Proactively “From the Sea”; an agent of change leveraging the littoral best practices for a paradigm breaking six-sigma best business case to synergize a consistent design in the global commons, rightsizing the core values supporting our mission statement via the 5-vector model through cultural diversity.
(NB: at no time is the term "staff weenie" is any way referring to anyone in any way related to DoD IG, nor are any pictures in any way to be construed to be related to the DoD IG or any IG anywhere at any time. This is just for any staff anywhere. Any unsolicited and unworthy advice to the DoD IG is only meant in the most respectful and deferential way.)Ahem. Has any staff weenie EVER wanted a smaller staff (except CENTCOM)? Even though he has time, people, and money to invest in a 18 year old he said/she said, the DoD IG says, shocking - that he needs MORE staff.
In seeking an additional $25 million above the Bush administration request for next year's budget, the Kicklighter report said the funds are "directly linked to requests by Congress to increase both audit and investigative efforts regarding Southwest Asia and the Global War on Terror."
Just what an already top-heavy/tail-heavy military needs - more staff. The answer to his problems is privatization. Look around the Pentagon. How many gender and diversity advisers are really needed? How much duplication exists? Are we just lazy, inefficient - too cowardly - to make cuts - or a little of both?
Yes, you have a need - but so do the warfighter. Staff bloat helps no one. Streamlined and prioritized Staff Weenies - yes. More make work money sponges - no. Holding commanders accountable - yes. Empire building the Commissariat - no. I'll tell you what, if you have the time and resources to look after a 18 year past he said/she said issue that have no victims or evidence, then your budget is just fine. If not, do like the rest of us, go to your boss and get some billets recoded or shifted from some lesser deserving UIC. If your case is strong enough - you will be just fine.
If not, I have two words for you; Optimal Manning. Call your staff, "Hybrid Weenies." That works for our manning problems - oh, I'm sorry - challenges.
House Resolution 5658 (NDAA 09). For the whole thing, click here and type the "SENIOR MILITARY LEADERSHIP DIVERSITY COMMISSION" into the search block...
Here are the juicy bits:
SEC. 595. SENIOR MILITARY LEADERSHIP DIVERSITY COMMISSION .
(a) Establishment of Commission -
(1) IN GENERAL- There is hereby established a commission to be known as the `Senior Military Leadership Diversity Commission'.
(b) Composition-
(1) MEMBERSHIP- The commission shall be composed of 23 members, as follows:
(G) 4 individuals with expertise in cultivating diverse leaders in private or non-profit organizations shall be appointed by the Secretary of Defense.
(2) CHAIRMAN- The Secretary of Defense shall designate one member described in paragraphs (1)(F) or (1)(G) as chairman of the commission .
(3) PERIOD OF APPOINTMENT; VACANCIES- Members shall be appointed for the life of the commission. Any vacancy in the commission shall be filled in the same manner as the original appointment.
... (d) Duties-
(1) STUDY- The commission shall study the diversity within the senior leadership of the Armed Forces. The study shall be a comprehensive evaluation and assessment of policies that provide opportunities for the advancement of minority members of the Armed Forces.
(2) SCOPE OF STUDY- In carrying out the study, the commission shall examine the following:
(A) Efforts to develop and maintain diverse leadership at all levels of the Armed Forces.
(B) The successes and failures of developing and maintaining a diverse leadership , particularly at the general and flag officer positions.
(C) The effect of expanding Department of Defense secondary educational programs to diverse civilian populations, to include service academy preparatory schools.
(D) The ability of current recruitment and retention practices to attract and maintain a diverse pool of qualified individuals in sufficient numbers in officer pre-commissioning programs.
(E) The ability of current activities to increase continuation rates for ethnic and gender specific members of the Armed Forces.
(F) The benefits of conducting an annual conference attended by civilian military , active-duty and retired military , and corporate leaders on diversity , to include a review of current policy and the annual demographic data from the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute.
(G) The status of prior recommendations made to the Department of Defense and to Congress concerning diversity initiatives within the Armed Forces.
