1. Mission takes priority over maintenance, security, training, and everything else.
2. Ships spare parts and maintenance funded at 65% of the requirement vice the 90% of requirements used to fund naval aviation spares and maintenance.
3. Do more with less continues to be a successful strategy for promotion PROVIDED you are not in command when the INSURV team arrives.
4. Yard periods cancelled and deferred to save funding and enable very short turnarounds between longer and longer deployments.
The United States continues to have the world’s finest military manned by the greatest Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen the world has ever known.
However, our acquisition and budgeting systems REFUSE to acknowledge the TRUE costs of the complex weapon systems we field. (You can take the published cost and multiply by 3 to get in the neighborhood of the initial acquisition cost, which will be well less than 40% of the total cost to operate and maintain after fielding).
EVERYTIME the military has attempted to measure the total cost of ownership, or true operating costs, with accurate metrics and a verifiable methodology the leadership has blanched and lost its nerve. Not because there were too many significant figures in the answer, but because there were too many commas.
I make no excuses for the Commanding Officers of the USS STOUT or USS CHOSIN, it s*cks to be them. But those who sit in judgement know full well that “there are those that have and those that will.”
The finest mentor I ever had in the Navy told me they “give you your first command and see how lucky you are!”
One more.
Was the CO, XO, AND Sqd CO of either ship ever ranked by political corruptness (er, correctness), or by poetical competence?
Amen, brother....
I like that and it's probably for the most part true.