America needs a fleet because it needs to control the Atlantic and Pacific to prevent threats from reaching Western Hemisphere shores. And the fleet needs to support allies in Asia and Europe to prevent a hostile power from building fleets to take control of the Atlantic or Pacific and directly or indirectly threaten America. How's the Navy doing?
Figuring out what is wrong with our surface ship leadership is certainly welcome:
In 2018, Naval Surface Force Pacific established the Human Factors Oversight Council and since then has relied on the group to measure a broad range of sailor data, from how much sleep each individual sailor has gotten each night, and therefore how fit to stand watch they are, to how much training a sailor has received and how they scored on proficiency tests, and therefore the ship to which they should be assigned. The group looks at a ship’s mishaps during maintenance to determine how statistically likely they are to have a certain type of mishap during at-sea operations.
The data may allow the Navy to seek the roots of the crew problems at the ship and numbered fleet levels. That's not enough. I'm not truly worried about a recent spate of leadership firings by the Navy. I worry that this data-driven project--while useful--is treating the symptoms for the real problem in the flag officer and civilian leadership ranks:
What we should do but won't is revamp selection and training for our senior officers to reduce the climate of stupidity that cripples American warfighting abilities.
Somehow our flag officers are convinced that there are many substitutes for victory. But the truth is that woke lips sink ships.
I think that the purge doesn't go high enough. I've lost trust and confidence in our flag officers' ability to command the Navy. What oversight of those human factors will we carry out?
The Navy and Air Force are already under enough pressure that they don't know if they can spare assets from sea control to move and supply the Army overseas. We need superior leadership when control of the seas is contested in critical regions.
The value of having limited military threats to America for giving America the freedom to suppress or dissipate threats at the sources in Eurasia should not be underestimated and taken for granted.
And then we can work on the math of American naval power.
The foundation of American military power to protect America is aero-naval power. If America's aero-naval power can't hold the Atlantic and Pacific, enemies can directly threaten America or build up Western Hemisphere threats that require America to build up ground power. Which reduces resources available for aero-naval power to push back the threats from Eurasia. The foundation of that aero-naval power is secure northern and southern borders that allow America to have a relatively smaller ground force.
And keeping threats away from America helps preserve our freedoms by not needing to regiment America and constrain our freedoms. You do recall what happened to our relative freedom after 9/11, right? How much worse would it be if conventional enemies loomed over our coasts?
Let's fix the Navy and sustain the virtuous cycle rather then trigger a cycle of worsening security here at home.
UPDATE: The Navy remains focused like a laser on the real challenges it faces: climate change. To be fair, it isn't bad to wargame bad weather--a common thing. So if the Navy is just putting "green" camouflage on its useful exercises, I suppose I can't complain.
NOTE: My latest war coverage is here. Weekend data dump also has Ukraine-related entries.
