The PTS/PTSD hype & smear issue has a history worthy of a book (wait, that has already been done), and the sexual assault meme has been floating around in force since I was a LTJG … but what about now?

The last few days have seen two officers come forward; 2LT Dan Gomez, USA in TheGuardian and Capt. Lindsay L. Rodman, USMC in the WSJ. They are both pushing back against the drones of doom and smear, standing athwart the rising chorus and saying, “Stop.”

First let’s look at the good common sense from Gomez on PTSD, then we’ll dive in to the real touchy issue; sexual assault.

The revelations of sexual assault and harassment are only the latest in what has been a steady stream of bad news for the military. After a decade of war, we’ve read over and over about PTSD and mental health stigma, suicide, unemployment and extremism within the ranks. Without question, as a military, we have issues that we need to address.

But the things that I read about on a daily basis – all of these problems – while present and important, do not reflect the reality of what I see and experience as a soldier. In other words, this is not my army.

Yes, we’re growing and learning as an organization. We’ve been at war for over a decade, and are adapting to a rapidly changing world. America’s expectations of who we are and who we should be are also changing, and with that, problems are bubbling up to the surface that have been long ignored – and we are addressing them. But this fractured force that I read about full of misfits and miscreants is not my army.

The army I serve in is composed of brave men and women who joined the force during a time of war, fully knowing they will likely be placed in harm’s way. They’ve seen the veterans coming home with missing limbs and those who struggle to transition back to civilian life – and they still choose to sign the line. These are men and women who are unafraid to be patriotic at a time when doing so often seems out of fashion, and even looked down upon. They live the Army Values, and are just as shocked to learn about the scale of the problems we’re facing as a force – and as a nation – as the rest of America. And we want to get better. This is not a group of broken and sorry soldiers, fumbling along and victimized.

The army I serve in shows up every day and works, focusing on daily drills with a watchful eye on global hotspots, listening to the talking heads nonchalantly discuss “boots on the ground”, waiting for the call to be whisked away again to some far off place. Talk of an “Asia Pivot” or a return to a “garrison army” falls on deaf ears to the family saying tearful goodbyes to their loved one at an airfield, or to the soldier heading to Helmand province for a year. This is not to make light of the difficult problems we must face and fix, but it’s important to recognize that we here on the ground see the work being done to fix them.

Amen.

For some reason, the exception has become the rule; the footnote the lead story. This is not right, and this is not what we see on a day to day basis – at sea and ashore. We see the real Navy and Marine Corps – just as Gomez sees the real Army. The issue for me is this; why aren’t we standing up more for our culture, our Shipmates – and push back against the attentions seekers, sympathy trolls, and those who want to make the hero a victim? We have let this story, again, get upside down. We are forgetting what we let happen to the Vietnam generation. We should not let that happen again.

BZ to Dan Gomez, and now let’s shift fire to someone who everyone owes a solid professional nod to; Capt. Rodman. A Marine JAG who attacks a problem as only a Marine can – clear, direct, fundamentally sound, and fact based.

As with Dan, you need to read it all … but she eviscerates those who are using bad science to attack the military for their own agendas … something we’ve seen before. Something we know better than to let go unchallenged. When all others cower in fear, it does seem that there is always a Marine who is willing to step forward and do the right thing.

Here are the core bits that leave you knowing one thing that we really already knew; the numbers being used to make the American public think the military is full of sexual predators are garbage.

In the days since the Defense Department’s May 7 release of its 2012 Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military, the media and lawmakers have been abuzz. The report’s estimate that last year 26,000 service members experienced unwanted sexual contact prompted many to conclude, incorrectly, that this reliably estimated the number of victims of sexual assault.

The 2012 estimate was also significantly higher than the last estimate, causing some to proclaim a growing “epidemic” of sexual assault in the military. The truth is that the 26,000 figure is such bad math-derived from an unscientific sample set and extrapolated military-wide-that no conclusions can be drawn from it.
…
The term “sexual assault” was not used in the WGRA survey. Instead, the survey refers to “unwanted sexual contact,” which includes touching the buttocks and attempted touching.
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It is disheartening to me, as a female officer in the Marine Corps and a judge advocate devoted to the professional practice of law in the military, to see Defense Department leaders and members of Congress deal with this emotionally charged issue without the benefit of solid, verifiable data. The 26,000 estimate is based on the 2012 Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Active Duty Military. The WGRA survey was fielded throughout all branches of the military in September and November 2012. As the report indicates, “Completed surveys were received from 22,792 eligible respondents,” while “the total sample consisted of 108,478 individuals.” In other words, one in five of the active-duty military personnel to whom the survey was sent responded.

I am one of those who responded to the survey after receiving an email with an online link. None of the males in my office received the email, though nearly every other female did. We have no way of knowing the exact number of male or female respondents to the 2012 WGRA survey because that information wasn’t released.
…
Though the 2012 survey does not specify the gender composition of its respondents, the 2010 respondents were 42% female (10,029 women and 14,000 men).

Nevertheless, to achieve the 26,000 military-wide estimate in 2012 (and 19,000 in 2010) over half of the victims must have been male. Of course, male victims do exist, but empirically males do not constitute anywhere near the majority of victims of unwanted sexual contact-no less sexual assault. Here is what we do know: The actual number of reported sexual assaults in the military in 2012 was 3,374, up from 3,192 in 2011. These figures include reports by civilians against service members. Of the 3,374 total cases reported last year, only 12%-14% were reported by men. We also don’t know how actual sexual-assault rates in the military compare with civilian society.
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Each and every sexual assault is tragic and infuriating. But given the military’s recent emphasis on awareness of the problem and insistence that victims come forward, it’s no surprise that this number has gone up.

Here is a back-story in how our silence is hurting us; we are not recruiting good people because of our decision to let lies stand.

I often talk to young men and women interested in joining the military, and I find that women especially seek me out to gain the perspective of a female officer. In the past year or so, these potential female recruits have grown increasingly wary, asking many follow-up questions about whether women are treated fairly and respectfully. I tell them that serving in the military doesn’t turn a woman into a victim. I am a proud Marine, surrounded by outstanding military personnel from every service who take this problem seriously, male and female alike.

If you want quality men and women to join the military – don’t let them think they are joining an organization hobbled with sexual assault. It isn’t.

If you really want to help those veterans returning to the civilian world – you need to help push back against the twin smears of broken-vessels and sexual-predators. It wasn’t and isn’t our military; don’t let lesser mortals try to make it seem so.

PTS/PTSD and sexual assault are real, but especially with sexual assault, if you want to let people know your are serious about addressing the issue – and not off reacting to agendas – then you have to use serious numbers and research. Research and studies that can survive the follow-on question from statisticians and a Company Grade JAGs, for starters.

May many more follow Gomez and Rodman’s example. Demand that the military at least show you the respect you deserve by treating you as an adult – and not judging you from bad studies.

This is the first post in a weekly series about the writing and thinking of Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, leading up to the release of “21^st Century Mahan: Sound Military Conclusions for the Modern Era” by The Naval Institute Press.

This week is Commissioning Week at The U.S. Naval Academy.  It’s an exciting time of ceremonies, balls, parties, and obelisk climbing.  At this year’s ceremony the new Ensigns and Second Lieutenants will hear advice from many, including the CNO, SECNAV, Governor of Maryland, and the Commander-in-Chief.  Ultimately much of it comes down to the central question: What are the skills, the requirements, the qualifications, of a good naval officer?  Or to put it another way: What does it take to earn that “Special Trust and Confidence” from the President of the United States?

It is well known that the passage memorized by Plebes at the Academy entitled “The Qualifications of a Naval Officer” never actually flowed from the pen of Captain John Paul Jones.  The story is well documented in an article from Naval History, debunked by a writing team of a Midshipman and an Academy Professor.  However, the ideals listed in the passage are worth considering as a benchmark and sometimes we still see them in official Navy documents.

Alfred Thayer Mahan, as opposed to Jones, did write about what a naval officer should be capable of accomplishing.  ATM served as the head of the Gunnery Department in Annapolis when he was a Commander (at one point he wrote a report chit on an upstart young Firstie for being disorderly, a future officer named William Sims).  He wrote about the training of Midshipmen at the Academy in his essay “Naval Education.”  The essay was the first thing that ATM, who became quite prolific, ever wrote for publication.  It won third prize in the very first Naval Institute essay contest.  The subject of the contest was, of course, “Naval Education” and ATM set out to redesign the curriculum at the Naval Academy, which was the only source of commissioned officers at the time.

The following passage outlines the things that he believed were the required skills and capabilities of a naval officer:

The organizing and disciplining of the crew, the management under all circumstances of the great machine which a ship is, call for a very high order of character, whether natural or acquired; capacity for governing men, for dealing with conflicting tempers and interests jarring in a most artificial mode of life; self possession and habit of command in danger, in sudden emergencies, in the tumult and probable horrors of a modern naval action; sound judgment which can take risks calmly, yet risk no more than is absolutely necessary; sagacity to divine the probable movements of an enemy, to provide against future wants, to avoid or compel action as may be wished; moral courage, to be shown in fearlessness of responsibility, in readiness to either act or not act, regardless of censure whether from above or below; quickness of eye and mind, the intuitive perception of danger or advantage, the ready instinct which seizes the proper means in either case: all these are faculties not born in every man, not perfected in any man save by the long training of habit—a fact to which the early history of all naval wars bears witness.

It’s a tall order, and a bit more specific than the ideals attributed to Jones.  However, reading through the list each of us in the Service may see the attributes of some of our favorite superiors, or the things we determined others were missing.

More than just a strategic thinker who liked battleships and trans-isthmus canals, ATM has a good deal to offer in the leadership department as well.  His suggestion, aimed at increasing the skills listed, was to reduce the heavy weight given to engineering and hard science at the Academy (and today in ROTC units) and to increase the required courses in history and the humanities is as valid today as it was almost a century and a half ago.

LCDR Armstrong is a naval helicopter pilot and an occasional naval historian.  For more of Mahan’s writing, including the text of “Naval Education,” look for his book 21st Century Mahan: Sound Military Conclusions for a Modern Era and follow @NavalInstitute for quotes and sound military conclusions.

The opinions and views expressed in this post are those of the author alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of US Department of Defense, the US Navy, or any other agency.

How did the US Marine Corps and local tribal leaders turn the corner in Fallujah? Who were the people on the ground, Iraqi and American, who were the catalyst for the change that brought about a sea change in the tactical, operational, and strategic direction in Iraq?

Our guest for the full hour to discuss that and more will be author Bill Ardolino. We will use as a base of our discussion his new book, Fallujah Awakens: Marines, Sheikhs, and the Battle Against al Qaeda.

Bill is the associate editor of The Long War Journal. He was embedded with the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Army, the Iraqi Army, and the Iraqi Police in Fallujah, Habbaniyah, and Baghdad in 2006, 2007, and 2008, and later with U.S. and Afghan forces in Kabul, Helmand and Khost provinces in Afghanistan. His reports, columns, and photographs have received wide media exposure and have been cited in a number of academic publications. He lives in Washington, DC.

Join us live at 5pm (Eastern U.S.) or listen later by clicking here.

Today’s successful launch of an X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) demonstrator marks a significant turning point for Naval Aviation, as much for its cultural acceptance by the community as for its technological significance.

As a newly minted Naval Aviator in 2002, the mere mention of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the ready room was enough to send most discussions into overdrive.  The Navy, after all, would never have a need for drones, especially not ones launched from an aircraft carrier or a surface combatant.  When a leading aircraft manufacturer’s UAV team joined us during a cruise in 2003 to measure the GEORGE WASHINGTON’s flight deck, the response was a mixture of mild curiosity and more than a little negativity.

What a difference 11 years makes.  UAVs have undeniably altered modern warfare and, having found broad cultural acceptance within the military, the conversation now revolves around the roles the platforms should adopt, rather than whether or not we should accept unmanned vehicles into the ranks.

The Navy, for its part, is making significant headway in incorporating UAVs.

The MQ-8B Fire Scout, an unmanned helicopter, is flying missions off the coast of Africa, a scant seven years after its first autonomous landing on USS NASHVILLE during flight evaluations in January 2006.   During Operation Unified Protector in Libya, the drone provided real-time intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) in areas where it was deemed unsafe for manned helicopters to fly.  (In fact, one of the two Fire Scouts stationed onboard USS HALYBURTON was shot down during a mission in theater).

The MQ-4C Triton, a marinised version of the Global Hawk, will provide long-endurance ISR missions in support of maritime domain awareness (MDA) and is expected to join the Fleet in 2015 (the first squadron, VUP-19 in NAS Jacksonville, is already standing up).  Designed to complement the P-8A Poseidon’s role, the long range, high-endurance Triton will provide five continuous orbits around the globe, freeing up the P-8 for roles which require more responsiveness and flexibility.

Today’s X-47B launch is certainly a laudable technological achievement, placing us on a path towards redefining the composition of the modern-day air wing.

Most importantly, today’s launch vividly demonstrates Naval Aviation’s cultural shift towards the widespread acceptance and use of UAVs, a key enabler necessary for these systems to reach their full potential.

Lieutenant Commander Snodgrass is an active duty Naval Officer.

“I won’t be offended if you turn away to watch the planes flying. I do it myself all the time,” NAS Oceana commanding officer CAPT Bob “Goose” Geis tells our group as he starts his brief on the facility’s history and operations. It’s an appropriate introduction to a meeting being held in the control tower conference room, a space seven stories above the tarmac with floor-to-ceiling glass on three sides, giving a 270 degree view of everything happening on the airfield. It’s an impressive sight, and you can’t fully appreciate the scale of NAS Oceana’s aircraft operations until you see it from above.

Oceana is huge. It’s the Navy’s east coast Master Jet Base, and as of 2012 it has 19 squadrons and 337 total aircraft. Standing in the tower, it’s row after row of F/A-18 jets so far into the distance that it becomes hard to discern what type of plane you’re looking at. That doesn’t include the various other cargo and support planes, and the smattering of helicopters dotting the tarmac. Among all these aircraft is a constant stream of ground vehicles running around carrying fuel, parts, and who knows what else. At any given moment there must be at least a dozen jets taxiing to or from one of NAS Oceana’s four runways, including the area’s only 12,000 foot runway (the other three are 8,000 feet a piece). CAPT Geis tells us that when NASA was still operating the Space Shuttle program, Oceana was on the list of possible divert points for landing because they have a runway long enough.

Off of those runways 200,000 flights a year take off, and watching the traffic it’s not hard to believe. Every few minutes another pair of fighters take off with a thunderous roar that, even sitting behind the thick glass of the tower conference room, resonates through your entire body. Their rate at which planes are coming and going seems to outpace even the busiest commercial airports.

CAPT Geis completes his brief and invites us to watch the planes and take pictures from the conference room, and takes our questions. He points out the differences between the F/A-18 Hornet and the newer Super Hornet. After talking with him, I’ll bet you a beer I can pick out one from the other at night just by the lights alone. He points out a line of F/A-18s parked a few hundred yards away with strange paint schemes. “Those are part of an agressor squadron. Their job is to play the part of enemy aircraft during training missions. Those particular planes are painted to look like Chinese fighters.”

Leaving the tower, we take a quick van ride down the tarmac to VFA-15‘s hangar and squadron offices. We’re given a briefing on the history of VFA-15, its recent deployments, and a day in the life of a naval aviator. The Lieutenant Commander giving the brief paints a clear picture of the incredible amount of resources required to keep a fighter squadron flying. VFA-15 has 200 personnel assigned to it, only 25 of whom are officers. It takes 175 enlisted sailors to maintain the squadron’s aircraft, and while they’re out at sea maintenance is conducted 24/7, broken into twelve hour shifts (on shore they do maintenance Sunday night through Friday afternoon). Putting planes in the air is incredibly expensive, so they make the most of every minute they fly. NAS Oceana has a massive 94,000 square miles of airspace off the Atlantic Coast that they use to fly training missions of all varieties. They have telemetry systems on each aircraft that sends data about every single thing happening on board back to ground stations, and is used during their extensive, in-depth debriefs to fine-tune every aspect of a pilot’s skills.

Down in the hangar bays are a number of fighters in various states of disassembly while maintenance is performed. One of the planes has one of its engines completely removed, and you can see all the way through from the tail to the air intake opening. Walking around the hangar around the planes, you start to realize how much bigger they are than they appear to be in pictures, or when they’re flying overhead.

One of the squadron pilots is answering questions about the planes and their weaponry, but to be honest I’m only half listening because I’m too enthralled with checking out these amazing machines up close. It’s small details that stand out. The end of the arresting hook, used to catch one of the wires on the deck of an aircraft carrier to stop the plane when it lands, is only about the size of a fist. It’s incredible to think that a little chunk of metal on the end of a pole is solely responsible for keeping the plane from careening off the end of the ship. For an aircraft that costs tens of millions of dollars you’d expect every tool to be high-grade, specialized equipment – and much of it is, but there are also what appear to be $5 oil drain pans from an auto supply store on the floor, and foam packing blocks taped to the edges of the control surfaces to protect them from damage. Of course these items make sense logically, but they seem so incongruous in conjunction with the rest of the items in the hangar.

Above all else, I keep thinking how amazingly cool it must be to fly one. It’s one thing to watch Top Gun and want to buzz the tower, but it’s a whole different thing to watch them in person; to stand next to one looking at the humongous engines that hurtle these planes through the air at supersonic speeds.

My main takeaway from the tour is that NAS Oceana is all about big. Big runways, big numbers of aircraft, big speeds, big missions. It’s a wild experience to stand on the tarmac of one of the busiest airports in the country, feet away from planes that are capable of seemingly physics-defying feats of speed and agility, and remember that you’re a ten minute drive from the beach. All I kept thinking while I was there was, “this is so freakin’ cool!”

LT Laws’ journey from the corridors of Bancroft Hall, as a proud member of the USNA Class of 1962, to the aircraft carrier USS HANCOCK (CVA-19), operating in the Gulf of Tonkin during the war—to the jungles of Vietnam where his remains lay virtually undisturbed for 45 years—to his repatriation and interment at the U.S. Naval Academy columbarium is a story that deserves to be told.

