Who will replace CJCS Mullen?

Well, I think it is clear that it won't be Gen. Cartwright, USMC.

The Pentagon released a report of the investigation just weeks before Defense Secretary Robert Gates is due to recommend a candidate to succeed the current head of the military, Admiral Mike Mullen, to the White House.

Its timing is thought to have been designed to clear the air as rumours about the investigation circulated around the Pentagon.

Sources who have worked with the general believe the allegations may be part of a vendetta launched by those who do not want General Cartwright to get the post, Fox News reports.

According to the channel, his former aides said his relationship with the woman was closer than usual, but remained appropriate and fitted with his leadership style of having a close-knit circle of allies.

... but ... maybe ...

White House officials said President Obama is aware of the claim and was not deterred by it. Military sources say the general, a former fighter pilot, has a better relationship with Mr Obama than the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He is thought to be the favourite to succeed Admiral Mullen, although General David Petraeus and Admiral James Stavridis have also been mentioned.

The heavily-redacted report, completed in 2010, clears the general of three of the four allegations made by an anonymous accuser, including one which suggested he had a sexual relationship with the aide.

Mmmmm ... top cover that can get you out of this?

An anonymous accuser claimed Gen. James Cartwright acted inappropriately during a 2009 overseas trip on which the aide traveled as a military assistant. Several sources confirmed that the former aide is a young woman, although her name and pronouns that would reveal her sex are blacked out in the heavily edited Pentagon inspector general's report. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity to describe aspects of the report that were not released.

The inspector general quickly cleared Cartwright of the most serious allegations, which involved claims that he may have had an improper physical relationship with the young woman. The report, completed in March 2010, did find that Cartwright mishandled an incident in which the aide, drunk and visibly upset, visited his Tbilisi, Georgia, hotel room alone and either passed out or fell asleep on a bench at the foot of his bed.

Cartwright claimed he had done nothing wrong and was later cleared of all wrongdoing by the top civilian Navy official.

"The investigation into the anonymous allegations was thorough. He cooperated fully and when it concluded the allegations were not substantiated," Cartwright spokesman Maj. Cliff W. Gilmore said Wednesday. "Gen. Cartwright believes it's important to have a system that allows anonymous complaints to be heard and appropriate for leaders, especially at his level, to be open to this degree of scrutiny."

Cartwright told investigators that he was working in his hotel suite when the woman entered after 11 p.m. the night of March 30, 2009, and began a conversation. She was seated on the bench, where at least one other aide later saw her slumped and apparently asleep, according to the inspector's report and interviews with officials knowledgeable about the trip.

The suite functioned as Cartwright's office, the door was ajar while the woman was inside and security personnel were nearby.

Cartwright, who is 61 and married, told investigators he thought it best to let the woman sleep it off, and she eventually returned to her own room. He said he worked most of the night and got about an hour of sleep.

The inspector general faulted Cartwright for not insisting that the aide leave or be removed. The report says she felt "license" to enter the general's room late at night and drunk, despite being advised by a security agent not to do so.

The report also faulted Cartwright for failing to act on an earlier incident in which the woman also apparently drank too much. In that case, she had a disagreement with a Secret Service agent guarding President Barack Obama at an elite annual dinner given by the Alfalfa Club in Washington.

Yes. Read that again. He does have some top-cover though,

While the investigation cleared Gen. James Cartwright, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, of any improper relationship it did recommend nonjudicial punishment for Cartwright's failure to properly discipline the aide and for maintaining an overly friendly relationship.

After reviewing the evidence however, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus cleared Cartwright of any wrongdoing.

OK fellow recidivist Staff Weenies - how many of the Aides you know - or, ahem those of us who have worn a Loop of any kind - would have survived a drunken spat with a Secret Service person guarding the CINC-in-waiting ... in public?

This is neither here nor there - but when I was stationed in HI, we always used to make the observation that it seemed that the USMC female aides were all some of the most attractive women in uniform, bar none. They were sharp, professional - and to a woman drop dead gorgeous ... and we said that when we weren't even 4 months into a deployment.

People are human, and even if you do everything right - an older male General Officer with a much younger female Aide is a dangerous combination if you don't manage things right. People will talk regardless. Never give them fuel. Even if you give Gen. Cartwright the full benefit of the doubt, which I will, if you don't have the right person acting in the right way - you open the door to someone calling you out.

I don't know about you, but I have seen innocent people accused of sexual misconduct and ruined - and I have seen other people get away with open sexual congress with subordinates. Tough and imperfect world we have.

You can make your own luck. Best case for Gen. Cartwright - he exercised poor judgment in his choice and management of his Aide. As a result - I'd put a Franklin on this being his last position. Is that right? Probably not - but such it is as it is.

