As for Clark's commitment to a great Navy, I have no doubt about his sincerity about that, but he lost his way about 1.5 years into his term. Plussing up current readiness accounts will be his only positive achievement.
Mullen firing Sestak is a great thing and sends a clear message to the fleet, take care of your people, keep you temper in check and balance work and life. Sestak could do none of those. ( I'm told he drove much of his wardroom as a crusier CO out of the Navy....). Rumor has it there was little love lost between the new CNO and "Hurricane Joe", but I am suprised the new CNO did this so bluntly. I would have thought an amicable divorce would have been arranged ( " You know Joe, maybe you should think about retiring......"). To send that kind of message, that early makes me a little bit hopeful that he can begin to reverse the ruinous course his predecessor set the Navy on.
1 Flag down, about a 100 to go and then the Navy will be "right sized".
Skippy, you are right on target, and it sounds like we have spies in the same places. Perhaps Admiral Ulrich should check his email this week?
RE selection boards; One of the more bizarre statements at the conclusion of ODS was when we had a flag type drop by and tell us that operational service in SWA would not be a factor of consideration in selections. Seems (and at the time seemed) to me you would want folks with operational experience sticking around. What are you going to do?
Shadow,
Frankly, I have yet to get more than a trout-like stare from every Flag Officer I have asked the question "Why don't we weight actual combat experience in our selection process.." I have asked oh, about 10 or so Flags that question since the early-90s when it looked like no one cared about Desert Storm and IRAD selection. I have asked the quesion during board pre-briefs in Millington as well...Balkans, Desert Fox, OEF-OIF, no one cares. Oh, if you were a shore duty Flag Aide or have OPNAV/PMA experience.....oh yea, then they care. Just ill-focused.
Our Navy still seems to have a Cold War, static "select in my own image" attitude that is just out of phase with 2005. Why value an OPNAV job for a top running LCDR on track for command when he wants to take a front line postition in a JTW in SWA? Navy Flags have told these people "That isn't the career path you need to take..." Madness. It is going to take the right 4-star to fix. #1 priority has to be warfighting, otherwise we will have more and more people making decisions that have less-and-less warfighting experience. More and more tail, feeding off the hard work of the shrinking tooth.....IMAO.
I just hope the new guy keeps Bud Zumwalt in mind. Make too many waves, and you could have a "revolt" on your hands. At the Flag level, it isn't so much a chain of command as a feudal system--kind of like France around 900 AD. The king was nominally in charge, but nothing got done unless the rest of the nobility felt the same way. Speaking of Zumwalt, there was a guy that got promoted for being a combat commander instead of a Pentagon desk jockey. I don't think its happened since.
The feudal analogy used to be apt, but Vern Clark made blind loyalty a criteria for further promotion. As a result all the independent thinkers were "bred" out, leaving nothing but a chain of like minded sycophants...
I'm not sure I understand what the issues are about selection boards. Given the nature of this war rewarding someone on "combat experience" alone is probably not a good thing since many fine people will not go to Iraq and it will not be their fault. If you are saying value time at sea, well that is something else, but if one does not screen for command, what's in it for him ( or sadly her) to go back to sea? Nothing.
Being retired now, I don't really have anything to say about current politicing, but I always appreciate administrative screw-ups in messages. This one is good, but not as good as some tiny command including "ALCOM" as a message addressee for something like an ammunition transaction report when they meant to add something like "ALCOMADAK".
Agree with what Skippy said about combat experience being a lone factor in promotion selections. It's important, but shouldn't be the single "necessary and sufficient" condition for promotion.
The Air Force is sending a clear and opposite message via promotion boards: Expeditionary deployments (120+ days) count, everything else -- overseas short tours, overseas long tours, repeated short TDYs to OEF/OIF -- doesn't matter. Somehow I think those PACAF jobs just got a lot harder to fill.....
Never stated that it sould be a lone factor, but it shouldn't be INTENTIONALLY ignored.
USAF may have cracked the code, but the word in the USN is "not important to consider beyond other traditional areas." That is unfortunate, and is why communities hide their front runners when you come looking for 179 to 1 year IA/TADs. The result, the front line units are not getting a "quality spread" and we are growing the senior leaders of tomorrow with limited combat experience. Is that what a military is supposed to do?
Commenting by HaloScan