After graduation and flight training, Richard Laws became an F-8 Crusader pilot and he joined VF-24, the “Fighting Red Checkertails” onboard USS HANCOCK. He deployed twice with HANCOCK and was a “double Centurion” with more than 200 combat missions over Vietnam. During that second deployment, while on a strafing mission, his aircraft was struck by ground fire. He radioed that he had been hit and twenty seconds later his flight leader observed his aircraft strike a mountainside and explode. There was apparently no time to eject. He was presumed to have died on impact…

Now enter the JPAC, which stands for “Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command.” Activated Oct. 1, 2003, JPAC’s 400 joint military and civilian personnel are tasked with searching for the more than 83,000 Americans still missing from past armed conflicts. JPAC’s Central Identification Laboratory, is the largest and most diverse forensic laboratory in existence. No other nation in the world goes to such lengths to repatriate its heroes who have made the ultimate sacrifice. This is all about who and what we are—American Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines—a close knit band of brothers and sisters who will leave no one behind. Sometimes the process takes a long time. After all, Vietnam remains a “Socialist Republic.” It did not re-establish diplomatic relations with the United States until two decades after the fall of Saigon (1995).

American and Vietnamese recovery teams visited the crash site three times since the end of the war. They gathered remains, but DNA identification technology was not advanced enough to yield positive results until 2011. That’s when Richard Laws’ remains were positively identified, leading to his repatriation and interment at the Naval Academy.

When I arrived in Full Dress Whites on the steps of the “Cathedral of the Navy” last Friday, a crowd of Navy veterans started to gather. I introduced myself as the Escort Officer to several of LT Laws’ classmates and squadron mates. These men were in their mid-70s but still going strong—looking fit, dapper, and fully focused on making this a dignified tribute to their classmate, shipmate and friend. One member of the class of ’62 told me that he had not seen a gathering of so many classmates since the funeral of Colonel John Ripley, USMC (USNA ’62), who single-handedly blew up the Dong Ha bridge over the river Cua Viet, thereby blunting a major North Vietnamese offensive in April 1972 (His book published by the Naval Institute, “The Bridge at Dong Ha” is highly commended).

Those old squadron mates painted a grueling picture of life at sea onboard USS HANCOCK. There were no casualties on their first deployment, but as things heated up in North Vietnam, they lost naval aviators and aircraft to combat and mishaps on their second deployment. Back in the day, the carrier went “on the line” (engaged in combat operations) for 30 days at a time. Sleep was a precious commodity. You were lucky to get six hours a day. But on a carrier with no air conditioning and temperatures in the Gulf of Tonkin exceeding 100 degrees at times, it was difficult to really rest and recharge your batteries between missions. One man talked of his stateroom next to a clunky ammunition elevator that operated 24/7. He finally got used to sleeping next to extreme noise. Regardless of the harsh conditions, they got up every day, went to the ready room and did their duty. Fiercely proud of the F-8 Crusader, one man brought a scale model of the aircraft, fitted out exactly as Laws’ aircraft had been configured the day he went down—with Sidewinder missiles in case of an interaction with North Vietnamese MiGs and Zuni rocket packs for suppression of enemy fire.

Many of Richard’s classmates have formed “Club 11” in Annapolis and maintain strong bonds with the family. As I worked my way through this distinguished band of brothers, one of them asked me if I had met his widow, Karen Laws Engelke. I told him that I had not, so he made it a point to introduce me.

I found Karen Laws Engelke to be a remarkable woman, who epitomizes the true spirit and character of a Navy spouse. Strong, determined, and dedicated to the memory of her late husband, she supervised every detail of the memorial service and interment. Furthermore, she shared with me the story of her “mission” to visit the crash site in Vietnam. It was a fascinating account of Karen’s arrival at Xuan Du Village, about 45 minutes walk from the crash site. The Vietnamese people were very supportive. She thanked them for preserving the site throughout the years. She met one man who claimed to have seen the crash as an 11-year old boy. Karen made some insightful observations about her conversations with Vietnamese officials. Whereas we mark this time in our history as “The Vietnam War,” not unsurprisingly, the Vietnamese call it, “The American War,” as it was not their first (the French preceded us in Indochina) and would not be their last (Chinese incursion in 1979). According to Karen, most of the Vietnamese people she met, but not all of them, were willing to let bygones be bygones—the older men, likely former combatants, are not so apt to let go. As the culmination of her visit, Karen walked up the steep hill to the crash site. She carried with her a pole with 327 hand crafted memory ribbons from friends, classmates and shipmates. This memorial remains fastened to a tree at the crash site. A photo of the memory ribbons even adorned the program for the memorial service—very fitting.

The United States Navy Ceremonial Guard and Naval Academy Band turned out in splendid form for a picture perfect day in Annapolis to pay their final respects and return this distinguished graduate to his final resting place. I marched with Chaplain Cash to the columbarium in front of the hearse. As we turned the corner on Hospital Point, Naval Aviation provided F/A-18 Hornets overhead in a “missing man” formation. I couldn’t help but be proud of the troops and the dignified way they handled their duties for this special family. It was the least we could do to honor their sacrifice.

As the flag was folded and passed from the Ceremonial Guardsman to me and from me to the widow, the words spoken have been repeated thousands of times since the Vietnam War, but they convey what the loss of an American serviceman means to this country:
“On behalf of the President of the United States, the United States Navy and a grateful Nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service.”

Rest in peace LT Laws. You have done your duty. Thank you for your sacrifice and God bless… We have the watch.

My hope here is to put forward a different perspective on writing professionally. I will start with the obvious, and work towards what may be less obvious. It is my hope that my thoughts here might make some headway towards changing the minds of readers, and in turn (and in some small part) the Navy’s culture. Additionally, all I have to say assumes that we’re all well versed in and practice good OPSEC.

There are issues, and what are to me warped perceptions regarding writing in both the institutional aspect Navy and on the part of individual Sailors. In my talks with others more well versed with the state of writing in other branches, it would seem the Navy has a better culture than most, but still it remains that there is much room for improvement.

Foremost is the impression of what it is to write. Many, who step up the first time confuse their trepidation with how their audience will perceive their writing. In this, it is assumed that their words will reverberate with great force, and be a bellwether for change.

In reality, no. It won’t be. Even articles published in Proceedings are rarely of exceptional paradigm changing quality. This isn’t the fault of anyone, or any single organization. It’s the fault of everyone. The ~2 megabytes worth of data (including pictures. If none, then ~150kB) you just introduced into the World is the equivalent of the faintest star you can see in the night sky. Even if what you wrote is considered on par with the greats, your impact will fall well short of making you a household name.

Remember this: you’re just part of the system. Your words will be absorbed, digested, and then repeated in a novel way that you may or may not agree with. What writing does is give others ideas that little belong to you once learned by them.

For COs, and senior personnel of all flavors, it’s important to remember that as well. That junior person whose 1k – 5k words you might fear is far weaker than it might seem. Take a breath and put their words in a perspective larger than your immediate concerns.

It may seem obvious, but the nature of writing online demands this be mentioned often – don’t call people names. This is worth mentioning since much of blogging and the resulting comments (especially the comments) turn into a bull session where finger pointing, name calling, and condemning of whomever the content of the blog involves. That’s not writing, just as you’re not a poet when you’re drunk and blowing off steam at McGuires or Seville Quarter.

Don’t mention names, mention ideas. I personally don’t care whom thought of what. Everyone has good ideas, everyone has a unique perspective. More often than not, those who are listened to the most are only the ones who can write the best, with their ideas hovering around 3rd rate. A given idea is not better just because it came from someone with senior rank. Neither should an idea be valued more from someone with name recognition more so than it is from someone without. The person doesn’t matter, the idea matters when it comes to discussing ideas. Of course if you’re rebutting someone else’s writing I get that a name must be mentioned. But, aside of ensuring continuity or getting a reader up to speed, don’t talk about people, just talk about the idea. The whole point of this is to remove ego from ideas as much as possible.

A second order effect of this notion is that there is significant benefit to someone writing anonymously. Based on my own personal experience, I would even encourage many to start off that way. Reflect on why you are motivated to write, is it to build name recognition, or to better your Navy? Exactly, in talking about ideas and not calling anyone names the need to have a face and name to the words quickly begins to evaporate.

Don’t value your life less than you do your career. A military full of people willing to give their life in the line of duty, but just as many who do not write for the sake of their career. This is so counter intuitive I don’t think I need to elaborate.

Unless your staff refers to you as the ‘old man/woman’ or ‘the boss’ you’re not making policy, and your words won’t either. What’s more is that your words do not reflect the official opinion of the Navy, you’re some rank just like a bunch of other people. Actions speak louder than words, if you comport yourself in a professional manner with good military bearing, then your words are just that – words – feeble, devoid of action words that are only an attempt to contribute to the discourse and bettering your Navy. The Navy and your boss do not have much to fear from you.

But, there is a logical limit to such a claim. I wouldn’t publicly write anything critical of a decision made by my direct chain of command, or a decision made by those I have to work for/with. Doing as such, and being publicly critical of colleagues, seniors, and shipmates is just bad form, rude, and yes probably insubordinate. But, giving a public opinion regarding a decision made echelons above can be (and should be written towards being) productive. Blogging: real time 360 degree evaluation of ideas.

We’re nearly 10 years into military personnel saying things they shouldn’t on social media and online. The first year I was in the Navy, my CO warned us at an all hand’s to ‘stop saying bad things about the command on Facebook.’ Such a scenario isn’t new, that happened nearly seven years ago. We know how to handle it, and we should all be used to this by now.

Never write to be thanked or praised. I’d rather have my Navy not care that you write than to have it formally recognize you for writing. Why? Because writing is not about the promotion of self. It is about selflessly working to improve your Navy and Country. Non sibi sed patriae, or don’t pick up the pen.

The Navy needs your ideas to compete with all the other ideas. The Navy needs you to be well read, and versed on how ideas compete with each other (how it happens online is not too dissimilar in how it happens anywhere else).

Does this scenario sound familiar? It has been played out in similar form countless times throughout the Fleet. Our military, we hear, is not innovative. Yet, good leaders seem to understand there are great ideas brimming from their sailors. The difficulty lies in finding the proper tools to tap into that creativity.

This tool exists, and it has been used extensively in the private sector. Wait! I can almost hear the reader grumbling now that “the Navy isn’t a business”. Agreed-we should not run the Navy like a business, but we can learn some ways that businesses have encouraged innovation and creativity amongst their employees. Furthermore, the process, if done properly, can be very fun-described by one sailor who took part in it as one of the best and most unique experiences he has had in the Navy.

The method is called Design Thinking, and it was popularized by IDEO, a creativity and innovation company. Design Thinking involves a human centered approach to innovation. It begins with storytelling and brainstorming (with no devil’s advocate allowed early on) and continues with refinement and quick prototype development, often using cardboard cutouts and props.

Design Thinking has had at least one appearance in the Navy, and that was for the TANG a conference held in San Diego for JO’s and PO’s from the sub community. Submariners were given a goal: design the fire control system of the future. After that, there was a hands off approach while the watchstanders (all in civilian clothes-leave your rank at the door for the weekend) came up with a large number of ideas-many crazy-without shooting one another down and without negativity. After a period of time, they began to whittle down the best ideas and discuss how to make those happen. Finally, they showed their solution to the Commodore (sequestered with other CO’s in another room, able to observe over CCTV but not interfere), using hand drawn paper props and a skit mimicking an actual underway situation, as if in a simulator.

This sort of innovation from the deckplates is exactly what the Navy should be facilitating. It emphasizes the specific knowledge of the warfighter, who is most intimately involved with the technology, while creating the framework necessary to best tap into their minds-without negativity and cynicism taking over. A Fleet that asks its sailors how to improve (and what needs improvement) BEFORE talking to a corporation about what the Navy needs is a Fleet that cares about the well being of its personnel and its stewardship over taxpayer dollars.

Again, Design Thinking is merely a tool-let’s not get carried away at the possibilities-but one that could surely help the military. A CO with some familiarity with Design Thinking could hire an expert to run a weekend session with interested volunteers, increasing the esprit de corps and unit morale, and find out ways to innovate that may have been difficult or expensive with the traditional methods of iteration that are in use today. It sure beats replacing the one year old office furniture.

ET1(SW) Jeff Anderson is a surface sailor and Disruptive Thinker. He regularly tweets under the handle @NavyInnovator.

The height-weight tables are based on standards from the insurance industry that are out-of-date and no longer appropriate to assess the fitness of a contemporary military population—if they ever were. The current standards remain in place mainly because they are straightforward enough to allow many collateral duty physical fitness coordinators throughout the fleet to reliably administer them. What is often overlooked is the fact that precision (in this case, ease of replication) is not the same as accuracy.

It can be assumed that nearly everyone wants a force that can safely perform the tasks asked of them and also looks sharp in uniform. The Navy’s physical fitness portion of the assessment is divorced from occupational requirements and flawed in its own right, but I intend to talk about here about the more-overlooked BCA.

The Navy is a sea-going force and that presents unique challenges to physical fitness that the Navy prefers to ignore. While it is true that the physical fitness portion of the test can be waived for deployment or operations, the instruction is very specific that BCA cannot be waived. This serves to hold Sailors accountable for an area that they sometimes have very little control over. In addition to the real, physical consequences of rotating shift work on metabolism, there are often very limited healthy food options underway. Opportunities to work out can be similarly limited. While there might be a few functioning treadmills onboard, running in rough seas can be very difficult, even unsafe. The increasing length of deployments only exacerbates this problem. While Sailors may no longer be at high risk for scurvy, eight, nine, or even ten months at sea is still a long time and the toll it takes on one’s body is undeniably.

On a personal note, I was a three-sport athlete at one of the top NCAA Division I athletic programs. Under the Navy’s system, for the first fifteen years of my career, I have always been on the border of being judged to be out of standards. There is no way that I could ever make my maximum Navy body weight. I go into each PRT cycle knowing that I will have to undergo the ‘rope and choke.” There are many dimensions of fitness that are not captured by the Navy’s system. What the Navy is asking of people like me under the current system is not to become more fit, but rather to mold my body into a shape that more closely resembles their normative model.

As one who has spent my entire career on this borderline, when I am young and fit, I live with a sense of dread of what may happen if I were to sustain an injury that prevents me from working out or even the somewhat natural loss of muscle mass that can be expected as one ages. The Sailors with the most to lose are the career Sailors that have dedicated their most productive working years to the organization and are working towards retirement. It is these Sailors that also have the greatest incentive to go to extreme—even unsafe—measures to preserve their careers and to prevent getting kicked out.

The standards themselves need to be reviewed—the ‘waist-minus-the-neck’ method is a guesstimate at best. We cannot continue to have such severe consequences (discharge from service) applied to those whose genuine body composition (and by extension their physical fitness) is being approximated. What is the answer then for a Navy that still needs a standard that can be easily administered at the command level throughout the fleet? There needs to be recourse for those Sailors that do not meet the current, approximated BCA tables. Sailors who fail the tape measured BCA should be afforded the opportunity of a more accurate method (7-site caliper, electrostatic impedance, immersion, etc.) at a base medical facility. The costs of adding this option would be manifestly less than recruiting, assessing, training and then dismissing the otherwise good Sailors left behind under the current system.

I understand that Sailors that can fail the BCA and still score an outstanding on the PRT are truly rare, but that does not mean that outliers should be driven out of the service because they do not fit within an arbitrary model.

Lieutenant Kristenson, a surface warfare officer and 2009 Olmsted Scholar, holds a Master of Arts degree in international development from Tsinghua University (Beijing, China). His is currently serving as the Operations Officer in the USS FORREST SHERMAN (DDG-98) in Norfolk, VA. He passed his most recent body composition analysis. Barely.

Come talk with members and non-members alike about issues for the sea services. Special guests include Eric Wertheim, VADM William Crowder, USN (Ret.), VADM Thomas Kilcline, USN (Ret.), and VADM Peter H. Daly, USN (Ret.) the CEO of the U.S. Naval Institute.

Event Details
Tuesday, May 14 2013 6:00pm – 7:30pm
Keagan’s Bar
Virginia Beach Town Center
244 Market Street
Virginia Beach, VA 23462

Use the hashtag #usnimeetup for this event.

The Marine Corps must contend with two issues – to innovate after a decade of war and to operate under the fiscal pressure faced by the entire Defense Department. It will likely have to reduce its endstrength while adapting to a variety of new threats. These challenges should force the Marine Corps to reconsider some fundamental premises today that will help it effectively adapt to the operational environment ten to twenty years from now.

The Marine Corps must intellectually contest some basic organizational issues. The fundamental structure of the Marine Corps is based on a model that was effective during the World War II and Korea, where high casualty rates, limited communications, and massing of firepower were primary concerns. Is the same organizational structure, particularly the use of enlisted Marines, right for the Marine Corps of 2025 and beyond?

While amphibious operations will be the cornerstone of the Marine Corps for the foreseeable future, it could also find itself in a host of other roles and missions: complete integration into the special operations community, fully distributed operations, partnership building, and even supporting federal law enforcement or intelligence units to counter transnational threats. How will the Marine Corps adapt?

Below are a few “what-if” challenges that should stimulate debate among Marines at all levels on the use of the greatest asset in the Marine Corps, the enlisted Marine, over the next several decades.

What if… the US economy remains flat and unemployment rates climb because automation and robotics have replaced humans in labor-intensive fields? A typical rifle squad of the future may consist of all college graduates and the only difference between an E-1 and O-1 is the training path selected by the Marine Corps. How does the Marine Corps maximize personnel and prevent underutilization of the talent entrusted to it by American society? Harvesting civilian education and skills may become as important as making Marines.

What if… the line between Marine officers and enlisted Marines is erased or significantly blurred? Many retired military officers and scholars alike note the problems with the antiquated military personnel system. Changes in the private sector are often compared to changes that should occur in the military, particularly closing the gap between the roles of officers and enlisted. How can the Marine Corps close this gap? Will 25 different ranks still be necessary to distinguish levels of authority or should the rank structure be compressed?

What if… the 18 year-old private becomes obsolete in infantry units? Given the missions being considered for the Marine Corps and the emphasis placed on smaller, more independent units, should Marine Corps Infantry become more elite? Should an enlisted Marine first be assigned to a support unit for their initial enlistment, then compete for a slot in the infantry when reenlisting? This would create a more mature and highly specialized infantry but it would also create problems with leadership roles if everyone in a unit were an NCO.

Could changes in the compensation system facilitate a more agile organization with qualified personnel filling billets at different echelons or types of units? Consider what an oval vice pyramid enlisted force structure would look like. A Corporal in a line unit may find himself as a Lance Corporal in a more high-end unit, with no loss of compensation. This model is analogous to major league baseball – if a single A player plays well, he moves up to AA, where he will have a decreased role on the team but more compensation, then after improving performance, moves up to AAA ball, where again, he rides the pine for a while.

What if… semi-autonomous or unmanned weapon systems become fully integrated into small units? How will future technology change leadership roles? Integrating and controlling technology may become as important, if not more so, than leading (human) Marines. If so, how do leadership development models change?

