9/21/20
During the past year, I worked in the E-Ring of the Pentagon as the Navy’s chief learning officer, reporting directly to the Secretary of the Navy. I was disturbed, however, by many signs that under the Trump Administration, the Navy has drifted badly off course. Over the last four years, the Navy’s civilian leaders have failed to define a compelling vision for the Navy’s future, reform a badly broken ship design and acquisition system, or build a diverse, high-performing leadership team. These failures – caused, in part, by rapid turnover in leadership, with five different Secretaries or acting Secretaries of the Navy serving on average for only nine months — have damaged Navy effectiveness, undercut morale, and jeopardized national security. The primary naval responsibility of every administration is to define the navy the United States will need in coming decades to protect national security. This strategic vision is developed and shared publicly through a process called “future force assessment.” The current administration has utterly failed to meet this responsibility. Defense Secretary Mark Esper stripped the Navy of its responsibility to design our future navy and assigned the task to his staff, an unprecedented development reflecting total lack of faith in the service’s leaders and its strategic planning capability. As a result, the Navy – our nation’s experts on naval combat and strategy – has lost the power to define its own future.
The Navy’s ship acquisition program is also struggling. If we want to maintain the world’s strongest navy in the face of aggressive Chinese construction plans, we need to acquire powerful, cost-effective manned and unmanned ships in significant quantities. The last three major surface warship programs, however, have been disasters. (USS Ford aircraft carrier, the hyper-expensive Zumwalt class destroyer program, and the Littoral Combat Ships, dubbed the “Little Crappy Ships”). Finally, the administration has failed to develop a diverse, high-performing leadership team. To fix these problems, the Navy needs to implement a series of fundamental reforms. The Department of the Navy needs to create a joint Navy-Marine Corps think-tank inside the department staffed by leading naval thinkers from universities, think tanks, and the uniformed services. And we need a revolutionary commitment to diversity and inclusion, starting at the top, that changes the way we recruit, assign, promote and mentor officers and civilian executives of color. Our sailors and Marines – and our country — deserve better. Fixing these problems is not impossible, but it will take a real commitment to change.
