Let's Check in with the Fruits of Transformation Age

Never before has so much been spent for so long on so few in order to gain so little.

Yes, I will take two lumps of schadenfreude with my cup of gloat.

Oh, and please order a cup as well for the Old School members of the Front Porch a decade ago who warned everyone this is where these horribly executed programs would wind up; Byron, Sid, Mr. T's Haircut and others who in comments helped flesh out the opposition to these transformatinalist Edsels.

Let's start with the poster child for technology risk; DDG-1000.

Problems with the complex technology being installed in the new destroyers of the Zumwalt class have forced the Navy and shipbuilder General Dynamics Bath Iron Works to delay delivery of the first two ships, the US Navy said Monday night.

The Zumwalt (DDG 1000) had been scheduled to be delivered to the Navy this summer, but that has dropped back to November. Delivery of the second ship, Michael Monsoor (DDG 1001), production of which is about a year behind Zumwalt, has also been pushed back a few months in 2016, to November of that year.
...
"The schedule delay is due primarily to the challenges encountered with completing installation, integration and testing of the highly unique, leading edge technology designed into this first-of-class warship," Cmdr. Thurraya Kent, spokeswoman for the Navy's acquisition directorate, said in a statement.

The only thing that gives me hope that this three ship technology demonstration project will produce something of value is that they are being built by BIW. If anyone can make it happen, they can.

While we're enjoying our sad little Cassandraistic joy, let's see who is having fun kicking around the Little Crappy Ship;

“Without a clear capabilities-based assessment, it is not clear what operational requirements the upgraded LCS is designed to meet,” McCain said. “The Navy must demonstrate what problem the upgraded LCS is trying to solve. We must not make this mistake again.”

Senator McCain with a bone in his teeth; nice.

Of course we know what the LCS-to-FF is all about; (1) Keeping some production going in order to keep ship numbers up; (2) Keep #1 going in order to keep enough CDR Commands to fluff SWO numbers at the CAPT boards; (3) Keep jobs; (4) Fill the frigate gap with a non-frigate because the story we told for a decade about not needing a frigate was wrong. Something built here is better and nothing built at all because our egos and politics won't let us take better EUROFRIGATE designs and build them here.

O’Rourke takes issue not with the Small Surface Combatant Task Force itself, but with then-Secretary Chuck Hagel’s February 2014 memorandum that rebooted LCS in the first place.

“[There are] two formal, rigorous analyses that do not appear to have been conducted prior to the announcement of the program’s restructuring,” O’Rourke writes. Before you commit taxpayer dollars to a weapons program, you traditionally take three steps, he writes: “ identify capability gaps and mission needs; compare potential general approaches for filling those capability gaps or mission needs…and refine the approach selected as the best or most promising.” In short, you figure out what problem you’re trying to solve, then how to solve it, then how best to implement that solution. The upgraded LCS skipped the first two steps.

Specifically, the Small Surface Ship Combatant Task Force did Step No. 3. The SSCTF was created to examine existing, all-new, and modified designs for “a more lethal and survivable small surface combatant, with capabilities generally consistent with those of a frigate.” After extensive analysis, the task force came up with the ship that met those criteria best. But it was Hagel’s memo that set those criteria. It did so with no evident analysis of what specific problem the frigate was supposed to solve. Nor was there analysis of whether a frigate was the best solution, as opposed to some other kind of ship or something else altogether — for example a larger ship, an aircraft, or new tactics.

“Having refined the design concept for [the upgraded LCS], the Navy will now define and seek approval for the operational requirements for the ship,” O’Rourke writes. “Skeptics might argue that definition and approval of operational requirements should come first, and conceptual design should follow, not the other way around.”

This is where I find my inner Tim. I'm not sure if that is Laz or Galrahn playing King Arthur ... I'll let you ID Sir Robin.



The bold faced lessons from the age of transformation; poorly concepts followed by spotty program managements pushed by personality will not trump centuries of lessons of the compounding impact of technology risk, program risk, and the limits of the human body

Present and future leaders of our Navy; see what was done with these two programs and - don't do that.