What if… the lethality and non-lethality of a small unit increases significantly? A decade from now, infantry units will likely increase both lethal and non-lethal force at the squad level. Advances in nano-explosive technology, directed energy weapons and lasers, and electro-magnetic weapons will cause this change. How would dramatically improved capabilities alter the size of a typical rifle company and officer/enlisted ratios?

What if… human performance enhancing technology is accepted on the battlefield of the future? The concept of creating super-“soldiers” (using super with Marine seems a bit redundant) through robotic or biomedical enhancement is currently under debate. How will the Marine Corps manage civilian integration after conflict? Does the Marine Corps simply escort these military-modified super humans to the front gate and turn them loose on society? Or is Marine for life a future reality?

In 2008, the National Research Council (with LtGen Amos and RDMLs Burke/Davenport as advisors) addressed similar issues for both the Navy and Marine Corps (embeded below). It is unclear to what extent the study’s findings were actually considered within the services.

Service purists will resist any change and argue that the Marine Corps has adapted in the past without any significant change in force structure. However, the Corporals of today will become the Sergeants Major of 2025 and beyond. They must start to consider these issues now to effectively shape the enlisted force of future.

The original version of this post appeared on the Marine Corps Gazette Blog.

Robert Kozloski is a program analyst for the Department of the Navy. He is the author of Marching Toward the Sweet Spot: Options for the Marine Corps in a Time of Austerity in the Naval War College Review. The views expressed are his alone.

Last month saw the U.S. Navy’s newest shipbuilding plan hit the streets.

Is this good news, more of the same, or are there some systemic issues that are being painted over?

What can the Navy expect over the next few years as the defense cuts bite deeper and the battle for wedges of the defense budget pie heats up.

Using their latest article in RealClearDefense as a starting point, our guests will be Mackenzie Eaglen, Resident Fellow at the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and Bryan McGrath, Director, Delex Consulting, Studies and Analysis.

Listen live (that’s on 5/5 at 5) or pick the show up later by clicking here.

Some keep their thoughts to themselves when they see problems, or keep them firmly behind closed doors.  Others see the requirement to step from the shadows to confront in the open what others are keeping silent about.

Why are so many people in the profession of arms so quiet? The reasons are many and varied; loyalty to ones chain of command, deference to authority, orders, propriety, fear, passivity, verve, desire to retain professional viability, or just a lack of confidence in ones opinions.

When is the supported institution best served by silence, and when by open and contentious discourse? Is this a time for silence, or a time for those at the highest levels of leadership to dare to read, think, speak, and write?

Not put their name to something a person on their staff wrote; not some “It takes a village to write 3,000 words” safety-in-numbers collaboration. No – something in their own words either in their personnel by-line, or by a properly vetted “Federalist Papers” format.

At its best though; Sims, Mitchell and Connolly – there is the benchmark that we need right now.

What do those three General Officers/Flag Officers (GOFO) have in common? Well, at different stages in their careers, they were highly influential due to their very public outspokenness about what was not being done correctly in order to, in their minds, address the critical shortfall in weapons development, procurement and strategy in order to have an effective fighting force.

They put their reputations and careers on the line – while on active duty and planning to stay on active duty – in order to elevate the discussion in the open. The did this for one reason – in order to bring about a better American military.

Sims was sending letters directly to the President, used rather colorful terms to identify critical shortfalls, and was an aggressive publisher of anti-establishmentarian ideas. Mitchell beat the drum and edged across a few lines to pronounce to an unlistening and ossified parochial bureaucracy the future influence of air power upon history. Connolly had no problem aggressively explaining Newtonian physics against the Joint-fetishists of his day. Sims was rewarded, Mitchell was Court Martialed, and Connolly found himself a terminal 3-Star.

They chose the risky path – and rewarded or punished individually; their nation’s military were the better for it collectively.

There is another path – it is an honorable one as well – one that has a mixed record of success. While it is true that the higher one goes up the chain, the more perceived “power” one has and as a result has the ability to affect change, most of the time that remains just-beyond reach. That power lever is a mirage. It is a trick. It is the triumph of hope against experience.

Good people who are truly trying to do the right thing often find they have waited too long. That magic set of PCS orders, that enabling rank – it never comes. All of a sudden, they find themselves scheduled for Executive TAP, yet realize their work is incomplete.

And so we find the parting shot. Look at one of General Craddock’s final speeches as SACEUR. Look at Admiral Harvey’s parting gift, and finally, we have this.

Does the United States need a 300-ship Navy or will it over the next 70 years need seven strategic nuclear submarines on patrol in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans? Each would have 24 intercontinental ballistic missiles, all of which could carry up to five nuclear warheads.

That was the choice Vice Adm. William Burke, deputy chief of Naval Operations Warfare Systems, described Tuesday at the Congressional Breakfast Seminar Series.

Burke, who is set to retire in the next few weeks, spoke frankly about the undersea portion of the U.S. strategic nuclear triad “and its intersection with our shipbuilding plan.”

His conclusion: “If we buy the SSBN [the planned 12 replacement strategic submarines for the current 14 Ohio class now in service] within existing funds, we will not reach 300 ships. In fact, we’ll find ourselves closer to 250. At these numbers, our global presence will be reduced such that we’ll only be able to visit some areas of the world episodically.”

This topic of the impact of SSBN recapitalization in the face of a perfect storm of macro-budgetary crisis and the delayed effects of the procurement Lost Decade from poor programmatic decisions that will be the 2020’s is not new. Indeed, many of us have been writing and speaking about the need to address the coming “Terrible ‘20s” for years.

Why is it a GOFO scheduled to “retire in the next few weeks” is the one who is talking about this? On this and many other issues; you can have all the “Disruptive Thinker” JOs and sharp enlisted you can jam in a conference room, you can have scores of retired Field Grade officers pounding away at their dinner table each evening, and you can have the pundit-pondering think-tankers of the Potomac chattering until Judgement Day and it won’t have the impact of serving GOFO standing up and speaking without guile or hedge about what everyone sees, but few openly say. As long as they do not, then you will get the B-team working the creative friction.

What impact can a GOFO have as he is heading out the door? Not really that much. Like a lame-duck politician – his professional capital is spent. The cynic and critic will simply dismiss his comments as sour grapes. His natural allies will just set their jaws and mumble “too-little-too-late.” If the only issues he raise are related sequester, then he will be looked at as just a political hack.

Are these professional death-bed conversions helpful? While the decision to be silent and work behind the closed door is a valid and honorable one, in the end is it really a false economy of delayed revelation? Better late than never, or just another lost opportunity?

Sure, comments heading out the door can be helpful, important, and impactful in a fashion, but they have but a shadow of the impact they could be have had if these actions took place in the open, in high profile, years before while the GOFO were still in uniform and intended to stay as such for another tour or two.

As our Fleet shrinks and is balanced out with either sub-optimal platforms such as LCS or expensive Tiffany porcelain dolls; as our carrier decks are full of short-legged strike fighters and underarmed expensive F-35s (TBD), our deployed Sailors are burdened by a bloated, demanding, and ineffective Shore/Staff fonctionnaire cadre, and a money-sponge of a SSBN recapitalization requirement is squatting right in front of us – where are our Sims, Mitchells, and Connellys?

Do we need them? Do we have them? What do they need to do?

Below is a guest post from LCDR Benjamin “BJ” Armstrong, USN. He is an active duty naval helicopter pilot who is currently serving as an MH-60S Detachment Officer-in-Charge.  He is a contributor to Proceedings and Naval History and was a panelist at the 2010 USNI History Conference “Piracy on the High Seas.”  His unit is currently deployed in support of maritime security and contingency operations off the coast of Libya.

[Republished from 13 June 2011] A little bit over a month ago, at his home blog Information Dissemination, Galrahn noted that the 27th of April marked an important day in the history of the United States Navy and Marine Corps, the anniversary of the Battle of Dernah.  In his post Galrahn drew a connection between the First Barbary War and Operation Odyssey Dawn and the current operations that are being conducted under Operation Unified Protector.  It can certainly be said that the success of Hamet Karamali’s insurgent army, led in reality by Naval Agent William Eaton and Marine Corps First Lieutenant Presley O’Bannnon, played a central role in the conclusion of the First Barbary War for the United States of America.  In 1805 boots on the ground mattered after nearly four years of naval operations which had experienced little success driving the Tripolitan Pasha Jousef Karamali to the negotiating table.  However, the history of Eaton, O’Bannon, and Hamet in Dernah offers a great deal more to consider than a simple lesson about the effectiveness of land forces.

The March to Dernah

Hamet Karamali had been the crown prince of Tripoli, but was deposed by his brother Jousef after their father’s death.  It was Jousef who had declared war on the United States in 1801.  When Eaton found him in Alexandria and offered to build him an army, and to help him lead it to Tripoli to reclaim his throne, Hamet jumped at the chance.  Eaton, a former U.S. Army officer and previous U.S. consul to Tunis, had at his disposal twenty thousand dollars and a small detachment of United States Marines led by O’Bannon.

On the third of March, 1805 a rag tag army set out from Alexandria, Egypt to cross the desert toward the Tripolitan region of Bomba.  About six hundred fighters strong, the force that Eaton organized marched for many different reasons.  Some were Greek mercenaries (frequently referred to in the dispatches of the American officers involved as “the Christians”) who were in it for the money that Eaton promised them.  Some were tribal loyalists to Hamet.  Others were members of local desert tribes who’s Sheiks had been bribed, cajoled, or promised positions of power to join the insurgency.  Eaton lamented the “ungovernable temper of this marauding malitia [sic],” which traveled with their families and flocks and offered constant leadership challenges and two mutinies as they crossed the desert.

When they arrived near the coastal city of Dernah on the 24th of April the army was twenty five days since their last meat and fifteen days since their bread ran out, mainly subsisting on rice and water.  Eaton’s force rendezvoused with USS Argus and USS Hornet.  Under the orders of Master Commandant Isaac Hull, the Sloops of War offloaded as much food, supplies, and ammunition as they could spare which reanimated the insurgent army.  They moved forward and took position on a hill south of the town.

On the 26th Eaton sent a letter to the Governor of Dernah and made him an offer to join the insurgency.  By allowing Hamet’s army to resupply and pass unmolested he would be permitted to retain his position when Hamet took the throne.  Eaton closed the letter saying “I shall see you to morrow, in a way of your choice…”  The Governor responded that evening: ”My head or yours.”

On the morning of the 27th Hull’s Sailors moved a field piece ashore, hoisting it up a twenty foot beach front cliff to Eaton and his men.  Joined by USS Nautilus, the three Sloops moved to positions off the fortress that protected the town with a battery of eight cannon that faced the sea.  Hornet’s skipper, Lieutenant Evans, brought his ship within one hundred yards of the fortress and anchored by setting spring lines.  Argus and Nautilus took up positions on either side.  It was about two in the afternoon when Hamet’s tribesmen and the mercenaries were in position and the assault began.  Eaton later reported that “The fire became general in all quarters.”  All three ships opened fire on the fortress and battery, decimating the eight cannon that opposed them.  The bombardment lasted about an hour while Hamet led his tribesmen into the southern end of the city.  Eaton and O’Bannon led the Marines and the mercenaries around the town and assaulted the fortress along the beach.  Hull wrote in his report that “about half past three we had the satisfaction to see Lieut. O’Bannon and Mr. Mann, Midshipman of the Argus, with a few brave fellows with them, enter the fort, haul down the Enemy’s flag, and plant the American Ensign on the Walls of the Battery.”  By four o’clock the insurgents had taken control of the town.

A City Under Siege

The Battle of Dernah, however, is just the beginning of this story.  The great Mark Twain once said that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.   It is after the battle that we begin to pick up the rhythm that reminds us of today’s challenges on the North coast of Africa.

Eaton immediately set about shoring up the defenses of the city.  The guns of the fortress’ battery were turned inward toward the desert and Hull and the skippers of the other Sloops landed Sailors to help move supplies ashore and work on the city’s defenses.  After helping the Marines and mercenaries reinforce their defenses the Sailors embarked on their ships.  Hull, unsure of Commodore Barron’s orders with regard to the occupation of the city, began cycling the Sloops back to Malta to resupply and inquire about orders.  Hornet was sent first, while Argus and Nautilus remained with three weeks of provisions each.  Hornet would return with fresh stores and ammunition for the city.

Hull sent a report to Barron detailing his thoughts on the occupation, and what it would take to move the insurgency forward.  He felt that holding the city itself would not necessarily be a difficult task and could be completed by the force on the ground as long as it was provided proper supplies from the sea and that at least one warship was kept on station to provide fire support against any attempt by the regime to retake the city.  In order to push forward toward Tripoli, however, it would have required a different approach in the young Master Commandant’s mind.  He wrote “I am clearly of the opinion that three or four hundred Christians, with additional supplies, will be necessary to pursue the expedition to Bengaze and Tripoli.”  It was a significant increase in support, and an escalation from the American reliance on sea power.

Eaton came up with a plan that was slightly different.  Pointing out that, with the proper funding, Hamet could recruit local Sheiks as he moved west, Eaton thought the insurgent army would grow.  He recognized that loyalty that was purchased was suspect as a motivator for fighters.  To counter that he suggested that as the force encountered difficult or entrenched enemies he would need detachments of Marines or regular soldiers to be landed by the American squadron.  This support by amphibious forces would “aid and give effect to such operations as require energy.”  After each amphibious raid the forces could embark aboard ship and continue to patrol the coast awaiting the next call.

It wasn’t long after the insurgents victory at Dernah that an army from Tripoli arrived. Initially they took up position on the hill south of town where Eaton and Hamet had planned their own assault.  The regime forces laid siege to the city.  Attacks or probes were made several times a week.  During some of the heavier attacks the regime forces penetrated through the defenders outer lines and into the city.  Brutal house to house urban combat was conducted by the insurgents and, with fire support from the Sloops sitting in the harbor; they were able to drive their attackers back to their positions outside the city.  In a few instances Eaton lead his Marines and mercenaries out to face the irregular cavalry and undisciplined infantry that opposed them, each time having minor successes but never driving away the Pasha’s army.

While Eaton and Hull endeavored to keep the siege lines away from Dernah, and the regime’s forces at bay, the American Naval and Diplomatic leadership began to listen to Jousef’s new attempts at negotiation.  Whether it was the deteriorating situation in his own country, the poor harvest that year, lack of popular support for the war with the Americans (all of which appeared to be true), or whether it was the threat posed by his brother’s foothold in Dernah, the Pasha made an overture for peace.

Negotiations and Diplomacy

As the diplomats worked their negotiations the regime’s forces continued to attack and probe at Dernah.  Eaton reported that spies had heard dispatches received with orders from Tripoli.  The Pasha intended to conclude a peace with the United States and once it was complete he would be able to “dispose of his internal enemies.”  Eaton warned Commodore Barron not to accept terms of peace too hastily, and pointed out that consideration of Hamet’s position could result in a true ally on the coast rather than a suspect treaty.  He pushed hard, commenting that the honor of the United States required that they not simply abandon Hamet on the shores of Dernah.  Cooperation between the United States and Hamet would, according to Eaton’s reasoning, “very probably be a death blow to the Barbary System” of piracy and hostage taking.

Eaton realized, as time went on and the regime’s army was reinforced, that Hamet was being used as a bargaining chip.  He received a report that a pair of women had come into the city with orders to poison him and he began spending more time aboard Argus or Hornet, Nautilus having been dispatched for more supplies.   On the 4th of June Hull received orders to return to Syracuse with Argus and Hornet and sent word for Eaton and the Americans to join him.  Eaton confided to Hull that he was sure that his position in Dernah was playing an important role in the negotiation and he didn’t feel that he could leave until he knew that the negotiation had been completed.  Hull prepared to send Hornet to Syracuse as ordered, but remained off Dernah aboard Argus, unwilling to abandon his countrymen.

Neither man knew that on the 3rd of June a peace treaty was signed by Jousef and Tobias Lear who was the State Department’s lead negotiator.   The crew of the captured USS Philadelphia, held since the fall of 1803, were freed and sailed for Malta aboard USS Constitution.  Lear wrote to Eaton that he had tried to secure some consolation for Hamet, however he decided based on his negotiations that it was “impracticable.”  Lear agreed that the United States would remove all support from the insurgent army at Dernah, and also promised the Pasha that he could keep Hamet’s wife and daughters as hostages to ensure that his brother left the country.

The news was slow to spread, and on the 9th and 10th of June the regime’s army launched assaults on the city which were repelled through vicious fighting.  The Sloops moved close to the shore and their guns were brought into action, “keeping up a brisk fire” according to Hull’s journal.  The Pasha’s army was pushed back yet again and Hull landed more powder for the fortress’ guns.

As the sun reached toward the western horizon on the 11th of June USS Constellation arrived off Dernah, with orders for Eaton and the Americans to embark and withdraw from the assistance of the insurgent army.  The withdrawal would be tricky business, and Eaton would not leave Hamet in the lurch.  He consulted with the insurgent ruler and they concocted a ruse to have Hamet’s people prepare for an attack on the enemy.  After dark on the 13th the Arabs and Tripolitans prepared themselves for their attack while the boats of Constellation rowed to the seawall and began taking off the Greek mercenaries.  Once the Greeks were aboard word was sent to Hamet that Eaton wanted a meeting and the leader and his court slipped into the fortress and aboard Constellation’s boats.  Eaton, O’Bannon, and the Marines were the last to embark, quietly covering the amphibious withdrawal.  By two in the morning the force had been embarked and the insurgent army abandoned.  Constellation, Argus, and Hornet sailed into the Mediterranean as Hamet’s tribesmen and the Arabs who had joined him attempted to slip away into the mountains and desert before the regime’s forces could corner them.

A Violent Aftermath

The victory of the United State Navy in its first conflict on a foreign shore is something that we continue to celebrate.  However, few know these details of the “success.”  Many of Hamet’s supporters were able to escape, a small number were captured and executed.  Based on their agreement with the Pasha, a representative of the regime was landed by the Americans just before they left and he immediately began demanding loyalty oaths from anyone in the city.  The United States paid Jousef sixty thousand dollars and all the Americans held in Tripoli’s slave camps were freed.

The peace held for less than a decade.  Once the Barbary powers learned of the American’s war with the British in 1812 they began falling upon American merchants as their Navy fought in the Atlantic.  Americans again began to fill the slave camps on the Tripolitan coast.  It would take another conflict and two squadrons of battle hardened naval veterans after the end of the War of 1812 to pacify the Barbary Coast again.  The Second Barbary War was considered another successful conflict for the early U.S. Navy.  However, piracy and slavery on the Barbary Coast didn’t end until several years later when the Royal Navy finally decided to stamp it out.

