to transitioning from one generation of platforms to another IMO. Of course, it is one thing to get dealt a bad hand, and another to then play that bad hand badly. And finally, it is a source of shame and frustration to me that, despite having dedicated 18 years of my life to the Navy (so far), I'm at a loss to understand what I could have done to make an impact on these issues over the course of my career at any level other than advocating for the individual sailors I've led when they run into problems with the Navy's bureaucracy.
Not lesser extent, USCG. Equal extent for sure. Look at the Polars and OPC builds... the Commandant wouldn’t even commit to naming a decade for delivery of the first polar at the last hearing.
Andy, you are too hard on yourself. There is no shame, ever, in advocating for your people. At 18 yrs of Naval service, it's not for you to set institutional policy, although you should always be prepared to offer an informed opinion. Meanwhile, Big Navy is metrics-driven; so if enough admirals hear about enough problems from enough deckplates, there's a slight chance that an issue will get addressed. Along the lines of Sal's excellent discussion today, a wise old admiral once said to me that two of his biggest concerns -- aside from the nuclear weapons -- were "paychecks and parking spaces," but that was long ago in a galaxy far away. And then, as I recall, the 1990s transformed into an era when the "End of History" was upon us, and the Navy picked up many new, bad habits, atop others that were already legacies. The challenge was to do more with less, until such time as we wound up doing less with less, which appears to be now.
I can remember back in the Jimmy Carter era. His mantra of fiscal austerity included substituting rabbit for roast beef, halving our parts budget, and worst of all bandying around the idea that we sailors should be paying for parking on base. As a former Naval Officer he should have known better. The parking in Hawaii was decent but I suspect there would have been mutinies in Norfolk or San Diego if the pay-for-parking scheme had ever come to fruition.
Your mention of DTS, we’re still using it, with a higher level of manning than when we did it on paper. As a member of the original DTS test group, when I entered our second meeting seeing a PP slide being projected saying,”99% of DTS users say they love DTS!” Hilarious then as now.
No doubt! It's also fun that you HAVE TO choose the rental car company that costs the least. You don't get the option of taking a $2/day decrease in in your per diem to slide it over to a rental car company that has served you a lot better EVERY TIME you've used them. That is just crap.
I also loved adjusting the split-disbursement, which was a goofy work-around that you had to learn through trial-and-error. And, of course, you'd get flagged and treated like you were trying to steal your organization's Christmas party fund when all you were doing was directly shifting money from the per diem that you pocket to your travel card bill to get it right and avoid another bill the next month. The system as-is shorts your govt. credit card, heaven forbid that you step in and set it right. If their algorithm could do some 3rd grade math correctly, you'd never have to mess with it.
Don't get me started on fly-by-night rental cars. I had a trip to Yuma where the rental car had a tire shred. On the Interstate, at 70 mph. I managed to keep the vehicle going straight, pulled over, figured on changing the tire.
Except that there WAS no spare tire. It took 30 minutes to get through to their "emergency" line, another 90 minutes to get a tow truck out there, 90 more minutes to get the tire replaced...and to top it all off, I had to put the tire replacement on my personal credit card because the Government Travel Card would not take the charges.
Even better, it won't let you try to save the government money! I was on a two week training TDY in Norfolk about three hours away from home. Class was M-F so I tried to set it up so I could check out of the navy lodge for the weekend since I was goin home. DTS said no, there is no way to split lodging on a single voucher. So the gov had to pay for three unused nights in the lodge that someone else could probably have used all because DTS couldn't handle it.
Gotta love that, the system takes the expensive route because it's the easy route and you're not allowed to use judgement. One time I needed to go to Montreal on short notice because an aircraft parts manufacturer had technical questions and some problems that they wanted my team to look at. I didn't have a passport (it was going through the process because I had a foreign TAD coming up in a couple of months). At that time (around 2006), you had to have a passport to fly into Canada but you could drive across the border with two valid forms of US ID (my birth certificate and driver's license were good, and I'd use my military ID was a backup if needed). So I flew to Albany, NY, drove a rental car to Montreal, and then came back the same way.
When I came back to my command and submitted my voucher, the travel office treated me like I was using govt. money at the titty-bar. They accused me of using the govt. travel system to take a nice personal vacation through upstate New York. I upset them when I said, "If my travel plan was such a problem, why did YOU approve it?" When I showed them that my travel plan cost $400 less EACH WAY than flying direct to and from Montreal, they were actually pissed off that they couldn't bust me.
Dumb Travel System. Wretched thing. It would NOT let you book a rental car EXCEPT at an airport. And when the Naval Air Systems Command is 70 miles from the nearest commercial airport, there was a massive amount of one-way rental car activity to/from Pax River.
I had the same thing happening. When going to Holloman AFB, you have to fly into El Paso, TX and then drive 95 miles north to Alamogordo, NM. The inflexibilities in DTS with getting a rental car was always a problem. The excuse was always, "The JTR says...." BS, that stupid system was WAY more inflexible than the JTR ever was.
