One year ago this week, the LHD-6 Bonhomme Richard caught fire in the San Diego Harbor. It took four days to fully extinguish the fire and the Navy scrapped the ship rather than repair it. No cause for the fire has been released. A Covid outbreak on the U.S.S. Roosevelt led to the resignation of the Acting Secretary of the Navy. This and other mishaps led four Republican lawmakers to commission a survey of sailors. The results are depressing.

The four Republican lawmakers are all serious men and all have military experience. They are:

–Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, U.S. Army Captain, eight years service.
–Congressman Dan Crenshaw of Texas, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander, ten years service.
–Congressman Jim Banks of Indiana, U.S. Navy Reserve Lieutenant, 2012-present.
–Congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, U.S. Marines Captain, seven years service.

The lawmakers tasked two well-respected retired officers to conduct the survey. They are:

–Lieutenant General Robert E. Schmidle, USMC, Ret. – His impressive biography can be read here.
–Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, USN, Ret. – His biography can be read here.

Serious people do serious work. Their full report “A REPORT ON THE FIGHTING CULTURE OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY SURFACE FLEET” can be read here. Seventy-seven current and recently retired surface warfare sailors were surveyed. The U.S. Naval Institute News reported:

The Navy’s surface warfare community is weighed with a culture that values administrative chores over training to fight, ship commanders that are micromanaged and an aversion to risk, according to a new survey overseen by a retired Navy admiral and Marine general at the behest of a group of Republican lawmakers. That culture was at least partially responsible for a string “of high-profile and damaging operational failures in the Navy’s Surface Warfare community,” the report found.

The aversion to risk is known as “zero defects”. Regarding incidents like Bonhomme Richard, two destroyer collisions in the Pacific and, I hate even thinking about this one, the riverine sailors who surrendered to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps:

“When asked whether incidents such as the two destroyer collisions in the Pacific, the surrender of a small craft to the IRGC in the [Persian] Gulf, the burning of the Bonhomme Richard and other incidents were part of a broader cultural or leadership problem in the Navy, 94 percent of interviewees responded ‘yes’,” reads the report. Fifty-five percent said there was a direct connection between leadership, culture and the incidents.

Yes, according to reports, at least two Admirals had warned that the sailors in the boat surrender incident were not prepared for their mission. And, nobody listened?

From the Washington Examiner comes this devastating take from a Black, female sailor, who sounds pretty darn squared away:

“Sometimes I think we care more about whether we have enough diversity officers than if we’ll survive a fight with the Chinese navy,” according to an officer the report describes as “one lieutenant currently on active duty.”

“It’s criminal. They think my only value is as a black woman,” she added, according to the report. “But you cut our ship open with a missile and we’ll all bleed the same color.”

This from a formerly active and now reserve officer:

“We’ll spend hours and hours on drill weekends or other areas talking about like, ‘OK, what’s the checklist you have to have in place? Do you have all your right uniforms?’ But there is no training like, ‘what is the current situation in China?’” Montgomery and Schmidle quote “a former active-duty surface warfare officer and current reservist” as saying. “And to me, if we’re focused on the front-line warfighting, we should know the worst we’re going into and what the greater context is. There’s none of that right now.”

Today, the hearing commenced for the nomination Commander Carlos Del Toro U.S. Navy (ret.) as Secretary of the Navy. Del Toro was impressive and sober in his back and forth with Tom Cotton. The “sober” is a nod to Josephus Daniels who abolished alcohol on Naval ships.

The fear of making a mistake (zero defects) will have an attrition effect on personnel and lead to the most cautious officers rising through the ranks. I liked his answer on micro-management too. As a former Naval Commander, he is in a unique position to understand these issues. Since the Russian Navy is no longer considered a peer, the Navy hasn’t really had a peer to focus on. Yes, the Chinese Navy is rising, but they are not our equal. And, the People’s Republic’s top down command leaves naval leaders afraid to make any decision.

With Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, looking for white supremacists in the military and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley, studying his white rage, it will fall to the individual service Secretaries to maintain our standing military. When Carlos Del Toro is confirmed, he has a big job ahead of him after this report.

Featured Image: Bonhomme Richard/U.S. Pacific Fleet/Flickr.com/cropped/Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0)