Diversity Thursday

Another DivThu that simply writes itself.

OK you USAF types, think about all the challenges you face. Think of what you want your leaders evaluated on, what you want their efforts focused on, what you want scarce resources allocated to.

BEHOLD!

Secretary of the Air Force Deborah James has decided to celebrate Women’s History Month by announcing a set of nine initiatives to increase diversity and inclusiveness in the service. The most notable is a new requirement that unless those aspiring to leadership roles can demonstrate their commitment to diversity and inclusion, they will not be considered for promotion.

So, how are you going to operationalize this?

More importantly, what metrics are you going to use?

Think about the implications here. The entering argument from the Secretary of the Air Force is, simply, that the present USAF leadership does not support "diversity" as she defines it. OK, if true, let's have some names. Let's get some Article 15s going. Let's see some Court Martial scheduled.

It is almost as if she is requiring people to prove that they aren't a bunch of racists, sexist homophobes. You cannot prove a negative. So, what will people do?

According to James, while there’s been some movement toward diversity in the past, it hasn’t been enough. This new strategy will ensure that the service is able to continue to attract the most talented and able minds. Career-field-development team chairs are now required to conduct analyses to figure out what is blocking “airmen from reaching their highest levels of performance ...

So, they need to publish self-criticisms?

This is all simply madness. This will drive many of your best away as they have one more example where it isn't about performance, warfighting, or service. 

It is all about matching someone's else's non-performance based metrics. Shame on every civilian above the chain of command from James.

At Sea, Size Matters

Back on the 9th, a friend left a little note,

Who is Gregg Easterbrook?

... with a link to this article in the NYT, Our Navy Is Big Enough.

Who is Gregg, indeed. After a couple of minutes of google-fu, I realized he was mostly a sports writer who happens to be a contributing editor at, yes them again, The Atlantic. I read the article, shrugged at it, and got back to the paying gig.

Well, I should have realized that regardless of his background, a lot of the "right people" would read and digest what he wrote simply because he has The Atlantic and NYT stamps on his card.

Why him though? Who gave him the tasking? My head scratching was in line with Andrew Erickson;

I remain perplexed as to why the New York Times considered Easterbrook’s polemic a substantive piece worth publishing—particularly when there are so many prominent, readily-reachable experts available on this and related topics.

Looking at it a second time, if it is going to get that kind of traction - then it needs to be pounded. Most people who read the article will not know that much about the Navy, and sure won't know that the author of the article is a nautical noob. With that stage, someone needed to do something.

Lucky for us, two of our favorites have already pig-piled on Gregg's dog's breakfast of an article, and I highly recommend both to you today. Join in the feast.

First, over at RealClearDefense, Jim Holmes weighs in old-school;

I feel like the Rick Grimes of naval affairs: the undead bad ideas keep coming no matter how many head shots you fire into the zombie herd. The Walking Dead fans among you will get that familiar feeling from reading the latest commentary on sea power, which appeared over at the New York Times yesterday. Read it and hurry back. And gather some extra clips along your way.

Nice ... very nice.

One lesson foreign officers learn in Newport, he opines, “is that there is zero chance they will ever defeat the United States in battle—so why even try?”

Now, I’ve been around the Naval War College since 1992, first as a student and then during two stints on the faculty—most recently since 2007. International officers constitute about one-sixth of the student body, so I can’t speak for all of them. But I have yet to hear anyone, foreign or American, voice the views about U.S. invincibility that Easterbrook claims to have gleaned in the hallowed halls of Newport.

More to the point, so what? Guess who sends no students to Newport: China, Russia, and Iran. No prospective foe of any consequence does. If someone in Newport is sending a message about American supremacy, there’s no one to deliver the message to Beijing, Moscow, or Tehran.

Next, let’s vault up to the strategic level. Easterbrook contends that sea power is all about “contesting the ‘blue water,’ or deep open oceans.” No open-ocean challenge, nothing to worry about, it seems.

