Ukrainian Lessons as Old as Time: Logistics-Auxiliaries-Prizes

We opened Midrats last Sunday with a question to our guest Jimmy Drennan about what lessons he's taken so from from a maritime perspective during the Russo-Ukrainian War. This is a question I would like all of our navalists to think hard about. One constant we see throughout history is that small to medium wars will signal to you what you need to be ready for when the big war comes - and come it will. They always do.

Well, yesterday another Midrats alumnus, Dr. James Kraska has a tightly written overview of some takeaways for him, and as always with Kraska's work ... his observations deserve close consideration.

The setback for Russia was apparently tied to the oldest of military challenges—force sustainment during combat. The capture of Snake Island may help Ukraine to position anti-ship cruise missiles south of Odessa to weaken the Russian stranglehold on the port city.

The Attack

The resupply ship that never reached Russian forces on the island is believed to be the Russian naval tugboat Spasatel Vasily Bekh. The ship had a loaded displacement of 1670 tons. Part of the Black Sea Fleet, the Vasily Bekh was launched in 2016 and commissioned in 2017. The tugboat is designed to provide towing services for ships in distress, firefighting at sea and ashore, freshwater and electrical supply to other vessels, and to evacuate injured personnel. It carried a complement of 20 crewmembers with capacity for 36 more people and could carry tons of supplies.

Coming after the sinking of the Black Sea flagship Moskva on April 14, the strike on the Vasily Bekh underscores the Russian Navy’s inability to establish sea control in the western area of the Black Sea. The Moskva was the largest Russian warship damaged by enemy fire since 1941, when the Luftwaffe damaged a Soviet battleship in Kronshtadt. The Russian withdrawal from Snake Island also demonstrates the importance of combat logistics. While Russia maintains internal lines of communication that can feed the Russian war machine inside Ukraine, the Russian element that occupied Snake Island had to be supplied from the sea, raising questions about the rules for targeting ships supporting the armed forces in war.

If you want to know the sobering reality of war at sea - especially how we have done it in our entitled mindset of decades of dominance at sea, read close his legal outline of  "Targeting Combat Logistics" next.

I don't know about you, but it immediately makes me want to ask some very hard questions to people who I don't think are ready for them.

Then I want you to play that out for the USA vs. China west of Wake. Heck, make it globe-wide.

Later in his article, a few conversations I've had with Claude Berube and my co-host from Midrats came to mind - about Letters of Marque. 

Where does Ukraine's government stand on Letters of Marque ... because as this war drags on ... there are some interesting options for them ... and depending on how that plays out, for any - ahem - nation that may find itself at war at some time in the future with the People's Republic of China;

Russia’s plans to leverage greater support from merchant ships also implicates the law of naval warfare. Russian-flagged merchant ships are liable to capture by Ukrainian naval forces, and they may be converted to use after adjudication of prize in a court of admiralty jurisdiction.

The Russian merchant fleet has 1,155 ships and 7.7 million deadweight tons and could serve as an effective force multiplier for the Russian military services. China’s merchant fleet is among the top ten largest in the world, with 87 million deadweight tons and 4,881 ships. Decimated by uncompetitive costs of operation resulting from the Jones Act, the U.S. fleet is shockingly small and shrinking. The number of U.S. oceangoing commercial ships in the U.S. merchant fleet fell from 282 vessels to 182 ships since 2000. This means that while Russia and China can supplement their auxiliary naval forces with national-flagged merchant ships, the United States would find that option more challenging.

This situation is ironic because unlike Russia and China, which enjoy internal lines of communication, U.S. requirements for force replenishment depend on a massive logistical flow to Asia and Europe. American forces operate forward, along the first island chain running from Japan to the Philippines, and on NATO’s eastern border in Europe. Sustainment of these forces likely would require merchant shipping. Like Russia, the United States may also resort to contracts with merchant carriers to provide force sustainment. These merchant ships would also be liable to capture by the enemy during armed conflict, and they may be attacked and destroyed if they resist capture.

Yes, there are a lot of maritime lessons in this mostly land-centric war. The longer this goes - if you are willing to open your mind a bit - the more interesting the implications that may evolve for the US national strategy - or at least in the classified annexes.

Check Your Magazine Inventory Recently? missile>bomb>shell>bullet>blade>club>fist>teeth

Some warning will only be given so many times.

