Understanding the Navy Bureaucracy to Get Things Done

"As CNO, Burke understood that the United States Navy was an immense bureaucracy, and that it was very hard, if not impossible, to communicate his desires, much less make his commands felt. In order to get things accomplished in the Pentagon, he decided it was “not wise to give a direct order” because if he did he would have to check whether it was carried out. Instead, he called the action officers to his office and convinced them of the importance of what he wanted. If the officer was “alert and enthusiastic” he could be counted on to follow through and do the necessary checking. This was "the main reason why" Burke believed that as CNO he could "influence things but I must get things done by persuasion and sometimes things do not get done which I think should be done." One tool Burke invariably employed in convincing his subordinates was good humor. His communications downward to Sailors and with his deputy CNOs and his fleet commanders and upward to the Secretary of Defense and even the President are filled with good-natured, self-effacing humorous comments that did much to get the CNO’s points across."

From the Navy History and Heritage Command.

The Navy Must Decide What It Stands For ...

or it will fall for anything.

- Drug use at the academy. Not one of my Leading Petty Officers would have believed Midshipman Curry's explanation for popping positive on his urinalysis test. Can't understand why VADM Fowler did.

- Commanding Officer fraternization. At least the Navy fired Captain John Titus.

- Commanding Officer abusive behavior/cruelty. Thankfully, the Navy finally fired Captain Holly Graf.

- Commanding Officer solicitation of prostitutes. Captain Little was fired in South Carolina.

We're batting .750 when we could easily bat 1.000 on these four cases. It's not over until it's over and with the recent outcry at the United States Navy Academy, I'm not sure that the 'fat lady' has sung in Midshipman Curry's case.

I LOVE OUR NAVY. I HOPE THIS ILLNESS IS SHORT-LIVED.

Trust and good counsel

The greatest trust between man and man is the trust of giving counsel.

Sir Francis Bacon

Commander U.S. 10th Fleet Establishment

Today is the official establishment ceremony for Commander, U.S. TENTH Fleet at Ft. George G. Meade, Maryland.

Vice Admiral Bernard J. "Barry" McCullough, III is Commander, U.S. Fleet Cyber Command/Commander, U.S. 10th Fleet. Bio is here.

Rear Admiral William E. Leigher is Deputy Commander, U.S. Fleet Cyber Command/U.S. 10th Fleet. Bio is here.

I suspect that Admiral Ernest J. King - commander of the original U.S. 10th Fleet would be proud that 'his' Fleet has been re-established.

Official Navy press release is here.

Navy Information Warfare Field

(090317-N-5174T-013 HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE, Hawaii (March 17, 2009) Adm. Robert F. Willard, commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet, thanks Lt. Heather Beal, an information warfare officer assigned to Navy Information Operations Command, Hawaii, during an Individual Augmentee awards luncheon for her service as an individual augmentee in Afghanistan. The event, held at the Hickam Air Force Base Officer's Club, was hosted by the Honolulu Council Navy League and recognized more than 150 Sailors and Marines for their service as Individual Augmentees. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Shane Tuck/Released)

As an Information Warfare Officer, you will live and work with information security, contributing to sensitive initiatives through the application of cryptology — specifically cryptography and cryptanalysis.

Navy Information Warfare combines two related skills: cryptography, or disguising communications to protect them, and cryptanalysis, or deciphering the coded communications of others.

Navy Information Warfare Officers specialize in disguising communications to protect them. You'll focus on the art of deciphering the coded communications of others. You'll work with highly sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment and supervise the investigative efforts of others.

As an Information Warfare Officer your duties may include:

• Deploying as part of a direct support team onboard surface warships or submarines or onboard operational staffs or joint task forces
• Deploying onboard specially configured aircraft conducting aerial reconnaissance in support of tactical, theater and national missions
• Qualifying as an Operations Watch Officer, responsible for real-time signal intelligence collection, processing, analysis and reporting
• Computer network operations
• Development and acquisition of cutting-edge exploitation and defense systems that directly support our core mission areas

The Information Warfare field is a highly competitive area offering advanced expertise and highly sought-after security clearance. Your mission will be to perform Naval Information Operations functions as directed by the Chief of Naval Operations afloat and ashore, as well as National Signals Intelligence tasks assigned by the National Security Agency. You’ll be trained to operate and maintain specialized electronic equipment, such as radio receivers, antennae, recorders and computers.

Candidates must possess a bachelor’s or postgraduate degree from an accredited college in political science, foreign language, mathematics, economics, geography, electronics, physics or history.

Taken from the Navy's "Careers and Jobs" website 20 January 2010.