Decades of great service - stopped by a female aide almost young enough to be his granddaughter and her inability to handle her alcohol ---- and his reaction to it.

Watch and learn. Watch and learn. And no, this would not have happened if she were a he. Knowing the Staffs I was on - one incident of public drunkenness like that and you would be liaison to Thule AB, Greenland the next Monday.

We could also talk about the IG's hotline too if we want .... but .... sigh. What a can of worms that is.

Hat tip d'mole.

Hoss over the side

I told you last FEB .... and so it has come to pass via Noah,

As recently as last month, Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright was known in Washington as “Obama’s favorite general,” a leading candidate to become the country’s top military officer, and one of the biggest tech fiends ever to pin four stars to his shoulders. Now, Cartwright has been definitively ruled out as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pentagon sources tell Danger Room — the apparent victim of a nasty Beltway whisper campaign.

I don't care too much for tracking who or who may not be the next CJCS - frankly I am just not that interested in palace politics.

My concern with Cartwight has nothing to do with the rumors. I was aggressively neutral towards Gen. Cartwight until FEB10 when, to be frank, he came off to me as having a very unhealthy view of the role of the military in our representative republic.

There is more than that to have concern with. First, there is the strange fact that after a nation has been at war for a decade you have a someone near the top of the chain in a land-combat branch with no combat experience at the Tactical Level - or Operational Level for that matter. You can't have that much "bad luck" from the detailer, can you?

No harm, no foul I guess - but at this point someone from the Army or Marine Corps who lacks combat experience should be in a supporting position to someone who has. We, thankfully, don't have a General Staff system - and so that much DC time just to me at least is off-putting.

That is minor anyway - there are plenty of additional substantive reasons to want Cartwright's as CJCS,

He lobbied to give the Vice Chairman’s office unparalleled power over decisions about which weapons the Pentagon should buy. He worked with Vice President Biden to come up with alternatives to the surge in Afghanistan, even when the buildup was accepted Pentagon wisdom.

He pushed to kill the F-22 Raptor and scrap new testing for the country’s nukes. In Air Force circles, he’s blamed for paring back plans for a new, strategic bomber fleet.

Ungh. Talk about smelling like the Potomac. I think I disagree with him pretty much on "all of the above."

As for who will take Admiral Mullen's place - there is something funny going on this time around in the selection. I am not going to share details - but there are more rumors out there about other potential candidates than just Cartwright that are finding their way to my inbox.

If someone has done something - either bring him up on UCMJ charges or keep him in the mix and shut up. No one should be hung out to dry on rumor. If rumor is known as fact - and if an E5 did it he would be going to Mast - then refer the General to the JAG and let's move on. Have we really reached the point where people could have done all these things through 4-stars and then "poof" it becomes an issue? If so - shame on us - but don't blame the person, blame the institution.

Who knows - I could be totally wrong about Cartwright - and if I am and he is pulled off because of rumor - then what a complete blight on DC and everyone involved. Petty people not worthy of the positions they hold, gossiping like a bunch of bitter old women. There are plenty of substantive reasons to oppose Cartwright - the fact that he had a bunch of unnaturally attractive female Aides should not be one of them. Also - if having marital problems with your wife is an issue - then you can get rid of half your GOFOs.

There is some nasty Ottoman Court stuff going on in DC right now that I am just not interested in playing. I'll comment after the fact. Anyway, if it isn't Mattis (and it won't be) I'll be a bit depressed regardless of who it is.

Vice Chairman turns Salamander

From the lips to Gen. James E. Cartwright, USMC, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to great Neptune's ear....

The military must end its quest for “exquisite” weapon systems that are too costly, take years to design and build, and don’t reach troops fast enough, or in quantities large enough, to address ever-changing threats.
...
Cartwright recalled the wry observation made by some critics of current weapon-buying practices that, by 2015, America’s armed forces will have one airplane and one ship operating in the Pacific, one airplane and one ship in the Atlantic and a single space vehicle orbiting the Earth.

“What they’re really saying, in my mind, is we have gone overboard with exquisite” ships and aircraft, Cartwright said, and “that we have got to get back to scale [and] platforms that are adaptable and flexible.”

If the Vice Chairman isn't a reader of this blog - well he hangs out with some right thinking folks anyway.

You have no idea how if feels for me to hear this from a 4-Star - I am as giddy as a school girl,

He said making better choices in buying weapon platforms becomes more critical when growth in defense budgets slows, as Cartwright believes it soon will. A slowdown shouldn’t be allowed to affect force quality or the military’s ability to operate in multiple theaters simultaneously. He suggested pressure will be on the military, Congress and industry to make smarter, more efficient choices in weapons procurement.