Not familiar with the DTS system but have an anecdote from1976 about SFOMS (Ship's Force Overhaul Maintenance System). In an overhaul of our Frigate in a drydock in Pearl Harbor we department reps (I was a Chief at the time) were given no training but told to estimate the number of manhours for every job we of the crew were responsible for. It was supposed to help all concerned in managing the work. We turned in the data, hand-written, to the D/H who in turn handed it off to the shipyard IBM key punch operators. After the first week I handed in the number of hours expended for 15-20 of the 90-100 jobs that the divisions in our department had listed. At our first Monday morning meeting with the shipyard wonks and it's EDO overseer, we were excoriated for being behind on up to 80 jobs in our department. The Captain was pissed at us all. We felt the wrath. Got my division reps together in the Ops department, swore them to secrecy, and suggested they be more creative in supplying the key punch operators data. That they should take the estimated manhours for each job and divide that by the number of weeks in the overhaul that remained and report that number weekly whether work had actually been done or not. Because we NCO's knew damn well we were going to complete every job or die trying. It was sad that I never shared that methodology with the other departments but conspiracies must be kept small to remain viable and unpunished. We never had another problem in Ops Department with SFOMS. I abhor "gundecking" but you must understand that back in 1976 you could not argue against spreadsheets and this new computer technology. Now, some 47 years later with our esteemed Vice President put in charge of A.I. I am scared witless.
Hooked me!! I am a modest collector of WW II firearms and have 1903s(Both versions) and M-1s (Both rifle and carbine), Worthy of note that the 1903 was as good as (and because of better sights) more accurate than the main infantry rifle of any of the other countries, Allied or Axis. The Garand was a world beater even so, and its modernized version, the M-14, still is. Little plastic rifles are little plastic rifles :-).
More seriously, the various debacles you describe cause me pain. We didn't (and I gather still don't) take care of our sailors or our ships. Those are fundamental duties, and the failure to perform them is infuriating. Condign punishment is deserved by those who are participants thereof. Unfortunately, our uniformed "leadership " is dominated by those bureaucrats you so accurately disparage, and is apparently immune from the consequences of their dereliction.
You and Captain Mongo need to get M4A1 clones. Mount a good LPVO on it, and load with 77-grain match. The 21st century is easier to get hits with, and easier.
Hm. 1903A3 has much the same sights as the 1917, both of which are much easier on my aging eyes than the 1903A1. 1903 is lighter and shorter than the 1917. I have both, and find the 1903A3 preferable. You do, of course, know that the 1917 is a re chambered British P 14, not that there's anything wrong with that! Yeah, yeah, SMLE has more magazine capacity :-).
"much the same" is true though the Enfield sights are more (and unnecessarily) complex. I rate the A3 as the "If I could only have one rifle it would be..." And yes, I have examples of those noted, save the P17. Gimme a cock-on-opening Mauser clone than an "on-closing" Lee.
Since this is a learned group, lets not call the M16/M4 a "rifle" merely because the PTB do; it's like calling the LCS a ship. The 5.56 weapons are Carbines (ala the .30 M1 Carbine); they are mostly personal defense weapons in all but the best incarnations. Even with 77gr bullets you're still using a coyote round to hunt the most dangerous game on the planet.
Captain Mongo. Milsurps, what joy they bring. Mosin Nagant's, SKS's, AK's, Chinese K98's, Lend-Lease Victory revolvers, Orbea Hermanos and Colt revolvers stamped with South American Police departments, Eibar revolvers made for WW1, both variants of the 1895 Nagant other cats & dogs used to occupy my time.
My maternal grandfather fought in WW2. He used to say that the Army had him walk halfway across Africa. (He was captured but repatriated when his POW ship was successfully attacked by the Allies.) Then on D-Day the Army dumped him on Omaha beach and had him walk halfway across Europe. That was about as much detail as we ever got out of him, but he did comment several times on how great the sights were on his 1903. Speaking of 1903's, here is a YouTube of a rather famous one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnr_gSZ_acE
The only way this gets fixed is with someone above the top brass in the Navy, say a President whom is actively interested and understands the DoD and in particular the Navy and says he is going to fix it and be fixated upon it daily, with heads rolling in shame for those that do not get moving. That Prez will need to do the equivalent of the Army's nightcourt, start culling needless positions, converting true civilian jobs disguised as sailors into civilian jobs by cutting the federal workforce but moving the cut personnel over to the Navy jobs (or those sailors that don't want to be real sailors can resign and be govt. workers) and put all those extra bodies into manning maintenance berths at the major bases, if needed slow down new ships while having the big shipyards do maintenance, get the fleet back to a fighting stance, and then start working on what they need to win a war against a numerically superior enemy hell bent on denying them access. Easy right? May need to drop some woke training and building ships with no purpose while at it.
When leadership is not held accountable then the team on down to the deckplate sees that and acts accordingly.
When is the last time anyone has seen real accountability in senior ranks, SCS and federal officials? There is too much “go along to get along”. The status quo has no use for disrupters.
Great post. I found the section on pay the most interesting at it ties to my experience in the Army, the Army brass made great comments about redoing the pay systems back in early 2009 and spent ungodly amounts of money on it since they trusted the vendor's promise. It became on ongoing boondoggle for over a decade, and I am not sure there was any success. (I was an Army (ARNG) Finance Sr NCO with extensive civilian experience in technology systems.) One thing i have learned over the years is, "how do you know the vendor lied to you? You bought the product!" It is amazing level of wishful thinking that is done by Sr leadership in any organization. However, I used to think the military was too pragmatic for that. Silly me.