We were warned a few months in to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

We were warned again five years later when we were trying to source what was needed to support the uplift in forces in Afghanistan while Iraq still had high demands. 

Our allies pretty much went Winchester in the 2011 operations against Libya.

We can barely partially source small and medium sized conflicts ... we are not ready for a larger one.

That is a simple fact that seems too painful for people to clearly look at. 

Like the US Navy excels in damage control by design and training, in theory the US military writ large excels in logistics.

What good is the culture and practice if you lack the inventory to move, the production to create ... and even if you did, the strategic sealift and airlift to bring the weapons to the fight?

In peace and in bushwars you can get by with shortages as you can always scrounge around to fill gaps (I have fun stories from AFG, but maybe later), but in a great conflict - there is no untapped resource. You either have it or you don't.

At peace, "experts" will sell you comfortable theories about "short, decisive wars" and "72-hr war-winning CONOPS" that never pan out once the first ITL button is pressed. 

Over at FT, John Paul Rathbone and Steff Chavaz join the chorus trying to wake everyone up;

In May, when Washington ordered 1,300 Stinger anti-air missiles to replace those sent to Ukraine, the chief executive of Raytheon, the defence company that makes them, replied: “It’s going to take us a little bit of time.”

Paris, meanwhile, has sent 18 Caesar howitzers to Kyiv — a quarter of its total stock of the high-tech artillery — but it will take French company Nexter around 18 months to make new ones.

The Ukraine war has exposed the skimpiness of western defence stockpiles — especially of unglamorous but crucial supplies such as artillery shells that have been the mainstay of fighting. Lack of production capacity, labour shortages and supply chain snafus — especially computer chips — mean long lead times to replenish them.

The shortages, defence officials and analysts say, reveal the west’s complacency about potential threats since the end of the cold war, now shown up by the desire to shore up Ukraine with military support. Fetishes for high-tech weaponry and lean manufacturing have obscured the importance of maintaining stockpiles of basic kit, they add.

...

“It’s like the first world war’s great shell crisis,” said Shea, recalling a 1915 scandal when massive artillery use in trench warfare depleted British stocks, a shortage that led to high troop casualties and the resignation of prime minister HH Asquith.

Ponder this as well. The maritime domain has not been as tested as the land component the last few decades. As such, we can assume that our magazine inventory is even more "exquisitely" designed. 

In closed door sessions, I hope that Congress is demanding answers and hard numbers in this area ... and then will fund to fix them.

What to do With America's Maritime Disinterest, with Jimmy Drennan - on Midrats

Few navalists can look around them and feel content that their peers, government, and the American people understand - or for that matter seem to care - that our nation's wealth, health, and security is all based on the fact that we are a maritime and aerospace republic. 

Without excellence, mastery, and control of these two areas in the face of the challenge from China, all else is in danger. Inside and outside government, what needs to be done to create the conditions so we can provide for those generations who follow us the place and the world previous generations earned for us? 

Making a return to visit, our guest for the full hour this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern to discuss this broad ranging topic will be Lieutenant Commander Jimmy Drennan, U.S. Navy, former president of the Center for International Maritime Security.

Join us live if you can, but it not, you can get the show later by subscribing to the podcast. If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here. You can find us on almost all your most popular podcast aggregators as well.

Fullbore Friday

 It is a beautiful place today when you drive by it, but then you notice a curious red dragon facing a wood.

The Welsh soldiers were just seven months out of training when they entered into combat at Mametz Wood. Many had never fired a round in combat, and used broomsticks rather than rifles at drill practice.

In sharp contrast they faced the elite Lehr Regiment of Prussian Guards - highly-trained professional soldiers who were deeply entrenched in the dense woods.

Their trenches were dug into chalk and thick wire stretched through the battleground, while the wood was heavily fortified with machine guns.

As part of the Battle of the Somme was the Battle of Mametz Wood;

Mametz Wood was the objective of the 38th (Welsh) Division during the First Battle of the Somme. The attack was made in a northerly direction over a ridge, focussing on the German positions in the wood, between 7 July and 12 July 1916 . On 7 July the men formed the first wave, intended to take the wood in a matter of hours.

The British system was exceptionally hard on the homefront. Like the regiment my ancestors fought in during the American Civil War, the guy to the left and right of you was your neighbor, your brother, your cousin, your co-worker, your classmate, your friend.

Lord Thomas of Gresford recently highlighted the role of the Division in the House of Lords, describing the loss of men in the battle as a "huge tragedy for the whole of Wales".