The study of history does not provide us checklists for success.  It doesn’t describe equations which will give military or government leaders a perfect answer every time.  However, it can certainly help illuminate the questions that should be asked, and the possible effects of the answers to those questions.  April 27th is an important anniversary in the history of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, but so is the 13th of June, when USS Constellation departed the harbor of a besieged city on the Barbary Coast.   Eaton, O’Bannon, and Hull slipped away from a besieged insurgency, which had been resupplied and defended from the sea, and which relied on Western support for survival.

Was it the right decision?  The expensive war being fought on the other side of the globe was certainly running the American treasury into the red.  The infant American democracy struggled with the political challenges of an undeclared war on foreign soil.  American casualties were few, the number of Americans taken hostage also dropped, and the reasons to keep fighting seemed small.  What of the aftermath?  The payment to the Pasha was arguably the very ransom that the Americans did not want to pay.  The result of the diplomacy was neither a supportive local government nor a successful treaty of peace.  Americans had to risk their lives on the Barbary shore again, many of them the same Sailors who started their career there.

For those who study strategy or who make policy, the story of Dernah may be history worth considering.

Sources:  Dudley Knox, Ed., Naval Documents Related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers: Naval Operations Including Diplomatic Background From 1785 to 1807, (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1939-1944).  Volumes 5 and 6 contain the original letters and reports related to the Battle of Dernah and the siege of the city.

The opinions and views expressed in this post are those of the author alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense, the US Navy, or any other agency.

Join us this Sunday, 28 April 2013 at 5pm Eastern U.S., for Midrats Episode 173: Back to the Littorals with Milan Vego :

If the requirement is to be able to operate, fight, and win in the Littorals – is the Littoral Combat Ship the answer?
Other nations have the same requirement – yet have come up with different answers.
Are we defining our requirements properly in face of larger Fleet needs and the threats we expect?
What platforms and systems need to be looked at closer if we are to have the best mix of capabilities to meet our requirements?
Using his article in Armed Forces Journal, Go smaller: Time for the Navy to get serious about the littorals, as a stepping off place, our guest for the full hour will be Milan Vego, PhD, Professor of Joint Military Operations at the US Naval War College.

Join us live (or, if you can’t listen live, listen later) by clicking here.

While the details of the budget cuts are still being debated, one thing is clear: the Department of Defense will face significant fiscal austerity. Accordingly, the Navy will face drastic cuts that mandate a reexamination of the way we do business.

Viewed another way, however, we are being presented with the opportunity to rethink the standard business rules governing the way we train, fight and prepare for future challenges – we should examine the best, most innovative ways to accomplish our strategic objectives. Given the tough budget and strategic challenges we are facing, “business as usual” just won’t work any more.

The surface fleet will be particularly hard hit. Surface ships will almost certainly see underway time for training and readiness cut. Deployments to engage in regions such as Central and South America are being curtailed. These decisions risk sending the message to our allies that we are no longer forward and present in the Central and South American region where we have provided a maritime presence for well over a century.

Yet the reduction in underway time and the elimination of planned deployments to SOUTHCOM may not necessarily spell doom for both training opportunities and engagements with our friends to the South. Although many view these two efforts as mutually exclusive, perhaps we can do both at once.

Typically, training days occur in operational areas (OPAREAS) off the coast of fleet concentration areas such as San Diego or Norfolk, with ships performing drills while driving mindless “circles in the ocean” and maintaining station in the OPAREA. After a few days or perhaps a week, the ships return to homeport. In the basic phase of the training cycle, the ship will operate alone, or perhaps rendezvous with an oiler to receive fuel and supplies. There is little interaction with other vessels; whales are often a greater concern than merchant traffic.

I would argue we could achieve more “return on investment” by combining training with actual operations. Drills could be run while in transit, or even in conjunction with allies. A US naval vessel conducting engineering drills off the coast of Guatemala provides a visible presence, interaction with local fishing and merchant vessels, and a reminder to potential drug smugglers that the US Navy is still watching – without actually engaging in complex counter-drug ops. Man overboard drills can be conducted just as easily off the coast of Costa Rica as in the San Diego OPAREA.

Heading south for training would require additional logistical considerations, such as stores, fuel, and advance coordination with allied nations if a ship desires to have joint drills, yet these obstacles are not insurmountable, given the resources are slated for training regardless of where the training actually occurs. Spending a couple of days transiting from San Diego to the waters of Central America would require careful management of fuel, but this would sharpen fuel conservation skills. Longer training periods could call on oiler support, possibly from those oilers that would no longer have to service the SOCAL OPAREA.

This approach of combining training with low-risk operational missions would provide more realistic training than sitting in an OPAREA that merchant and fishing vessels know to avoid, leaving the area largely devoid of contacts and providing artificiality to casualty response. As most mariners have experienced, Murphy’s Law suggests that casualties will occur at the worst possible time – perhaps when surrounded by a squid-fishing fleet or tankers transiting to the busy ports of Asia.

While it is necessary to ‘crawl’ before we run, there is no reason we can’t accomplish training in a low risk environment instead of a no risk environment. Crews would gain valuable experience in conducting emergency response operations in foreign waters, requiring them to deal with challenges such as merchant traffic, fishing fleets, language barriers, and unfamiliar territory – critical skills for deployment. “Train like you fight” should not just be a slogan, especially when we can achieve multiple strategic objectives at once by taking on just a bit more risk.

With the Navy looking to reduce deployments to Central and South America in favor of our rebalance to the Asia-Pacific, this operational training approach provides something for nothing. By combining training with operations we can assure our allies while better preparing for the challenges of deployment. Sure, we are assuming a bit more risk by conducting training a bit farther from home. But just as surely, drilling circles in the ocean off San Diego for a week before returning to homeport is a luxury we can no longer afford.

LCDR Rachael Gosnell is an active duty surface warfare officer. The views expressed in this article are the authors’ alone and do not represent the official position of the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense or the U.S. government.

The events of the last week in Boston has brought back to the front of the national consciousness what, for the lack of a better description, is known as The Long War.

The threats we face are both domestic, foreign, and increasingly a mixture of both. Communication and transportation has created a breed of transnational threats that are not new, and whose causes, resources, and threat vectors are not as opaque as some may try to make them.

Starting out and working in, what are the lessons we should emphasize to mitigate the ongoing threat? As we continue in the second decade after 9/11/2013, what are we doing correctly, what still needs to be done – and what things are we wasting time and money on for little gain?

To discuss, our guest for the full hour will be Steven Bucci, Director, Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

Listen live at 5pm (or you can listen later) by clicking here.

            In a similar vein, I got hit with an unexpected question Monday night: am I still planning to run the Marine Corps Marathon this fall?  The question gave me pause.  I’ve run Marine Corps as often over the years as deployments and children allowed, and ran Boston once some years ago (I remember that finish line spectacularly well, mostly because I barely crossed it).  The family often comes out to watch, and the team I run Marine Corps with has accumulated a strong cheering squad and support group at the finish.  But what would the reverberations of Monday’s events be?  Would people want their families to be there after what happened in Boston?  Would I?  And would I feel safe running it?

            The answer is an unequivocal yes.  Yes, yes, and again, yes.  Absolutely, I’ll run the Marine Corps Marathon, as will thousands of others.  We will run it with pride, anger, and disgust, directed at those who spread fear within our borders.  What happened Monday is exceedingly rare here, and in that we are beyond fortunate; Boston should remind us of that.  What happened is abnormal, horrific, and yet so often, in so many places that are not America, people are numb to it.  Not here.  Our defenses and security measures are imperfect; we cannot see and catch all.  But when a bad apple gets through and inflicts harm upon fellow Americans, we react.  We abhor.  And we bear witness.  Monday’s events had news outlets tripping over each other trying to get the facts out; four days later we can still see the same ubiquitous slow-motion video clip of the explosions everywhere we look.  The analysis is too much, perhaps even voyeuristic, sensationalistic.  But that’s far better than the alternative, and it keeps us aware.

            My immediate reaction to the letter I initially described was primarily an instinctive hatred for the unwelcome image of this nation gripped by fear.  We should always be improving security, and we should always be alert.  We should embrace our families, and fear for their safety.  Yet part of what makes this country amazing is that there will still be marathons, and there will still be spectators at the finish line.  We will continue to fly, to travel, and to gather in large numbers in public places.  We will continue to be shocked when terrorists attack here, obsessive in the aftermath, and naïve in our beliefs that we can really keep terrorism out of our borders.  What scares me most of all is the image of an America where those things cease to happen.

No non-state actors currently possess the capability to threaten the survival of our Nation, and it seems that the nations that do possess the capability have today neither the desire nor incentive to do so. Nevertheless, the Navy provides a ready force, both forward stationed and rotationally deployed, to promote stability, prevent crises, and combat terrorism. As Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert has made abundantly clear, we must be where it matters and ready when it matters.

On any given day, our aircraft carrier strike groups stand ready to answer the Nation’s call, our submarine force provides intelligence to alert national security decision makers to impending strikes, and ballistic missile submarines remain globally stationed to provide strategic deterrence and immediate strikes should the need arise. Finally, surface forces such as Aegis class cruisers and destroyers are also strategically positioned around the globe to rapidly defend the nation and our allies from ballistic missile strikes. Absent these Navy assets, our Nation and its allies would be left unprepared to respond to the security challenges of the 21st century.

The global economic system relies heavily on open sea lanes and the unimpeded flow of commerce across the world’s oceans, evinced by the fact that 90% of global trade in goods is transported by sea. The United States necessarily has an interest in the free and open movement of this commerce, and therefore it is clearly in our best interest to ensure the maintenance of a secure maritime environment. Your Navy consistently provides this service by conducting the full range of operations to guarantee security such as: unilateral assistance at sea, maritime interception operations, multi-national counter-piracy operations, and freedom of navigation operations in places such as the South China Sea and Black Sea. It helps willing allies and partners to develop their own capacity to do this as well.

The same Navy assets that defend against a threat to the survival of the nation also contribute heavily to the prevention of catastrophic attack from non-state and rogue actors. In addition to defending against ballistic missile threats, Navy surface vessels launch unmanned intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance drones that can monitor terrorist activity, provide early warning of impending attack, and provide precise targeting information to offensive platforms. The Navy monitors sea-borne activity on the global commons, and in conjunction with its maritime partners, conducts interdiction and boarding operations to prevent rogue actors from entering the nation by sea to inflict catastrophic damage, such as the attacks on 9/11.

The Navy also consistently partners with nations around the world to conduct joint operations and exercises to build partner capacity. This includes everything from an international task force defending against piracy near the Horn of Africa, to frequent exercises with allied nations (such as the recent joint US – South Korean naval exercises in the East Sea last month), to large-scale multi-national exercises such as the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise that includes 20+ nations. Consistent Theater Security Cooperation (TSC) efforts such as African and Pacific Partnership build a rapport with partner nations, and help ensure their growth in naval expertise and professionalism, while simultaneously providing aid to those who need it most. All of these efforts provide friendly partner and allied governments with a domestic capacity to defend their own trade and security interests, the confidence to do so, and a relationship based on mutual trust with the United States.

The world is subject not only to man-made disasters, but natural disasters also occur frequently. When they do, America’s Navy is able to answer the call. Because its forces are forward positioned and not reliant upon airfields or port facilities, when a tsunami occurs (such as the one which devastated southeast Asia in 2004), the Navy can employ its organic medical forces, strategic and tactical lift, logistics support, and robust communication tools to save lives during the critical period after the disaster. Further, American citizens living and working abroad can rely on Navy carrier strike groups and Amphibious Ready Groups to be prepared and available throughout problematic regions for protection or evacuation. Additionally, the Afloat Forward Staging Base concept provides the capacity for staging special operations teams prepared to support hostage rescue operations or counterterrorism missions. Because of its full-time forward posture, Navy forces can respond rapidly to defend American citizens, property, and interests abroad.

Whether providing offensive strike capability and electronic attack as occurred recently in support of the Arab Spring in Libya, the recent rescuing of distressed mariners in the Persian Gulf by the John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group, or providing lift and medical support to earthquake and tsunami victims; the Navy is uniquely posed to preserve and extend universal values and serve as an example of those values to the international community. The Navy’s globally deployed forces defend other vital national interests while simultaneously possessing the capacity to execute humanitarian assistance and disaster response missions when required. In fact, the sea space in which we operate is growing as we observe a shrinking polar ice cap and longer seasonal transit times through the Northwest Passage and the Arctic Ocean. This presents a whole new series of challenges to our Navy and our Allies. Without preserving the Navy’s capacity and forward deployed posture, the nation loses the ability to defend these interests with any credibility.

In times of fiscal austerity, we are called to review our vital national security interests to determine the most efficient and effective method to advance them while minimizing risk. The Navy’s role in defending national interests and the capacity of the nation to employ those capabilities is as old as the nation itself. President John Adams said, “A naval power…is the natural defense of the United States”. Today, the Navy’s mix of large deck carriers, surface combatants, submarine forces, amphibious ships, special operations forces, and the logistics network that supports them provide unique and essential capabilities to effectively defend our vital national security interests. We must provide those capabilities efficiently; however, (without reconsidering what remains a vital national security interest and what does not) the Navy’s structure, forward operating stance and overcoming the challenges to quickly reconstitute them after neglect remain critical to the defense of those interests.

It is all around us – from poor program decisions to significant budgetary stresses that are only recently starting to bite – the large US Navy Fleet straddling the globe is contracting.

What are the initial, second and  third order effects of the decreasing presence of the US Navy.

Is it permanent, relative, or can fewer numbers be made up in other ways?

Join Sal from CDR Salamander and EagleOne of EagleSpeak in a wide ranging discussion along with their guest Seth Cropsey, Senior Fellow from The Hudson Institute and author of the new book, Mayday: The Decline of American Naval Supremacy.

You can listen live or listen later here.

ET1 James Hopkins and BMC Richard Belisle (Ret.) lost their lives one year ago today as the result of a heinous crime. Without trying to reopen old wounds it would suffice to say they were murdered. After months of speculation and rumors there was finally a break in the case bringing the entire Coast Guard family within grasp of an end. Now it’s a waiting game.

Despite the fact that the ordeal is almost closed we can’t forget that we lost two members of our family. We won’t forget; we’ll always Remember.

However, as I’m a proponent for the Coast Guard I went into the proposed budget looking for what might be heading our way in terms of cuts (or additions?). We’re currently already in the midst of sequestration which slashed funding across the board as a means to save the government funds. What else could there be?

Overall the reduction to funding, though not directly established for the Coast Guard, has been proposed for DHS at large. The proposal calls for a decrease of 1.5 percent, or $615 million, below the 2012 enacted level. In the grand plan that’s not all that much. On the same note the budget cites a $1.8 billion savings across the entire department.

The Coast Guard is only mentioned a measly two time in the cuts and savings plan. I look at this as a good thing. Here they are:

Pollution Response:

• It seems a little soon for people to forget that the Coast Guard, among others, recently undertook the massive response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill; however, in reading, it seems some may have.

  In a proposed cut to the EPA (CUTS: SUPERFUND SUPPORT TO OTHER FEDERAL AGENCIES Environmental Protection Agency) it’s requested to drop an annual $6 million transfer of funds to their Hazardous Substance Superfund account. From that inject the Coast Guard annually receives $4.5 million. These are the fund that the Coast Guard uses to respond to oil drums and substances of an unknown type (excluding known oil spills and the like- those use the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund).

  Reading further into the justification you’ll see “…impacts to USCG, NOAA, and DOI should be minimal due to mission-specific funding within those agencies and the continued ability to enter into interagency agreements to fund specific support taskings.” Though I’m not up-n-up on all the legal mumbo-jumbo I wonder how this would work. The Coast Guard, by law, uses different funding streams for different incidents (or potential incidents) thus if the funding for the Superfund is cut it begs the question to who will fund it. I suppose that the Coast Guard could inject their own funding but then we’re adding another $4.5 million to operational spending that we currently don’t budget for annually.

Aviation:

• This is a cost saving measure as opposed to a drop in funding; nonetheless, it seems like it wasn’t thought through all the way. Though in theory the proposal of SAVINGS: SHARING EXCESS AVIATION EQUIPMENT seems like a good idea I question the long-term benefits.

  The measure calls for the CG and CPB to share equipment in the aviation sector as it pertains to the CG’s HU-25 Falcons and the CBP’s MX-15 sensor packages. In short, as we decommission our Falcons (17 of them in 2015) we’ll be giving CBP the radar systems (they already use them) and we’re going to use the already established maintenance system from CBP on our MX-15 sensors. It’s supposed to save $20 million between now and 2016.

  The issue I have, though it won’t really mean anything to the Coast Guard, is that the systems we’ll be giving to CBP will be (are?) obsolete by the time they’ll get to use them in 2016. But, that’s just my opinion.

Do you have anything to say on the subject?

Admiral Stavridis anticipates departing his current duties this summer as combatant commander for all U.S. forces in Europe; as Commander, European Command; and as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, posts he has held since early summer 2009. In his role as Supreme Allied Commander, he has directed the NATO efforts in Afghanistan, commanded the NATO operations in Libya in 2011, led security in the Balkans, developed a successful counter- piracy campaign off the coast of East Africa, implemented an improved missile-defense posture for Europe and successfully expanded alliance partnerships throughout the world.

Speaking for all members of the Board of Directors, Acting Chair Vice Admiral Nancy Brown, U.S. Navy (Ret.) said, “We are delighted and honored by Admiral Stavridis’ acceptance. He is a distinguished officer and an individual of the very greatest accomplishments whose contributions epitomize the mission of the U.S. Naval Institute. This is an exciting time for the Naval Institute. It will be in the very best of hands with him at the helm of our Board.”

Admiral Stavridis is a 1976 distinguished graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, a U.S. Naval Institute Life Member, and renowned author or editor of four Naval Institute books. He and his wife, Laura Hall Stavridis, are prize-winning Naval Institute Press Co-Authors of the Year. He is also a previous winner of the Naval Institute Proceedings Author of the Year.

A surface warfare officer, he commanded the destroyer USS Barry (DDG-52) from 1993-1995. The Barry won the Battenberg Cup as the top ship in the Atlantic Fleet under his command. In 1998, he commanded Destroyer Squadron 21 deploying to the Arabian Gulf and winning the Navy League’s John Paul Jones Award for Inspirational Leadership.

From 2002 – 2004, he commanded the Enterprise Carrier Strike Group, conducting combat operations in the Arabian Gulf in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. From 2006 – 2009, he commanded U.S Southern Command in Miami, focused on Latin America and the Caribbean.

