The American people—along with most of the free world—have come to rely on the U.S. armed forces to be there when and where it matters. As a long-serving member of the armed forces, I like this reliance; it helps ensure I am focused, and makes it clear I am in a “no-fail” mission.

As the United States re-enters a time of great power competition following a long period of strategic atrophy, I expect reliance on U.S. armed forces will only grow. Few other nations have the national will, coupled with the national resources, to stand up to pacing threats such as Russia and China, as well as the nontraditional threats such as ISIS, extremist organizations, and non-state actors. Although there are great coalitions that work against these threats, partners, allies, and friends all look to the United States wield the “Big Stick.” This stick was pretty easy to swing over the past 25 years—but the opposing team is getting much tougher.

Since the end of the Cold War, we have lived in a world where the United States could rely on massive overmatch. In a game of life and death, I like having this advantage. With this overmatch, the likelihood I succeed in my mission is much higher (and, frankly, I do not need to prepare as much, nor accept as much risk). I like the cards being dealt in my favor, as well as having several aces up my sleeves. That is a comfortable place to be when it comes to warfighting.

But this comfort in overmatch created problems in several key areas. Most notably in the culture of the U.S. armed forces—the Navy in particular.

Overmatch is Both Good and Bad

Good: This does not need much discussion. Winning easily comes from overmatch. Winning is what the armed forces are supposed to do. But winning easily is not what will happen going forward. Pacing threats stay with us, and they punch back.

Procurement and Risk Aversion

Overmatch created, among other things, aversion to risk. This is most prevalent in U.S. procurement programs. Without a pacing threat, the procurement processes have stagnated. Since the end of the Cold War, there has been very little need to keep up with the Joneses.

The Navy’s procurement process is designed to deliver high quality products to the Fleet, and in most cases does an extremely good job delivering this quality. Sailors’ lives depend on this quality, so as a taxpayer and a sailor myself, I like high quality. The bar is appropriately set very high for a system the Navy procures. The problem is the procurement processes adds a level of bureaucracy which reformers often cannot (or should not need to) meet.

People who are in the procurement business have job security because their standards are so exacting. If something is not good enough, they are the ones to tell the provider to try again, and the Navy of today is better equipped as a whole because of their high standards. The processes put in place to field a new system are purposely torturous to ensure the providers complete their due diligence. Look at the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program (NNPP), responsible for cradle to grave ownership of every aspect of the Navy’s nuclear-powered warships. Naval reactors make their service providers strive for perfection. In the rare instance where perfection is not provided, NR compels the provider to get to the root cause of what went wrong, then fix it. And what is the NNPP’s track record to date? Perfection: hundreds of millions miles steamed without accident. Despite what former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman might think, the NNPP’s standards are not getting any lower any time soon.

As a submarine officer, I have been subject to the standards of the NNPP, and an advocate for them at the same time. External to my role as “a good nuke,” I have seen firsthand where the innovation and procurement processes collide.

Case in point: Several years ago, I was involved in an innovative experiment in which commercially available communication technologies, including high-speed internet satellite communications, wi-fi, and 4G/LTE were integrated to provide enhanced bandwidth to some of the Navy’s communication disadvantaged ships. In today’s age, where information is power, it made sense to take capabilities off the shelf, and employ them in an innovative and militarily significant manner. We even obtained permission to pass properly encrypted and secured classified information over this link.

But this three-week experiment proved to be dramatically more difficult to pull off than I initially though. We encountered many hurdles along the way, some of which were expected and we addressed, but many did not seem consistent with the need to overcome strategic atrophy.

To be given permission to bring hand-held 4G/LTE and wi-fi devices on board a ship, we were directed to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to validate that this technology would not damage other permanently installed components on the ship. In essence, we were tasked to validate a cell phone would not break the combat system of a warship. How many cell phones come on board the average ship every day? I do not have definitive data to answer this question, but based on my personal observations I would estimate it is about the same number as there are sailors assigned.

We were tasked to validate a 400-pound antenna would not cause either a catastrophic failure of the deck to which it was attached, or cause instability in the seaworthiness of the ship. As a submarine officer I personally do not know much about surface ship design, but I think I have seen more than the equivalent of two adult males stand next to each other topside on a warship, and not fall through the deck, nor cause the ship to tip over.

We were tasked to validate these antennas would not damage other sensitive electronic components topside when energized. This test made sense to me, as I thought there was real value in ensuring radiated energy from a temporary antenna would not damage permanently installed equipment. Then I found out all these tests were already done to validate the same systems would not be damaged by the same antenna on a different (but similar) class of ship.

This experiment—known in the Seventh Fleet as Pandara Net—demonstrated the Navy’s aversion to risk and the procurement community’s perspective to only accept perfection in the effort to maintain massive overmatch. Again—perfection is important, but perfection and progress are not the same thing.

The bar for procurement was applied to invention in this experiment. Every one of these tests makes good sense if the Navy is considering a decision about billions of dollars, and whether it should outfit all ships with a new and permanently installed system. These extensive tests served to eliminate risk; common sense and some critical thinking could have mitigated the risk for a three-week experiment, saved hundreds of thousands of dollars, and streamlined an important initiative. We saw it play out, however, that bureaucracy in procurement is the art of making the possible impossible.

So what is the lesson here? Do not confuse procurement with progress. Allow learning—also known as failure—in experimentation, and do not apply the same standards to two entirely different efforts. Let procurement sustain current overmatch; enable experimentation to create new areas of overmatch. The culture where the Navy cannot ever fail—even when we try something new—is eroding our advantage. But more on that later.