He said 1,000 men from the Rhondda Regiment went in to battle that day, but only 135 men answered the roll call the following day. ... 3,993 killed or injured there.

In the first day, over 400 men were killed just trying to get from that red dragon to the treeline.

The poet Robert Graves fought in the battle and, having gone back into the wood once the battle was finally over, wrote:

"It was full of dead Prussian Guards, big men, and dead Royal Welch Fusiliers and South Wales Borderers, little men. Not a single tree in the wood remained unbroken."

Take some time to follow the links above and read up on this little snapshot of the sacrifice from WWI years before the USA threw its hat in the ring - especially this one about what a walk in the woods is like today.

First posted July 2016.

Pluperfect's Programmatic Imperfection on the Future Perfect's Presentism

Today let's look not at tactical, operational, or even strategic challenges. No, let's instead look at the political, bureaucratic, and industrial structures that exist to enable everything else.

There is a lot of money floating around the USA's defense budget and yet in the post-Cold War period no one feels we are making progress. On the naval surface side of the house, the promised future seems to underperform (LCS), be stillborn (DDG-1000), never arrive (CG(X)), or become limping testimony of institutional arrogance (FORD).

On the land side, any attempt to move beyond Cold War era platforms fail to transition past prototype from self-propelled howitzers to amphibious assault craft. 

In the air, we cancelled F-22, overestimated F-35, and are to the point we are restarting the F-15 line in an echo of Navy's restarting DDG-51 last decade.

Why?

We did this to ourselves. In 1986 Goldwater-Nichols was signed along with the cult-of-the-Joint that followed and the now accretion-hobbled post-Cold War acquisition system that is more interested in process - and itself - than actually producing things that displace water, make shadows, and can engage an enemy.

Our natsec nomenklatura on balance is motivated by something - incentivized by something - but providing usable kit serving to support national security needs of our nation is not it.

Desert Storm in 1991 was won by the pre-Goldwater-Nichols military. Since then, we were defeated by a pre-modern culture in Afghanistan, Iraq is still a wreck in progress, and our enemies seem comfortable in calling our bluffs - some successfully, some not.

We are not hopeless or completely unable - mass has use and we are in most areas still the big kid - but we are underperforming and allowing our comparative advantage to fade year after year in to parity - when we should be moving from strength to strength.

It doesn't have to be like this - but we seem happy to allow it to be.

The same institutions and mindsets that failed to see the obvious collapse in Kabul not even a year ago, failed to see Russia's advance in to Ukraine this winter. No one is accountable. Everyone thinks they did a good job.

...and yet, the national security apparatus at the dawn of the second half of 2022 wants you to believe that this time, in the face of China's rise, they will get it right.

They use "pacing" to describe a threat that is gaining, passing, or lapping our own. They come up with their buzzwords and promises each POM cycle as if they have always gotten things right before - and as they had in the 30+-yrs they have owned our system - that they have all the time in the world to get their contracts, generate their white papers, pad their resumes, and prepare for their just reward.

We should defer to them. We should acknowledge their authority. We should be thankful they are in power.

Since the "do more with less" of the Perry years of the 1990s, through the Age of Transformation of the Rumsfeld era, to the distractions of petty domestic political games and reputation-covering of the last decade and a half, we find ourselves losing our status of the primary power in the Pacific to a nation all the Smartest People in the Room™told us was a peaceful rise, a way to get rich, ... a fair partner in the international system ... you know the drill.

We accepted the promise of a future that was never delivered, are less secure than we were, and then the same people, processes, and organizations who got us here demand that we should quietly accept their continued leadership.

Bullshit.

The future is here, we were lied to, the nation's security is weaker than at any point since the 1980s, and the worst people have gotten rich in the process.

In an ideal world, Congress would already have Goldwater-Nichols replaced with something more aligned with this century and not the last; our moribund, corrupt, and incompetent acquisitions system pulled up root and branch and replaced; the institutional ball-gag and intellectual lobotomy of Joint would be gone - but alas - we don't live in Salamanderland.

We have what we have, and smart people are doing their best to bring attention to the crisis at our feet from a lack of Congressional action and Executive Branch imagination.

The future is here and time is short.