No, that is all stored at a warehouse at Army Depot Sierra. But it is just the tooling and fixtures, the actual machinery is vendor owned. You still can't practically restart production
"rumors persist in part because the tooling to make the F-22 and its engine, the F119, were preserved in case an emergency forced the re-opening of the production line. More than 30,000 jigs, fixtures, and other manufacturing equipment key to building the F-22 are stored at Sierra Army Depot, a high desert storage facility in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The knowledge to build the fighter is also preserved in a series of DVDs, designed to instruct future assembly line workers on how to build parts. The Air Force previously denied that the tooling and knowledge were being preserved to build new fighters, but rather to maintain the existing fleet of aircraft."
This was a really well written piece. We really have a problem where much of the current baseline of the Navy is broken and we know fixing it the right way will be hard, so we fall for the "miricle cure" approach. While this can work in a start-up (where the examples come from), this rarely works in an established enterprise.
The Intergrated Pay and Personnel systems that Navy (along with Army and Air Force) continue to try to implement is the perfect example. All of the legacy systems were cobbled together over many years, worked only with significant manual work and couldn;r be supported in a modern network environment. Clearly they needed to be replaced. Each service used the DOD software acquisistion guidance and set off in search of what they belived it requied - adapting off the shelf software for a commercial application. Except, military pay and personnel isn't a commercial application. Each service got bogged down into trying to make a commercial product (which successfully uses the idea of making your processes conform to the product) adapt to the constraints which Congress and others have imposed on us. This involved customizing the software beyond the creators imagination at great time and expense. The vendor told us that what we were doing wasn't wise, but we pushed ahead. They were happy to take our money!
Meanwhile the Marine Corps kept upgrading their legacy system which was purpose built for the military pay and personnel process. OSD didn't like it, but amazingly, the Marine Corps remains the only integrated pay and personnel system in DOD.
Maybe, the other services can ... adopt the Marine Corps software? Of course some minor modifications would be required, but that's just details since the basic software already works for a service's pay and personnel needs.
Navy doesn't need more processes. We don't need more diversity / equity programs. We certainly don't need more pronouns....Nope. We are *not* a microcosm of America. We are an Elite fighting force that is being diluted by the trendy B school processes, incessant and unnecessary calls for diversity/equity and social consciousness by pimple faced 'Poll watching politico' neophytes who surround our President. Regretfully, that seems to include Civilian leaders who all think they'll be SECDEF / SECNAV for another 4 years.
What's missing is Leadership Backbone to say BS to all this touchy feely nonsense that dilutes our ability to think, fight, and win. If, hypothetically, CNO were urged to be more supportive of equity (not equality)and to accept minimal funding for shipbuilding and other urgent war fighting needs, he should pushback - hard. If nothing changed, he should immediately resign and go public with the reason why..., or accept well deserved criticism of being part of the problem and not part of the urgently needed solution.
In today’s DoD, the process IS the product. We all serve the process, not vice-versa. Warfighting is a distant third behind the process and the DEI juggernaut.
Anything software-related, especially support software for pay, travel, etc., is guaranteed to have problems. Mostly caused by adopting the software on a fixed schedule...one usually related to the person ramming the shoddy-ware down people's gullets retiring to a job with the vendor.
I think much of the problem is a job-hopping management system. Spend two or three years in a position, then move on. Make a big splash, move on and leave your successor to clean up the mess. Perhaps it's time to change the time-in-position standards.
Another issue is the Iron Law of Bureaucracy. People get promoted for growing the bureaucracy, not for accomplishing the mission. Scars do NOT earn Stars (ask me how I know).
All this "mindset" is a Leadership, leadership, leadership.
“If you want to know how a man runs his business, look at how he runs his personal life - and likewise.” A manger or director can afford to separate his off duty conduct from his on duty conduct a leader cannot. If your leadership is having affairs, zipper control failures and mishandling classified materials how are things with his crew/unit?
How you do the small things is how you do the big things or attention to details. There should be no casual Fridays aboard ship or in the military in general.
“Be careful doing business with anyone that has an ichthys on their business card.” Fat Leonard anyone?-
"Associate yourself with Men of good Quality if you Esteem your own Reputation; for 'tis better to be alone than in bad Company" attributed to George Washington
Marine Corps Leadership Trait#7 Integrity
Manning? Failure of Leadership. Nobody want to follow mangers and directors.
Training? Failure of leadership , taking care of the troops/sailors is training making sure they can accomplish the mission
Equipping? Failure of leadership, making sure troops/sailors have the tools to do the job
Accountability for all this? Where is it? Marine Corps Leadership Principle #10 Seek Responsibility and Take Responsibility for Your Actions
We have sailors walking around in camping gear and you think "casual Friday" is the issue? Shitcan the camping equipment and dress sailors in clothing suited for maritime operations. If a sailor needs to go camping, there is a branch of the Navy which has a whole suite of camping clothing.
Very valid point on which I have commented on previous substacks and this one would come under making sure your sailors have the equipment to do there job-again leadership, -which I commented on this edition.. Sadly our Navy has more than one issue. The casual Friday attitude (which is DOD wide problem) and equipment/uniforms are only two. In a Department of the Navy where I was in charge the Uniform Board would have been fired and sent off to count ice floes in the Bearing Strait while the Coast Guards work uniform would have been adopted with appropriate US Navy trim
The Coast Guard uniform is a B. Dungrees are an A+.