Ashore, Admiral Stavridis has served as a strategic and long-range planner on the staffs of the Chief of Naval Operations and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He also served as the executive assistant to the Secretary of the Navy and as senior military assistant to the Secretary of Defense.

Admiral Stavridis earned a PhD and MALD in international relations from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in 1984, winning the Guillon Prize as outstanding student. He is also a distinguished graduate of the National War College and the Naval War College. His decorations and awards include two awards of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal and the Defense Superior Service Medal, and five awards of the Legion of Merit. He holds sixteen international medals and decorations as well.

He is author of Destroyer Captain and co-editor of the Watch Officer’s Guide, Division Officer’s Guide, and Command at Sea, all published by the Naval Institute Press. He also wrote Partnership for the Americas, about Latin America, published by National Defense University Press. From the rank of ensign through admiral, he has published more than three dozen major essays and commentaries in the Naval Institute’s flagship journal Proceedings, in addition to another fifty articles in other security publications.

Upon learning of his selection by the board, Admiral Stavridis said, “I am passionate about the Naval Institute, which has been the intellectual heart of our Naval profession for well over a century – Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marine. I look forward to taking on this responsibility after retirement from the Navy.”

Naval Institute Press Author of the Year

Elliot Carlson
Joe Rochefort’s War: The Odyssey of the Codebreaker Who Outwitted Yamamoto at Midway

Naval History

Jonathan Parshall and J. Michael Wenger
“Pearl Harbor’s Overlooked Answer”
December 2011, Naval History

General: First Prize

Captain Gerard D. Roncolato, USN (Ret.)
“America Must Be Careful Where It Pivots”
May 2012, Proceedings

General: Second Prize

Commander Brian McGuirk, USN
“Rekindling the Killer Instinct”
June 2012, Proceedings

General: Third Prize

Lieutenant Matthew Hipple, USN
“Cloud Combat: Thinking Machines in Future Wars”
July 2012, Proceedings

Last week I ran in to Dave Booda’s recollections of his run in with Big Al once in Annapolis;

I just thought he was another guy using the urinal next to me at Riordan’s, a local bar in Annapolis.

“So, what do you want to do when you graduate?”

“Uh, I’m deciding now between Surface Warfare and Submarines”

“Ah, I remember those days. I keep thinking I’ll retire but they always pull me back in. The key is to just take it one tour at a time.”
…
We were taught to avoid living in the present by procrastinating our happiness. If you constantly say “I’ll be happy when I graduate”, you’ll miss out on what it’s all really about … Take it from Al Konetzni. Stop waiting to live in the future,

Good advice, and like much good advice – difficult to put in to practice.

That evidently has been simmering in my nogg’n for a week, because it came to the fore yesterday when I read the latest apologia on LCS – this time from our own pal, Craig Hooper, now with Austal;

DARPA is working on a program to use Independence variants of LCS as “platforms for medium altitude, long-endurance, fixed-wing unmanned aircraft for strike and ISR missions,” Hooper said. “This is a sign of what is to come — energy weapons, rail guns, unmanned craft. Embrace this. The future is in flexible platforms that capable of quickly and cost-effectively integrating new payloads. That’s what my two ships can do.”

Stop. I’ve seen this movie before.

“We must sacrifice now to transform for tomorrow.” Of course, that has a great track record.

The homing torpedo will end the submarine threat. You don’t need carriers in the nuclear age. We will have an all nuclear surface fleet. The Royal Navy will never need guns again, everything will be missiles – and it won’t need those carriers either – the RAF can cover it. We must get rid of the A-6 so we can move forward with the A-12 …. errrr …. F-18. We must decom the SPRU-CANS early so we can invest and recapitalize with DDG-1000 (nee SC-21). We don’t need frigates. NLOS will handle the surface fires requirements.

Yes, it is always better to get rid of what you have that works now, because the promise of the future is perfect, clean, shiny and … well … new and perfect and clean and shiny … and transformational!

It is comfortable to live in the future, to assume that all plans, systems, and CONOPS play out in line with with you want – or need – it to be. Making the present work is hard – but going to war in the present when you have neglected the “now” for the fuzzy future is even harder.

Reality is tough to get right.

For each weapon, there is a counter. One tactic/weapon does not work in every situation. Money and technology is not universally accessible. A single point of failure is just failure. Technology risk is real and usually higher than industry and program managers think.

I think we have learned this lesson again in spades over the last decade from LCS to F-35. If nothing else, perhaps we should hedge and mitigate more; we should have a set of requirements and stick with them instead of chasing shadows that only add cost, weight, and lost treasure.

Are those lessons sinking in? I think so as things start to displace water and make shadows on the ramp (or not) – then yes, reality starts to overtake the PPT. That is what seems to be happening – goaded on by a gang of ruthless facts; a move away from the transformational mindset. Smart and inline with historical experience, if a bit late.

So, Craig has job to do, but so do others.

But any weapons changes on the horizon for LCS won’t happen until the Navy revises its requirements for its newest vessels, said Rear Admiral Thomas Rowden, director of Surface Warfare.

“I’m the keeper of the keys for requirements,” Rowden said. “And I am here to tell you that LCS meets the requirements.”

Well, that is subject to debate – but at least he is sticking. Enough chasing shadows with LCS. Make it the best as we can, and move on with what treasure we have left to move on with.

Get what you have now right, or dump it. In the future, focus on the evolutionary, not revolutionary so we avoid another lost decade. Build a little, test a little, learn a lot. Prototype, test, evaluate, deploy. Work for the future, but in the spirit of Big Al; you are living, building, and deploying now – make the best of it.

She blinded me with science.

Red Sky in Morning

Lasers are nothing more than light: deadly, deadly light. Like all light, lasers as at the mercy of the atmospheric conditions they encounter. In particular, lasers are at the mercy of refraction and scattering. Refraction changes the angle that occurs as light moves through an atmosphere of varying density and makeup. As lasers are designed for longer ranges, or short range lasers encounter areas of differing conditions, the trajectory will change. This could pose challenges as targets move through areas of varying range and atmospheric density over long ranges.

Fog and Techno, LaWS’ greatest enemies.

Eyes on Target

Unlike kinetic rounds, lasers cannot be tracked en route to their target. An SM-2 explosion can be detected, the 76MM’s MK 98 tracks each splash and can be corrected by operators, and the CIWS system tracks each CIWS round for automatic ballistic correction. The refraction and scattering effects, combined with the time needed for LaWS to be effective, make judging effectiveness particularly important. The laser is not powerful enough to cause immediate destruction of target detectable by radar. If atmospheric interference prevents an IR tracker from detecting the laser heat signature on target, there is no way to verify trajectory and correct. This imposes, at times, a dangerous “wait and see” aspect to the use of LaWS. If a ship is engaging multiple C-802’s, and a LaWS has (hypothetically) range of 6nm, 37 seconds is not a long time for a ship to worry if its measures are effective.

Not Enough Potatoes in the World

Enough for a small city, or a batter of space-age weaponry.

Proper Room Clearance

When “arrr” becomes “aaahhhhhh!”

But, yeah, I’ve been busy…

I’m not in Belgium any more.  I left at the end of February, at the last date that Millington said was possible without losing my billet and thus being removed from the Navy: 28FEB13.

In the present, I am at Corry Station, in Pensacola.  Learning about the stuff that the aforementioned gentlemen wrote about.  The thing about it though, I can’t write about what I’ve learned and am learning–its a different world I’ve walked into.  From the completely open source world of social media into the Crypto-Tech world.  I am at A-school.  I am surrounded by boots.  Every 45 seconds I am greeted in the P-ways with “good evening Petty Officer.”  I am a class leader, I have a number of boots I am charged with keeping on task… And it is fascinating.

It’s like seeing myself seven years ago when I was new to the Navy.  The questions they have differ little from my own back when…. They’re so young though, my god.  When you’re a boot, you don’t think you stand out that much.  But, you do.  The mistakes you’re going to make are predictable and understandable.  My experience over the last two weeks of school reminds of a quote from Hobbes,

Prudence is but experience, which equal time, equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto.

Experience, and in turn prudence, starts with bootcamp.  It builds to some expertise in A-school, you reach the Fleet and it is there that you learn to be a Sailor.  This fact seems to have been abused back when I came into the Navy.  A-schools back then were afflicted with the vogue notion of CBT, or Computer Based Training.  Where the Navy assumed boots to be cleaver enough to essentially teach themselves.  I’ve been told that even some of the more technical rates were afflicted by this methodology as well.  Even more so, instructors favored the term ‘you’ll learn it in the Fleet’ when a somewhat vexing question would be asked of them.  Again, all this to me, strikes me as a perversion of how a senior Sailor understands how they became who they are.

A more accurate portrayal of the development of a Sailor (‘Sailor-ization’ is a term that should not be used.  One does not simply make a person into a Sailor, a person must grow into being a Sailor–the onus is on the one growing.) is that no amount of schooling nor any quantity of sea stories can completely ready a Sailor for life at sea or in the Fleet.  But, that does not mean there is not great efficacy for either.  Rather, the senior Sailor needs to fully appreciate what they are able to impart to their junior classmate.  Everything they have lived can impart a small measure of prudence into that junior Sailor.  Indeed, I consider this a sacred duty for the senior Sailor.

Having that first or second class in the classroom is invaluable.  Having a 2nd or 1st that can truly spin a yarn is worth every cent of their pay.  A 1st or 2nd that boots are in awe of is your surest bet to creating a Sailor worthy of the Fleet.  I sincerely doubt that becoming a Master Training Specialist ensures any of this.  In fact, I am nearly certain it doesn’t.  But, I am open to being corrected regarding this perception.

A-school is the last great chance for the military to hold onto their boots, and impart in them the words that need to resonate in their heads for the next 20+ years.  Once they leave here, for many of them, they start their adult lives and it will be too late.  The core of their professional-selves are set.

For the senior Sailor, what is important is that they learn about who they have grown to become in each conversation they have with their juniors.  As you explain to them what you experienced in the Fleet you discover aspects of your experience that you possibly had not considered before.  From their reactions you are allowed to, in some small part, relive that experience and see from a 3rd person perspective how that experience affected you.  In spinning that yarn, you learn just as much as they are.  There seems to be much emphasis on the underscoring of technical prowess in being an instructor at A-school, I hope the Navy appreciates this more ephemeral aspect of instruction as well.

You’d probably be floored to know that about 10% of my class has a 4 year degree.  There are more than five others in school with me that have their masters.  What’s amazing is that it’s fairly evenly split between guys as such either not knowing they could be an officer, and others who do not want to be officers.  The lines between what an officer is and an enlisted guy is blurring.  In many respects what it is coming down to is how a person was trained and treated.  If I were given the power, I’d like to do an experiment and see if someone from high school, and only high school, could become as good of an officer as someone from college.

There are still some months I have left here at Corry Station.  I am very eager to get to know more people well established in the community I am entering.  But, even more so, I feel incredibly lucky to be able to lead in some small way the boots (to be sure, I use that term in an endearing way) in class with me.  They are teaching me more than they realize.

A few years ago, I was given a tremendous opportunity to form JCCS-1 to work with almost 300 Sailors, traveling together to Iraq to defeat the RC-IED threat to our forces in OIF.  That was a rude awakening for the U.S. to find an adversary that was fighting inside the EMS better than we were.  Fortunately, as soon as we focused on “controlling the EMS”,  we could rely upon “the expertise and flexibility of our research base, our history of adaptation, and the skill and perseverance of our Sailors” that the CNO calls out in his blog.  The personal and professional efforts of these young men and women, E-4 to O-5, ultimately led to significantly degrading RC-IED effectiveness, saving lives in combat through control of the EMS.  Again, this particular fight was about conducting Electronic Warfare (EW): Electronic Attack (EA), Electronic Protect (EP) and Electronic Warfare Support (ES) within the EMS, and was rightfully segregated from other  cyber issues.   Whether it was industry, Army I2WD, JHU APL, Navy or Air Force, each partner leveraged its experience and expertise for a joint success story.   Hopefully we have captured the painful lessons from having to create a force to enable fighting inside the EMS.  We can bet that if the adversary saw an EMS  vulnerability there, the next adversary will be looking in similar places.

It is encouraging that the Navy continues to lead in the investment for critical EW programs like the Next Generation Jammer, the EA-18G, and the Surface Warfare EW Improvement Program (SEWIP).  I applaud the CNO’s unprecedented acknowledgement of the critical issues, especially including EMS, and also for the establishment of Fleet Cyber Command (FCC)/Commander TENTH Fleet (C10F), to focus on global cyber and EW operations, but I do have one concern when it comes to execution:  Does anyone know who is actually held accountable for failure to be able to fight within the EMS?  Who will be held responsible if our air forces are shot down because they were confused by the loss of GPS or worse yet by DRFM jammers?  Who will be responsible if EMI, material condition or even lack of an effective EW training program prevents an ASMD systems from operating effectively at sea?

Our people are our greatest asset.  We owe it to them to have the most capable fighting force within this new maneuver space.  This is a terrific forum to generate the type of discussion that will highlight capability and capacity gaps to our naval leaders and future leaders.  Knowing our organizational, budgetary and/or political restrictions, we must do more with what we have.  We need the experts in your individual areas who are passionate about your skill set to inspire others to get together to find ways to leverage complementary talents.  Electrons don’t care what color shoes you wear or even what platform you operate.  Please share your thoughts to enable another joint success story for our forces.

CAPT Brian “Hinks” Hinkley US Navy (ret) currently work as VP, Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations for URS Federal Services, Inc.  Retiring from the Navy in 2010, his highlights included: First Director, Fleet Electronic Warfare Center (FEWC), Norfolk, VA, responsible for highlighting current and future Navy EW shortfalls and prioritizing requirements across DOTMLPF areas impacting Fleet Man, Train, and Equip EW/Spectrum Management (SM) and Information Operations (IO) readiness. First Commander, Joint Counter Radio-Controlled Improvised Explosive Device EW (CREW) Composite Squadron ONE (JCCS-1), Camp Victory, Baghdad, Iraq, the first Navy force specifically designed to defeat the RC-IED threat to US, Coalition, and Partner Nation forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).  Commanding Officer, Tactical Electronic warfare Squadron (VAQ-135) during combat operations over Afghanistan and Iraq.  Clearance:  TS/SCI.

…one of many thoughts that went into my thinking for the post above – there are others…

- It is not a challenge of us having to merge spectrum and cyberspace – technology has already created the merger.  Analog systems can now create digital effects and vice versa.  As Admiral Greenert’s Proceedings article points out, ”Jammers that once simply overloaded radar or communication receivers with EM energy can now use computer controllers to deny signals to receivers or retransmit altered signals to them that inject false targets, obscured areas, or even malicious computer code. Our newest radars and jammers can also coordinate and synchronize their operations automatically with one another through computer networks, even when the systems are on different ships, aircraft, or unmanned vehicles.”  Technology has already created the merger between analog and digital, between traditional EW and Computer Network Operations.  Our challenge is to build a force whose parochialisms within stove-piped communities like Intel, Cryptology and EW can be leveraged to build weapons systems and operators that can understand the physics behind the environment and the operational warfighting importance of fighting within this new “maneuver space”.

If only fighting the invisible threats of the EM-Cyber spectrum was this easy.

In his piece, “Imminent Domain,” ADM Greenert suggests that the EM and Cyber spectrums need now be considered a stand-alone domain of conflict. Respectfully, we’re already there. The electronic environment, wired and unwired, is an obsession for defense planners. In CYBERCOM, the EM-Cyber spectrum practically has its own unified command. The navy’s component of CYBERCOM, the “10th Fleet,” in name harkens back to ADM Greenert’s example of the rise of sub-surface warfare. From the military’s fears over an assassin’s mace style EMP attack to the public’s obsession in movies like Live Free, Die Hard and games like Black Ops 2, the awareness is more than there. While we may have recognized this new environment, ADM Greenert is right in that we have not taken this challenge to heart. If forces are going to operate as if the EM-Cyber spectrum is a domain of warfare, they must act as they would in the physical battlefield on the tactical level, not just the strategic: take cover, stay organized, and interrupt the enemy’s OODA loop.

TAKE COVER

In a battlefield, soldiers take cover to avoid detection and enemy fire. In the EM- cyber realm, we’ve made a habit of unnecessarily exposing ourselves to vulnerability. The US Navy has created an entire web of centralized databases that require not just mere control of the EM environment, but also a stability that often doesn’t exist at sea. The Ordnance Information System-Retail (OIS-R) is the perfect example of unnecessary exposure to EM spectrum weakness. The system, designed to manage all ordnance administration, accounting, and inventory, requires a command to sign in to a shore-side database requiring uninterrupted connection through a Java interface. To access a ship’s ordnance data, one MUST have a functional internet connection either hard-wired or satellite. If account problems exist, troubleshooting must be done through other wireless means (phone, email, etc…) with land-based facilities. Each step requires a series of exposures to a very particular type of EM Cyber connection to operate effectively.

The old system, Retail Ordnance Logistics Management System (ROLMS) was a stand-alone database that would update parallel shore-side databases through message traffic. The old system, while potentially harder for a single entity to manage, didn’t open the whole system to multiple weaknesses by environmental interference, enemy interference both kinetic and cyber, and equipment errors shore-side that a ship cannot trouble-shoot. It might be easier to keep all your ordnance (admin) in a huge pile, but to require warfighters to make a run through the open plains of TRON to get it is not a good idea.

STAY ORGANIZED

The drive to create centralized databases is often driven by a lack of organization on the part of the end-user. Properly organized supplies (data) minimize loss and the need to reach back into the logistical chain for material already packed. If the networks on ships are any indication, the average sailor enters the EM battlefield with absolutely no organization whatsoever. Sign in to a ship’s NIPR network and one will likely decade old files, repeated, in over a dozen similarly named folders: Operations Department, Ops, Operations, Ops Dept, OS1’s Folder, etc… Perhaps, those folders will have subfolders of the same name down 20 deep in series. Poor organization leads to inefficiency; inefficiency requires time, bandwidth, and exposure that should go towards the survival of the force and the success of operations. Ships need to treat their networks as they do their home desktops, organizing their material in a sensible way and deleting wrong, obsolete, or useless files.

Organization becomes the key to minimizing the need to go off-ship: well organized tech pubs, updated instructions in intuitive places, and personnel willing to spend the minute to search . The badly organized NIPR network is a reflection of how the navy treats the rest of its data: badly. We have seventeen sources pinging a ship for the same information that is held in 8 PowerPoint trackers, 2 messages, at least one call over the voice circuits, and 30 emails. Today, we expect every sailor to be at least an LS1 of the data-GSK, without giving them the tools or support to be so. One could drastically decrease the need to go off-ship for information by teaching sailors how to do a proper “ctrl-f” search or assigning an IT2 to deleting the ¾ of the network dedicated to obsolete files, animated .gifs, and 12 years of sea-and-anchor PowerPoints. Better training must exist not only in how to use data and of what kind, but how to properly disseminate/find it as well.