One of the best natsec minds out there, Mackenzie Eaglen, put out over the weekend a must read. If I could make her Empress I would, but instead all I can do is help spread the world. Head on over and read her article in Real Clear Defense in full. Here are the bits I hope people learn by heart;

The U.S. military’s conventional deterrence and global leadership will also extinguish if time is continually wasted on uncertain wishes for an equally uncertain tomorrow. Unlike the financial state or strategic posturing of American military forces, there is one variable of which neither Congress nor the Executive has control—one that burns away irrespective of perception: time.

Two generations of leadership consumed two generations of possible, incremental gains in capability and achieved nothing but broken promises and IOU's. Heck, "we" even had to trick the system and fool ourselves to get the Super Hornet in production by acting like this new airframe was just an update to an existing one.  That was the exception. 

Never forget, there is a lot of money to be made on extending development times, prototyping things that can never be brought in to production, or allowing the good idea fairy to go on a drunken requirements rampage without adult supervision. There is also a lot of money in killing potential advances - like the X-47B - from going in to production to keep the high-margin developments in place without endangering paranoid communities until certain year-group leader's retirement dates arrive.

Cynical? Sure. Based on fact? Yes.

As the military enjoys the luxury of manufactured peace until 2027 based on optimistic assumptions, Pentagon leaders are simultaneously giving away permanent combat power and capability today as troops wait for the vaunted tomorrow to bear fruit.  

Defense planners are moving far too fast in giving away what cannot be clawed back and far too slow in estimating when Beijing might move forcibly against Taiwan. This is both an invitation for aggression and a recipe for failure.

Why is our primary warship class in 2022 derived from a platform designed before Goldwater-Nichols/JCIDS/Joint grew deep roots? Did we learn nothing from the premature decommissioning off the OHP FFG and SPRUANCE DD for the promise of LCS and DDG-1000?

Accepting a unilateral drawdown of trained manpower, capacity, training, and posture throughout the next decade will result in a self-inflicted stasis, in which our weapons and warfighters become more like antiques than armed forces—expensive yet impractical.

The Pentagon and Congress have for three decades delayed modernization critical to the sustainment of credible U.S. combat power. Backs against the wall now, policymakers must not cede American military supremacy to a “dusty death,” but rather revise the pace of productivity by accepting that the armed force cannot survive on “buying time” to gain capability, but rather buying capability to gain time.

No more Charlie-Brown and Lucy with the football. There is no time to "divest to invest" and we should have enough self-respect to stop deferring to people, institutions, and processes that have failed us for generations.

As Jerry Hendrix mentions in his recent article over at National Review; the Chinese are serious in their plans while we are ... doing what exactly?

China is willing to suffer pain to surpass the West and revenge its “century of humiliation.” We can expect that China’s new supercarrier will go to sea often to test its new capabilities and then begin putting its new aircraft and pilots to their paces. China already has two more Type 003 supercarriers under construction and is on pace to produce one every 18 months for the foreseeable future. We struggle to build a new carrier every four years. With its construction capacity, China will soon have the upper hand in sea control and power projection in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

In addition to the changes outlined above and in previous posts, let me remind you of other acts I have been asking for the last few years when "The Long Game" became the next away game; 

1. No weapon system presently under production will be allowed to stop production until its replacement is under production itself.

2. Acknowledge we have lied to ourselves for decades actual magazine requirements in war (use "new" lessons from the Russo-Ukraine War for the tender to save face - whatever works) - and accelerate/restart production of everything from ASW weapons to strike weapons of all types.

3. Acknowledge that we do not have enough weapons - specifically anti-air and land attack - on our warships. Every war proves this and recent experience tells us this.

4. If I take away your access to satellite VOX & DATA and you cannot navigate and fight, you are not a wartime asset and your funding sent somewhere useful.

5. Accelerate capacity for repair away from fleet concentration areas, preferably afloat. Maximize production of sealift and begin the process to replace the C-5M.

6. If your combat unit does not have organic, robust unmanned ISR under the command of your unit's commander, you are worthless in the war to come and you will have such a capability by FY25 or you will be disestablished.

7. Pass the Salamander Bill: no General of Flag Officer shall, for a period no less than 5-yrs from retirement date, receive compensation of any kind or anything of value from any publicly or privately held company that does business with the federal government, nor shall they serve in any non-paid positions with same.

Yes, #7 is important. If you have not realized why in 2022, you are part of the problem.

VADM Brown; Remembering the Johnston's Turn

There are many fine traditions in the naval service, especially in the Anglosphere. One of the best was summarized by Admiral Nelson, RN.