I saw an officer at the gas station in the blue camping gear. He looked ridiculous. My hero Pep Guardiola was speaking on positive body language in athletes; he was making the point that if you look like an aggressive attacking player, you become an aggressive attaching player. These folks in the blue camping geal look like the blueberries in "Charlie and the Chocolates Factory." How can you adopt the mindset of a battling naval officer when you look so stupid?
US Navy helped win 2 world wars without having to go to camping gear. To my mind, and only from speaking to to sailors and former sailors the Dungrees were better. The Coast Guard offered the best, immediate, and most cost effective solution to a problem that has gone on too long and should never have existed in the first place.
IMHO the Navy work uniform fiasco is on par with the Army going to black berets for everybody in attempt to solve morale problems (make everybody elite) and the Air Force issuing pilots leather flight jackets in attempt to solve pilot retention problems. All examples of monumental failures in leadership that failed to address real problems
Except that looking slovenly is a real problem. That's why I cited to Pep. The best coach of the best football team in the world says that appearance is key to winning. If you keep a positive body language, that leads to a positive result. Our sailors, who used to be the best dressed enlisted men in the entire world, now wear ridiculous camping gear entirely unsuited to life at sea. In sport, when you look like crap, you play like crap. Is the Navy that different?
To further expound on my objection to "Casual Fridays" I don't even believe in them in the civilian world.. Is that the day of the week in which is a organization tells its customers we are going to treat your business casually instead of seriously. In the Navy on LHD-6 the Damage Control teams still are not trained but is is 10 July a Friday will tackle it again on 13 July a Monday- Fire broke out 12 July 2020 a Sunday- granted that is my guesstimate of the attitude or Mindset but I would be surprised if I was far off the mark. If I were in charge there would be no liberty call until the damage control training was taken care of.
This is what terrifies me. Organizations like Navies do not change from within. Change is usually forced from the outside. And it is usually very painful.
losing a major action (Kasserine? Pearl Harbor?). or a small war (Vietnam) is generally what takes.
Afghanistan wasn't enough
On the other hand, Patton's turnaround of II Corps in two weeks is a case study that deserves more attention than it gets. High standards, hard training, and a CO who is FURIOUS at the performance (or at least fakes it really well)...they get results.
Patton was a warfighter. He understood the importance of maintenance, of training and making sure EVERYONE was doing their best job, correctly. Warfighters tend to be pragmatic and have a realistic view of things. The CNO position is due to change, I don't know all the candidates, however Adm Paparo seems to have certain instincts about knowing his future advisory and the necessary materials needed...perhaps he'd be better off as a COCOM rather than a Beltway dweller.
The pick will be testosterone free, even if they don't pick the female presenting VCNO
All the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters. Every single man in the army plays a vital role. So don't ever let up. Don't ever think that your job is unimportant. What if every truck driver decided that he didn't like the whine of the shells and turned yellow and jumped headlong into a ditch? That cowardly bastard could say to himself, 'Hell, they won't miss me, just one man in thousands.' What if every man said that? Where in the hell would we be then? No, thank God, Americans don't say that. Every man does his job. Every man is important. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the quartermaster is needed to bring up the food and clothes for us because where we are going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last damn man in the mess hall, even the one who boils the water to keep us from getting the GI shits, has a job to do.
Kasserine shakeup went far beyond just II Corps. It had impacts on doctrine, equipping and training throughout the Army
Because the flaws become institutionalized. ie- The French Army leadership in WWI believed that the Spirit/Cult of the Offensive would overcome any equipment or tactical shortcomings. It took massive causalities and mutiny to change that. We have a military that is more focused on being diverse an celebrating differences, being a family friendly IBM with uniforms than a military with a unified organizational identity and unity of purpose. That translates into having 9-5 managers not 24-7 leaders which translated to troops/sailors who only identify with being troops/sailors during "duty hours". Hardly the mark of professionals
completely OT, and my apologies for posting here, but I want my outrage to be read.
John Kerry wearing his discarded medals to the coronation? WTF!
But what else can you expect from him?
In the immortal words of one of my C.O.’s “When the sh*t hits the fan, I don’t need people to clean up up the sh*t, I need someone who knows how to turn off the fan.”
Then COMSUBFOR says we are not waiting for N1 to fix itself...BZ! VADM Houston and team
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/commander-submarine-force_vice-adm-william-houston-commander-submarine-activity-7060319057715048448-VqPu?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios
Once upon a time you suggested I was blind when I stated the Navy needs a very heavy and toothy lessons learned organization. Your words were “that is the last thing we need “ so I’ll say it again, you cannot/should not expect big Navy to learn lessons- they are not built this way. While the ships are still afloat let’s all push for an enterprise wide “Sub Safe” copy cat organization that makes Admirals learn and act accordingly. P.S What happened to the Navy’s last learning officer?
I did?
You did, how could I forget, but all is well and please keep the the pressure on our Navy leaders while being mindful that, as is, they do not really listen they just do head bobs. Again, all is well.
I'm afraid I need a Ref. A.
I understand, it happened about two years ago so I don’t remember the title of your post that prompted the back and forth, however, remember trust is a force multiplier.
More fun facts about WW2 service rifles: The M1, adopted in 1936, had to have a major redesign of the gas system. Fortunately, John Garand (the 2nd greatest War Department hire after John Hall) was able to do it. The 1903 was cheapened to the 1903A3, which had better reliability and better combat sights than the original.