Trouble is, this is a gigantic straw man. ... Blue-water combat isn’t at issue; near-shore combat is. And the picture is far murkier than Easterbrook allows in Asia’s marginal seas.
...
Easterbrook also bestrides shaky ground when drawing comparisons between China’s posture in the South China Sea and the U.S. posture in the Caribbean Sea. ... When Washington starts trying to dictate what others do in international waters or skies, evicts Latin American fishermen from waters near their home shores, or auctions off Caribbean states’ offshore seas to foreign firms for oil or gas exploration, then this analogy may gain credence. Not until then.
...
Yes, the U.S. Navy is constructing a destroyer class dubbed the Zumwalt class, a.k.a. DDG-1000. And yes, Zumwalt boasts some golly-gee technology. But its “huge arsenal” of guided missiles is smaller than that of current navy cruisers and destroyers (80 vertical-launch cells for Zumwalt, to 90 for DDG-51 Arleigh Burke destroyers and 122 for CG-47 Ticonderoga-class cruisers).

Zumwalt’s “advanced cannon,” as Easterbrook terms it, is a 155-mm gun that delivers precision-guided but modest-sized projectiles at impressive range—and only against shore targets for now, not enemy fleets. This is not Victory at Sea. We’re not talking USS Iowa blazing away at enemy men-of-war with 16-inch guns.
...
Easterbrook fares little better when assessing carrier aviation. “No other nation is even contemplating anything like the advanced nuclear supercarriers like the United States has under construction,” he tells us. Really? Well, France has deployed a nuclear-powered carrier of modest size and armament, Charles de Gaulle, for over two decades now. So much for the nuclear aspect.

Nor is nuclear power fated to remain a Western thing.
...
Easterbrook mocks Liaoning, the PLA Navy’s refitted Soviet-built aircraft carrier, as an “outdated, conventionally powered carrier.” How does he know China’s first carrier is outdated? Is it because of chronological age? No. Liaoning, nee Varyag, was laid down in 1985. Old, eh?

But USS Theodore Roosevelt, one of the ten supercarriers Easterbrook touts, started construction in 1981 and was commissioned in 1984. Three of her Nimitz-class sisters are even older.

Read it all ... then follow the next link to our favorite, Bryan McGrath over at War on the Rocks;

... Gregg Easterbrook, author and contributing editor at The Atlantic, wrote an op-ed at the New York Times on 9 March entitled “Our Navy is Big Enough,” in which he lays out why the U.S. Navy need not grow and why its funding is sufficient. His argument is a tendentious restatement of the poorly informed ruminations of others. He thoroughly misunderstands the role of navies in general, and the U.S. Navy in particular, and he inaccurately portrays the rising support of a larger Navy as a partisan wish of the Republican Party. Let us begin with that last point.

Two consecutive independent National Defense Panels charged with reviewing both the 2010 and 2014 Quadrennial Defense Reviews reached the same conclusion: that the U.S. Navy was not large enough to meet its global commitments. These conclusions were affirmed by two leading Democratic Party members of those panels, former Secretary of Defense William Perry (2010) and former Under Secretary of Defense (Policy) Michele Flournoy, the latter of whom is considered very close to the presumptive Democratic nominee in 2016, Hillary Clinton. Additionally, the current (Democratic) Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus is basing his entire legacy on growing the fleet to 300 ships by 2020, a fleet which on March 2 stood at 275 ships. Easterbrook’s suggestion that this is some kind of Republican cabal is simply not supported by the available evidence.

I don't see how Gregg can recover from that.

Read it all ... it only gets better.

I think there is a big lesson here for the traditional media types - if you are going to throw ideas out there in the national security arena, you better bring your A-game.

LCS handles "heavy" seas

As breathlessly reported;


Heavy seas, eh? Well, isn't that cute.

So, how do you get your good name back?

A very cautionary tale of what media, poor leadership, and a priority system infused with paranoia, interservice friction, over-reliance on training vignettes, and a disposable sense of loyalty can do to good people.