(H) The incorporation of private sector practices that have been successful in cultivating diverse leadership .
(I) The establishment and maintenance of fair promotion and command opportunities for ethnic and gender specific members of the Armed Forces at the O-5 grade level and above.
(J) An assessment of pre-command billet assignments of ethnic-specific members of the Armed Forces.
(K) An assessment of command selection of ethnic-specific members of the Armed Forces.
(3) CONSULTATION WITH PRIVATE PARTIES- In carrying out the study under this subsection, the commission may consult with appropriate private, for profit, and non-profit organizations and advocacy groups to learn methods for developing, implementing, and sustaining senior diverse leadership within the Department of Defense.
(e) Reports-
(1) IN GENERAL- Not later than 12 months after the date on which the commission first meets, the commission shall submit to the President and Congress a report on the study. The report shall include the following:
(A) the findings and conclusions of the commission ;
(B) the recommendations of the commission for improving diversity within the Department of Defense; ...
That can only be done with quotas - well beyond the "soft quotas" that exist right now.
Even more people will falsely label their ethnicity. Mixed race people will be forced to classify themselves - or others will classify them to meet the needs of the Service. Rich, poor, smart, dumb - won't matter. Performance won't make a difference. It will all be how the Eugenics Commissariat puts you down.
This will increase racial tension. This will move us backwards. This will sprout conflict. This in un-American.
If orders come out of this, I know a few lawyers who can classify it as an unlawful order. Maybe that is the point I take one of the options mentioned by CJCS last week WRT politics - as this is simply identity politics and racism pure and simple.
That is what you get with Democrats in power. Consider yourself on notice.
You need to be a subscriber to read it, but Christopher P. Cavas either owes me a hat tip or at least a beer. Hey, at least throw in a plug - or we should at least go bowling - because in his 02 JUN 08 NavalEnquirer article "The Navy Adrift" he hits on the bold faced items we discuss here on a regular basis. Just a taste;
When Navy officials tell Congress they have confidence in their shipbuilding cost projections, lawmakers don’t believe them.
When flag officers say they’ve got enough money for maintenance, fleet sailors wonder why high-tech warships aren’t combat ready.
When top admirals say they have a new maritime strategy, analysts struggle to match it with the shipbuilding plan.
When business strategies override operational needs, officers wonder whether they are war fighters or executives.
Navy leaders are suffering from a credibility gap — with Congress, with industry and, increasingly, with the fleet.
In discussions with dozens of naval professionals over several months, few questioned the Navy’s commitment to fielding an effective fighting force. But on a wide range of issues, the ability of Navy leaders to manage programs and explain service direction is being questioned, doubted and, in some cases, challenged outright.
“They need to take a hard look at themselves,” one former senior officer said.
An element of denial is apparent in many service calculations, which typically are based on perfect-world scenarios to make everything come out right.
“They’re constantly using optimistic cost and schedule assumptions,” said Bob Work, a retired Marine Corps artillery colonel who is a top naval analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. “This continual optimism, the continually rosy assumptions, the effort to go too fast” have so eroded the service’s credibility in Congress, Work said, that House lawmakers have difficulty even listening to the Navy.
One congressional source said he can’t, at times, rule out deliberate deception.
“It’s more a feeling rather than specific things,” the source said. “An accumulation of a lot of little things which in and of themselves are perfectly explainable, but when you add them up, it doesn’t work.”
Yep. He got shipbuilding right as well.
The 313-ship, 30-year fleet plan — which is revised each year — emerged in February 2006, designed to quiet critics who decried the practice of Clark and previous Navy Secretary Gordon England of advocating not a specific number, but a range.
The Navy admitted the plan wasn’t perfect. Among other problems, in order to make the number of surface combat ships add up, the service had to extend the ships’ planned lifespans. Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, for example, are now slated to sail for 40 years rather than 35. Real-life experience, however, indicates that could be costlier and more difficult than this rosy projection allows. The 14-year-old Stout is considered by maintenance officers to be an old ship, yet it is barely one-third of the way through its 40-year career. The Chosin is 17 years old and needs to remain operational for 18 more years.