In reluctant fairness to the FOGOs, Congress and the Executive Branch are as bad about shiny and new and sexy. Tankers, tenders, drydocks, shipyards, ammunition plants, Patrol Craft, and ASW frigates are only interesting as jobs programs. And they've been set aside for "bigger and better and shinier (at least until the corrosion becomes obvious)".
Whether or not the nation will produce the change in leadership remains to be seen.
A very thought provoking post (even more than usual), and I don't know if I really have all that much of an alternative theory or explanation to offer for your call to action at the end. I would offer, though, at least for the shipbuilding programs and the parallels that you drew between the Springfield and Garand, is that the problem for Navy leadership is that they didn't (or at least, saw themselves as not having) the resources to keep building the current stuff while designing the next generation. That is to say, it would be as if the Army in the 1930's didn't have the money to keep Springfield production going and fund the development and fielding of the Garand. The big difference of course that the Garand was great and the LCS/DDX/CGX were all stinkers. This also brings up a challenge that I think is unique to the Navy (and to the lesser extent the USCG); no other artefact of the Military Industrial Complex is as expensive on a per-unit basis as a ship. The closest I can think of are the gold-plated comms and ISR birds we park in GEO orbit. That translates into a lot less maneuver room when it comes to transitioning from one generation of platforms to another IMO. Of course, it is one thing to get dealt a bad hand, and another to then play that bad hand badly. And finally, it is a source of shame and frustration to me that, despite having dedicated 18 years of my life to the Navy (so far), I'm at a loss to understand what I could have done to make an impact on these issues over the course of my career at any level other than advocating for the individual sailors I've led when they run into problems with the Navy's bureaucracy.
Not lesser extent, USCG. Equal extent for sure. Look at the Polars and OPC builds... the Commandant wouldn’t even commit to naming a decade for delivery of the first polar at the last hearing.
Andy, you are too hard on yourself. There is no shame, ever, in advocating for your people. At 18 yrs of Naval service, it's not for you to set institutional policy, although you should always be prepared to offer an informed opinion. Meanwhile, Big Navy is metrics-driven; so if enough admirals hear about enough problems from enough deckplates, there's a slight chance that an issue will get addressed. Along the lines of Sal's excellent discussion today, a wise old admiral once said to me that two of his biggest concerns -- aside from the nuclear weapons -- were "paychecks and parking spaces," but that was long ago in a galaxy far away. And then, as I recall, the 1990s transformed into an era when the "End of History" was upon us, and the Navy picked up many new, bad habits, atop others that were already legacies. The challenge was to do more with less, until such time as we wound up doing less with less, which appears to be now.
I can remember back in the Jimmy Carter era. His mantra of fiscal austerity included substituting rabbit for roast beef, halving our parts budget, and worst of all bandying around the idea that we sailors should be paying for parking on base. As a former Naval Officer he should have known better. The parking in Hawaii was decent but I suspect there would have been mutinies in Norfolk or San Diego if the pay-for-parking scheme had ever come to fruition.
Your mention of DTS, we’re still using it, with a higher level of manning than when we did it on paper. As a member of the original DTS test group, when I entered our second meeting seeing a PP slide being projected saying,”99% of DTS users say they love DTS!” Hilarious then as now.
One of my favorite parts of DTS is the inability to book DoD hotels through the system and then be flagged for not booking through DTS. Good times.
No doubt! It's also fun that you HAVE TO choose the rental car company that costs the least. You don't get the option of taking a $2/day decrease in in your per diem to slide it over to a rental car company that has served you a lot better EVERY TIME you've used them. That is just crap.
I also loved adjusting the split-disbursement, which was a goofy work-around that you had to learn through trial-and-error. And, of course, you'd get flagged and treated like you were trying to steal your organization's Christmas party fund when all you were doing was directly shifting money from the per diem that you pocket to your travel card bill to get it right and avoid another bill the next month. The system as-is shorts your govt. credit card, heaven forbid that you step in and set it right. If their algorithm could do some 3rd grade math correctly, you'd never have to mess with it.
Don't get me started on fly-by-night rental cars. I had a trip to Yuma where the rental car had a tire shred. On the Interstate, at 70 mph. I managed to keep the vehicle going straight, pulled over, figured on changing the tire.
Except that there WAS no spare tire. It took 30 minutes to get through to their "emergency" line, another 90 minutes to get a tow truck out there, 90 more minutes to get the tire replaced...and to top it all off, I had to put the tire replacement on my personal credit card because the Government Travel Card would not take the charges.
Even better, it won't let you try to save the government money! I was on a two week training TDY in Norfolk about three hours away from home. Class was M-F so I tried to set it up so I could check out of the navy lodge for the weekend since I was goin home. DTS said no, there is no way to split lodging on a single voucher. So the gov had to pay for three unused nights in the lodge that someone else could probably have used all because DTS couldn't handle it.
Gotta love that, the system takes the expensive route because it's the easy route and you're not allowed to use judgement. One time I needed to go to Montreal on short notice because an aircraft parts manufacturer had technical questions and some problems that they wanted my team to look at. I didn't have a passport (it was going through the process because I had a foreign TAD coming up in a couple of months). At that time (around 2006), you had to have a passport to fly into Canada but you could drive across the border with two valid forms of US ID (my birth certificate and driver's license were good, and I'd use my military ID was a backup if needed). So I flew to Albany, NY, drove a rental car to Montreal, and then came back the same way.
