The US Navy is Sleepwalking into Defeat

...war does not care about your talking points...

I’m shifting what I was going to post today, because I realized Sunday night that this is the most important thing to start the week with.

We need drastic change in our senior leadership, and whoever is brought to the front must sharply shift in tone and substance from the standard behavior of this century.

We must put to the side the system of incentives and disincentives we use to promote our most senior leaders. This last quarter century’s process has a record of consistently producing sub-optimal performance. This isn’t just my opinion. Look at everything from how we manage our people using a Cold War framework, to program management that cannot design a laudable warship or a fit-for-purpose airwing, to the shambolic results of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and the Horn of Africa.

The results speak for themselves.

No, even if we ignore that dysfunction, we have to look at the potential conflict that presents the greatest danger to our nation’s power, economy, and that of our allies—the threat that would, if it has its way, change the international order in ways that will reverse centuries of progress.

That challenge is in the Pacific. To fight and win, there is one simple thing that is common to all wars, but in the Pacific is an order of magnitude greater, because of time, distance, and geography for a sea power coming from the other side of the planet to fight: logistics.

The hour is late, yet even in this year of our Lord, Two Thousand and Twenty Five, on the 6th of May at the HASC Readiness Subcommittee Hearing, the highest ranking officer of the service that will have to lead any fight west of the International Date Line is unable to even articulate the problem IN HIS WRITTEN TESTIMONY.

BEHOLD the fruits of our system as transcribed by CharlieB:

Contested Logistics: The current strategic environment demands a naval logistics enterprise capable of assuring readiness and sustainment at speed and scale for the Joint Force. Navy is modernizing our logistics enterprise to be more agile, resilient, and capable of sustaining combat effectiveness in contested environments against peer adversaries. To address the challenges of refueling, rearming, and resupplying inside weapons engagement zones, we are investing in next generation logistics ships to augment the current combat logistics force and in new capabilities such as rearming at sea." — Admiral James Kilby, USN, Acting Chief of Naval Operations.

We have to stop talking like this. This is not how the confident, clearheaded, honest, and determined speak.

This is the patronizing language of corporatism, denial, entitlement, and decline.

Let’s Fisk every single sentence of this fetid over-staffed intellectual chaff-cloud.

The current strategic environment demands a naval logistics enterprise capable of assuring readiness and sustainment at speed and scale for the Joint Force.

FFS. The “current?” Shipmate, this “environment” has existed since the dawn of time and we have known this in detail for the over two centuries our Navy has sailed the waters of the Pacific. We do not have an “enterprise” anything. Stop using that word. It impresses no one, and in 2025 if anything it is a tell to clear-thinking people that you or those who write for you are hobbled by intellectual insecurity. “Joint Force?” You are the acting Chief of Naval Operations. You are at your terminal paygrade. You have your JPME credit. Speak clearly about the Navy you are supposed to focus your efforts to train, man, and equip. Bullsh1t Bingo words are worthy of little more than scorn.

Navy is modernizing our logistics enterprise to be more agile, resilient, and capable of sustaining combat effectiveness in contested environments against peer adversaries.

Oh, are we? Really? Define “agile.” Define “resilient.” Explain to me, specifically, how you are helping your logistics force operate in “contested environments against peer adversaries.” As we’ll see later on in this post—this is all aspirational.

Also, why did your predecessors leave us in this state when this threat has been clear as day for decades?

To address the challenges of refueling, rearming, and resupplying inside weapons engagement zones, we are investing in next generation logistics ships to augment the current combat logistics force and in new capabilities such as rearming at sea.

“…we are investing”, oh, are we? Why at this late hour are we only now doing this? These “investments”—how long until these displace water and are ready to steam west? Finally, don’t be insulting. Everyone has access to google. rearming at sea is not a “new capability.” It is a capability we are reconstituting after abandoning it because it was, “too hard.”

I’m sorry Admiral Kilby, but you are not speaking clearly. You are not speaking directly through a miasma of passive voice. You are regurgitating archaic and discredited cant from the cargo cult of the the Cult of the Joint.

Talk to your staff who are helping you prepare. Talk to yourself. Reset for the future.

I was about to type out some more unpleasant things that I may regret later, but lucky for me, Sal Mercogliano has summarized a superb response to Kirby’s word-salad I will repost here.

We no longer have the luxury of such self-serving obfuscation, unclear speaking, and inability to be blunt with the American people and their elected representatives as to what is needed to get the nation’s Navy ready for the challenge that is there in clear sight.

We need new leaders selected under different criteria to prepare our Navy for what is needed. Continuing to harvest the fruits of a tree that produces nothing suitable for consumption in a competitive market is foolishness of the highest order.

I’m feeling a bit here today.