Transcripts For CSPAN3 Global Security The Navy Part Two 20

CSPAN3 Global Security The Navy Part Two December 6, 2017

Next, a forum on global security, this Panel Focused on a recent reviews by the navy. We heard testimony from the vice chief of Naval Operations. Its two hours. Im going to ask everyone to come back in and take your seats. Weve had two excellent keynote briefs this morning. Both our speakers spoke to the comprehensive review the u. S. Navy issued the comprehensive review of the issues at sea, that occurred within the last year. One cruiser that grounded another that was involved in a collision with a chinese ship. And two destroyers that collides with large merchant ships that resulted in a loss of life that comprehensive review was conducted over the past well, it took about 60 days and was reported out about 30 days ago, and presented and we thought wed invite a few folks in here today to talk about the extent of it the adequacy of it, and perhaps the meaning of it we have three experienced warfare officers, three individuals who have stayed close to the profession, either through their government, the activities or through their commercial activities, but theyve stads close to the profession finally, each of our three panelists today, have published for proceedings all in the last year at least. Some of them longer, our first panelist, ill introduce is captain john cordal, he had command of oscar austin and the cruiser sanya sin toe. He brings a special perspective from that. Kevin ire is one of the only people i can think of thats commanded three cruisers, shiloh, chancellorsville and thomas s. Gates. Hes been a regular contributor to proceedings as a regular contributor almost every month. Finally, we have a retired captain, who commanded the destroyer the sullivans, and destroyer squadron 26. Instead of giving minispeeches, we thought wed just get right into a discussion. After which well open it up to the audience, have q a and get right at it. To kick it off, ill ask this first question. Youve all read the review. Based on your experience and maybe even based on some of the earlier comments today. In your view, has it been very hencive enough, and are there any important things that were left out, what would you highlight as an important thing that you would take away from it . Ill start with john. I looked at the gao reports that came out slightly before it, and some other articles and readings. The first thing i did was look at the back and see who was on the panel. And look at the list of places they went. That list, you know, the names i recogni recognize, every place they went, is everything i could think of. I think it was comprehensive. It was a good thing. Also saw some people from other services. And a wide range of pay grades, everything from a retired admiral to a qmc on the panel. As far as surprises or omissions, i think when i read the gao reports and the comprehensive review, i was very happy to see and kind of treatment of fatigue and crew endurance. Something ive been focused on since my navy times and since. And so i was very happy to see that, its a little unfortunate that it took this event to push that through, to become policy, it is, and i think thats very encouraging. Then i sort of looked at the gao reports, everything you talk about, fatigue, goes back to the workweek and manning and things like that, i did a pf control function search for manning and manpower. If i saw an action item in there, i would like to see Something Like, lets go back and look at the go reports. Primarily, the number of watch teams per ship from three to four. Thats sort of what struck me as to what i would have liked to have seen. I know the Surface Force did recently come out and say, were going to Institute Watch builds and ship routines that are based on a sir okayedian rhythm, so i thought that was an immediate action that was in line with what your kmeenlts are. It was out on the due date certainly that is something youve been leading the charge on. So evan, ill go over to you, in this report it covered a lot of ground as john said. But did you feel there was a glaring omission or omission thats worth mentioning . And is there something you think is important that may not come through on the first read . I think it was a frank and unvarnished report. And it was deep. I was appreciative of that. I think the concern that i have with regard to an omission is that it is very focused on seamanship and navigation. And the question which should come to mind is, if our Surface Forces are unable to successfully execute these fundamental blocking and tackling tasks, how can it possibly be expected that they are also able to do the much more complex war fighting tasks, which are coming to the fore after this extended period of profound peace, which million work was talking about, and id like to give you a specific example of this. The egis Weapon System is remarkable. Its been designed to degrade gracefully, i can tell you from my own experience. Even if you take away fire control men, and the training they receive i have full confidence every egis ship can go out there and engage airborne targets. However, if an egis weapons system is at 508 of its full capacity, in order to use Ballistic Missile capability, it has to be up to 80 . Im making these numbers up, but theyre representative. Every time a ship gets prepared to do a shot, quite literally, a team of rocket scientists come on board and groom the system to make sure it gets up to the 50, 60, 70, up to the requisite 80 . Its a worthwhile question to ask oneself, if we took all of the ships in the fleet out and we line them up and north korea launched something, how many of them could successfully engage . Im right back to navigation, seamanship, these are the fundamental capabilities which every Service Officer in warfare should have. Totally agree. I mean, it goes back to something that bob work said about the previous surge capability that we maintained, you could ring the bell and empty the barn and everybody could contribute without the special groom or the cross decking of parts, i think theres a lot of us who also remember that it wasnt all rosie, even back then, i mean, going back to the 70s and