First, let's time travel - back to 2007 and the NYT;

Last May, Gen. Michael W. Hagee, the commandant of the Marine Corps at the time, went to Iraq to express deep concern to his marines and to reinforce what he called the “core values” that required them to respond to danger with thoughtful precision.

But almost a year later, marines killed at least 10 civilians in Afghanistan in an episode that bore some striking similarities to the Haditha killings and suggested that the lesson had not taken, even in a platoon of combat veterans wearing the badge of the elite new Marine Corps Special Operations forces.

Marine Corps officials said the unit, whose members undergo at least four months of specialized military training, did not receive specific values training addressing the lessons of Haditha. The actions of the 30 marines on patrol in Afghanistan appeared to contradict many of the edicts General Hagee had implored the marines to remember.

“We use lethal force only when justified, proportional and, most importantly, lawful,” General Hagee declared in a series of talks he gave at Marine bases around the world. “We must regulate force and violence,” he added. “We protect the noncombatants we find on the battlefield.”

A preliminary military investigation found that the marines killed at least 10 civilians and wounded dozens along a stretch of road near Jalalabad on March 4, and no evidence that they were being fired upon.
...
“You do ask, ‘How did this happen?’ ” said an officer familiar with the inquiry, speaking on condition of anonymity. “And it’s a fair question.”

Thanks to Andrew deGrandpre over at MilitaryTimes, perhaps some good people can get their names back ... a bit. From the 1st of a 5-part series;

A prior-enlisted sergeant, Galvin made history in February 2006 when, as a major, he was selected to lead Marine Special Operations Company Foxtrot for the first-ever overseas deployment of an operational unit from MARSOC, the Marine Corps force that carries out highly sensitive missions for U.S. Special Operations Command. It was a prestigious assignment for which Galvin was hand-selected based on his record of success leading Marines in the service's specialized Force Reconnaissance community.

But the job would become a curse. On March 4, 2007, less than a month after arriving in country, 30 men with Fox Company's direct-action platoon were riding in a six-vehicle convoy that was ambushed while patrolling in the Bati Kot district of Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, a nefarious transfer point for suicide bombers and other extremists entering the country from Pakistan. Media reports about the incident seemed to surface before the smoke had cleared and the shell casings were collected. And it seemed to leave little doubt that the Marines went on a wild rampage, inflicting mass civilian casualties.

Within days, Fox Company was ordered out of the war zone under a cloud of shame. Galvin was stripped of command. Yet investigations into what happened in Bati Kot had only just begun.

You need to read it all, as this is where it goes;

... the "facts" accepted by investigators and subsequently presented to the court varied dramatically depending on the witness, the report concludes. For example, an Afghan man allegedly driving an SUV at which the Marines fired gave testimony so inconsistent that O'Rourke, Sloat and Morgan could not determine whether he was present during the attack or "lying," the report says.

The court's report says the investigating officer, Air Force Col. Patrick Pihana, attempted — unsuccessfully — to convince an Army explosives expert to reverse his determination that damage to their vehicles was caused by incoming small arms fire. After the soldier refused, the report says, the investigating officer elected not to include his statement in his final assessment of the incident, a decision the court's officers called "inappropriate" and may be due to the fact that the soldier's statement "did not support Col. Pihana's conclusion." Ultimately, Pihana recommended that four Marines be charged with negligent homicide. But to reach that conclusion, he had to "disregard the statements of every Marine on the convoy," the court determined. 

... Pihana, Kearney's (Army Maj. Gen. Frank Kearney, then the head of Special Operations Command Central) chief of staff, may have been "negatively influenced" by Kearney and others in the command — and that, above all, it was inappropriate for Kearney even to have assigned the investigation to his chief of staff, as doing so inherently raises questions about neutrality.

When does a bias towards truth lose out to a bias to the news cycle? When does a instinct to support your own people and a faith in their honor lose out to an instinct to buy in to the enemy's INFO OPS campaign?

