HASC Has Some Ideas ...

Last week the House Armed Services Committee Subcommittee for Readiness released its proposals for the Fiscal Year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

To keep this focused, let's just look at DON related items;

The Readiness Subcommittee's proposal: 

...

Directing the Navy to provide a clear chain of command for operations, for building readiness, and for shipyard maintenance;

Requiring the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV) Inspections be conducted on a no-notice basis make details of those inspections unclassified and available to the public;

Requiring the Secretary of the Navy to provide a report on ways to optimize surface Navy vessel inspection and crew certifications to reduce redundancies and the burden on inspection visits that ships undergo;

Limiting the amount of time a Navy vessel is forward deployed overseas to no more than 10 years;

Ensuring the Navy retains sufficient ship repair capability and capacity in the Western Pacific by prohibiting the redevelopment of the Former Ship Repair Facility on Guam.

Ensure infrastructure supports military readiness by:

Recommending the Full Committee increase funds for facility sustainment above the fiscal year 2019 request;

This is, by and large, a Salamander endorsed list.

Two items:

1. The return to unclassifed INSURV. It was a huge strategic error to classify INSURV last decade. From day-1, I have been adamant that it had nothing to do with keeping classified information from anyone - it had everything to do with providing cover as we starved our fleet of the readiness support it required. You can, and I will, draw a direct line from that decision and the attitude it encouraged to what happened in WESTPAC in 2017. Keeping INSURV out of the taxpayer's eyes only prevents accountability. It shields the Flag Officers from the results of their inability to make the case to our civilian leaders to give our Navy what it needs to sustain readiness. It is way too easy to just fire CDR/CAPT without having to answer questions why they were never properly resourced to begin with.  BZ for this proposal.

2. No more lost bases. This acknowledges that once we lose a facility, we aren't getting it back. It isn't just Guam. Load a logistics professional up with a few beers and then ask them what BRAC threw away on the West Coast that we will never get back. Stand the line in Guam. Stand the line in CONUS.

Especially on our coasts, we are no longer a thinly populated nation with plenty of room to grow if needed. If you cave to developers and the myopic, you will have huge problems when the next global war comes.

Yes, its coming; we just don't know when.