The battlefield equivalent of how we treat our data is sending soldiers into combat with a dozen different weapons from over the past century, but hiding them, their magazines, and their ammunition randomly throughout the base in mis-labeled boxes. Like a poorly organized supply system, perceived “lost items” that are merely hidden end up wasting bandwidth on downloads, emails, and voice traffic as sailors work to solve the problems whose answers are merely in the 20th sub-folder down or in the inbox of the department head who doesn’t read his email. We must worry almost as much about the organization of our data as we do our organization of physical objects.

DOMINATE THE OODA LOOP

Survival often depends on an ability to use the enemy’s expectations of your methods against them. Some have suggested the navy embrace a wider range of bandwidths for communication; while true, more drastic measures are necessary to navigate the EM-cyber commons. In 2002, LtGen Paul Van Riper became famous for sinking the American fleet in a day during the Millennium Challenge exercise; he did so by veiling his intentions in a variety of wireless communications. We assume wireless to mean the transfer of data through the air via radio signals, but lights, hand signals, motorcycle couriers, and the like are all equally wireless. These paleo-wireless concepts are just what we need for flexibility and security in the EM environment.

Combot vulnerabilities to wireless hacks are of particular concern to warfighters. Data connections to operators or potential connections between combots and ships serve as a way for enemies to detect, destroy, or even hijack our assets. While autonomy is the first step in solving the vulnerability of operator connections, combots in the future must work as communicating teams. Fewer opportunities should be provided for subversion by cutting the long link back to the operator while maintaining the versatility of a small internally-communicating team. However, data communication between combots could still be vulnerable. Therefore, combots must learn from LtGen Van Riper and move to the wireless communications of the past. Just as ships at sea communicate by flags and lights when running silent or soldiers might whisper or motion to one another before breaching a doorway, combots can communicate via light, movement, or sound.

Unlike a tired Junior Officer of the Deck with a NATO code-book propped open, computers can almost instantly process simple data. If given the capability, a series of blinking lights, sounds, or even informative light data-transmissions could allow combots of the future to coordinate their actions in the battlefield without significantly revealing their position. Combots would be able to detect and recognize the originator of signals, duly gnoring signals not coming from the combot group. With the speed and variation of their communications, compressed as allowed by their processing power, combots can move through the streets and skies with little more disruption than a cricket, lightening bug, or light breeze. High- and low-pitch sounds and infrared light would allow for communications undetectable to the average soldier or an enemy EW platform.

One must also accelerate faster than the enemy’s OODA loop can process. In the cyber realm, the enemy is often software long-ago released by its human creators. Like the missile warfare that inspired AEGIS, cyber warfare is both too vast and too fast for human reaction. Capital investment would concentrate more money in autonomous and innovative defensive programs: 10th Fleet’s AEGIS. Proactive patrol and detection can be done with greater advancements in adaptive self-modifying programs; programs that can learn or understand context are far more appropriate. Recent developments in computing systems point to organic systems that could “live” in the systems they defend.

Biological processors and organic computing allow for hardware that thinks and learns independently, potentially giving defensive networks the added advantage of an instinct and suspicion. Imagine the vast new horizons in the OODA loop of defensive cyber systems with hubs sporting the defensive animal instinct and the ability to re-wire their own hardware. Quantum computing also hovers over the horizon, with not only vast consequences for computing speed, but he whole cryptological offense-defense equation.

The image painted is dramatic and far-off, but modest investment and staged introduction would serve as a better model than the dangerous possibility of a “human wave” mode of thinking. With fluid cyber-defense systems guarding more disciplined communicators, the US Navy can crush ambushes in the invisible commons.

ACTING LIKE IT

We will never be able to completely control the invisible commons; it is too heavily populated and easily influenced. Those conflicts held within vision are often confusing enough; the invisible becomes infinitely harder to master. However, if we minimize unnecessary exposure, organize ourselves well, and move with aggressive speed and unpredictability, our convoys of data will survive their long mili-second journey across the EM-cyber sea. ADM Greenert is right in saying the EM-Cyber world is a new field upon which battle must be done. However, while we may have realized it, we must start acting like it.

We have heard from industry, military leaders, Marines, and private security providers, this Sunday we are going to look at piracy at a more personal level with director Thymaya Payne of the documentary, “Stolen Seas: Tales of Somali Piracy.”

He will be our guest for the full hour.

From the show promo:

The filmmakers have spent the past three years traveling to some of the world’s most violent locales in order to make this documentary on Somali piracy, Stolen Seas. Utilizing exclusive interviews and unparalleled access to real pirates, hostages, hostages’ relatives, ship-owners, pirate negotiators and experts on piracy and international policy, Stolen Seas presents a chilling exploration of the Somali pirate phenomenon.

The film throws the viewer, through audio recordings and found video, right into the middle of the real-life hostage negotiation of a Danish shipping vessel, the CEC Future. As the haggling between the ship’s stoic owner Per Gullestrup, and the pirate’s loquacious negotiator, Ishmael Ali, drags on for 70 days, these two adversaries’ relationship takes an unexpected turn and an unlikely friendship is born.
Stolen Seas is an eye opening refutation of preconceived ideas on how or why piracy has become the world’s most frightening multi-million dollar growth industry.

Join us live (or download later) here at 5pm Sunday, 7 Apr 13.

From the start, a goal of the National Security Act of 1947 was to make the military more efficient and effective. The first Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, wrote to President Truman after the Key West Conference in 1948 stressing the need to integrate policy and procedures throughout the military in order to produce an effective, economical, harmonious businesslike organization.

Subsequent amendments to the NSA ’47 continued to assign more responsibility to the SECDEF and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and each iteration provided justification to increase the staff size within their organizations. Of course, this was in addition to the staffs of the service secretaries, who were still responsible for managing their respective services.

The NSA ’47 failed to accomplish its original objectives and in 1982 the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff conceded the military was broken and beyond his ability to fix. This claim was the stimulus behind the Goldwater-Nichols Reorganization Act of 1986. The effectiveness of Goldwater-Nichols is debatable but the fact that it significantly increased overhead is not.

These two pieces of legislation were actually at odds with one another. A 1997 study prepared for DoD identified that before Goldwater-Nichols the OSD staff did many of the integrating functions among the services and unified commands. The contentious debates that preceded the final version of Goldwater- Nichols forced the authors to clearly define roles and missions of the Joint Staff and unified commands. This left the OSD with no clear direction as to its roles and responsibilities and as a result, OSD assumed new functions. This shift in authority should have resulted in a decrease in staff but instead its numbers grew.

In the mid-1990s, Congress and the SECDEF recognized that while the number of military personnel was reduced, Major Headquarters Activities (MHA) within the DoD were still disproportionally large. Congress legislated sweeping reductions (up to 33% in some organizations) of MHA staffs from FY97 to FY02. Unfortunately, managing two wars derailed this effort. The NDAA of FY08 repealed the limitation of MHA and staff sizes quickly swelled – often in response to Congressional legislation intended to make the DoD more efficient!

In 2010, the DoD acknowledged that its enormous overhead had grown to the equivalent of the GDP of a small nation – somewhere between Portugal and Israel for comparison. Consider the tradeoff of military capabilities occurring just to maintain these organizations. It is difficult to maintain public support for a strong military given that such a significant portion of their taxpayer dollars is being diverted to overhead expenses.

In response to the 2008 “too big to fail” controversies, the problem of ”too big to manage” was identified. Large organizations often become too big and too complex to manage. Four types of organizational complexity could affect a large organization: dysfunctional, designed, inherent and imposed. Unfortunately, the DoD suffers from all four types.

The concept of bureaucratic accretion, that is, adding organizations, oversight, regulations and processes onto existing ones over time, further explains how the massive defense enterprise has evolved into its current state. DoD has simply become too big to manage the military effectively or efficiently.

Since the Blue Ribbon Defense Panel released its findings in 1970, countless studies were conducted within the DoD, War Colleges and at influential think tanks on ways to make the DoD more efficient by improving the organizational relationships between civilian leadership and military services. However, the fundamental premises stated by Forrestal have rarely been challenged. Do the benefits of DoD-wide policies, processes and organizations outweigh the costs?

To illustrate how complex and costly a DoD-wide “good idea” is, one needs to look no further than DIMHRS, “After $1 billion and 12 years of effort, Defense officials have pulled the plug on a hapless plan to bring the four military branches under a single, modern payroll and personnel records system.” There are also numerous examples of joint acquisition programs and processes that clearly demonstrate why these overly complex initiatives are neither efficient nor effective.

These are complicated issues and I certainly do not have the solutions. However, it is time to start asking some tough questions and challenge how we currently manage the DoD. One approach that must be considered almost appears to be an oxymoron: bureaucratic simplicity – removing overly complex bureaucratic processes and non-essential organizations to reform the entire defense enterprise.

Fixing the problem of excessive overhead is critical in austere times but it is often considered too difficult to attempt. Marginal across the board staff reductions are not the solution. As we have witnessed, staffs will only grow back over time or tenuous work will be outsourced to costly contract support personnel.

Reconsidering how to best organize and manage the US Defense Department is even more important today than it was in 1947. In recent days, DoD and Congress have each formed internal working groups to address the future of national defense. Neither group should leave the problem of excessive overhead unaddressed. Reform through simplification is an essential part of the solution.

Robert Kozloski is a program analyst for the Department of the Navy. The views expressed here are his alone and do not represent the views of the Department of Navy or Defense.

Does the Navy have a counterargument to this view, and if so how do we characterize it? The U.S. Navy has long maintained that our strategic value to the Nation is predicated on our ability to operate forward. We have long used the phrase forward presence to emphasize this posture and convey both a robust operational tempo and a readiness for any crisis. We characterize it within our Maritime Strategy as a “core capability.”¹

I would argue, though, that forward presence is inaccurate and misleading in describing the value of our Navy’s forward and ready posture. Being forward deployed is not simply about being present—as if that were enough—it is about being ready and able to provide an effective response to challenges to America’s vital interests. This mischaracterization of forward presence as just “being there” feeds the misperception that we seek to be everywhere rather than being where it matters, when it matters. Have we failed to convey the value of the Navy’s forward and ready posture all these years by using the wrong words to describe it? We have to make a two-fold case to shift the discussion to more accurately convey the great lengths to which our Navy goes in maintaining a combat ready force operating far from our shores. First, we have to choose the right words – forward presence simply fails to fully capture the purpose of forward and ready Navy forces. Operating forward directly enables everything we do, from deterrence to disaster relief – it is a posture of readiness, rather than an end in itself. Second, we have to stop advertising forward presence as a core capability. Commanders request capabilities to execute particular courses of action to meet mission objectives – but capabilities may not be service specific, and they are called upon only episodically. This clearly understates the strategic contribution of the Navy’s forward and ready posture: it is neither interchangeable with the offerings of other services, nor do episodic forward deployments convey the same responsiveness and steady-state influence as ready, forward forces. Forward and ready is in fact the central operating construct of our Navy: it provides America with an essential and cost-effective ability to proactively influence events and rapidly respond to crises when time is of the essence.

Being forward and ready enables every function we perform as a Navy – from cooperating with allies and partners in maintaining maritime security to defeating adversaries in war. Forward operations are a central element of the Nation’s ability to project power and communicate resolve where and when it matters most. This does not mean we need to be everywhere at once – a common misperception – but it does mean we need to be operating forward and ready in the regions of greatest importance to the American national interest.

Our forward operations encourage–rather than dampen—the allies’ and partners’ willingness to contribute by communicating American resolve and promoting regional security and stability. Tailoring our forward posture by region ensures a U.S. Navy posture that is concentrated where it is needed and desired, and diffuse where partners assume primary responsibility for regional security and stability. And through daily engagement and maritime governance in cooperation with allies, partners, and other stakeholders, naval forces contribute to freedom of navigation, reinforcing the norms of free access to the maritime commons.

Forward posture also enables timely response to crises. The presence of combat-ready naval forces allows us to dissuade, deter, and contain aggression. In the event of conflict, our ability to operate forward enables sea control and facilitates the arrival and employment of additional naval, joint, or multinational forces surged from home or from other globally dispersed locations. Moreover, forward operations facilitate the inherent advantages of our forces (mobile, versatile, and self-sustaining) by providing an ability to swiftly shift from one location or mission to another as local situations evolve. While we can’t be everywhere at all times, swinging forward and ready forces is inevitably a more effective and efficient first response compared to “surging” forces from their homeports.

Forward presence was, and still is, our own terminology so we bear the responsibility of shifting the conversation. The Navy does not simply provide presence. We provide a relevant and capable combat ready force that is globally deployed. We are forward and ready; not forward and present. It is time we communicate this more effectively to properly convey our Navy’s strategic value to the Nation. Pulling back our deployed forces is not a feasible solution when the very essence of how we operate is forward and ready.

Rear Adm. Smith is currently the director, Strategy and Policy Division (OPNAV N51). He is a 1983 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and his first division officer assignments were aboard the USS Texas (CGN 39). After earning a master’s degree from the Naval Postgraduate School, he reported as combat systems officer in the USS Leftwich (DD 984) where he participated in Operation Desert Storm.
RDML Smith’s full biography »

¹ A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower (CS21) – currently under revision.

Carriers started off as fleet auxiliaries a century ago, scouting and screening for the battle line, before taking their place as the chief repository of U.S. Navy striking power during World War II. The CVN could trace the same trajectory followed by the battleships—from capital ship, to expensive fleet auxiliary, and into eventual obsolescence and retirement.

Why is he thinking this way?

This is a milieu populated not just by adversary cruisers and destroyers, but

Old “Silkworm” Anti-Ship Missiles

by missile-toting subs and fast patrol craft. This is also an age of land-based sea power. Extended-range fire support has come a long way since the days of Corbett and Mahan, when a fort’s guns could clear enemy vessels out of a few miles of offshore waters, and that was it. Tactical aircraft flying from airfields ashore, batteries of antiship cruise missiles, and even an exotic antiship ballistic missile are among the weaponry with which U.S. Navy defenders must now contend. This latter-day, hybrid land/sea flotilla menaces not just CVNs but all surface forces that venture within its range.

Modern Iranian Chinese C-801/2 Dispenser

Actually, it is a return to the old days, when Lord Nelson’s adage “A ship’s a fool to fight a fort” was the wisdom of the day.

Anti-access weapons and capability have just added to their range, as land-based powers seek to convert their “near seas” into safe, controlled space.

What does it mean if Professor Holmes is right?

I would suggest starting with building up the submarine fleet. A slew of diesel/AIP boats would be good (in theory, cheaper than nukes). Or something different – submersible missile hydrofoil ships? Break out the old Tom Swift books and see if anything makes sense.

I should also note that one of the original arguments for something like the Littoral Combat Ship was that it was an inexpensive asset that could be put in harm’s way . . . to keep the sea lanes open among other things.

The U.S. Navy needs to be very careful to the avoid the hammer/nail approach to problem solving.

Via the SalamanderUnderground, the following notes from a Chief of Naval Personnel recent all-hands call is helpful, and adds a bit to Ryan’s post from the 21st.

VADM Van Buskirk’s MT&E priorities are to STABILIZE (at 320,000 personnel), BALANCE (overmanned and undermanned ratings) and DISTRIBUTE (between sea and shore) the workforce. Sailors need to be ASSIGNABLE, DEPLOYABLE and DISTRIBUTABLE in order to meet the Chief of Naval Operations tenets to be WARFIGHTERS FIRST, OPERATE FORWARD and BE READY.

In order to meet these goals, his emphasis is to attack undermanned ratings and increase the quality of recruits as currently evident on entry level exam scores. Quality of recruits is key to keep apprised and abreast of technological changes. He noted that Perform to Serve (PTS) is at 90 percent acceptable in-rate quotas with averages at over 95 percent over the last four months. Retention is historically high but a continued focus is on resiliency of the force. He indicated continued FY funding for sailor support and family readiness programs.

Q&A session discussion included impact of sequestration/CR regarding as well as the following topics:

- USN continuation of tuition assistance (TA) through this FY (all other Services have curtailed this benefit). 45 thousand sailors are recipients of TA with over 90 percent receiving degrees.

- Possible changes in advancement to include consideration of multiple scores such as sea duty.

- Priority of Cyber training but fiscal pressures including civilian furloughs may slow training pipelines.

- Attack undermanned rates with new accessions. YTD have had 41,000 new accessions. Previous years were approximately 35,000-37,000. Looking at a summer surge of recruits.

- Provision of health care with possible civilian furloughs requiring referrals to civilian specialists in town. Possible contributory payments for pharmacy co-pays and increased retiree payment for Tricare for Life.

- Discussion of option to obtain NECs on-line leveraging technology for training. Limitations include current training infrastructure and classification limitations.

- Active duty IAs (except for specific specialties such as dog handling) will be transferred to reserve component. Expect closure of Gulfport MS and other IA training centers.

- STA-21 IW program closed this year. Accession options adjusted based on ROTC, OCS and related accession pipelines. Look for adjustments in future cycles.

- Number one priority is stabilizing the work force ensuring proper distribution and balance. Cross deck sailors may receive special pays and other incentives.

This is going on throughout the Navy and other services. As budgets continue to contract, expect to see more and more of this.

Priorities; time to rack-n-stack ‘em.

There is a fair bit of talk about the rush for the arctic for economic and strategic reasons – and where there is international interest on the seas, the nations involved need to think about what is the best way to secure their interests.

While the initial thought might be Navy – is the natural answer really the Coast Guard? If the USCG is the right answer, is it trained, manned and equipped for the job?
What does it need to do in order to fulfill its role – and why may it be the best answer to the question – who will show the flag up north?

Our guest this Sunday for the full hour from 5-6pm EST will be U.S. Naval War College Associate Professor James R. Holmes. As a starting point for our conversation, we will use his latest article in Foreign Policy: America Needs a Coast Guard That Can Fight: As the Arctic becomes an arena for conflict, the United States’ forgotten naval force will need to cowboy up.

Join us live or later by going to Midrats on BTR or picking up the show later from our iTunes page (lately there has been some delay in getting the show to iTunes, though, and the link may require iTunes).