“The maintenance strategy is absolutely critical to being able to execute the 313-ship, 30-year fleet plan,” the congressional source said.
The service has little if any credibility in Congress when predicting the budget necessary to buy its future fleet. The Navy did not help its case by insisting for two years that the shipbuilding plan would cost an average of $15 billion a year, despite critics who said the real price would be at least $20 billion. This year, the service quietly revised its estimate to $20 billion per year.
“But they never discussed that in testimony, they never offered any explanation,” the congressional source declared. “That isn’t incompetence, that isn’t a mistake. That’s sort of a willful and deliberate omission. It’s not lying, but it’s leaving out an evident truth.”
The Maritime Strategy? Yep.
Ironically, the Navy completed work on its new Maritime Strategy some two years after it settled on the fleet size, reversing the logical order in which a strategy would dictate the tools needed to carry it out.
There were high hopes for the strategy when planning began in April 2006, but for the next 16 months, discussion was limited by a rigid adherence to how the strategy was being developed rather than the issues at hand, squelching open exchanges.
Finally unveiled last October, the completed strategy incorporated Mullen’s oft-stated visions of a 1,000-ship international cooperative effort, humanitarian missions and stationing of more U.S. ships in foreign lands. But it added little to the debate over the Navy’s roles and was criticized for avoiding discussion of what kind of fleet the Navy needs.
“It is not compelling, not tied to a force structure,” said a second retired senior officer, now in industry. “So what?”
Results of that "Outward Bound 2-week mini-MBA for compensating Admirals" FOD? Yep.
The continued emphasis on applying business practices to fleet problems disturbs many naval professionals.
“We’re not a business organization. We’re war fighters,” the first former senior officer said. “We’re not here to waste money, but we’re not here to make a profit.”
Clark epitomized the MBA-admiral, the former officer said, with discussions of human capital management and other business-speak.
“All the flag officers have these titles that mirror a corporate board structure. I just want to throw up,” the former senior officer said. “Where’s the warrior culture? We’re not a board of directors, it’s the Navy. It should be about standards and accomplishing the mission.”
Nice summary of where we are - BZ CPC; BZ. Galrahn and I don't feel so alone now.
If you don't subscribe, send me and email and I will throw a copy your way - or steal the whole thing from a Shipmate.
This post should be shorter than the title suggests. Maybe.
Rep. Taylor (D-MS) and some of the other nuclear power lovers have been running fairly strong over the last year, encouraged by the oil bump, to push the concept of nuclear power for more than SSN and CVN.
We have the ABM CBGN idea, OK. CGN Cruisers and CBGN Battle Cruisers nuking their time away in deep water with their CVN Carrier buddies and SSN/SSGN/SSBN sub-buddies - sure. But; are we sure we want something we call a Destroyer nuking it way around the firing line - giving and taking fire with the enemy like any honest ship should be ready to? Really? Inside the useful NSFS range of the 5" pea-shooter we "arm" our major surface combatants with? Really?
One thing people don't really talk about much should be talked about. Remember the major reason we found the TITANIC? Yep, needed to check out the SCORPION and THRESHER nuke plants to see how they are doing after a few years.
I don't know about you, but I always get a bit twitchy about having CVN/SSN too shallow and close to shore in confined bodies of water like the Persian/Arabian Gulf and such. Nosomuch because of their ability to get that long boat around. No, those pros do that just fine - as a matter of fact some of the place they go would make a eel proud. No, what I think about is what we do know. We know what a heavy-weight torpedo can do. We know what a moored mine can do, old-school ASW weapons and others can do co cause major damage. We also know it is a lot easier to kill a surface ship, especially a smallish one, than it is to kill a SSN. We have post-WWII gotten quite spoiled - the enemy rarely shoots back at the USN.
Ships get sunk. Ships get broken in half. Picture a nuclear powered surface ship that, in some combat related event (that still happens at sea you know) in a confined shallow water or environmentally sensitive area results in the its reactor cracking open or creating a significant nuclear spill - not to mention one bubb'l away in 10 fathoms. Is is one thing thousands of feet down in the middle of the ocean, it is quite another to be stuck in the middle of someone's fishing ground.