early 80s. There were cross gaps and decks in holes to fill. The numbers made up for it, that was another key critical point made by bob work. Do you need to be that much better and not exhaust yourself on the day to day forward forces and accept a slightly lower capacity, or do you want to spend all your money on capacity and numbers of hulls and platforms. Its an excellent question, but all of that is at play here, because i think what i tooken from both was that were not doing either one well enough right now, this is an example. Jerry, ill turn back to you with the same question. Is there something you thought should have been in there that wasnt in there that came through your read of the comprehensive report . Thanks, pete. First of all id like to comment kevin for his socks. Theyre pretty classy, im trying not to dont look right at them. The comprehensive review was, i think, a credible, sophisticated approach to really try to figure out whats been going on, why are we at this juncture . Is it comprehensive enough . No, it cant be. The secretary is doing his Strategic Review that gets at some of the more fundamental issues how do we get our officers to see more. So they get the experience they need, so that the kinds of stuff that report sites is not anticipating the problems, and being able to act in time becomes more of a Second Nature because youve spent so much time at sea . Some people might argue the navy, the military as a whole has become overly bureaucratic. I resemble that remark, i spent a lot of time in the pentagon. Its interesting to note that in 1941, president roosevelt told admiral king, i dont want any repeaters in d. C. , what he meant by that was, i dont want my captains and flag officers doing more than one tour in d. C. , obviously a lot has changed since then, it gets to the point that in that interwar period that mr. Work was talking about, we spent a lot of time at sea, so that the kinds of stuff were looking at with collisions and not being able to navigate safely in a sea way, were not just not as big of a problem, and we didnt have yeah, we had 6,000 ships in 1945, but in 1941 we didnt have a an over match of capacity and capability. The other thing in my discussions with sailors and cos, i found a lot of challenges with manning and training. The minimum manning just is not a good idea. Its it hardly works for maintaining a ship. It cant work for fighting a ship in an environment where you have to undertake significant damage control actions. It doesnt work, the other thing ive seen a lot of frustration with is what were call gadget overload. That comes out in the report when they talk about the integrated development of sophisticated Navigation Systems on the bridge. What im hearing from everybody from e 5s to 06s, we keep getting this stuff, its not supported, we cant get it fixed, we cant get training on it, its too much, its all happening too fast. In the report, i think gets to the point of, we need to we the navy need to look at how to get that rationalized and fixed. And then i guess maybe my biggest concern not concern, but as i reflected on the report, the Biggest Issue i see is, it talks a lot about essentially saying, if we just follow our own certification process, wed be okay. And i just dont think thats true. I think the certification process gets you to a level of training that weve become to look at as a training ceiling, but its really a training floor. And we need to get above that floor, into the mastery level, if were going to do the kind of stuff that kevin talks about, quite effectively from the get go, in a multithreat environment. A couple people, some of whom are very senior, some of whom are relatively junior, called me right after this report came out and said, the report said that these incidents were avoidable. And they go a lot way toward pointing toward the Commanding Officer. My next question is, are these the fault of flaw ed command leadership, or are they the result of a flawed system that produce them . I think its a little of both. You look back, i did the porter investigation. Many of the same things i read in that report are what i saw in these maybe the way to do this is 20 look at a ship that didnt have the collision. Do the same stuff. I think theyre having trouble hearing you. Youre on. Is that better . Yes. Okay. I wont repeat the whole thing, you had four points in the same time and space and certainly looks like a trend there. It could have been the Commanding Officers, unfortunately, you know, since were going down it looks like the road of discipline, we may not get what was inside their heads, what struck me was why . Why did the officer on the deck of the fitzgerald not call the captain, those types of questions, why did the captain of the john s. Mccain decide not to station the detail for anev lucien, rather than delay the evolution, right . We may not know the answers to in a. As i mentioned i did the uss porter investigation. Reading the comprehensive review, many of the exact same down to the line item were what were in that investigation. Maybe its not all 7th fleet. I know theres time, but its not that much time. Really, the other piece that kind of struck me, theres a part later on in the comprehensive review where it talks about sustainment, and how do we figure out a way to learn the lessons and not repeat. It talks about picking around the edges. I think back to the porter, you know the only reason i think that in were no casualties in the porter was they hit a bigger ship. They hit a ship that was 300,000 tons instead of 50,000. The bow went under the keel rather than in the birthing compartment. I was part of that, i was on the stap at the time. What did we not do then, and how did our system not capture that. It did a lot. Theres a lot of good stuff, but i would probably have too say not enough, given the evidence. Youd come down on the side of, its more than just the co, its the system . Its more than just the seventh fleet . I agree. Yes, i would. Thats come up, and i think that i spend my time only in mainly in the atlantic side. I go to bahrain. I see some of the same challenges, the things that a co can do in norfolk, go down across the peer. They cant do in a in bahrain. One big