When I came back to my command and submitted my voucher, the travel office treated me like I was using govt. money at the titty-bar. They accused me of using the govt. travel system to take a nice personal vacation through upstate New York. I upset them when I said, "If my travel plan was such a problem, why did YOU approve it?" When I showed them that my travel plan cost $400 less EACH WAY than flying direct to and from Montreal, they were actually pissed off that they couldn't bust me.
Dumb Travel System. Wretched thing. It would NOT let you book a rental car EXCEPT at an airport. And when the Naval Air Systems Command is 70 miles from the nearest commercial airport, there was a massive amount of one-way rental car activity to/from Pax River.
I had the same thing happening. When going to Holloman AFB, you have to fly into El Paso, TX and then drive 95 miles north to Alamogordo, NM. The inflexibilities in DTS with getting a rental car was always a problem. The excuse was always, "The JTR says...." BS, that stupid system was WAY more inflexible than the JTR ever was.
Not familiar with the DTS system but have an anecdote from1976 about SFOMS (Ship's Force Overhaul Maintenance System). In an overhaul of our Frigate in a drydock in Pearl Harbor we department reps (I was a Chief at the time) were given no training but told to estimate the number of manhours for every job we of the crew were responsible for. It was supposed to help all concerned in managing the work. We turned in the data, hand-written, to the D/H who in turn handed it off to the shipyard IBM key punch operators. After the first week I handed in the number of hours expended for 15-20 of the 90-100 jobs that the divisions in our department had listed. At our first Monday morning meeting with the shipyard wonks and it's EDO overseer, we were excoriated for being behind on up to 80 jobs in our department. The Captain was pissed at us all. We felt the wrath. Got my division reps together in the Ops department, swore them to secrecy, and suggested they be more creative in supplying the key punch operators data. That they should take the estimated manhours for each job and divide that by the number of weeks in the overhaul that remained and report that number weekly whether work had actually been done or not. Because we NCO's knew damn well we were going to complete every job or die trying. It was sad that I never shared that methodology with the other departments but conspiracies must be kept small to remain viable and unpunished. We never had another problem in Ops Department with SFOMS. I abhor "gundecking" but you must understand that back in 1976 you could not argue against spreadsheets and this new computer technology. Now, some 47 years later with our esteemed Vice President put in charge of A.I. I am scared witless.
Hooked me!! I am a modest collector of WW II firearms and have 1903s(Both versions) and M-1s (Both rifle and carbine), Worthy of note that the 1903 was as good as (and because of better sights) more accurate than the main infantry rifle of any of the other countries, Allied or Axis. The Garand was a world beater even so, and its modernized version, the M-14, still is. Little plastic rifles are little plastic rifles :-).
More seriously, the various debacles you describe cause me pain. We didn't (and I gather still don't) take care of our sailors or our ships. Those are fundamental duties, and the failure to perform them is infuriating. Condign punishment is deserved by those who are participants thereof. Unfortunately, our uniformed "leadership " is dominated by those bureaucrats you so accurately disparage, and is apparently immune from the consequences of their dereliction.
" a world beater even so, and its modernized version, the M-14, still is. Little plastic rifles are little plastic rifles :-)."
yea. verily. loved me my M-14. reach out and touch em with 7.62
Slapped a Mattel sticker on my 16....thing was a rattling piece constant shame. Semper Fi
You and Captain Mongo need to get M4A1 clones. Mount a good LPVO on it, and load with 77-grain match. The 21st century is easier to get hits with, and easier.
I have tried them (along with lots or variants). Fun to shoot. Still prefer a M-14.
I must admit, I am seriously considering getting one of the Bula M14 copies.
TIL I need to buy another firearm
M-14s in Ukraine is a thing. https://armourersbench.com/2022/06/12/m14s-in-ukraine/
I'd take the M1917 over the M1903, though. MUCH superior sights.
Hm. 1903A3 has much the same sights as the 1917, both of which are much easier on my aging eyes than the 1903A1. 1903 is lighter and shorter than the 1917. I have both, and find the 1903A3 preferable. You do, of course, know that the 1917 is a re chambered British P 14, not that there's anything wrong with that! Yeah, yeah, SMLE has more magazine capacity :-).
"much the same" is true though the Enfield sights are more (and unnecessarily) complex. I rate the A3 as the "If I could only have one rifle it would be..." And yes, I have examples of those noted, save the P17. Gimme a cock-on-opening Mauser clone than an "on-closing" Lee.
Since this is a learned group, lets not call the M16/M4 a "rifle" merely because the PTB do; it's like calling the LCS a ship. The 5.56 weapons are Carbines (ala the .30 M1 Carbine); they are mostly personal defense weapons in all but the best incarnations. Even with 77gr bullets you're still using a coyote round to hunt the most dangerous game on the planet.
Fortunately, The Most Dangerous Game isn't very tough, so coyote loads are plenty.
The Most Dangerous Game is increasingly likely to be armored; not always gonna be dudes in man-dresses.
I would like to find a M1916 (American-built Mosin-Nagant) but I expect I would die from sticker shock.
There's plenty around; it's just that so many were sporterized.
Personally, I would love Winchester to make a reproduction of the Russian Contract 1895.
