He had to reach across the aisle. Q and a, sunday night at 8 00 eastern on cspan. Coming up next, a forum on Global Security and a recently completed naval review of the seventh fleet collisions at sea that took place last year. The vice chief of Naval Operations also speaks at this u. S. Naval institute forum. I would like to ask everybody to come back in and take your seats. Okay. 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 recent incidents at sea that have occurred within the last year, almost all obviously forward in the western pacific. One aegis cruise hear the grounded. Another that was involved in a collision with a chinese ship. And two arly burke destroyers that collided with large merchant ships that resulted in a loss of life. 17 total sailors. That comprehensive review was conducted over the past well, it took about 60 days and was reported out approximately 30 days ago and presented. And we thought we would invite a few folks in here today to talk about the extent of it, the adequacy of it, and perhaps the meaning of it. Weve invited three experienced Surface Warfare officers who have had command and major command at sea. Three individuals who have stayed close to the profession either through their government activities or through their commercial activities. But they have stayed close to the profession. And finally, each of our three panelists today have published for proceedings all in the last year at least. And some of them longer. So our first panelist ill just introduce, is captain john cordle, u. S. Navy retired. John had command of oscar austin and the destroyer, and the cruiser san jacinto. He is also a Nuclear Propulsion qualified officer and brings a special bent from that. Next to john is kevin eyer. Kevin eyer is one of only a couple of people i can think of thats commanded three aegis cruisers. He has commanded shiloh, chancersville and thomas s. Gates. And kevins also been a regular contributor as i mentioned to proceedings in as a regular contributor almost every month. And finally, weve got retired captain jerry roncolato. Instead of giving like mini speeches we thought we would just get right into a discussion, after which well open it up to the audience, have q and a, and well get right at it. And so just to kick it off ill ask this first question. So youve all read the comprehensive review of the recent Surface Force eechbtsd 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 comprehensive enough . And is there any important things that you think were left out . And what would you highlight as maybe an important thing that you take away from it, as a top level observation . Ill start with john cordle. Actually, i did read it. I also looked at the gao reports that came out slightly before it and some other articles and readings. I absolutely 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. I think that list, the names i recognized as subject Matter Experts are on there. And the places they went were every place i could think of. Given the scope and scale i think it was comprehensive. It is a little swo centric naturally so because thats where the expertise is. And there were others on there to represent other forces, submarines and navigation. I also saw other Services Like carterham. Absolutely. And a wide range of pay grades. There was everything from a retired admiral to a qmc on the panel and some Junior Officers. 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 pleasantly surprised to see that the deep treatment of fatigue and crew endurance, something i have been focused on since my navy time and since. I was happy to see that. Its unfortunate that it took this event to kind of push that through terminal velocity to become policy. But it is. I think thats encouraging. Then i sort of looked at the gao report. And everything you talk about fatigue goes back to the work week and manning and things like that. So i did a pf control function seven for manning and manpower. It came up 66 times in the report. I flipped to the back the look for action items and only found one. It was to do a study. So i guess if i saw an action item in there i would kind of like to see Something Like lets go back and look at the gao reports take the action items from there and look at some of the governing documents like theon nav instruction. Primarily the Standard Navy work week and changing the number of watch teams per ship from three to four to bake in those gains from the crew endurance part. Thats sort what have struck me as where i would have liked to have seen. Okay. I do note that the Surface Force did recently come out and say we are going to Institute Watch bills and ship routines that are based on a circadian rhythm. I thought that was an immediate action in the line of what your comments are. It was out on the due date, on time for the right. That is something you have been leading the charge on. Kevin ill go over to you. I mean, in this report, it cuffed a lot of ground, as john said, but did you feel there was a glaring omission or an omission thats worth mentioning . And is there something that you think is important that may not come through on the first read . Well, i do think that it was a frank and unvarnished report. And it was deep. And i was very much appreciative of that. I didnt exactly expect that. So i was very happy about that. Right. 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 if you know 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 foreafter this extended period of profound peace which mr. Work was talking about . And i would like to give you a specific example of this. The aegis weapons system is remarkable. It changed the surface navy. It has been designed to degrade gracefully. I can tell you from my own experience that even if you take away fire controlmen and the training that they receive, i have full confidence that every aegis ship can go out there and successfully engage airborne targets. However, Ballistic Missile defense, if an aegis weapons system is at 50 of its full capacity, in order to use Ballistic Missile capabilities it has to be up to 80 . Now, im making these numbers up, but they are representative. So every time a ship gets prepared to do a sm3 shot, quite literally a team of rocket scientists come on board, and they groom the system to make sure that it gets from 50, 60, 70, up to the wrerequisite 80 . This happens for demonstration shots. Its a worthwhile question to ask one self, if we took all of the bmd capable ships in the fleet out and we lined them up and north korea launched something, how many of them could successfully engage . So im right back to navigation, seamanship, these are the fundamental capabilities which ever Surface Warfare officer should have. But i suspect that if called to war, well be required to do a lot more than safely navigate the singapore strait. Yeah. Totally agree. I mean, it goes back to something that bob work said about the previous surge capability that we maintained. That you could ring the bell and empty the barn and everybody could contribute, you know, without the special groom or the cross decking of parts. Although i think there is 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 decks and there were gaps and holes to fill. But i think the numbers made up for it. And that was another i think key critical point made by bob work. Do you really 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 . So its an excellent question. But all of that is at play here because i think what i took from both was that were not doing either one well enough right now. And this is an example. These incidents are an example. So, jerry, ill turn back to you with the same question. Is there something that you thought should have been in there that wasnt in there or a big takeaway in a you want to foot stomp that came through your read of the