My military service has been good to me. I have fairly good healthcare, I get paid well, I’ve learned a lot of life skills, and my jobs haven’t been all that bad either. I’m sure we can all agree that our education benefits over the last ten years or so have been rather awesome too. As a matter of perspective, if not an admission, I was able to pay for about 90 percent of my bacholor degree by way of tuition assistance (TA) while serving in the Coast Guard.

As a one-time Education Services Officer and full time education evangelist I can say that TA was an awesome tool. Times were great, until March 1st, 2013 came and messed that all up.

The deed known as Sequestration became a reality at the beginng of this month and immediately started changing things. From travel to schools and conferences in between life as I/we knew it had begun to alter.

In the Coast Guard alone our operational budget had to be cut by some 25 percent. As I actually type that out it doesn’t seem too bad. That is, until I remember that the word “operational” means search and rescue, among other things. As a measure to ensure the Coast Guard is able to continue saving lives and protecting the nations shores our leaders had to look around to find ways to fill that 25% gap with “non-operational” funds. It’s no surprise that TA was eliminated. I am surprised, however, it didn’t happen sooner if only as a cost saving measure.

Over the last year, give or take, the question of when/if TA is going to be cut or reduced had been broached by many. Though I had no official word from higher authority my gut told me it was in trouble; with or without sequestration. Nonetheless, in the end four of the five military services, USCG included, killed their TA funding.

As of today only the Navy is holding on to its TA program, at least through the end of the current fiscal year (FY13). Congress saved TA for everyone but the Coast Guard.

Aside from obvious fiscal savings- the act of dropping TA may be a subliminal tactic to keep only the best and the brightest in the ranks of our military. I don’t think you’ll actually hear anyone comment on that nor do I think it was a real reason to drop it. However, one has to remember that TA was not only a awesome deal but a recruiting and retentention tool too. How better to thin the ranks outside of the avenues already being taken?

So this leads me to why this ordeal is good. As mentioned this may be a way for the Coast Guard, and others, to retain only the best of their service, or at least the best educated. From my personal observations, with no real data to back it up, I’ve noticed that most of our senior Enlisted folks, as well as most Officers above O-2, hold some sort of degree or are perusing such. With the TA program currently dismissed, and the next fiscal year expected to bring only a fraction of the funds back for use, only those who are truly dedicated will get their education on their own dime*.

As I understand it NAVADMIN 263/04 (the link is broken to the actual message) from the Navy states, in so many words, that beginning in fiscal year 2011 an associate degree or equivalent that is rating-relevant will be a prerequisite for advancement to senior chief petty officer for active and reserve personnel. If this were true across all services then only the best educated would be the leaders.

It’s true that an education doesn’t mean you’re going to be a great leader but one has to admit that if we were required to get a degree in our specialty our military would be better for. We don’t need a retained workforce, we need an educated workforce to move forward in today’s world.

So the removal, or reduction, of tuition assistance will allow the Coast Guard to keep only the best and brightest in its ranks. If they were to go one step further and require certain degrees for certain jobs or certain ranks then we could truly be one of the best educated fighting nations in the world.

Does removal tuition assistance suck? Yes. But will it help the Coast Guard and other services in the long run? Also yes, if it is leveraged correctly.

Any thoughts on the matter?

Update 22 March 2013: The Coast Guard also reinstated its TA (http://www.uscgnews.com/go/doc/4007/1732873/)

* Rumors are tuition assistance in the Coast Guard is going to be back, but not nearly as robust as it once was.

Episode 167: Intellectual Integrity, PME, and NWC

How do we advance the intellectual development of leaders through Professional Military Education, the Naval War College, and else where?

What is the purpose and how are we trying to achieve the goals to best serve our nation? Are we doing it right? What are the trends, and what could we do better?

Our guest for the full hour to discuss this and more will be Dr. Joan Johnson-Freese, Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Her publications include: Heavenly Ambitions: America’s Quest to Dominate Space; Space As A Strategic Asset, and over 80 journal articles. She is a member of the Space Studies Board of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the International Academy of Astronautics, and a member of the Editorial Board of China Security. She has testified before Congress on multiple occasions, and is regularly interviewed by the media, including CNN, CBS, ABC, The New York Times, Reuters and the BBC, on space issues. She also teaches courses on Globalization and US National Security, and Space and Security, at Harvard Summer and Extension Schools.

Join us live here (or listen later or download it later from that same location) or from our iTunes page (perhaps, someday iTunes will catch up with our episodes).

LT Brian Bruns, that ambitious individual, had a goal of not only bringing awareness to those who’ve fallen in the line of duty but was also looking for a way to bring awareness to the Coast Guard Foundation’s Fallen Heroes Scholarship Fund. Bruns’ and Lawler’s plan worked. Enter the 2011 Coast Guard Run2Remember; in the end LT Bruns ran the 100 mile ultra marathon in memory of 90+ Shipmates who had fallen since 9/11. Donated funds came in at around $2,000 all of which were donated to the Fallen Heroes Scholarship Fund. Not too bad for a single runner and a few followers.

Last year’s second annual Coast Guard Run2Remember (2012) got a whole lot bigger, and LT Lucy Love entered into the coordinator’s seat. After seeing the impact the first event had on the families of the fallen, LT Love stepped up and took the initiative to ensure a 2nd event took place. With LT Bruns deployed, she assumed the reins and transformed a one-man event into a movement. She continued to work with ME1 Lawler and together they renewed a campaign to bring further awareness to the Foundation’s scholarship fund and the Coasties we’ve lost.

Their hard work paid off. LT Love involved not only some 93 people to run the Keys 100 but also individual events at units throughout the Coast Guard. Units from Virginia to Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, and even Kuwait were holding their own Run2Remeber events. While Love worked to coordinate the actual running in Key West (yes, another crazy one!) and help the individual event holders at units around the globe, Lawler was (and still is) hard at work getting the word out via their Facebook page, unit event pages, Twitter, and in general online social interactions. Lawler is also the designer, three years running, of their logos and images. It’s a lot of work on top of their day jobs.

As a member of the Coast Guard, I was part of our local Run2Remember here in Juneau, AK last year. We had a turnout of about 50 or so people all wearing the t-shirts with the names of the fallen on the back. I still wear mine knowing someone is reading the back. At the end of the 2012 campaign, LT Love and ME1 Lawler’s work enabled them to donate $12,000 dollar to the Fallen Heroes Scholarship Fund. Awesome!

The event has kind of taken a life of its own without a doubt. I admit I never saw it getting as big as it has. With that in mind I wondered if the Coast Guard as an organization would have taken notice- they have. Though the event isn’t sponsored by the Coast Guard it definitely is supported. Which is good enough for me.

The 2013 campaign has changed a little. After listening to both participants and wishful participants of last year’s event the duo set in motion a change of name and a change of participation. Starting this year the formerly named Run2Remember has officially been changed to CG Remember (it will be held 17 & 18 May 2013).

Why the change to such a successful event? Well, in short, not everyone runs or can run. So the name change opens up the event to not only runners but also bikers, rowers, rollers skaters, house sitters, and your backyard Bar-B-Q. “Virtually any event can be used as a remembrance event. It’s not about the exercise or running, it never was, it’s about remembering.” says ME1 Lawler.

The goal hasn’t change though. The event is still here to help the Fallen Heroes Scholarship Fund. What has changed, along with the name, are the t-shirts. Over the past two years the shirts have listed the names of the fallen since September 11, 2001; 90+. This year that number has risen to 126 fallen Shipmates going back to 1982 1978. It will also include the most fallen Shipmate, [Senior] Chief Petty Officer Terrell Horne III, who died in 2012.

ME1 Sean Lawler said it well in a letter to 2012 participants writing, “To the families of the fallen members, we know that nothing will ever ease the pain you have from losing a loved one, but you need to know that every member of the Coast Guard is with you, thanks you, and will always remember your sacrifice. Our uniforms have our names on the right side, but bear the words [U.S.] Coast Guard on the left…and that makes us all family. We will always remember our family.”

I look at the work that is being done here as Coasties helping Coasties. We’re known as an organization that is always there to help the public; however, we’re also just as capable with helping each other.

Now the easy part: getting involved. If you’re in the Coast Guard it’s likely that your unit is already planning something. Check the list of participating units at event page which will have your local point of contact.

If you’re not in the Coast Guard, or you’d rather not participate in an event but still want to help Coast Guard Foundation Fallen Hero Scholarship fund, you can purchase your own t-shirt for $20. The best part is 100% of the proceeds go to the scholarship fund. If you’d rather just donate without anything in return you’ll also find the address to mail donation on that same page. Either way it’s a great cause.

Thank you LT Love and ME1 Lawler for keeping this annual remembrance in motion.

LT Lucy Love was the Coast Guard’s Shipmate of the Week on 15 March 2013.

This Sunday March 10 at 5pm (don’t forget the time change “spring ahead”) Episode 166: ‘Expeditionary Fleet Balance” on Midrats at Blog Talk Radio:

Do we have the right balance between strike as embodied by carrier air and expeditionary forces based around amphibious ships?

What capability is most cost effective and gives the combatant commanders the most flexible assets in their area of responsibility?

What is driving our Fleet structure, and do we have the right mix? What is informing our decisions, and what should be informing it?

Our guest for the full hour will be Lieutenant Colonel James W. Hammond III, USMC (Ret), senior manager at WBB.

Prior to retirement in 2005, he was Director, Commandant’s Staff Group.

As a starting point for our discussion, we will review his points in the FEB13 Proceedings article, “A Fleet Out of Balance.” Previous published articles and letters in the Naval Institute Proceedings and the Marine Corps Gazette have dealt with Naval Surface Fire Support, Counterbattery support from the Sea, Electronic Attack, Revolution in Military Affairs, and Provisional Rifle Companies.

Listen live (or download later) here or on our iTunes page.

The final battle of Epipole showed the pitfalls of over-reliance on communications and single circuits. During the Athenian siege of Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War, the Syracusans countered the attempt of Athens to wall in the city by building a counter-wall past the projected path of Athenian battlements. The Syracusans had gained a critical blocking position, and Athenian General Demosthenes concocted a plan to dislodge the defenders. Athenian forces found themselves stalled during the daytime battles outside the counter-wall, when their enemies could easily observe and rally against them. General Demosthenes planned a night-time strike on the counter-wall. The well-organized night-time attack completely overwhelmed and nearly destroyed the first garrison. As the alarm was sounded, the Athenians rushed forward before allowing themselves to re-organize and re-identify. When the first real resistance was met, the ensuing disaster is worth citing in full:

IFF degrades to, “is this person stabbing me in the face?”

“Although there was a bright moon they saw each other only as men do by moonlight, that is to say, they could distinguish the form of the body, but could not tell for certain whether it was a friend or an enemy. Both had great numbers of heavy infantry moving about in a small space. Some of the Athenians were already defeated, while others were coming up yet unconquered for their first attack. A large part also of the rest of their forces either had only just got up, or were still ascending, so that they did not know which way to march. Owing to the rout that had taken place all in front was now in confusion, and the noise made it difficult to distinguish anything. The victorious Syracusans and allies were cheering each other on with loud cries, by night the only possible means of communication, and meanwhile receiving all who came against them; while the Athenians were seeking for one another, taking all in front of them for enemies, even although they might be some of their now flying friends; and by constantly asking for the watchword, which was their only means of recognition, not only caused great confusion among themselves by asking all at once, but also made it known to the enemy, whose own they did not so readily discover, as the Syracusans were victorious and not scattered, and thus less easily mistaken. The result was that if the Athenians fell in with a party of the enemy that was weaker than they, it escaped them through knowing their watchword; while if they themselves failed to answer they were put to the sword. But what hurt them as much, or indeed more than anything else, was the singing of the paean, from the perplexity which it caused by being nearly the same on either side; the Argives and Corcyraeans and any other Dorian peoples in the army, struck terror into the Athenians whenever they raised their paean, no less than did the enemy.”

In Sicily, the simple task of a man not stabbing his own ally in the face with a sword was hard enough with only primodrial IFF and comms. In today’s higher-speed remote-control warfare and vulnerable high-tech comms in which seconds could mean life-or-death, the potential to accidentally destroy a friend, miss an enemy, or become isolated totally become even greater. When the enemy knows the “watch-words,” it becomes a certainty as paranoia and confusion set in.

The Offense Challenge

The defensive party often has the simpler fight. As illustrated in the excerpt and so aptly explained by the indomitable Chesty Puller, “”So they’ve got us surrounded, good! Now we can fire in any direction, those bastards won’t get away this time!” The US Navy, as the expeditionary power, will almost always have that offense-disadvantage; it has yet to fight an enemy that can attack the precious network of communications that creates such an unspeakable force multiplier in the field. When those operations begin and the network is attacked, the swarm of ships, missiles, and aircraft become a liability to itself, as were the Athenians as they cut apart their own brothers ahead of them.

Protecting Less with More

The solution to the communication weakness is to stay ahead of the offense-defense struggle through aggressive capital investment and divestment of use. As with the AEGIS response to ASM, cyber-warfare is far too fast for human operators. Our virtual-defense infrastructure may be significant, but it is slow, human, and defending far too many unnecessary and redundant communications. A response is a smarter investment in cyber-defense capital and a more disciplined use of our vital communications networks.

“We got the info via e-mail? Good! Bill, request a message. Susanne, request it be added to three status and SITREP messages. I’ll request voice reports on two different circuits. I’ll also need 6 of you to chat them every 3 minutes from your individual accounts. After that, we’ll send a powerpoint for them to update. Also, one of you be sure to forget this is high-side information and constantly ping them until they cave and email it from Gmail. Get to it, people!”

The divestment comes from bringing all communications into control, or more accurately bringing into control those using it. We are the Athenians screaming our watch-word at one another because no one bothered to re-organized before charging in. It boils down to paying attention and staying calm; what we have is seventeen sources pinging a ship for the same information that is held in 8 PowerPoint trackers, 2 messages, at least one call over the voice circuits, and 30 emails with at least half the lazy people asking for the information in the CC line. The sheer bandwidth of material that needs protection and monitoring could be decrease with a “ctrl-f” search of email and message traffic. It also leaves a veritable treasure-trove of information lying around in hundreds of different locations, making it easier to steal or detect. Better training not only in proper communications procedures/methods, but basic computer literacy, could solve this problem.

Unfortunately, people are not as good at defending us from cyber attack as John McClane might have you think.

The speed of cyber-attacks only allows the “labor” side of the equation to be reactive; capital investment would concentrate more money in autonomous and innovative defensive programs: 10th Fleet’s AEGIS. Proactive patrol and detection can be done with greater advancements in adaptive self-modifying programs and programs that can learn or understand context are far more appropriate.  Recent developments in computing systems point to more organic systems that could “live” in the systems they defend. Biological processors and organic computing allow for hardware that thinks and learns independently, potentially giving defensive networks the added advantage of an instinct and suspicion. The development of mutable indium antimonide magnetic processors mean that the circuit hardware of a device may now be as mutable as the software running it. Imagine the vast new horizons in the OODA loop of defensive cyber systems  with hubs sporting the defensive animal instinct and the ability to re-wire their own hardware. The image painted is dramatic and far-off, but modest investment and staged introduction would serve as a better model than the dangerous possibility of a “human wave” mode of thinking. With better fluid cyber-defense systems guarding more disciplined communicators, the US Navy can guard its forces against Epipolaes.

To the scribes, to the thinkers, to the families, to those in the arena…in honor of one who served our Navy well in each of these roles. http://www.neptunuslex.com/

The Chief Petty Officers’ Mess is well known for establishing horizontal relationships.  Chiefs utilize relationships established during CPO 365 and within the Chiefs’ Mess to solve problems and accomplish the mission.  In essence, the effectiveness of the Chiefs’ Mess is based in large part on these horizontal relationships.  These horizontal relationships need not be limited to the Chiefs’ Mess, however.  Command members at all ranks, officer and enlisted, can and should seek to establish these relationships in order to make themselves and their command or organization more effective.

A good example is the somewhat recent emphasis on the N3/N2 (Ops/Intel) relationship, linking the operator to the intelligence professional, and vice versa.  The result has been greater synchronization between these supporting entities.  Another example is the establishment of the Information Dominance Corps (IDC), which seeks to establish a close working relationship between information-focused communities.  Regardless of where these information-focused professionals work in an organization, a roadmap for their horizontal relationships has been pre-established by the formation of the IDC.  The possibilities for horizontal relationships are truly endless, while the potential value in establishing and utilizing these relationships is immeasurable.

Establishing a horizontal relationship takes little effort.  Warfare qualification programs, command functions, social events, and command organizations, such as the First Class Petty Officers Association, all encourage the establishment of horizontal relationships.  Getting out of your work space and interacting with your peers is another method.  Share each other’s roles and responsibilities and seek to identify overlap, and common or supporting efforts.  Then establish a relationship and ensure you leverage it whenever necessary or feasible.

Horizontal relationships need not be limited to your own command or organization.  Establishing relationships with other commands or supporting staffs can be beneficial as well.  Horizontal relationships can also be established within a wider community, leveraging the collective thoughts of a large, diverse group.  Tools like the IDC Self-Synchronization website enable establishment and utilization of such relationships.

So the next time you think about the chain of command or look at an org chart, focus on the horizontal vice vertical aspects of the organization.  Identify the seams and look for places to establish horizontal relationships, relationships that will help make you and the command more effective.  Then set out to navigate the seams.

LCDR Chuck Hall is an Information Warfare Officer and member of the Information Dominance Corps. He enlisted in the Navy in 1988 and served 13 years as a Cryptologic Technician (Interpretive) prior to commissioning as a CWO2.  Subsequently selected for LDO, he transitioned to the Restricted Line once he completed his BA in Middle Eastern Studies.  He currently serves on the CCSG-8 staff, embarked in USS DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER.  When at home he enjoys spending time with his wife and three amazing children.  He has also contributed to Connecting the Dots with his blog post Waiting to Lead.

Institutions do not exist and excel simply because they “are.” They must be nurtured by dedicated individuals that find the right combination of stewardship and intellectual curiosity to ensure they continue to carry out their mission and leave a more viable entity for those who follow.

It must be informed by the past, though not shackled to it. It must be true to its nature, but not ossified in its operation. It must be ready for the future, but clearheaded on how to get there.

For the maritime professional in the United States, there is a rather unique institution that really has no counterpart here or in other nations; the United States Naval Institute. Our guest for the first half of the hour will be USNI’s CEO, Vice Admiral Peter Daly, USN (Ret). He will be with us to discuss USNI’s place in the maritime security arena and how ideas and concepts today inform and influence the direction of our Navy.

For the second half of the hour, we will shift focus back with Ensign Chris O’Keefe, USN who is the producer of the United States Naval Academy podcast series, “A History of the Navy in 100 Objects”, that uses objects from the Naval Academy’s museum to help tell the story of our Navy and the nation it serves.