"The big injury to Fred and his men is moral," said Steve Morgan, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel and combat veteran who served as one of the three officers appointed to the court of inquiry. "It's an injury to their souls."

Those who helped bring that injury?

Kearney told Military Times that he's "not interested in resurrecting the dead." He ordered an investigation at the Marine Corps' request, he said, indicating he believed that Marine leaders felt obligated in light of two other high-profile war-crime cases arising from the deaths of Iraqi civilians in Haditha and Hamdania. "If these Marines have heartburn," Kearney said, "it should be with the Marine Corps."

Pihana declined to be interviewed. "In recalling that event I remain convinced there is nothing substantial I could add, remove or change to the original inquiry," he said. "… I can understand the personal feelings involved but that would not change the thrust of the investigation" he said.

As is the case more often than not - you are alone, and the only thing you can can do is to speak the truth and let time reveal the larger truth. Ultimately, you have to speak for your own name. Fred Gavin is doing that for him and his Marines. See the video in the linked article above to hear him in his own words.

Loyalty and honor are interesting concepts. You can find yourself alone very quickly. If there are higher priorities held by some, you become just a vignette, not a fellow American. You can be all in the right, you can speak the truth, but if others find the truth inconvenient, and people cannot wait for the truth - then your loyalty and honor to your service, chain of command, and your nation will not matter. Those up the chain who expect all the loyalty of those down the chain will, in an instant, refuse to return that loyalty.  The below video came out within days of the incident.

  Who will be held accountable? Who will own up to the damage done to our Marines?

Fullbore Friday

Regardless of nationality, the naval professional is usually attracted to two things - strong and beautiful ships, and tragedy.

The news this week was full of the discovery of the center of that venn diagram;

The World War II-era Japanese battleship Musashi was sunk by U.S. warplanes on Oct. 24, 1944, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, one of the war's largest naval battles. Despite numerous eyewitness accounts at the time, the location of the wreckage was never known. Until now.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, whose father served in World War II, says his research team discovered the Musashi's wreckage on March 1 in the Sibuyan Sea off the Philippines. Allen's team used "historical records from four different countries, detailed topographical data and advanced technology aboard his yacht, M/Y Octopus," a statement said.

For context, from Part II of the exceptional, Battle of Leyte Gulf - go to the 19:00 point.

Fair warning, you may lose most of your morning's productivity.



You can get Part I, here.

Diversity Thursday

A little reminder from last month about the very political nature of the entire Diversity Industry.

Each part of the Navy's diversity commissariat is really just the USN's contribution to two things; (1) A source of employment for otherwise unemployable diversity professionals, (2) An outpost of the political system that exists to ensure the larger survival of (1).

That political system feeds, carves out reliable voting blocks, and fundraises off of division, sectarianism, hate, and the most base form of tribalism.

Now and then, one of the branches of this toxic socio-political movement lets the mask slip in some way that serves as a nice, "See, I told you so."

This is not about diversity, inclusion, fairness, or any of the fruits of the enlightenment - it is just plain old rent seeking power blocks and their self-supporting network. When our Navy supports it - it is no different than if our funds were going directly in to a Political Action Committee supporting pick-the-cause.

This week's example is from our friends in Chapel Hill;

The leadership at UNC-Chapel Hill has made it clear that it supports diversity on its campus – as long as you agree with it politically, that is.

Chancellor Carol Folt, Vice Chancellor Winston Crisp and the Student Advisory Committee to the chancellor co-hosted a dinner with 40 student leaders from student organizations across the campus last week to discuss diversity and the school’s future.

But not a single conservative student group was invited to voice an opinion.

In fact, right-leaning organizations including the UNC College Republicans, Carolina Students for Life, UNC Young Americans for Liberty, the Tar Heel Rifle and Pistol Club, and Christians United For Israel were not even aware of the dinner until the Daily Tar Heel wrote an article about it the next day.

Sure, feel free to take a shower Tarheels, you do look a bit slimy.