Captain Mongo. Milsurps, what joy they bring. Mosin Nagant's, SKS's, AK's, Chinese K98's, Lend-Lease Victory revolvers, Orbea Hermanos and Colt revolvers stamped with South American Police departments, Eibar revolvers made for WW1, both variants of the 1895 Nagant other cats & dogs used to occupy my time.
Exactly!!!
My maternal grandfather fought in WW2. He used to say that the Army had him walk halfway across Africa. (He was captured but repatriated when his POW ship was successfully attacked by the Allies.) Then on D-Day the Army dumped him on Omaha beach and had him walk halfway across Europe. That was about as much detail as we ever got out of him, but he did comment several times on how great the sights were on his 1903. Speaking of 1903's, here is a YouTube of a rather famous one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnr_gSZ_acE
The only way this gets fixed is with someone above the top brass in the Navy, say a President whom is actively interested and understands the DoD and in particular the Navy and says he is going to fix it and be fixated upon it daily, with heads rolling in shame for those that do not get moving. That Prez will need to do the equivalent of the Army's nightcourt, start culling needless positions, converting true civilian jobs disguised as sailors into civilian jobs by cutting the federal workforce but moving the cut personnel over to the Navy jobs (or those sailors that don't want to be real sailors can resign and be govt. workers) and put all those extra bodies into manning maintenance berths at the major bases, if needed slow down new ships while having the big shipyards do maintenance, get the fleet back to a fighting stance, and then start working on what they need to win a war against a numerically superior enemy hell bent on denying them access. Easy right? May need to drop some woke training and building ships with no purpose while at it.
TRUTH.
When leadership is not held accountable then the team on down to the deckplate sees that and acts accordingly.
When is the last time anyone has seen real accountability in senior ranks, SCS and federal officials? There is too much “go along to get along”. The status quo has no use for disrupters.
End of rant.
That wasn't a rant. Mark. I think that is called "Hate Facts" now by those in charge. Keep at it.
Great post. I found the section on pay the most interesting at it ties to my experience in the Army, the Army brass made great comments about redoing the pay systems back in early 2009 and spent ungodly amounts of money on it since they trusted the vendor's promise. It became on ongoing boondoggle for over a decade, and I am not sure there was any success. (I was an Army (ARNG) Finance Sr NCO with extensive civilian experience in technology systems.) One thing i have learned over the years is, "how do you know the vendor lied to you? You bought the product!" It is amazing level of wishful thinking that is done by Sr leadership in any organization. However, I used to think the military was too pragmatic for that. Silly me.
USAF: It’s too expensive to store the F-22 production tooling, so Lockheed cut it up for scrap.
At least Lockheed didn't sell the tooling to China, as occurred with certain articles that were used to build the B-1 bomber.
No, that is all stored at a warehouse at Army Depot Sierra. But it is just the tooling and fixtures, the actual machinery is vendor owned. You still can't practically restart production
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/news/a19056/sorry-the-f-22-production-line-is-dead/
"rumors persist in part because the tooling to make the F-22 and its engine, the F119, were preserved in case an emergency forced the re-opening of the production line. More than 30,000 jigs, fixtures, and other manufacturing equipment key to building the F-22 are stored at Sierra Army Depot, a high desert storage facility in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The knowledge to build the fighter is also preserved in a series of DVDs, designed to instruct future assembly line workers on how to build parts. The Air Force previously denied that the tooling and knowledge were being preserved to build new fighters, but rather to maintain the existing fleet of aircraft."
Been to Sierra several times. Thanks for correcting me.
Cheers,
PW
This was a really well written piece. We really have a problem where much of the current baseline of the Navy is broken and we know fixing it the right way will be hard, so we fall for the "miricle cure" approach. While this can work in a start-up (where the examples come from), this rarely works in an established enterprise.
The Intergrated Pay and Personnel systems that Navy (along with Army and Air Force) continue to try to implement is the perfect example. All of the legacy systems were cobbled together over many years, worked only with significant manual work and couldn;r be supported in a modern network environment. Clearly they needed to be replaced. Each service used the DOD software acquisistion guidance and set off in search of what they belived it requied - adapting off the shelf software for a commercial application. Except, military pay and personnel isn't a commercial application. Each service got bogged down into trying to make a commercial product (which successfully uses the idea of making your processes conform to the product) adapt to the constraints which Congress and others have imposed on us. This involved customizing the software beyond the creators imagination at great time and expense. The vendor told us that what we were doing wasn't wise, but we pushed ahead. They were happy to take our money!
Meanwhile the Marine Corps kept upgrading their legacy system which was purpose built for the military pay and personnel process. OSD didn't like it, but amazingly, the Marine Corps remains the only integrated pay and personnel system in DOD.
Wait, I see a solution here ....
Maybe, the other services can ... adopt the Marine Corps software? Of course some minor modifications would be required, but that's just details since the basic software already works for a service's pay and personnel needs.
An idea so crazy it just might work!
This page says it all: https://my.navy.mil/quick-links.html
That looks like a webpage I would have designed in the mid-90s when I was getting my MBA.
Typed it into my phone. Looks even worse there. I guess Big Navy doesn't believe their deckplates use handheld devices. Sigh....
Give the job to a GEN Z kid and he'll have it user friendly in not.