When in doubt, attack. That bias for action in the face of a threat is an admirable trait, especially when contrasted with a more common human reaction – to freeze. 

As we have evolved as a species, other reactions developed past these Upper-Paleolithic instincts of Homo Sapiens. Indeed, in the modern evolution of Homo Bureaucraticus, scapegoating and blame-shifting have sadly become more common through natural selection. In Ottomanesque bureaucracies, game recognizes game, and such responses are rewarded and passed along generation after generation, eventually being a characteristic trait of a sub-species. 

Megan Eckstein kicks the work week off with a broad ranging, complicated, and important development in the story of the burning of the USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6), whose two-year anniversary will arrive at the end of next week.

I see it as two interrelated stories; our Navy’s institutional failure of the fundamentals (Part I), and a gentleman’s response to an attack on his honor (Part II).

We’ll do a “Part-I” and “Part-II” format.

Before we dive in to Part-I, let’s review a few entering arguments which have anchored many conversations here over the last 18-yrs that apply in this case.

1. The Navy’s investigatory and legal system is no longer fit for purpose. It is hopelessly compromised by a culture infected with undue influence, sloth, and self-focus.

2. No one can trust a “Big Navy” investigation. The smart will lawyer-up early with outside counsel, keep meticulous records with secure backups, trust few, and suspect anyone who directly or indirectly will benefit from their downfall. It isn’t always about right and wrong, the longer it goes on it brings out the worst aspects of our adversarial legal system – it is about what can be blamed on whom not in the service of justice, but in service to the career goals of those conducting the investigation and prosecution.

3. We have too many Flag Officers with too few real Flag Officer responsibilities. As such, we have a warped culture where large numbers of ambitious people are underemployed and seek authority yet wish to avoid responsibility as demanded by our present system of incentives and disincentives. 

Part I: C2 Matters

I hope Megan does not mind me pulling so much from her article, but especially for those who have served in staff positions, the core to this story is the C2 diagram (Figure 1) in para 6 of Enclosure (3) of OPNAVINST 3440.18 Dated 13 Nov 2018.

To start out, no, I have no idea what the doctrinally correct definition of a “Bridge Line Command” is. 

I spent 9-yrs of my 21-yr Navy career as a staff officer on USA and NATO staffs with untold hours working on C2 diagrams and relationships. I have never heard of that term, and a little googlefu cannot find it defined anywhere. I only see it referenced directly or indirectly to 3440.18. If you can find anything better, please let us know in comments. 

Additionally, para 6 ends with the phrase “command bridge line.” That is also a term I am not familiar with. I can only find one other Navy use of it in a NAVSEA document referring to communications. I will assume it is related to para. 3 of Encl.(3) but the list there is not fully congruent with the strange dashed box in Figure 1 of Encl.(3) … so, we’ll just put it to bad staff work.

So, yeah … how this ever got approved is beyond me, but it is what we had … and bad staff work usually manifests itself with poor results in the field … and here we are.

So, there is no definition of what the solid lines are in the diagram vs the dot-dash line … there are all sorts of inadequacies with the diagram itself and I’m not going to pick it apart anymore, but the important part is on the previous page in paras 1 and 2:

1. The chain of command is provided graphically in figure 1 of this enclosure. As the in-hull incident commander, the ship’s CO controls all damage control efforts on board the ship. The CO is assisted by a fire department senior fire chief or officer and naval supervising authority project superintendent (if applicable).

2. The area or unified area commander will remain in constant contact with the in-hull incident command. All requests for additional resources, special equipment, or technical expertise will be passed through the area commander. The area commander will man all bridge lines.

This is rather clear, “…the ship’s CO controls all damage control efforts on board the ship.” So is, “All requests for additional resources, special equipment, or technical expertise will be passed through the area commander.” … and the Area Commander reports to the Primary Commander (Fleet Commander).

So, I believe the “Area Commander” here would be CNRSW and the “Primary Commander” would be C3F.  BTW, why does Commander Navy Region Southwest hardly get any mention here? Seriously, I have no idea.

Now that we have this. Behold this mess;

The initial response to the July 2020 fire that destroyed the multibillion-dollar amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard was uncoordinated and hampered by confusion as to which admiral should cobble together Navy and civilian firefighters, according to new information from the then-head of Naval Surface Forces.