Does he read The Long Game series .... is he a believer of "the future belongs to those who show up" Mark Steyn school of reality ...

Regarding worldwide threats, Cartwright said he and other members of the Joint Chiefs believe “we are entering an era of persistent conflict,” stirred by the world’s rising populations seeking shares of “finite resources” such as water, energy and irrigable land.

“Today, in any given minute in the United States, 40 babies are born. In China, it’s 160. In India, it’s 280. When you look at the population of age 18-to-35 males, there’s an explosion in southern Asia, in the Middle East, in Africa, in South America.” Persistent conflicts will be “broadly spread across the planet. So it’s not like we can go to one place, focus on a problem, solve it while the rest of the world waits for us to finish there and then move on.”

And I ask you - what ship does not fit this bill?

“Building platforms that can have multiple purposes, that can modify very quickly with software, that consume minimal amounts of energy for extended periods of time … are critical,” the vice chairman said.

...and don't feed my that "Mission Module" BS. That is not a multi-mission platform. Missions can change in minutes. Changing Mission Modules will take days to weeks depending on where you are and what you need to do.

War waits for no fools.

I have said it before, I will say it again - give us a Marine as the next CNO - one picked by the Vice Chairman and Gen Mattis. Change I can believe in.

Rewarding Failure at the DoD Policy Board

No, I am not making this up.

DOD Announces New Defense Policy Board Members

Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta today announced the following new members to the Defense Policy Board: Madeleine Albright, former secretary of state; Jamie Gorelick, former deputy attorney general; Jane Harman, former U.S. congresswoman; Retired Gen. James Cartwright, former vice chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; Retired Adm. Gary Roughead, former chief of naval operations.

Really?

Really.

Shall we review?
- Madeleine Albright. C-.

"What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?"

Nothing more needs to be said there.

- Jamie Gorelick. F. What do you want to talk about first, the fact she created the CIA-FBI wall that resulted in a large part for our inability to prevent the attacks of 911, or the fact that she sat on the board of Freddie Mac as it created the conditions for the financial collapse of 2007-09?
- Jane Harman? B. You could do worse from a Democrat administration, I guess. If you wanted a former member of Congress and you were a Democrat; she is on the short list of people who could at least understand the issues.
- Cartwright? A-. You know my opinion of the guy - but he is qualified; I just think he is wrong about the Constitutional role of the military.
- Roughead? D. OK. Look at the condition of ships, shipbuilding, and readiness when he became CNO - then when he left. That isn't even folding in his Cultural Marxism advocacy via his racialist fetish.

This is who is going to be advising over the next few years.

Also note that none of the members who used to wear the uniform have any combat leadership experience in over a decade of war. None. Think that at least one with that skill set would be nice? Just one? Perhaps ....

Obama's national security kindergarten ...

Oh good googly moogly. My kids behave better ...

A variety of administration officials expressed scorn for James L. Jones, the retired Marine general who is national security adviser, while he referred to some of the president’s other aides as “the water bugs” or “the Politburo.”

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thought his deputy, Gen. James E. Cartwright, went behind his back, while General Cartwright dismissed Admiral Mullen because he “wasn’t a war fighter.” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates worried that General Jones would be succeeded by his deputy, Thomas E. Donilon, who would be a “disaster.”

Gen. David H. Petraeus, who was overall commander for the Middle East until becoming the Afghanistan commander this summer, told a senior aide that he disliked talking with David M. Axelrod, the president’s senior adviser, because he was “a complete spin doctor.” General Petraeus was effectively banned by the administration from the Sunday talk shows but worked private channels with Congress and the news media.

And the book recounts incidents in which Adm. Dennis C. Blair, then the national intelligence director, fought with Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, and John O. Brennan, the counterterrorism adviser.

During a daily intelligence briefing in May 2009, Mr. Blair warned the president that radicals with American and European passports were being trained in Pakistan to attack their homelands. Mr. Emanuel afterward chastised him, saying, “You’re just trying to put this on us so it’s not your fault.” Mr. Blair also skirmished with Mr. Brennan about a report on the failed airliner terrorist attack on Dec. 25. Mr. Obama later forced Mr. Blair out.

...

As for Mr. Obama himself, the book describes a professorial president who assigned “homework” to advisers but bristled at what he saw as military commanders’ attempts to force him into a decision he was not yet comfortable with. Even after he agreed to send another 30,000 troops last winter, the Pentagon asked for another 4,500 “enablers” to support them.

The president lost his poise, according to the book. “I’m done doing this!” he erupted.

