There is a certain challenge in underwater acoustics when you are looking for something you know is there, but you simply cannot hear it. Perhaps the ambient noise is too high, or perhaps you are not looking in the right frequency range. Other times it isn’t so much that you are having trouble hearing something that is there, but that there is nothing to hear. Want to find your target? Don’t investigate the noise that is out there, look for where there is no noise.
Since my post last week on the COVID-19 response on the TR, a lot has happened. What an event filled week.
In the last week I looked for what actions of commission and omission would lead our Navy to such an inglorious and embarrassing situation. I’ve read, I’ve listened, I’ve parsed memos and speeches, but the details provided little that was useful.
Getting nowhere, I started to steer the null … and then it broke out. In this whole sordid tale, there is a area of silence where there should at least be an expected ambient noise, but there isn’t.
We learned a lot about what the CO of TR said and did. We saw a lot of who is now the former Acting SECNAV said and did … but what in this timeline from Bradley Peniston at Defense One is missing?
March 22: The first TR sailor is diagnosed with COVID-19.
March 24: Two more TR sailors are diagnosed with COVID-19. They are medevaced off the ship.
March 25: Five more TR sailors are diagnosed with COVID-19 and medevaced off the ship.
March 26: TR begins testing entire crew for COVID-19. In Washington, Acting Secretary Modly and other Navy officials say the carrier will pull into port in Guam, fulfilling plans for a second port visit there, and that no TR sailor will be allowed to leave the pier, save those being treated at Naval Hospital Guam.
March 27: TR is pierside in Guam for the second time in its deployment.
March 28: Eight sailors have been sent to Naval Hospital Guam for treatment for COVID-19.
Saturday, March 29
Modly tells his chief of staff, Bob Love, to contact TR CO Capt. Crozier, and the two exchange emails.
Crozier and his superior officers are “struggling to reach a consensus on a plan of action, according to three people familiar with the discussions,” the Washington Post reported. “Among them were Rear Adm. Stuart Baker, who was embarked on the ship as its strike group commander, and Adm. John Aquilino, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Both admirals favored smaller mitigation efforts than Crozier wanted because of concerns about taking the carrier out of action and jeopardizing the mission.”
Monday, March 30
Love talks with Crozier by telephone, according to Modly, who said his staffer made it “very clear that if [Crozier] felt that he was not getting the proper response from his chain of command that he had a direct line into [Modly’s] office…The CO told my chief of staff that he was receiving those resources and he was fully aware of the Navy’s response, only asking that he wished the crew could be evacuated faster.”
Later: Crozier sends an unclassified 4-page memo via unclassified email to 20 or 30 Navy people, including his staff and leaders inside and outside his chain of command. Attached to an email that begins, “Dear Fellow Naval Aviators,” the memo asks for urgent approval and help in executing his proposal to remove all but 10 percent of his crew from the ship, lest sailors die “unnecessarily.”
Crozier wrote: “The spread of the disease is ongoing and accelerating. Decisive action is required.…We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die.”
Crozier’s immediate boss, Rear Adm. Baker — embarked aboard Roosevelt as the commander of its strike group — learns about the letter from Crozier’s group email. (per Modly)
Later (morning Washington time): Modly holds a conference call about the letter with CNO Gilday; Adm. John Aquilino, Pacific Fleet commander; Vice Adm. Bill Merz, 7th Fleet commander; Rear Adm. Bruce Gillingham, the Department of the Navy surgeon general.
7:47 a.m. (9:47 p.m. Guam time): Crozier posts to TR’s official Facebook page: “The TR Team is working with the great folks at Naval Base Guam to get Sailors off the ship and into facilities on base to help spread the crew out.” (Facebook post, screenshot)
Evening: Modly holds a second conference call about the letter.
Where were the constellation of Admirals in the Operational and Administrative chains of command between the CO of TR and the SECNAV?
Sure, in time we will – perhaps – find that out, but the public record is the public record.
Their absence in this storyline – including the decision to go in to Da Nang – is deafening.
To keep with the acoustic analogy, back up a bit. Check your bin-width/bandwith match up and your time constant. Look at a longer term view, and a pattern started to emerge – this is a pattern that, if looked at from the correct angle and resolution, starts to break out.
On dot is just that, a dot. A few dots are interesting. A lot of dots looked at a certain way turns in to something trackable.
Just to stick to recent history; from Fat Leonard, to the tragic events of 2017, to the Housewives of the Potomac drama involving the already confirmed prospective next CNO, to TR pierside in Guam we have a pattern of dysfunctional uniformed leadership at the highest levels. This isn’t a problem forced on the Navy by Congress. This isn’t anything caused by our sister services. This is only tangentially associated with the revolving parade of civilian appointees – no, this is all Navy.
Of course, there are great and wonderful exceptions, but we are not talking about individual failures here, this is a problem with the herd. Why are we selecting the type of senior leaders we are who lead us in to Fat Leonard, WESTPAC ’17, Ottomanesque intrigues, and playing the quiet game?
What are the rewards and incentives we have in our system for promotion to Flag? What kind of personalities predominately respond to those rewards and incentives, and therefor prosper under them? What do those personalities do when they gain significant access to levers of power and influence? How do those types of personalities, and the motivators and disincentives which drive them, respond to crisis and the unexpected?
Are we doing this right? Is our system producing the end product it needs?
Why did the German Army of WWI’s leadership overperform while the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s underperform? Why did the British Navy in the WWII Mediterranean overperform while the Italian Navy did not?
Who had the better selection of leaders in those four nations? You find your answers by looking at performance.
What has our recent record of performance been trying to tell us? Are these just isolated events with no connection, or are they external manifestations of an internal dysfunction?
We better figure that out sooner more than later. The system is still running the show.