Navy doesn't need more processes. We don't need more diversity / equity programs. We certainly don't need more pronouns....Nope. We are *not* a microcosm of America. We are an Elite fighting force that is being diluted by the trendy B school processes, incessant and unnecessary calls for diversity/equity and social consciousness by pimple faced 'Poll watching politico' neophytes who surround our President. Regretfully, that seems to include Civilian leaders who all think they'll be SECDEF / SECNAV for another 4 years.
What's missing is Leadership Backbone to say BS to all this touchy feely nonsense that dilutes our ability to think, fight, and win. If, hypothetically, CNO were urged to be more supportive of equity (not equality)and to accept minimal funding for shipbuilding and other urgent war fighting needs, he should pushback - hard. If nothing changed, he should immediately resign and go public with the reason why..., or accept well deserved criticism of being part of the problem and not part of the urgently needed solution.
In today’s DoD, the process IS the product. We all serve the process, not vice-versa. Warfighting is a distant third behind the process and the DEI juggernaut.
When you hire a bunch of people whose only job is to ensure a process is followed, the process becomes the product.
Yup. The ones trying to apply business efficiency principles to warfighting. It never works.
It will likely work. You'll efficiently lose the war.
You’d think that, but...Afghanistan.
Efficiency is bad for consultants because it puts them out of a job.
Anything software-related, especially support software for pay, travel, etc., is guaranteed to have problems. Mostly caused by adopting the software on a fixed schedule...one usually related to the person ramming the shoddy-ware down people's gullets retiring to a job with the vendor.
I think much of the problem is a job-hopping management system. Spend two or three years in a position, then move on. Make a big splash, move on and leave your successor to clean up the mess. Perhaps it's time to change the time-in-position standards.
Another issue is the Iron Law of Bureaucracy. People get promoted for growing the bureaucracy, not for accomplishing the mission. Scars do NOT earn Stars (ask me how I know).
All this "mindset" is a Leadership, leadership, leadership.
“If you want to know how a man runs his business, look at how he runs his personal life - and likewise.” A manger or director can afford to separate his off duty conduct from his on duty conduct a leader cannot. If your leadership is having affairs, zipper control failures and mishandling classified materials how are things with his crew/unit?
How you do the small things is how you do the big things or attention to details. There should be no casual Fridays aboard ship or in the military in general.
“Be careful doing business with anyone that has an ichthys on their business card.” Fat Leonard anyone?-
"Associate yourself with Men of good Quality if you Esteem your own Reputation; for 'tis better to be alone than in bad Company" attributed to George Washington
Marine Corps Leadership Trait#7 Integrity
Manning? Failure of Leadership. Nobody want to follow mangers and directors.
Training? Failure of leadership , taking care of the troops/sailors is training making sure they can accomplish the mission
Equipping? Failure of leadership, making sure troops/sailors have the tools to do the job
Accountability for all this? Where is it? Marine Corps Leadership Principle #10 Seek Responsibility and Take Responsibility for Your Actions
We have sailors walking around in camping gear and you think "casual Friday" is the issue? Shitcan the camping equipment and dress sailors in clothing suited for maritime operations. If a sailor needs to go camping, there is a branch of the Navy which has a whole suite of camping clothing.
Very valid point on which I have commented on previous substacks and this one would come under making sure your sailors have the equipment to do there job-again leadership, -which I commented on this edition.. Sadly our Navy has more than one issue. The casual Friday attitude (which is DOD wide problem) and equipment/uniforms are only two. In a Department of the Navy where I was in charge the Uniform Board would have been fired and sent off to count ice floes in the Bearing Strait while the Coast Guards work uniform would have been adopted with appropriate US Navy trim
The Coast Guard uniform is a B. Dungrees are an A+.
I saw an officer at the gas station in the blue camping gear. He looked ridiculous. My hero Pep Guardiola was speaking on positive body language in athletes; he was making the point that if you look like an aggressive attacking player, you become an aggressive attaching player. These folks in the blue camping geal look like the blueberries in "Charlie and the Chocolates Factory." How can you adopt the mindset of a battling naval officer when you look so stupid?
US Navy helped win 2 world wars without having to go to camping gear. To my mind, and only from speaking to to sailors and former sailors the Dungrees were better. The Coast Guard offered the best, immediate, and most cost effective solution to a problem that has gone on too long and should never have existed in the first place.
IMHO the Navy work uniform fiasco is on par with the Army going to black berets for everybody in attempt to solve morale problems (make everybody elite) and the Air Force issuing pilots leather flight jackets in attempt to solve pilot retention problems. All examples of monumental failures in leadership that failed to address real problems
Except that looking slovenly is a real problem. That's why I cited to Pep. The best coach of the best football team in the world says that appearance is key to winning. If you keep a positive body language, that leads to a positive result. Our sailors, who used to be the best dressed enlisted men in the entire world, now wear ridiculous camping gear entirely unsuited to life at sea. In sport, when you look like crap, you play like crap. Is the Navy that different?
*****Bering Strait.
To further expound on my objection to "Casual Fridays" I don't even believe in them in the civilian world.. Is that the day of the week in which is a organization tells its customers we are going to treat your business casually instead of seriously. In the Navy on LHD-6 the Damage Control teams still are not trained but is is 10 July a Friday will tackle it again on 13 July a Monday- Fire broke out 12 July 2020 a Sunday- granted that is my guesstimate of the attitude or Mindset but I would be surprised if I was far off the mark. If I were in charge there would be no liberty call until the damage control training was taken care of.