Admiral James Stavridis' speech at the Surface Navy Association (SNA) from 16 January is HERE.
Briefly, he said, we should:
- Listen more
- Build intellectual capital
- Learn languages
- Use social networks
- Use every available technology to our advantage
LCS will work. We've had early problems with every ship type. Sailors overcome.
We need to think more about cyber. "Vice Admiral Rogers, this is for you. I was more worried about cyber than any other aspect in my last job."
No one should doubt the ability of the U.S. Navy or the surface warfare community "to conduct prompt and sustained combat operations at sea. It is who we are and what we do."
4 comments:
Any residual respect I had for the man faded after watching this video of him at the SNA symposium.
-The PLO and its splinters were not aspiring to be Al Quida. They inspired Al Quida because of our pathetic response to their outrageous terrorism against Americans which they were permitted to get away with and assisted with by our own government.
-A Canadian Corporal, by definition, doesn't have anything else to do in 9 months in Afghanistan so he has plenty of time to learn Pashtun. It doesn't work that way in our surface forces.
-Language and listening. We have NSA to do that. NSA shares all that data and information with the appropriate people so we don't all have to waste our time learning Urdu or Arabic or Assyrian.
-Where are NATO's Hospital Ships and NATO's ice breakers? Why is the Navy on the hook for disaster relief? Shouldn't FEMA or some other agency do that? Where are NATO's mobile field hospitals? How many ROPU do they typically send to disaster stricken areas?
-Anything you ever connected to the www or stored online is now available, at the appropriate level, in China, Russia and probably in India and if you think otherwise, you were not informed.
-LCS is known for many of its failures. Its most notorious failure, among too many, is its repeated Fail To Sail, which means it never will be able to execute sustained combat operations. It also doesn't have the means or the manpower to do so. The DDs and DDG and FFG were slightly maligned but the problems they had could be fixed by throwing more sailors at them. You literally cannot do that in LCS.
-The admiral knows all that. I am quite disappointed that he continues the masquerade with regard to the dismal failure of LCS. The writing is on the wall in that its numbers have been slashed in half (now, more later I'm sure) and by the fact that this precious 9 year old concept and 5 year old ship has still not completed a deployment or participated in the coastal operations in and around the PI, Strait of Hormuz, Red Sea, NAS, Persian Gulf or any other arena of conflict.
Haters gonna hate.
@ 3:52, does it really seem that way to you? Stavrides had a chance to stand up and be counted granted only to men who reach flag rank and he sat down. Now that he is retired he continues to ignore the harsh realities imposed by the men like him who dared not criticize LCS until it was far too late and even now won't presume to question its effectiveness as a mine countermeasures ship or as a surface combatant or as an ASW platform.
If you simply denounce criticism as hate, you explain so much about why people like Stavrides have done what they did and held their tongue.
I'm with you on all of this, HMS Defiant.
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