The discombobulation in those early hours meant sailors may have missed a small window to contain the fire in a storage area. One admiral who said he lacked authority to issue an order pleaded with the ship’s commanding officer to get back on the ship and fight the fire, when the CO and his crew were waiting on the pier. And when that admiral — now-retired Vice Adm. Rich Brown — found the situation so dire that he called on other another command to intervene, it refused, Brown said in an interview.

...

Brown, as the type commander for surface ships, said he should have played a supporting role the morning the fire broke out.

...

So Brown called ship commanding officer, Capt. Gregory Scott Thoroman, who said he and the crew had left the ship and were on the pier. The investigation into the fire noted the crew pulled out of the ship twice during the firefight that morning.

Thoroman should have been coordinating with the base’s Federal Fire Department and the Southwest Regional Maintenance Center, collectively forming the incident command team, according to a 2018 Navy instruction laying out fire prevention and fire response responsibilities for ships in maintenance.

...

With the Navy’s organization falling apart, he called the Expeditionary Strike Group 3 commander, Rear Adm. Phil Sobeck, around 11 a.m.

“Phil, you can tell me to eff off, because I’m not in your chain of command, but you have to get down to that pier and provide leadership and guidance because they’re all sitting at the end of the pier watching the ship burn,” Brown said he told Sobeck. “And he goes, ‘Admiral, I’m getting in the car, I’m on my way.’”

...

Brown directed his staff to contact U.S. 3rd Fleet around 12:30 p.m., but 3rd Fleet’s position was, “The ship’s in maintenance, it’s not our problem.”

Who accepts responsibility? Who avoids it and why? As a friend mentioned earlier today to me, “Quite sure Kimmel did not say “not my job.””

After the staff-level call failed, Brown set up a call with 3rd Fleet Commander Vice Adm. Scott Conn, for the two three-stars to hash it out directly.

“I said, hey, Phil’s down there, but we have to formally establish a new command structure. And he told me he wasn’t going to do it because the ship was in maintenance and it’s not his problem. And I said fine.”

...

He then called the then-Pacific Fleet commander, Adm. John Aquilino.

“I told him what I had done, what I was seeing: the C2 degrading on the pier, there’s no focus of effort, people are off doing their own things. And I told him that I had asked Scott to take command and he said no. And I said ... ‘Phil now works for me, and I’ve got it.’”

“Absolutely, Rich, you got it, put the fire out,” the admiral replied, according to Brown.

At the time we were all wondering what was going on. Chaos, that's what.

A bias for action, again one of our better traditions. In times of crisis, often those who should be responsible do not rise to the occasion, endangering not just themselves and their command, but everyone around them. It is not unheard of for this to be part of a cascading set of failures to act. Below the primary failure no one will do anything absent that direction as they either lack confidence or perspective to see the failure, and those above who should take charge don’t for similar reasons or just plain ignorance.

What did VADM Brown do here as CNSF? No, he was not in the chain of command, but he was a leader who saw a failure to lead and he stepped up to try to get those who are responsible to act, and absent their actions, fill the gap as best he could as a supporting entity outside the chain of command.

Did anything he did make things worse? Did they make them better? Was any other leader showing what we ask our leaders to show – a bias for action? What does our Navy reward? What does it punish?

Part II: Honor Demands

Let’s look a bit at how I framed Part-II at the start of the post, “a gentleman’s response to an attack on his honor.” It should go without saying, but as we live in a tender and reactive age, “gentlemen” can be seen as non-gender specific, but also very specific to men. Interpret that as you wish.

Duty. As an officer in the United States Navy, who do you owe your duty to? There is both a simple and a complicated answer to that. Let’s start with the Oath;

The Oath of Office (for officers): "I, _____ (SSAN), having been appointed an officer in the _____ (Military Branch) of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of _____ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God."

The Constitution first of all, that is pretty much a “Ref. A” answer. We have that document and rafts of judges up to SCOTUS to give us the “Ref. B.” Serious, yet complicated in its simplicity. That is the easy part. Then “the duties of the office.” There is that concept again, “duty.”

In the military context, that definition is rather broad and open to interpretation, but I like the definition the State of Connecticut uses;

…the performance of military service by a member of the armed forces of the state pursuant to competent state military orders, whether paid or unpaid for such military service, including training, performance of emergency response missions and traveling directly to or returning directly from the location of such military service.

