Id like to ask everybody to come back in and take your seats. Okay. Well, weve had two excellent key note briefs this morning. Both our speakers spoke to the comp reense haddive review. The u. S. Navy issued the comprehensive review of the recent incidents at sea that occurred within the last year. Almost all obviously forward in the western pacific. One cruiser that grounded and another involved in the collision with a chinese ship and two destroyers that collided with large merchant ships that resulted in a loss of life. 17 total sailors. That comp are reense haddive review was conducted over the past well, it took about 60 days and reported out approximately 30 days ago and presented. And we thought wed invite a few folks in here today to talk about the extent of it, theed a ksy of it and perhaps the meaning of it. We had two experienced Surface Warfare officers who had command at sea. Three individual whose have stayed close to the profession, either through their government activities or through their commercial activities. But theyve stayed close to profession and finally each of our three panelists today have pubing alled for proceedings all in the last year at least. And some of them longer. So our first panelist ill introduce is captain john cordal, u. S. 2345i6by retired. He had command of oscar austin and it destroyer and the cruiser. Hes also a Nuclear Propulsion qualified officer and brings a special event from that. Next to that is kevin ire. Hes only a couple other people i can think of that rr commanded three cruzzers. And kevins also been a regular contributor to proceedings as a regular contributor almost every month. And finally weve got retired captain who commanded the burke destroyer, the sullivans and destroyer squadn are 26. So instead of giving mini speeches we thought wed get right if to a discussion after which well open it up to the audience, have q and a and well get right at it. So to kick it off, ill ask this first question. So youve all read the comprehensive review of the recent surface war events that was released by the navy and based on your experience and maybe even based on some of the earlier comments today, do you see that in your view has it been comhehencive enough and is there any important things you left out and what would you highlight as an important thing you take away from it as a top level investigation. I did i also looked at the gao reports that came out slightly before it. The first thing i did was look at it back and see who was on the panel and look at the places they went. So the names not recognized as experts are on there. So given the scope and the scale, i think it definitely was comprehensive. Its a little slow centric because thats where the expertise is. And mike conor were on there to represent the other forces. So submarines and aviation. Also saw some people from other Services Like carter ham. Absolutely. And a wide range of pay grades. Everything from a retired admiral to a qnc. As far as surprises or omissions, i think when i read the gao reports and the comp reense haddive review, i was happy to see and pleasantly surprised to see the treatment of fatigue, something ive been focussed on since my navy times and since. So i was very happy to see that. Its a little unfofrp if the had it took that event to become policy. But it is. And i think its very ifcouraging. But then i looked at the gao reports and everything you talk about goes back to had work week and manning and things like that. So i did what you call a pao control function search and it came up 66 times in the report. I flipped to the back and found action items and it was to do a study. I would like the see Something Like lets look at it gao reports and look at some of the governing documents primarily the Standard Navy work week and changing the number of watch teams per ship from three to four to sort of bake in those gains from crew endurance part. Thats what struck me as where i would have liked to have seen. I do note the Surface Force did recently come out and say were going to Institute Watch bills and ship routines that there based on a surkadian rhythm. So i thought that was an immediate action in the line of what your comments were on. On time. And certainly thats something youve been leading the charge on. So ill go over to you. In this report it covered a lot of ground. As john said. But did you feel for was a glaring omission worth mentioning and is there something you think is important that may not come through on the first read . I do think it was frank and unvarnished report and it was deep and i was very much appreciative of that. I didnt expect that. So i was very happy about that. I think the concern i had had with are eguard to an omission is that it is very focussed 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 taskz, 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 for after this extended period of profound peace, which mr. Work was talking about and id like to give you a specific example of tis. The Weapon System is remarkable. It has been designed to degrade gracefully. I can tell you from my own experience even if you take away fire controlman and the training they receive, i have full confidence that every ship can go out there and successfully engage airborne targets. However had, Ballistic Missile defense if a aegis weapons system is at full capacity, in order to use Ballistic Missile capability, its to the be up to 80 . Im making these numbers up but theyre representative. So every time a ship gets prepared to do an sm 3 shot, quite literally a team of rocket scientists come on board and they groom the system to make sure it gets up to the requisite 80 . This happens for demonstration shots. Its a worth while question