surprise that caught me was buried in the back of the report, page 143, talks about the number of gaps at sea, from march of 16 to march of 17, that number feign went from 1500 to 5,600. They went in five per ship to 20 per ship. What are the secondary. There was a comment. The narrative out there is that the large piece of the mccain collision was due to mechanical either a steering loss or a misunderstanding of the way the steering worked. They talk about the crew members who were fatigued and exhausted. And again, not to come back to the same theme again, thats a systematic issue. I dont think its restricted to the seventh fleet. Kevin, i think yours is working. Well see. One of the things that i found a little bit disturbing about the report was, it is couched as if this is 7th fleet, but anyone who understands anything about ships can read that, and these exact same things can be applied to a lesser or greater extent to every ship in every fleet in the world. I think that is important that people grasp that. Now, ive given this some thought, one of the great things about us is that this absolute responsibility for what goes on. And the buck stops here, i cannot think of any other profession, doctors, lawyers, priests where the same kind of thing holds true. And its quite remarkable. The cno and admiral davidson both specified that these accidents were avoidable. They both indicted the cos of both ships, and they both said there were failures in judgment on the barts of both cos. Those two last month where we lost lives . Yes. And i do not dispute this. Having said that, admiral davidson goes on for the vast majority of the report indicting the system. Everything from manpower, personnel, facilities. Every area, he indicts specifically. He then offers 13 causative, contributor factors, some of these i view to be fluff, thats my opinion. Some of them are called fundamentals. Every one of these is the responsibility of someone else to provide to that co. So whos fault is it . I think that im amazed that Commanding Officers still talk commands of ships. Because there are 360 wild cards on your ship that could do something crazy every day. You can be dragged out behind the chemical sheds and have a bullet put in your head, every day. Guys still do itp p but they play the hand theyre dealt. If they are not being dealt a fair hand. Thats someone elses fault. And not just theirs. Well come back to that, theres some cultural aspects here about how far do you play the hand youre dealt, and when do you tell the dealer hes dealing from the bottom. But to finish this line here jerry, how about you . Do you think its a flawed Commanding Officer . Or a system that didnt give them what they needed to succeed . Well, the tip of the iceberg is the Commanding Officer, its clear that there were some problems with the cos on all four ships, essentially. Given that the cos responsible for a ship. But i really think its a longer term systemic problem in a we very that started at least 15 years ago, when we shut down swas basic. When i was a commander in 12002, 2003, 60 of my engineers did not have elcalls. The Division Officers had not been through swas basic. The only thing we had going for us that was a real strong suit were the chiefs, and those have now been replaced by the blue shirts who were the product of reduced training in the schoolhouse. Case in point, just talking to an oil king gsm one a couple weeks ago. His school was five days long. Right. So there are systemic issues here, i know weve taken a lot of issues to increase manning, to restore training, it took us 15 years at least to get to this point. Its not going to happen overnight, this is what admiral davidson put into the report, someone has to sheppard this through a long longer than a prd process. So i think i think theres the other problem is, weve seen this happening, even in the golden years, when you and i were younger, where every class of ship that ive been on. The Acquisition Community purchases and builds a blatt form. Gives it to the operators who say, we cant operate this, we need more people. That suggests a much deeper broader systemic problem than just the training and perform answer of cos in the sixth fleet destroyers. Well, you know, you talked about when we were younger. Everybody up here, myself included lived in an era where we had more resources, you just take the training the egis training, the egis Training Command that was separate and focused on the egis ships. There was a recognition outright that they were more complex and difficult to operate. I didnt mean that the systems were integrated and werent well designed, but the complexity required you to get the most out of it. Hire level of twrang, so theres people up here who fired 25 standard missiles or tomahawks and weve done things in the fleet like eliminate the proficiency missile firings, we shortened the schoolhouses, five days for gsma school. We eliminated the Surface Warfare basic training. We eliminated the people who tracked the maintenance checks. So we grew up in in a different era, and so i just want to make sure from the viewpoint of our audience, that people know that we are coming at this from our experience and were commenting on what weve seen happen in the last 15, 16 years, which includes all those things, lets talk for a minute. Bill moran is coming in here, hes responsible for the effort to make the change for the comprehensive review. So my next question is really about prioritization. Given that all those things have happened. And the point that was made by all of you that it takes some time to deal with it, do you think the prioritization and the urgency in the report is right . Each one of those action items, theres a whole an exthere that lists i listed them, theres like 58 action items, is the urgency right to get at that . Are we doing the right things first to make sure we get a grip on this . So that you can build our we can build our way back out of it . I ask john to ponder that one. Is this on now . Yeah, youre on. I always get to go first. Mix it up after that. Yeah. Right. Wow so theres a lot of actions on there, i mean, my first thought was back to that discussion

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