In practice, things get complicated from there. Loyalty is talked about a lot, yet abused more often. Are you loyal to people, or institutions? Yourself? Your family? “Ship, Shipmate, Self” is something we throw around a lot, and is a useful entering argument, but it is not a one-way relationship. As in all well-functioning systems, the relationship is interlocked and multi-relational. 

Most will find themselves in situations small and large where they find out that their assumptions about the systems they are a part of are no longer valid. The agreements, spoken and unspoken, that enabled decades of hard work and success, are broken. They are not working. Perhaps they never did.

Then what does one do? Where one may have spent decades taking the burdens of an organization you love on to yourself personally, when does that act of love become more of an acceptance of abuse? When does a man reach a point where the honor of love is replaced by the dishonor of accepted abuse?

Part-II is about a man who found himself in a place many have found themselves in before. An organization he invested his life in, built his reputation on, and most likely loved – turned on him. He sees if not an upcoming assault on his honor, then at least an injustice, a bearing of false witness, and at a minimum an attempt to make flesh an untruth hewn from the body of his reputation.

Some will advise a man to take such things as part of the job, to not make a fuss for … the sake of the institution. Some will counsel to appeal within the system, that regardless of its malperformance to date, one must trust the system regardless and work within it. 

There is another school of thought that forces an answer to a hard question; what do you owe to an institution if that institution breaks its bond with you? What honor is there to give the gift of trust to an untrustworthy organization? If one party breaks spoken and unspoken agreements, what rule under heaven obliges the other party to act as if the break never occurred?

There is a time to accept that you are in a place you never desired to be. That even though you did all you could possibly do in the scope of your authority and responsibility, other entities are shaping your reality. They are stronger, larger, and on paper at least, more powerful. When they have you bracketed you can simply carry on as before in the knowledge that this is the fate you have been dealt, or you can decide that fate is what she is, but there is a way to embrace it with a higher honor based on a higher ethic to embrace that fate on your own terms. 

Call flank-speed, full left rudder, and engage the attacking force head on.

That, in a fashion, is how I read the strange Kafkaesque place Vice Admiral Rich Brown, USN (Ret.) finds himself in. 

Brown said he is sharing his story with Defense News now as he faces a secretarial letter of censure. He was named in the investigation as contributing to the loss of the ship, but was cleared by what’s known as a Consolidated Disposition Authority in December. He said he was not interviewed for the investigation into the fire.

Capt. J.D. Dorsey, a spokesman for Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro, told Defense News “the secretary is still in the process of reviewing the command investigation and has not yet made any final decisions on actions beyond what the CDA has imposed.”

...

Brown didn’t dispute the Navy’s accounting of the rest of the five days of firefighting as laid out in the investigation, but said the investigation’s accounting of how the command and control fell apart during a crisis is incomplete and the investigation itself was “fatally defective” without interviewing him or including a full picture of what will be a key lesson learned.

...

The retired three-star said one of the reasons he wanted to share his perspective about the fire is because the same command and control flaw played a role in the 2017 collisions of destroyers Fitzgerald and McCain and the 2020 fire on Bonhomme Richard. Brown led the McCain investigation and participated in the Fitzgerald investigation, and he said one of the recommendations he made at the time was to reinstate a Cold War-era command structure that had two chains of command: one for ships in maintenance and the basic phase, led by a one-star admiral focused on ensuring they built up their readiness, and one for ships in advanced training and deployments, led by a one-star focused on employing their warfighting capability.

Brown said this setup could have prevented the Fitzgerald and McCain tragedies, and that he had urged the Navy to revamp the command and control setup in 2017.

“I was told, ‘It’s not going to happen; there’s one chain of command.’ That’s what they all kept saying to me, there’s one chain of command, and that’s the operational chain of command, which the [type commanders] are not in.”

...

Had the Navy made Brown’s recommended change in 2017, Bonhomme Richard would have been clearly under Brown’s control in 2020 and he could have taken more aggressive measures when the fire broke out.

Brown said the Navy must learn from this disaster and make the proper reforms to prevent another ship from being destroyed — and the right lessons can’t be learned or the right reforms made if the Navy is working off an incomplete and inaccurate investigation.

...

Brown said, despite the major role he played while the ship was on fire, he was never interviewed. Conn emailed him about a potential interview and to ask five specific questions related to the roles and functions of the type commander. Brown answered the questions, but said Conn never followed up to arrange a formal interview.