To ensure that the Pentagon did not reinterpret his decision, Mr. Obama dictated a six-page, single-space “terms sheet” explicitly laying out his troop order and its objectives, a document included in the book’s appendix.

Mr. Obama’s struggle with the decision comes through in a conversation with Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who asked if his deadline to begin withdrawal in July 2011 was firm. “I have to say that,” Mr. Obama replied. “I can’t let this be a war without end, and I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”

You need to take Woodward's work with a chunk of salt ... but ... does that sound all that unplausible?

Hat tip MTH.

Get thee to a SM-3

See, if you read CDR Salamander yesterday, you would have been the first kid on the block to know; let that be a lesson to you all.

It's official.

The Pentagon today announced that a Navy warship has been tasked with shooting down a failing United States spy satellite that, if left alone, was expected to hit Earth within weeks.

In a joint news conference, NASA administrator Michael Griffith and Gen. James Cartwright, the No. 2 officer at the Defense Department, announced that an SM-3 missile, designed to hit inbound ballistic missiles, will be fired from a Navy cruiser or destroyer during the next month to obliterate the inbound spacecraft. The idea is to break apart the satellite to rid it of toxic fuel onboard by smashing its tank, which is the largest intact piece left. If successful, it would be the first direct U.S. test against a satellite since 1985, when an F-15 climbed to 80,000 ft. to fire a three-stage missile at a defunct solar-monitoring platform in low-Earth orbit.

OK fellas; let's get out the lineal numbers.

Month of the MPR Long Knives

One of my spies in the shadow world of the "special" Maritime Patrol & Reconnaissance community sent along this point to ponder;

The Navy will consolidate its two electronic reconnaissance squadrons in August into one large squadron.

According to a directive issued in late March by the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron Two (VQ-2) officially will be deactivated on Aug. 31 at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Wash., although the deactivation ceremonies will be held on May 17. Its EP-3E aircraft and air crews will be absorbed by its sister squadron, VQ-1.

The consolidation is part of the Navy’s initiative to reduce its overhead costs planned for fiscal 2012.

VQ-2 was established on Sept. 1, 1955, as Electronic Countermeasures Squadron Two at Port Lyautey, Morocco. It was transferred to Naval Station Rota, Spain in January 1960 and redesignated VQ-2. The squadron moved to Whidbey Island in October 2005.

Word has it VPU-1 is going away on 22 APR.

As Skippy has outlined often, the move to put the P-3 community in charge of the VP and VPU squadrons may have made sense on paper - but did not bode well for those communities.

Strange in a way. With today's challenges, those skills that they brought to the table are needed more now than ever. The VQ squadrons were already large compared to VP squadrons. We don't see them consolidating VP squadrons to the size of VQ, personnel wise, but we know the reason for that (it takes CDR Commands to make CAPT to make RDML to make .... ).

So. This was in many ways written in stone with the horrible decision almost a decade ago to go with that canary in the acquisition coal mine, ACS for a EP-3 replacement.

My spy give of a view down the road too,

... the Navy is getting rid of manned reconnaissance before unmanned assets are online (watch for the requirements creep in BAMS Spiral 3 - advertised as an EP-3E replacement...and then watch the program slip), is the annual certification before Congress as to the health of the VPU/VQ community.

Gen. Cartwright said that everything was fine, but that was at RDML Mike Hewitts personal request - they are quite close.

This year's certification will also discuss detaching crews for 6 months at a time (the Navy standard redline), but that the squadrons don't have enough people to keep those deployers home. In an unusual change of events, VQ squadrons ITEMPOs are surpassing VPUs, with certain ratings in the 70% ALREADY.

Also, as your sources in [redacted] can tell you, POM14 is a tough year. An issue sheet (that looks good from a funding perspective) will get rid of VPU entirely in 2015, and VQ in 2017. Hard to tell if the COCOMs will weigh in.

If they could - what would they say?

Please don't tell me this is another case of, "Let's get rid of something that is working, mature, and functional now, for something the PPT tells us will slice, dice, and juliennes 5-yrs from now. That works great every time - pay it forward!"

The about face from the USAF on Global Hawk (BAMS is the Navy version of Global Hawk) Block-30 vs. manned U-2 should give one pause ... but is anyone in Navy listening?

If my spy is right - are we looking at a sound decision, or a decision to throw VQ and VPU over the side in order to ensure that the right number of P-8s are purchased? Hard to tell - for this community there is very little in open source or any press.

We'll find out eventually though ...

Hoss's Ending That Was Not to Be

If you have not kept up with the tragedy that is the story of General Cartwright, USMC (Ret.), head on over to USNIBlog and give my thoughts a ponder.