We Should: Think, Read, Write and Publish - ADM James Stavridis

This is a personal note to me is from several years ago when VADM Stavridis was Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's Senior Military Assistant (SMA).

This particular note came after his reading my article which was later published in the United States Naval Institute PROCEEDINGS entitled, "360 Degree Feedback - Can We Handle The Truth?"

Welcome to the Cryptologic Community

Do letters matter? Do 35 year old letters matter? Why does it matter and who does it matter to?

The letter on the right is a Welcome to the Cryptologic Community letter to a young LT in the diesel submarine community. It was written and delivered 35 years ago. Note the signature - G.P. March (That was not done with a signature pen.) The letter is old and its recipient is approaching middle age. This letter marks a significant milestone in this officer's career. It was a MAJOR transition for that officer. That MAJOR transition was recognized by the leader of the cryptologic community at the time - Rear Admiral G. Pat March who passed away on 18 October 2009. You can read about him elsewhere on this blog.

Critics will argue that it is a form letter and sending the letter was a mere formality - both meaningless, for the most part. The officer receiving this letter had no sense that this was a form letter and the process a mere formality. He competed with some number of other officers who wanted to become a cryptologist and he was selected. Others were not. He got a letter and others did not.

The Information Dominance Corps and the Information Warfare community should reinstate the practice of welcoming lateral transfers and new accessions with a letter recognizing their achievement. Truth be told, many of our community's most senior leaders have come from other warfare communities - RADM Deets was in training to be a Naval Aviator, RADM Singer was a SWO and so was VADM Dorsett.

Years ago (1986) when you had to request augmentation to the regular Navy, I received a letter from the Admiral welcoming me to the "Regular" Navy. I still have that letter as well as a letter from a Commanding Officer who said that he always "thought that I was a Regular guy anyway". Do these letters mean anything? I will let the length of time that they are kept by their recipients answer that. 35 years-24 years. I think that means something.

John Paul Jones

On this date in 1913, the body of John Paul Jones was laid to rest in the Chapel of the United States Naval Academy.

1985 USNA GRAD WAS 2006 VADM STOCKDALE INSPIRATIONAL LEADERSHIP AWARD NOMINEE

Captain Babette Bolivar is a 1985 graduate of the United States Naval Academy. In sharp contrast to those traits demonstrated by her classmate Captain Holly A. Graf (former CO of USS COWPENS), Captain Bolivar was recognized in 2006 as the CNO’s Pacific Fleet Finalist for the VADM James Bond Stockdale Inspirational Leadership Award. To date, she has been the only woman nominee. VADM James Bond Stockdale Inspirational Leadership Award candidates are peer nominated, meaning her fellow Commanding Officers recognized in her those traits which best represent the five roles of leadership that VADM Stockdale exhibited himself.

Those roles are:

Moralist
Commitment to a personal code of conduct which emphasizes strong moral ethics, courage, resolve, and humility as demonstrated by personal and professional service to members of the Naval service.

Jurist
Ability to establish policy, which can be implemented and obeyed, and to make those hard decisions, based on the policy, in those difficult situations, which portend endless complications.

Teacher
Example of self-discipline, sensitivity to others, and ability to place the major issues in proper prospective while creating the motivational command climate essential for job satisfaction and organizational pride.

Steward
Example of competence, proper regard for the rights of others, and personal commitment to the development and maintenance of accepted standards, unit loyalty, and esprit de corps.

Philosopher
Ability to reason, understand and explain the essence of reality and recognize the need for forethought in dealing with uncertainties.

Story about the VADM J.B. Stockdale Award winners here. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen was a winner when he was a Commander.

She is the CO of Naval Weapons Station Yorktown. Her biography is here. She is a member of the Women Divers Hall of Fame.

A Lesson Learned For Captain Holly A. Graf

"But it is not alone with officers that a commander has to deal. Behind them, and the foundation of all, is the crew. To his men the commanding officer should be prophet, priest, and king. The crew should be impressed with the idea that the Captain can do no wrong. This is the most delicate of all the commanding officer's obligations. No rule can be set for meeting it. It must ever be a question of tact and perception of human nature on the spot, and to wit the occasion. If an officer fails in this he cannot make up for such failure by severity, austerity, or cruelty. Use force, and apply restraint and punishment as he may, he will always have a sullen crew and an unhappy ship. Force must be used sometimes in the interest of discipline. On such occasions the quality of the commander will be most sorely tried.

When a commander has by tact, patience, justice, and firmness, each exercised in its proper turn, produced such an impression upon those under his orders in a ship of war, he has only to await the appearance of his enemy's topsails on the horizon, and he may be sure of victory over an equal or somewhat superior force, or honourable defeat by one greatly superior. Or in rare cases, sometimes justifiable, he may challenge the devotion of his followers to sink with him alongside the more powerful foe, and all go down together with the unstricken flag of their country still waving defiantly over them. No such achievements are possible in an unhappy ship with a sullen crew."