Brown said he had no indication he would be named as contributing to the loss of the ship until the report came out.

“I am convinced that there was undue command influence on that investigation at the end, because when you look at the findings of facts, in the findings of facts behind my name, they just don’t make any sense. And why won’t they talk to me?” he added.

...

Pacific Fleet Commander Adm. Sam Paparo serves as the consolidated disposition authority for this incident and sent Brown a short letter in December stating that “I have determined your case warrants no action.”

Brown said he thought the issue was resolved until his lawyer in early June warned him Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro would be sending a letter of censure.

“I just don’t know what facts changed in the last six months,” he said.

...

Asked what he hoped would happen by talking to the media, Brown said the Navy has a pattern of punishing three-stars for political expediency without examining root causes and making reforms.

Though he planned to let it go before, “now I don’t think I can, because I think the Navy is destined just to make the same mistakes again and again, especially the surface navy, because we don’t have the [command and control] right.”

The more I think about this story, the more it becomes clear that VADM Brown is taking the only possible path honor, at least as I see it, demands. However, in defending his honor, he is creating a greater good for our Navy and the nation it serves.

The Navy bureaucracy and Admiralty of the last few decades continues to fail its Navy and nation. There are exceptional individuals in both, but as a body the system of incentives and disincentives as they have developed are not just underperforming in selection in aggregate, they are damaging the institution, ill-serving its Sailors, and as a result providing an sub-optimal force to defend the maritime and aerospace requirements of the republic.

The Bonnie Dick burned two years ago. In 53% of the time we took to fight WWII, Where are we? We have arrested a junior Sailor who still has not gone to trial. We still do not know what happened and if the Navy has taken pro-active steps to ensure it does not happen again.

Justice delayed is justice denied. Bad investigations protect the guilty, hide the truth, and poison the future. Accountability thrown on the innocent reeks of the vilest institutional decadence. 

Bravo Zulu Vice Admiral Brown. Bravo Zulu.

Fullbore Friday

Often we refer to WWII as being "....on the edge of living memory." We are reaching the point where we may need to start saying, "...just outside living memory."

We reached an inflection point at the end of June;

Medal of Honor Recipient and World War II Veteran Hershel “Woody” Williams, 98 has died on Wednesday. Williams was born on Oct. 2, 1923, and grew up in Quiet Dell in Marion County, West Virginia.

Williams was the last living WWII Medal of Honor recipient. He joined the United States Marine Corps and served in the Battle of Iwo Jima with the 21st Marines, 3d Marine Division. Williams received the Medal of Honor on October 5, 1945, from President Harry S. Truman for his “actions, commitment to his fellow service members, and heroism,” the Woody Williams Foundation website says.

Following his service in WWII, Williams worked to serve veterans and their families as a Veterans Service Representative for the Department of Veterans Affairs for 33 years. He also served as the Commandant for the Veterans Nursing Home in Barboursville, West Virginia for almost 10 years and has served on the Governor’s Military Advisory Board for West Virginia.

Attention to citation:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as demolition sergeant serving with the 21st Marines, 3d Marine Division, in action against enemy Japanese forces on Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands, 23 February 1945. Quick to volunteer his services when our tanks were maneuvering vainly to open a lane for the infantry through the network of reinforced concrete pillboxes, buried mines, and black volcanic sands, Cpl. Williams daringly went forward alone to attempt the reduction of devastating machinegun fire from the unyielding positions. Covered only by 4 riflemen, he fought desperately for 4 hours under terrific enemy small-arms fire and repeatedly returned to his own lines to prepare demolition charges and obtain serviced flamethrowers, struggling back, frequently to the rear of hostile emplacements, to wipe out 1 position after another. On 1 occasion, he daringly mounted a pillbox to insert the nozzle of his flamethrower through the air vent, killing the occupants and silencing the gun; on another he grimly charged enemy riflemen who attempted to stop him with bayonets and destroyed them with a burst of flame from his weapon. His unyielding determination and extraordinary heroism in the face of ruthless enemy resistance were directly instrumental in neutralizing one of the most fanatically defended Japanese strong points encountered by his regiment and aided vitally in enabling his company to reach its objective.

Cpl. Williams' aggressive fighting spirit and valiant devotion to duty throughout this fiercely contested action sustain and enhance the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

A great Marine, an exemplary Shipmate, and a life well lived. Thank you Woody. We were all better for you.