comprehensive report . Thanks, pete. First of all, id just like to commend kevin for his socks. [ laughter ] they are pretty classy. Im trying not to dont look right at them. Im not. Im looking back over here. The comprehensive review was, i think was a credible, sophisticate aid proech sophisticateed approach to trying to figure out whats going on, why are we at this juncture. Is it comprehensive enough . No, its not. It just cant be. And the secretary is doing this Strategic Review that getsa at some of the more fundamental issues i think that the comprehensive review just wasnt tasked to do, which is how do we get our officers to sea more so they get the experience they need so that the kind of stuff that the report cites 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 you spent so much time at sea . You know, some people might argue that the navy the military has 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 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. But it gets to the point that in that interwar period that mr. Work was talking about, we spent, as a profession, we spent a lot of time at sea so that the kinds of stuff we are looking at with collisions and not being able to navigate safely in a seaway 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 i would say we did not have an overmatch of capacity and capability. The other thing that in my discussions with sailors and cos in the last couple of years working engineering training, i found a lot of challenges with manning and training. Okay . The minimum manning just is not a good idea. It hardly works for maintaining the 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 that i have seen a lot of frustration with is what well call is gadget overload. It 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 o 6s is we get the stuff but its not supported. We cant get it fixed. We cant get training on it. Its too much. Its all happening too fast. The report i think gets to the point of we, the navy need the 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 followed 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 we have come 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 we are going to do the kind of stuff that kevin talks about, which is fight effectively from the getgo in a multithreat environment. A couple of people, some of whom are very senior, some of whom are relatively junior called me right after this report came out and they say, aha, the report said that these incidents were avoidable, and they go a long way towards pointing toward 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 produced them . John . I think it is a little bit of both. I mean you look at the numbers and the cluster in one area at one time. But you have got to look back i did the i was the jag man for the you look back there and many of the same things that i saw in that report are what i saw in these. Maybe the way to do this is look at a ship that didnt have a collision and do the same depth of investigation and see if you find the same stuff. If you do, that might tell you there is a system problem. John, i think they are having trouble hearing you. You are on. Is that better . Yes. Okay. I wont repeat the whole thing. Basically you had power points in the same time and space and certainly it looks like a trend there. It could have been the Commanding Officers. Unfortunately, since we are going down it looks like possibly the road of discipline, we may not get what was inside their heads. That struck me as why . Why did the officer of the deck on the fitzgerald not call the capta captain . Those types of questions. Why did the captain of the john k. Mccain decide not the station the detail for the evolution rather than delay the evolution, right. Right. We might not know the answers to that. If we get to the why, we may get the answer to some of that. I did the pour investigation. Reading the comprehensive review, many of the exact same, down to the line item were what were in the porter investigation if you open it up and look. Looking into the aperture a little bit. And then really the other piece that kind of struck me is there is 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. 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 instead of 50,000, and the bulbous bow went underneath the keel rather than into the berthing department. And i was part of that i was on the staff at that time. What did we not do then and how did our system not capture that and build in some things. It did a lot. There is a lot of good stuff. But i would probably have to say not enough, given the evidence. But you would come down on the side of its more than just the co . Its the system . And its more than just the seventh fleet . Yes, i would. Thats come up. I spent my time only and mainly in the atlantic side. I go to bahrain as part of my job. And i see some of the same challenges. The thing the co can do in norfolk, go across the pier and get hazmat and get a gauge count. But they cant do that in bahrain. The resources arent there. One big spry, buried in the back of the report, page 143 it talks about the number of gaps at sea. It says from march of 16 to 17 it wehad a 400 increase. Thats a big difference. So one of the secondary i guess not the harp on but there was a comment the common sort of 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 system worked. If you read deeper in there they talk about the crew members who were fatigued and exhausted. And again, not to come back to the same theme again, but thats a systematic issue. I dont think its restricted to the seventh fleet. Right. So kevin, i think yours is working. Well see. Yes, it is, loud and clear. I just wanted to comment on this question about if its just seventh fleet. One of the things i found a little bit disturbing about the report is that 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. And i think that it is important that people grasp that. Now, i have given this some thought. And one of the great things about us is that this abs lawsu absolute responsibility for what goes on. I cant think of other tis president clinton, doctors, priests, where the same thing holds true. It was specified these actions were avoidable. They both indicted both admirals of both ships and both said there were failures in judgment on the part of the cos. For those last two months where we lost lives . Yes. And i do not dispute this. Having said that, admiral davidson then goes on for the vast majority of the report indicting the system. And everything from doctrine, operations, training, manpower, personnel, facilities. Every element of the dot milpf spectrum, he indicts specifically. He then offers 13 causative, contributing factors. Some of these i view to be fluff. Thats my opinion. Seven of them are called fundamentals. Every one of these is the responsibility of someone else to provide to that co. So whose fault is it . I think that i im amazing that Commanding Officers still take commands of ships because there are 360 wild cards on your ship that could do something crazy every day, and you can be dragged out behind the chemical shed and have a bullet put in your head every day, and yet guys still do it. And they are responsible. But they play the hand that they are dealt. And if if they are not being dealt a fair hand, thats someone elses fault and not just theirs. Right. Well come back to that because there are some cultural aspects here about how far do you play the hand you are dealt and when do you tell the dealer that he is dealing from the bottom. But to finish this line here, jer gerry, how about you . Do you think it is 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 co is responsible for a ship. But i really think it is a longer term systemic problem we have. Start at least 15 years ago when we shut down swa is basi