to ask ones self if we took all of the capable ships in the fleet out and we line them up and north korea launches something, how many of them could successfully engage. And so im right back to navigation seamanship, these are fundamental capabilities every warfare officer should have but i suspect will be required to do a lot more than safely navigate the singapore straight. Totally agree. It goes back to what bob work said about the preechbious surge capability we maintained. That you could ring the bell and empty the barn and everybody could contribute without the cross decking apart. Although i think theres lot of us that remember it wasnt all rosy, even back then. Going back to the 70s and early 80s. There were cross decks and holes to fill. But i think the numbers made up for it and that was another key crit cycle 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 so its an excellent question. I think what i took from both is were not doing either one well enough right now and this is an example. These incidents are an example. Ill turn back to you with the same question. Is there something you thoughticide have been in there that wasnt in there sore a big take away that you want to foot stomp that came to read in the comprehensive report . First of all id like the commend kevin for his socks. Theyre pretty classy and im trying not to dont look roith at them. Im not. Im looking back over here. The comprehensive review was, i think, was a credible sophisticated approach to really trying to figure out whats been going on. Why are we at this juncture . Is it comprehensive enough . No. It just cant be and the secretary pchs doing this Strategic Review that gets at some of the more fundamental issues that the comp rehence haddive review wasnt tasked to do which is how do we get our officers to see more so they get the experience they need so that kinds of stuff that the report sites as not anticipating the problems and being able to act in time to nip them in the bud becomes more of a Second Nature because youve spent so much time at sea. Some people might argue that the navy and military as a whole has become overly bureaucratic. I certainly resemble that remark. I spent a lot of time in the pentagon but its interesting to note that in 1941 president roosevelt told aed mrl king i dont want any repeaters in d. C. And what he meant was i dont want my captains and flag officers doing more than one tour in d. C. Obviously a lot has chachgd since then but it gets to a point where in the innerwar period we spent, as a profession, 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 had 6,000 ships in 1945. But in 1941 we didnt id say we did not have an over match of capacity and capability. The other thing in my discussions with sailers and cos in the last couple years i found a lot of challenges with manning and training. The minimum manning is not good idea. It hardly works for maintaining the ship. It cant work for fighting a ship in which you have to undertake significant damage control options. It doesnt work. The other thing ive seen frustration with is data over load. When they talk about sophisticated Navigation Systems on the bridge. What im hearing from everybody to e 5 to o06 is we cant get it fixed, we cant get training on it. Its all happening too fast and the report i think gets to the point of we need, we the navy need to get to how 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 lat about essentially say figure we followed our own certification process wed be okay and i dont think thats true. I think the certification process gets you to a level of training that we come to look at as a training ceiling. But its really a training floor and we need get above that floor into the mastery level if were going to do the kind of stuff kevin talks about. From the get go and a multithreat inenvironment. A couple people, some of whom are senior, some are junior, called me and said aha, the report said these incidents were avoidable and they go a long way towards pointing towards the Commanding Officer. So my next question is. Are these the fault of flawed command leadership and maybe Senior Leadership team on the ships or are these incidents the result of a flawed system that protused them . John . I think its a little bit of both. You look at the numbers and they do cluster in one area. But i look back. I was the jag man and you look back there and many of the same things i read in that report are what i saw in these. So maybe a way to do this is look at a ship that did have a collision and do the same stint of investigations and see if you find the same stuff. I think theyre having trouble hearing you. That better . Yes. I woebt repeat the whole thing but basically you had had four points in a time and space and looks like a trend there. It could have been the Commanding Officers. Unfortunately sijs were going down what looks like the road of discipline, it struck me as why did the office on the deck not call the fitzgerald . Why did the captain of the john s. Mccain decide not to station the detail for evolution, rather than delay the evolution . We might not know the answers of that which might get to the why. As i mention i do the uss porter investigation and im reading the comprehensive review. I mean down the line item are soopening the apperture a bit. So maybe its not all seven fleets. I know theres time but not that much time and really the other piece that struck me is trz rr a part later on in the comprehensive review where it talks about sustainment and how do we learn about the lessons and not repeat. The only reason i think that there were no casualties in the porter was they hit a bigger ship. They hit a ship that was 300,000 tons and the bow went underneath keel