The dark humor of serious things ...

First things first - this is in no way a swipe at Admiral Harvey over as CFFC and his blog. He is one of the good guys. He gets it - and is a solution guy with an open mind.

What this is though, is an opportunity to talk about images, master messages, STRATCOM, institutional blindness, and once again, poor staff support. Heck, I'm mad at myself for not getting this sooner.

This is a fairly audacious thing to do for a guy who fat-fingers posts all day - but I don't have a Staff looking after me. I am a Navy of one.

Check out the header on his blog. You have 5 seconds to figure out the problem.

It was the forward EHF antenna that gave it away.

Here you go. We have four ships. Left to right we have a PERRY Class FF(not-so-G), a BURKE Class DDG, a SPRUANCE CLASS DD, and a TICONDEROGA Class CG.

Our PERRY's are mostly gone geldings on their last legs - our last SPRUANCE was decommissioned in 2005.

I think we have a nice representation here about where we are with our Fleet. The disconnect between what is actually there, and what kind of face we put on it, is a chasm. It is somewhere between the Fleet we used to have, the one we wish we had, the one we actually have, and the Fleet we will one day have. The picture is of a balanced fleet. What we have is a Aegis and Corvette Battle Fleet - about as unbalanced as you can get.

I know ADM Harvey didn't pick this picture to headline his blog, but someone did. Someone on his staff made the conscience decision to. That is poor staff work. Fleet Forces Command is not the Navy History and Heritage Command.

Ponder ..... and will someone at CFFC please pass on to ADM Harvey that you have fixed the picture issue before this post is emailed to him. He deserves that.

Just don't replace it with a LCS picture or I will have to let Sid and Byron do a guest post on it.

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UPDATE: ...and now you know the rest of the story.

Hey, I look like a putz. From CFFC Actual in comments here,

CDR S, I commanded DD 971, CG 71 and was in the commissioning crew of FFG 8. This was a picture that represented the ships that meant (and still mean) a great deal to me.

In that case; great pic! Boy, I come out looking like a jerk; sorry about that Admiral.

Now excuse me while I go clean up.