Some nations, like New Zealand, already have an issues with ships that may or may not have nuclear weapons getting near their territorial waters. Imagine a DDGN split in two and spilling nutreons 12nm off of Dubai? You think having to drop anchor off a port is bad just because you ship has an "N" in its name - you ain't seen nut'n yet. Would anyone fault closing the entire Gulf to any nuclear powered ship of any nation? Like the politics of that? Like the other potential issues with that?
We have been very good and very lucky with out nuclear powered ships - but no one can tell me that any of our thin skinned ships and their nuclear plants could take a SS-N-22 or her more modern sisters hit intact. Seriously. Even if it did - imagine the problems we would have getting our ships where we want if one of our reactors was responsible for nuclear contamination - anywhere near shore or off.
It is a risk that has always been there - an acceptable risk - and one we have had good success with. Would we put a DDGN in the same danger as we put the USS PRINCETON or USS TRIPOLI? If they were nuclear, would that have impacted our risk assessment? How does that impact the ability of you to put your ships in harm's way - after one reactor was throwing neutrons around in 16 meters of water - the depth the PRINCETON was hit.
Forget the potential financial impact of DDGN's cost on our already stressed shipbuilding budget - think about the things no one wants to talk about. That isn't just Tactical or Operational Risk - that is Strategic Risk if you happen to be a navy that has put a "N" on its major Tiffany Navy ships that no one would let, even in peace, get near their shore.
Ponder. I could be all wet here, but ponder. Less likely things happen on a regular basis in this line of work. War changes all equations. Ponder.
In case you didn't catch it, the WaPo just declared victory in Iraq; kind-of.
THERE'S BEEN a relative lull in news coverage and debate about Iraq in recent weeks -- which is odd, because May could turn out to have been one of the most important months of the war. While Washington's attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have "never been closer to defeat than they are now."
Iraq passed a turning point last fall when the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign launched in early 2007 produced a dramatic drop in violence and quelled the incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites. Now, another tipping point may be near, one that sees the Iraqi government and army restoring order in almost all of the country, dispersing both rival militias and the Iranian-trained "special groups" that have used them as cover to wage war against Americans. It is -- of course -- too early to celebrate; though now in disarray, the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr could still regroup, and Iran will almost certainly seek to stir up new violence before the U.S. and Iraqi elections this fall. Still, the rapidly improving conditions should allow U.S. commanders to make some welcome adjustments -- and it ought to mandate an already-overdue rethinking by the "this-war-is-lost" caucus in Washington, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill).
The are giving some free, and good, advice to Sen. Obama (D-IL).
If the positive trends continue, proponents of withdrawing most U.S. troops, such as Mr. Obama, might be able to responsibly carry out further pullouts next year. Still, the likely Democratic nominee needs a plan for Iraq based on sustaining an improving situation, rather than abandoning a failed enterprise. That will mean tying withdrawals to the evolution of the Iraqi army and government, rather than an arbitrary timetable; Iraq's 2009 elections will be crucial. It also should mean providing enough troops and air power to continue backing up Iraqi army operations such as those in Basra and Sadr City. When Mr. Obama floated his strategy for Iraq last year, the United States appeared doomed to defeat. Now he needs a plan for success.
He won't say that he was wrong and Sen. McCain (R-IL) was right - and you won't hear "win" or "victory" until he can somehow claim credit for it.
What victory - and why should we want it? Maj. John can tell you. Mostly for this. Especially the girl on the boat - but the art students too. And yes, I did notice that they look just like the people down the street. That is the point.
On an unrelated note: speaking of MSM top cover; do you notice what I noticed about this CNN graph. Teh math be hard.
(NB: at no time is the term "staff weenie" is any way referring to anyone in any way related to DoD IG, nor are any pictures in any way to be construed to be related to the DoD IG or any IG anywhere at any time. This is just for any staff anywhere. Any unsolicited and unworthy advice to the DoD IG is only meant in the most respectful and deferential way.)