From the Royal Navy Review 1913

Cyber Actions Have A Presence and Reality In the Physical World

(Retired 1610 Captain, USN) Jim Newman of the Navy Information Operations Command (Hawaii) serving with the National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) Hawaii said that ... "all cyber actions have a presence and a reality in the physical world. Accordingly, the United States needs to structure the cyber part in the same way it structures the joint command world."

Quoted at TECHNET 2009 in Hawaii.

From:
Cybersecurity Issues Reach Across Vast Pacific Region
By Robert K. Ackerman
SIGNAL Magazine, January 2010

WHEN LETTERS WERE HANDWRITTEN: SOME ADVICE TO A YOUNG DESTROYER CAPTAIN

Royal Navy Air Station, Somewhere in Britain

1944

Dear Phillip,

I am sorry I have been away, so your letter has laid unread for some days; and I am, as usual, very busy on returning to the job.

There are, of course, hundreds of pit-falls into which a new destroyer captain may fall; but they are so many and varied that I cannot possibly think of putting them all down in one letter. Moreover, unlike Jehovah of old, I don't think that a list of "thou shalt nots " can ever be very much help, so I will try and give you a few "thou shalts."

Your first concern in producing a good ship must, of course, be discipline. Never forget that the whole discipline of a ship is vested in the person of its commanding officer. My Lords. in their wisdom have evolved the existing system with a view to keeping it absolutely fair. Summary justice, if sympathetically and intelligently wielded by the captain, can be the fairest form of justice known to men. (Do not imagine that courts martial, etc., are fairer. They are not, because they are so mixed up with legal procedure that the human element is lost.) On the other hand summary justice wielded by one man can be very unfair since we are all subject to prejudices and partialities. So Rule One is : see to it that your summary justice is utterly fair and impartial. On your success in this rests the discipline and morale of your ship.

Next in importance I think I would put your relations with your officers. Having been one of my officers you have probably a pretty fair idea of my ideas on the subject, but I would like to emphasize that you cannot get on without efficient officers; and officers, particularly inexperienced ones, will never be efficient unless they are given a full sense of responsibility. Never let an officer get the impression that you are not prepared to trust his judgment, but try and always give the impression that you assume 100 per cent. zeal and efficiency on the part of your officers and are rather surprised and hurt when you find that standard is not reached. If you get a really bad officer, the only cure is to fling him out; there is no room for a bad officer in a small ship. Do not forget, however, that a mediocre officer can quickly blossom into a good one if properly led, and that if not properly handled he will in all probability become a bad one. Fortunately there are few officers in our Service who are fundamentally bad and incurable. I can think of one, can't you?

Next in order, but of equal importance, is your reputation on the lower deck. Don't imagine for one moment that the lower deck can be "bounced." In a small overcrowded community, cut off from the world, such as the mess deck of a destroyer, one of the main recreations is gossip; and the great subject, which is always ready to hand for the gossiper, is his officers and particularly his commanding officer. The lower deck's judgment of their officers is terrifyingly perceptive, and the slightest foibles or weaknesses of their commanding officer are leapt upon with the pleasure of a gossiping washerwoman. Fortunately, however, the sailor is a generous soul; and when he has made his mind up about you he will overlook many little human frailities and keep his eye firmly on the bright side. But before he does this you must establish yourself in his confidence, and there is only one way to do this. He does not look upon you as a better man than himself because you happen to be wearing gold lace and brass buttons, but he does acknowledge that by your training and experience you are capable of doing a job which he could not hope to do. The way to gain his confidence, and the only way, is the hard way of proving your capabilities. However sympathetic with his domestic difficulties you may be (and it is important that you should be so) you will never gain the sailor's whole-hearted support until you have proved to him that you know your job.

I think perhaps the next subject should be handling the ship. The more detailed aspects of this gentle art I expect you learned from me during our time together, particularly when you were "the pilot." But there are a couple of golden rules which I have always followed and I cannot think of better advice to give you. The first is : "never fight the elements if you can help it." By this I mean that if you can possibly make use of the wind and the tide to get your ship into the desired position those elements will get you there quicker than all the horse-power in the world. In its simplest form this rule is expressed in the time-honoured rule which every coxswain of a boat is taught, namely; "always stem the tide coming alongside." But it has a much wider application if you think about it. Thus you will know that as soon as way is off your ship it will be impossible to get the bows up into wind by manoeuvring the engines. Therefore arrange that you get in such a position that you do not wish to put your bows up into the wind. Similarly you will also know that with the ship stopped in a beam wind the stern will go very easily up into the wind, so plan your approach so as to make use of this phenomenon.