rather than to the birthing department and i was part of that. I was on the staff that time. So how did the system not capture that and build in some things . It did lot. Theres a lot of good stuff. But i would probably say enough given the evidence. Youd come down on the side of its more than the ce. Its the system and its more than just the seventh fleet. Thats come up and i think its just i spend my time mainly in the atlanticing side. I see some of the same challenges. They have to get hazmat. In the back, page 143, it talks about the number of gaps at sea. 6,005en had. Thats a 400 if crease. Divide thats a big difference. The narrative is the key collision was due to mechanic mechanical eeth arsteering loss or a misunderstanding. They talk about the crew members that are fatigued or exhausted. I dont think its restricted to the seventh fleet. So kevin, i think yours are is working. I just wanted to comment on if its r just seventh fleet. It is couched as if this is seventh fleet but anyone who understands anything about ships can read that and these exact same thing kz be applied to a lesser or greater extent to every ship in every fleet in the world and i think that is important that people grasp that. Now, ive given this some thought and one of the great things about us is that this absolute responsibility for what goes on and it buck stops here and 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 specify these accidents were avoidable. They both indicted the cos of both ships and both said there were failures in judgment and on the parts of both cos. But those two last months where be lost lives . Yes. And i do not dispute this. Admiral davidson goes on for the vast majority of the report indicting the system and everything from doctor and operations, training, manpower, personnel, facilities, every element of the dot milk spectrum he indicts specifically. He offers 13 causative factors seven of them are called fundamentals. Everyone of those is the responsibility of someone else to provide to that co. So whos fault rer is it . I im amazed thatd Commanding Officers still take commands of ships because theyre 360 wild cards on your ship that could do something crazy every day and you could be dragged out by the chemical shed and have a bulled put in your head every day and yet guys still do it and theyre responsible but they play the hand that theyre dealt and if they are not being dealt a fair hand, thats someone elses fault and not just theirs. Right. Well come back to that because theres cultural aspects about how far do you play it 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 . 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 for were some problems with the cos on all four ship essentially. But i really think its a longer term systemic problem we have, started at least 15 years ago when we sut down swaus basic, we got rid of saws mart for all intense and purposes. They did not have out calls. So the department is were a eed about getting qualified. The Division Officers had not been through swas basic. The only thing going for us were the chiefs and those have been replaced by the blue shirts who were the product of reduced training in the schoolhouse. Case and point just talking to oil king gsm one a couple of weeks ago. His gsma school was five days long. Stloe are systemic issues here. I know weve taken a lut of measures to restore training, but it took us 15 years at least to get to this point. Its not going to happen overnight and this is what admiral davidson put in the report which is somebodys got to shepherd this through longer than prd process. So i think 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, tyco, aurally burke and now working with zumwalt and watching lcs, the Acquisition Community purchases and builds the platform, gives it to the operators and they say we kant operate this thing. We need more people. Every ship in psa at least is getting more people on board since dd 963. That suggest as much deeper systemic problem than just the training and performances of the seven fleet destroyers. You talked about when were younger. Everybody up here, myself included livabled in an era where we had more resources. You just take the training, there was an aegis training that was separated and focussed on the ships. They were more complex and difficult to operate and i didnt mean the systems werent integrated and well designed but the complexity required you to get the most out of it. A higher level of training. So theres people up here who fired 20 25 standard missiles or tomahawks and weve done things in the fleet like eliminate the profishancy missile firings. We shortenned the schoolhouses. Five days for gsma school. As jerry just mentioned we eliminated the Surface Warfare basic training, the senior readiness course. We trunicated and eliminated a lot of the maintenance checks a lot of the people who tracked it maintenance checks. So we grew up in a different era. 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. So lets talk for a minute. Bill murans coming in at the end here and hes responsible for leading effort to actually make the change for the comprehensive review. So my next question is really about prioritizization, given all those things have happened and the point that was made by all of you that it takes time to deal with it, do you think the urgency in the report is right . Because each one of those action items theres a whole annex that lists i listed them as 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 to build our way back out of it and i asked john to ponder that one. Is this on now . Yeah, youre on. I always get to go first. Wow, so theres a lot of actions on there. I mean my first thought was back to the