Join live or listen later by clicking here or pick the show up later from our iTunes page here.

“It’s our privilege to announce a very special project designed and created at the Naval Academy that should be of great interest to fans around the world. Led by Midshipman Chris O’Keefe (now an Ensign), “A History of the Navy in 100 Objects” premieres today on the Naval Academy website at www.usna.edu/100Objects.  O’Keefe modeled his “100 Objects” after the BBC’s “A History of the World in 100 Objects.” It was while listening to the BBC podcasts that he realized that the Navy didn’t have a similar series about its history and heritage and decided to produce his own.  In his spare time, O’Keefe set about identifying objects in the Naval Academy collections to develop the series, and interviewed experts from the Naval Academy, the Naval Institute and elsewhere about the objects. Navy leaders such as Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert, Commandant of the Marine Corps James Amos, and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz provided commentary for the series. Twice a week, for the next 50 weeks, a new object will be released. The first is about the crypt of John Paul Jones. Jones is considered by many to be the founder of the American Navy, and this podcast discusses his contributions to history. Future object podcasts will include the Momsen Lung, deck and hull plates from USS Monitor and CSS Virginia, and a Pearl Harbor bomb arming vane. All of the objects used in the project are located at the Naval Academy, either in the museum, the Archives and Special Collections of Nimitz Library or, like Jones’ crypt, on the grounds of the academy.”

An ambitious project! BZ Ensign O’Keefe and everyone involved!

According to Jefferson Lab, “Scientists suspected than an unknown metal existed in alum as early as 1787, but they did not have a way to extract it until 1825. Hans Christian Oersted, a Danish chemist, was the first to produce tiny amounts of aluminum. Two years later, Friedrich Wöhler, a German chemist, developed a different way to obtain the metal. By 1845, he was able to produce samples large enough to determine some of aluminum’s basic properties. Wöhler’s method was improved in 1854 by Henri Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville, a French chemist. Deville’s process allowed for the commercial production of aluminum. As a result, the price of the metal dropped from around $1200 per kilogram in 1852 to around $40 per kilogram in 1859. Unfortunately, the metal remained too expensive to be widely used.”
…
Although aluminum is the most abundant metal in the earth’s crust, it is never found free in nature. All of the earth’s aluminum has combined with other elements to form compounds. Two of the most common compounds are alum, such as potassium aluminum sulfate (KAl(SO4)2·12H2O), and aluminum oxide (Al2O3). About 8.2% of the earth’s crust is composed of aluminum.”

Pure aluminum was so rare at that time it was considered a precious metal. Charles Martin Hall’s method of processing the metal ore was to pass an electric current through a non-metallic conductor (molten sodium fluoride compound was used) to separate the very conductive aluminum. In 1889, Charles Martin Hull was awarded U.S. patent #400,666 for his process.

In 1888, together with financier Alfred E. Hunt, Charles Martin Hall founded the Pittsburgh Reduction Company now know as the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). By 1914, Charles Martin Hall had brought the cost of aluminum down to 18 cents a pound and it was no longer considered a precious metal.

1914. Sound familiar? The start of WWI.

In roughly the same distance in time as from DESERT STORM to now, Aluminum went from a rarely used metal in the military with only the German Junkers J.I making it to war, to being a strategic commodity ubiquitous in its use from eating utensils to intercontinental bombers.

Were the fathers of economic aluminum Charles Martin Hall, Paul Heroult, and Karl Joseph Bayer thinking about how aluminum would change the way war would be fought? No.

Did the military know right away the way aluminum would transform the strength and performance of established technology? No … but some had an idea.

I thought of the story of aluminum earlier today when another funny sounding word came in my ear; graphene.

Do you know what graphene is? Well, I think you will more and more – just as Teddy Roosevelt’s generation started to hear aluminum and bauxite more and more as it slowly transformed their world. Not overnight, but year by year with a quickening as smart minds saw new ways to take advantage of this new advance.

Back to the Navy. What gets a lot of futurists excited as they look for the next kinetic and/or weaponeering leap? That is easy; rail guns, lasers, and particle beam weapons. In our early 21st Century tool box, what is holding these promising technologies back? What is the long pole in the tent that everything else requires to be there? In a word, energy.

Many more cards need to come out of the deck – but if you are interested in the offensive potential of rail guns, and the defensive promise of lasers and particle beam weapons – but are humbled by the very real limitations there are to making them operational – then I offer you the below.

Not revolution, but evolution. Evolution with the possibility of a quickening that 100 years ago the world saw with aluminum. Graphene based super-capacitors? Use the next generation of the DDG-1000 engineering plant? Watch the below if you can or click here, and ponder with me.

Yes, we live in interesting times as our Chinese friends might say – but rejoice dear hearts; the future has potential.

Communication in the PME community too often seems to utilize a very Asian “information is power” model. Official notices or all-hands meetings where messages of “all is well” or “all isn’t well but we don’t know anything” are common. Even in “normal” times, that allows the rumor mill to function on overdrive. In times of extreme fiscal constraint such as currently being experienced, when clearly all isn’t well, speculation and rumor naturally runs especially rampant.  Will faculty be furloughed? How would a furlough be instituted? Will civilians be treated differently from military faculty and support staff? Are faculty basically facing a 20% pay cut? On these questions we will all have to wait and see. Other questions, however, are not dependent on the actions of others and could be addressed if those in charge chose to do so.

For example, faculty travel has been dramatically curtailed as a result of the financial crisis. Again, that is understandable. A choice between funding a faculty member to attend the International Studies Conference (ISA) and buying fuel to keep ships running seems pretty obvious, even to the person whose trip to ISA has been canceled. But travel and association with peers is part of academic life. The best teachers are also active researchers who must interact with peers. Therefore, if the Navy intends to maintain the kind of “world class faculties” it often purports to want, and to have, other avenues of funding ought to be sought, and made user friendly, which they are not.

Consequent to an investigation that found expenses related to some conferences being funded by the Navy were extravagant – a finding confined to a remarkably small number of groups – a new battery of forms, procedures and requirements have been generated within the Navy that make is difficult if not sometimes impossible for faculty to travel and attend conferences, even if not funded by the Navy. The required hoop jumping is difficult and ambiguous.

To cite a personal example: I had a trip turned down in November, fully funded by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to the annual meeting of the prestigious NAS Space Studies Board, on which I serve with permission.  The reason given was that approval for faculty to attend conferences now apparently includes a DC component, and whoever does that in DC simply never got around to it.

Seeking to attend a conference is another tripwire working against faculty seeking to remain professionally active.  If a faculty member is requesting to attend a conference using Navy money, the conference must be deemed “mission essential” to the Department of the Navy. That rationale, while regrettable, is understandable. But whether that qualification applies to trips fully funded externally is unclear. If a request to travel is fully-funded by the inviting group, but is deemed to be a conference, it apparently still can be turned down – thereby requiring faculty to take annual leave if they want to attend. If travel is partially funded externally and the faculty member volunteers to personally pay for the rest they still have to take annual leave to attend – apparently even if the event has not been designated a conference.

And nobody seems able to declare definitively what constitutes a conference. Personally, for example, me speaking as part of a panel to several hundred people was not considered a conference, me speaking to a group of 40 students was considered a conference, and acting as a moot court judge in China was considered a conference as well. What are the guidelines? The legal officers within PME, at least at the Naval War College, are struggling mightily to make determinations on a case-by-case basis – and their efforts are greatly appreciated by faculty members. But would it be so difficult for those setting these requirements to provide clear guidelines that could be known and understood by all? The lead-time for making these decisions is currently 30 days, though rumor has it that will soon be changed to 60 days. These constantly changing, ambiguous rules will soon have a chilling effect on faculty performance, if they aren’t already.

Perhaps most insidious and potentially chilling is the rumor that consequent to a Navy Investigator General (IG) finding of wrongdoings at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) originating from a complaint about a university publication about the university, the Navy is considering instituting a policy of pre-publication review of faculty publications.  While the Navy, like any government agency, clearly has the right to review employee publications for security purposes, the processes, parameters, and unintended consequences for such a review process within an educational framework should be clearly considered before instituting such a system. I strongly suspect that has not yet happened.

Who would conduct these reviews? The Public Affairs Office at the respective commands? I suspect they have neither the time nor the substantive expertise. The Security Office? The Legal Officer? How would they be done in a timely manner? When there is talk of furloughing faculty, would new staff be hired to screen publications? What would be their qualifications? What would be included: books, article, OpEds, media interview material, public presentations…personal blogs?

I attended a space conference this month in Washington, DC.  A very high-ranking government official enthusiastically recommended James Clay Moltz’s book on space to the audience. Dr. Moltz is a faculty member at NPS. I’ve been told my Orbis will now be part of a required reading package for new faculty at a senior PME institution. NWC faculty member Milan Vego’s book on operational art is a standard within PME. Also from the Naval War College, faculty member Nick Gvosdev writes a weekly online column, “The Realist Prism,” and Thomas Mahnken has his online blog “Shadow Government.” Will similar publications be supported in the future? Will ongoing, online publications be subject to review?

What would the censors be looking for, security violations…or something broader, perhaps sensitive topics? Who will determine what is sensitive? Might this article be considered sensitive? And perhaps political correctness would be considered? That could all but negate the Academic Freedom required to make any great educational institution, or a great educator great.

The rumor mill is already in high gear. I have written about this potential pre-publication review process once already, based on communications from NPS faculty who had been present when it was raised in a meeting. I then received mail from another NPS faculty chastising me for raising such a rumor, saying unequivocally it had never happened. I have now heard a similar rumor about publication reviews at the Naval War College. OPNAV clarification would go a long way toward calming waters on this very sensitive issue in a very turbulent time.

Finally, I must also ask a question that I have asked repeatedly before. Are there designated individuals in OPNAV involved in discussion of these issues who actually have experience in what is required to be a professionally active academic?  To prepare materials for a 21^st century professional education? Or, are bureaucrats  or consultants who have no idea of either requirements or consequences making these seemingly arbitrary decisions?  Would a similar approach be taken if creating procedures that would affect the running of a ship?

Critics have sometimes characterized PME faculty (especially civilian academic faculty) as lazy and unproductive. There is unquestionably deadwood at all academic institutions – civilian or PME. Being deadwood, however, has nothing to do with their pedigree, but with what are they doing currently. Are they professionally active in their fields, and consequently, are they teachers who can challenge theirs students with current ideas and depth? Or are they simply bureaucrats with academic titles, phoning-in teaching and collecting paychecks? Politicos hiding out until the next change of administration in DC? Ambiguous and arbitrary rules with a chilling effect on professionalism will actually encourage deadwood, serve no purpose and quickly damage the already questioned credibility of PME.

Sometimes, those who consider or issue new policies and procedures are unaware of the tumultuous unintended consequences that result, because the individuals charged with executing the new policies and procedures are reluctant to point out problems. If those in charge realized what was going on though, they might be very anxious to fix things. Perhaps that is what is happening now, and so raise these issues for awareness, hopeful that those in charge will want to address them.

Dr. Joan Johnson-Freese is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Her publications include: Heavenly Ambitions: America’s Quest to Dominate Space; Space As A Strategic Asset, and over 80 journal articles. She is a member of the Space Studies Board of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the International Academy of Astronautics, and a member of the Editorial Board of China Security. She has testified before Congress on multiple occasions, and is regularly interviewed by the media, including CNN, CBS, ABC, The New York Times, Reuters and the BBC, on space issues. She also teaches courses on Globalization & US National Security, and Space & Security, at Harvard Summer and Extension Schools. The views expressed in this article are the authors’ alone and do not represent the official position of the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense or the U.S. government.

Change is in the air as we look at sequester, a new SecDef, France in North Africa, preparing for the last fighting season in Afghanistan, and what looks like a long decade of budget stress.

Is this a pivot-point of opportunity, or just a winter of our naval discontent?

No guests, no set agenda – open floor and open phones. No one but Sal from “CDR Salamander” and EagleOne from “EagleSpeak” for the full hour. If there is a topic you want discussed, call in or roll it in to the chat room.

Listen live (or pick it up later) here or even later from our iTunes page.

The murder of ET1 James Hopkins and retired BMC Richard Belisle on 12 April 2012 came as a huge blow to the Coast Guard family. With a service as small as ours- and getting smaller- it was easy to know someone who was connected one way or another to ET1 or BMC.

With the murders taking place on the isolated island of Kodiak it was thought that the case was going to be an easy one to solve. After all, where could one go when there’s nowhere to go?

The FBI immediately took on the investigation as the crime took place on federal property (the murders took place inside Coast Guard Communications Station Kodiak buildings). The fact that that FBI was on it also brought down the anxiety level of many as this case was right in line of the FBI’s work. That is, the solving of murder cases. However, with weeks turning into months and murmurs and rumors within the small island town starting to dwindle away it suddenly became a question of “if” and not “when” the FBI was going to charge someone.

After all was said and done though it looks as if the FBI has got their man. Though he’s been detained in connection with the murders of our Shipmates we won’t know why Wells was actually taken into custody until next week when the sealed affidavit is opened and discussed in court.

So until then we continue the waiting game… but now we don’t have to hold our breath.

Source

“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed after the enemy has finished exterminating your entire naval task force and running you to ground in a quarry where you are executed or sold off as spoils of war.”
-General Patton

During the siege of Syracuse, the Athenian expedition anchored its naval task force inside the protected Great Harbor of Syracuse. Maintaining such a large force in a single place and at anchor decreased the price of manning, and control. The single entrance of the harbor and its copious defenses against wind and wave simplified the maintenance and logistics. The convenience came at heavy cost. The great advantage of their number was lessened by a lack of mobility. Infrequent patrols allowed for the deployment of navigational hazards and blockade runners by the enemy. Superficially low-cost reaction lost to the proactivity of the Syracusan enemy. The harbor’s single entrance turned into a nightmare scenario as the massive fleet was locked into the harbor by a chain of ships strung across the entrance. The expedition of the mightiest naval power in the world died in a Sicilian quarry without a single ship remaining.

One stone? Don’t worry, we’re way past two birds.

America’s Great Harbor is not in a foreign land, but up Thimble Shoals channel and through the gap in the Hampton Roads beltway. Five carriers, the world’s most powerful collection of conventional naval power in one location, sit idle at harbor, one beside the other. The United States maintains a massive naval center of gravity within a single chokepoint that could be plugged at a moment’s notice before a crisis. The concentration not only lends itself to easy containment, but simplifies the problem for espionage and terrorism. The fiscal noose tightening around the navy’s neck is creating a prime target that goes against every lesson we’ve learned from Pearl Harbor to Yemen.

America’s Great Harbor is a vicarious manifestation of a more terrifying fleet-wide atrophy. Sequestration will force the navy into a fiscal Great Harbor. A sample of the Navy’s potential pain includes: 55% decrease in Middle Eastern operational flights, 100% cut in South American deployments, 100% cut in non-BMD Mediterranean deployments, 100% cut in training exercises, 100% cut in non-deployed operations unassociated with pre-deployment workups, and a slew of major cuts to general training. Not only does this seriously hamper the navy’s ability to conduct deterrence, detection, and presence, but it undermines an organization only just recovering from a previously ruined training regime. Despite a growing trend of worries about fleet maintenance, a half year of a/c maintenance and 23 ship availabilities will be cancelled. The snowballing impact on already suffering training and maintenance will further exacerbate that diminishing return on size and quality created by the fiscal Great Harbor. Nations like China and Iran continue to make great strides forward in countering a force that will recede in reach, proficiency, and awareness. The mighty US Navy is forced to sit at anchor while the forces arrayed against her build a wall across the harbor mouth.

What directionless security assistance program? All I see is dancing kids!

Military leadership has done a poor to terrible job advocating the true cost of defense cuts. A series of actions by brass has undermined their credibility and covered up the problem. The blinders-on advocation for teetering programs like LCS and the F-35 have undermined the trust that military leadership either needs or can handle money for project development. The navy personnel cuts were pushed hard for by leadership, and when the navy grossly overshot its target, the alarms were much quieter than the advocation; the ensuing problems were left unadvertised. In general, military-wide leadership uses public affairs not as a way to inform, but as a method to keep too positive a spin in a misguided attempt to keep the public faith. That public faith has removed vital necessary support in a time when the military is rife with problems that absolutely require funding. The PAO white-wash helps under-achieving programs and leadership get passed over by the critical eye. Where Athenian leaders were frank with their supporters at home, stubbornness and inappropriate positivity have undercut military leadership’s ability break loose from the fiscal harbor.

China’s sequestration mostly involves disposing of excess DF-21D’s into carrier-shaped holes in the desert.

Those who dismiss the hazard of sequestration are wrong in the extreme. When I was an NROTC midshipman, I remember a map on the wall of the supply building: a 1988 chart of all US Navy bases around the world. Today’s relative paucity of reach leads some to believe that surviving one scaling back shows inoculation against another. However, the law of diminishing returns has a dangerous inverse. Each progressive cut becomes ever more damaging. The United States Navy and sequestration apologists must realize what dangerous waters the US Navy is being forced to anchor in. The question is, how long can the navy safely stay in the Great Harbor before her enemies get the best of her?

LTJG Matthew Hipple is the Executive Officer of PC Crew INDIA. He graduated from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service and is the Director of the NEXTWAR blog at the Center for International Maritime Security, where his article can also be found. He is a also a member of the U.S. Naval Institute and a contributor to Proceedings.

However, the big offender on the list today (actually yesterday now…) is Navy Times. Yesterday on the site’s news pages I read two headlines stating “Ex-Navy SEAL” and “Ex-SEAL…” both are differing subjects (screen shot right). However, within the article they correct themselves to use the proper label of “former.” Yes, there is a difference.

Perhaps those at Navy Times know there is a difference and they’re only link-baiting… maybe not. Matters not if they are link-baiting to get your attention- they should at least give the individuals they’re discussing the respect of proper labels.

So what’s the difference? Well, if you ask a Marine they can tell you outright; however, for some reason it’s not as prevalent in the other services. The label “ex” (e.g. ex-Coastie) should lead one to believe that this person was once a Coastie but it no longer because they were discharged for wrongdoing or some other ill thing (actual title: Ex-Coastie commits wire-fraud). Whereas the label of “former” spells out that the individual was once a member of said service and left on good terms (good conduct discharge, retired. etc.). For example the Navy Times had a story of an “Ex-Coast Guard member” who wrote a book (I’m reading it with a review soon); however, this was NOT an “ex” Coastie but, in fact, a “former” member of this great service.

The soapbox was there, I stood up and said my piece, now I’ll get down.