The second golden rule is: "as fast as possible at sea and as slow as possible in harbour." I think you have probably heard me say this before. The slowness in harbour can of course be overdone in boisterious weather conditions, since a destroyer has a nasty habit of going sideways if she is not going ahead very quickly; but on the other hand if you hit something going slow you will not do a great deal of harm, whereas a really decent crash with 1,500 tons behind it is apt to cost the country a great deal in wasted time and manpower. It is often easier to take a destroyer alongside a difficult berth at excessive speed and rely upon the engine-room to provide you with efficient brakes at the right moment. This is not seamanship. In the worst case the engine-room boys may let you down, in which case there is one hell of a hole in your bows; but in all cases you have virtually lost control as soon as your screws are going full speed astern, and there is also a strong likelihood that one engine will either start or stop before the other one which will give you an uncontrollable swing and, to use an expression borrowed from my present trade, "You've had it ! "

Another way not to do it is to approach a place where you are being blown on to the berth by a strong beam wind, by leaving yourself plenty of room and then drifting down on top of it. It is surprising how much damage a destroyer can do to her tender hull by arriving violently on the fenders with a really good drift on. I don't think I can go into any more details; there are so many hundreds of situations with which you will be faced and which you must solve for yourself, but the above two golden rules can be trusted not to let you down really badly. There is only one really good reason for getting your ship smashed and that is in action with the enemy, and even then only if you are achieving something useful by smashing him worse.

If you are going to stick the racket of war very long one of your chief concerns must be the training of your officers of the watch at sea. This is becoming more and more difficult in these days of inexperience amongst the majority, but it is by no means impossible to avoid the necessity for remaining yourself on the bridge for excessively long hours. The only way to make a good officer of the watch is to teach him first your way of going about things and then insist upon him doing it himself without your supervision but with the knowledge that you are ever at his call if he wants you quickly. Excessive super­vision will never make a bad officer of the watch into a good one. The only way is to build up his confidence in himself. This may sometimes turn your hair grey; but it is, as I said, the only way. I have spent many hours on the lower bridge before I was confident that some particular officer was competent to carry on in my absence - on the lower bridge because he did not know that his actions were being supervised. It paid me handsomely and I have never yet been in a ship where I could not get almost all the sleep I wanted (and I can take a good deal). Always be prepared, however, to arrive on the bridge at double-quick time if you are wanted. The responsibility is yours; and it is unfair to a young officer to expect him to hold the baby if he is not confident in himself. Your job is to build up that confidence.

Well, I think that is about enough fatherly advice for one letter. I tried to write you when you were in your prison camp; but the censor kept on sending it back because I had broken some piffling rule, so I eventually chucked my hand in. I wanted to write and tell you how very proud I was of the old ship's last action-she certainly had a Viking's funeral. ­

Give my respects to your wife and tell her that my present station is an excellent one for Wrens. My own family is flourishing, thank you. Unfortunately the brat is now high enough to see over the top of the table and everything comes off it on to the floor ­she needs much more supervision than any officer of the watch.

Best of luck to you with your first command, and do write and tell me how things are going.

Yours very sincerely,

G.H.S

From the U.K. Naval Review

For Those Who Wish To Limit The Discussion

In his farewell orders to the Manchurian Army, Kuropatkin wrote :

"Men of strong individuality are with us, unfortunately, often passed over instead of receiving accelerated promotion. Because they are a source of anxiety to some officers in peace time, they get suppressed as being headstrong. The result is that they leave the service; whilst others who possess neither force of character nor conviction, but who are subservient and always ready to agree with their superiors, are promoted." After looking back on the vast drama in which he had played so great and melancholy a part, he pronounces the final dictum :

" There is only one thing that matters, and that is the truth."

Memorial Service Support

Worth knowing.

The National Defense Authorization Act for FY2010, Public Law 111-84, Section 631, Travel and Transportation for Deceased Members of the Uniformed Services to Attend Memorial Services, Washington, D.C., Oct. 30, 2009.

Congress established a new entitlement that authorizes travel and transportation to specific family members to attend a memorial service in honor of a deceased service member. DoD has not yet published implementing guidance regarding installation or unit memorial service entitlements for this new law.

Commanders must understand which family members are entitled to funded travel, the time allowed for travel, and any restrictions that may apply.

100,000 Visitor Blog Tuneup

It's a milestone I never expected to reach. Thank you to each and every visitor. Special thanks to those who have made constructive comments along the way. Suggestions for improvement are certainly welcome.