Sad thing is - this is the world we created.
BEHOLD! A DISCUSSION OF THE BUREAU OF NAVAL BUREAUS
Here is the good news. To untie a knot, you have to understand the knot. You cannot fight the knot at the beginning - you cannot lose your cool. You have to work it, ease it, know how one part affects the other.By June 30, commanders are instructed to revise Fleet Forces missions, functions and tasks (MFTs) to eliminate the term "type command" and revise or draft Warfare Center of Excellence MFTs to create de-conflicted administrative control and command relationships.
The admiral also requires revisions to the Fleet Forces' processes for supporting Navy areas of responsibility to show that Warfare Enterprise leads and the Fleet Readiness Enterprise have no administrative control responsibilities or authorities, ensure that support of Echelon 1 requirements follow proper administrative control guidelines and establish Fleet Forces' deputy chief of staff for resources and integration as the sole flag officer responsible to the commander for coordination of Navy Component Commander requirements.
Fleet Forces' deputy chief of staff for global force management and joint operations is required to change doctrine and identify investments that will optimize relationships between Mission Operations Centers and with MOCs and Service Operations Centers to improve the flow of information to combatant commanders by Nov. 26.
Harvey's memo stresses the importance of feedback in establishing effective control by allowing commanders to monitor events, adapt to changing circumstances and change direction if necessary. In order to establish a feedback loop in Fleet Forces Command, Harvey's memo requires Fleet Forces N4/7 directorate to coordinate with Type Command and the 2nd Fleet to brief the admiral monthly on unit readiness, including material health and operational health. The briefs were scheduled to begin in March.
The document postulates that such steps are necessary for setting up an environment that allows effective command and control in response to confusion over hierarchy and unified command that have arisen in past years.
The quote sounds the way it does because of what it is, an honest attempt to fix a problem. To untangle a fonctionair's creation - you must think and speak like a fonctionair. This is good. Via Inside Defense, here is the background.
The head of Fleet Forces Command is instructing subordinates to move back to basic principles of command and control, including an unambiguous hierarchy and lines of authority and accountability, in an effort to straighten out confusion the admiral says has arisen since the Navy's standup of initiatives like Sea Power 21, which aimed to unify domains into a single entity.Another BZ to ADM Harvey.
Adm. John Harvey says that the decentralized nature of naval operations has led the service to push decisions to the lowest level possible, but argues that dispersed command does not leave behind the foundational principles of command and control.
"I strongly believe in our decentralized command and control system not only because it is fundamentally sound and has withstood the test of time, but also because it has allowed the Navy to develop independent thinkers willing to act to the limits of their authority to accomplish their assigned mission to the benefit of the Navy and the nation," Harvey writes in the Feb. 10 serial message posted on the command's website.
I am not sure what he is trying to do-the TYCOMS would be just fine if they did not have to deal with all of the other ankle biters that Uncle Vern created ( Specfically CNIC and NETWARCOM). The Navy needs TYCOMS because the fleet commanders do not have the staff or the focus to worry about the details of getting parts and people flowed overseas efficiently.
ReplyDeleteThe real problem began when the TYCOMS lost control over all the toys and-they were somehow estranged from the customers they support throught the various re-orgs of the last decade. NAVAIRLANT and NAVAIRPAC always listened to the fleet commanders. At least they used to. The lead follow thing has been a disaster though-and it got worse when shore station manangement was taken away from the TYCOMS.
Plus FFC used to get "health of the force briefs". So what changed.
ReplyDeletehmm... smells like a new flag....I never bought into the notion of "Center's of Excellence".. buzzwords that really mean ISIC... call em what they are...
ReplyDeleteHard to get my head around this. I know the system needs to be fixed, but there's a lot of buzz words and ethernet ideas in those paragraphs.
ReplyDeleteWas any of this written in English? What argle-bargle is this?
ReplyDeleteSal,
ReplyDeleteI have enormous respect for the man but I would be ready to debate interpretations. I'm argumentative by nature though.
You know very well who those purely admin people are right? In their Centers of Excellence and Type Commands and Enterprises. Each and every one of them holds the pump handle to the $ and since the command relationships for the $ was broken off years ago, it now has a very broad reach. Call it what you like. Every single OPCON out there will happily pay today for what's needed today and not spend a penny on keeping alive the things one needs downstream. I'm fine with ONR but the SYSCOMS need to go. The TYCOMS need to go. The labs need to go. CFFC is not going to get control again until it regains sole command of the $ flow to the fleet.
I had so much fun with them.
The admiral needs to move on to Phase II as quickly as possible and disestablish all those things. They have zero benefit from any of them.
Nobody in their sane mind even argues with them. I'm living proof that one can piss off OPCON thoroughly and move onward and upward. When the $ stop......it's different.