Overmatch and Vulnerability

The Navy culture has become comfortable with so much overmatch, it assumes it is not vulnerable. Overmatch in the past two decades created the assumption we will operate with impunity; that the Navy can “fly, sail, and operate anywhere international law allows” without getting punched. Or if someone tried to punch, the Navy could swat them away like flies. This is not the case anymore, both on a small scale against terrorists hellbent on making headlines, and a large scale against pacing threats of Russia and China.

Being so good in delivering violence from great distance has caused adversaries to fight back in no-traditional ways; ways the Navy might not be able to predict and defend against. Not being able to compete in one sport has caused foes to pick up new sports; new sports in which a behemoth has vulnerability.

Consider the case of the USS Cole (DDG-67). The opponents could not compete on the football field, so they lobbed rotten fruit from the bleachers. With the U.S. focus on more traditional threats—against whom we have a significant advantage—the Navy let its guard down against an unsophisticated mob. Being so much better than the opponent on the playing field created confidence any lobbed fruit would be nothing but an annoyance, and therefore not necessary to worry about. Seventeen sailors died on board the Cole, partly since a DDG has such overmatch against virtually every traditional threat in that region.

Overmatch was also a contributing factor to the 2017 incidents in the Seventh Fleet. The Navy systems were so good, and its overmatch so absolute, it developed the belief one DDG could handle any threat posed by any adversary. Assuming it was so good at the high-end fight, why would the Navy need to spend effort on the basics? Overmatch (as well as a slew of other cultural factors our Navy is addressing across all communities) created blind spots.

So what is the lesson here? Overmatch created a culture of invulnerability. Assuming any degree of invulnerability creates complacency. Over the past three decades, the Navy developed complacency and now threats who can pace with current U.S. capabilities will more easily outpace us in the future.

The Navy needs to prepare every sailor of every rank to be good at what they do and be confident in their abilities—and the service is doing that pretty well. But it need to make every sailor of every rank know that every bad actor is out there to trying to unseat them from the top, and that they are working in shifts. This convincing starts when new sailors get off the bus at Great Lakes—or any other accession point—and ends when they leave the service. The Navy does not need to overhaul its training programs in the content of what it teaches; its need its teachers to know the urgency of this threat, the risks of not properly addressing it, and the essentiality of making their students understand this perspective.

There are still risks from unsophisticated mobs (who, unfortunately, are growing in their sophistication). The Navy must remember that threats can come from any direction, and they can be way tougher to handle than a Boston whaler. The quality of Navy training programs, and the individuals we have standing in the front of the classroom are at the front line of this fight.

The Navy must also (re)learn that it are not going against the threats all alone.

Ship Action vs. Fleet-Level Maneuver

Great ships with awesome power are outstanding. Against less capable threats, the capabilities of the individual ship easily win the fight. But that will not be the fight of the future. Having highly capable individual ships is great; highly capable individual ships working as a fleet, is greater.

A culture of invulnerability and overmatch allows the Navy to operate alone and unafraid. As a submarine officer, who spent the bulk of my career operating independently from other ships, I am comfortable in this role. I know I have the upper hand against almost anyone, and I have known what it is like to operate with impunity in the presence of a potential adversaries. But I am not going to win all on my own. Navy culture, in which a single submarine, or a DDG on independent ops, or even a single strike group, assumes it can win the fight is not what it takes to prevail going forward; the fully integrated capabilities of the fleet is.

Synergy is a clichéd term, but appropriate in this case. A single littoral combat ship, working in concert (but probably far removed) from a submarine, which is then equally removed from a carrier strike group, is truly greater than the sum of the parts. The sub might kick down the door, but the it must know when and how to get out of the way of the rest of the combat power wielded by the integrated fleet.

Fortunately, this cultural shift toward fleet-level maneuver warfare is well underway. War games are already playing at the fleet level, and the independently minded Submarine Force is on board as well. The Submarine Force is even starting to teach it commanding officers that they are not truly out there on their own, which I can assure is a new way of thinking. The Navy is changing the culture about how it thinks it is going to fight, and is doing well in this key area. It cannot shut down on the throttles one bit is this most essential cultural shift.

There are also some related cultural shifts the Navy must undertake to keep its competitive edge. They stem from the threats the Navy experienced since the end of the Cold War, and its preeminence as a naval force over the past 30 years.

Being So Good Means You Shouldn’t Lose (Even a Little)

The Navy is good, and it knows it is good. It has great tools, and can out-gun and out-run its adversaries. It’s are the world’s preeminent Navy, and is relied on in a no-fail mission.

An unwanted side effect of this combination is this: Many leaders are no longer willing to accept risk. Risk involves failure from time to time, and with the above combination, few are willing to accept the chance they might fail. Risk aversion stifles growth rate in learning, and will lead to degrades in the advantages we have over our potential adversaries in the maritime domain.

I do mean to say the Navy should promote people who come in second, fail as a matter of routine, or take unnecessary risks. The service appropriately promotes the best and most successful warfighters to the highest positions of leadership. However, the Navy must foment a culture that accepts risks in areas where it can, and enables learning through failure. The Navy does not want to promote failure; it needs to promote people who demonstrate they learn the fastest whenever they do fall short, and apply those lessons across multiple endeavors. The service need to not derail the people who accept risk (where appropriate), fall short, but then get back up stronger for the experience.

I do not think these ideas about learning are new. I predict few senior officers will disagree or claim they are risk intolerant or unwilling to accept some degrees of failure. The change that needs to happen is in the packaging of the messages about how we learn. The need to highlight the wins it achieves through the folks who try, fail, learn, and then succeed. It need to highlight the people who came up with a new idea we don’t adopt across the Navy. The headline “So-and-so develops new tactic, and it didn’t work!” shows people are thinking about new tactics, and the Navy is trying the and learning organization. Let’s highlight and celebrate people who try something new. To learn faster, everyone in the Navy needs to know about the leaders who have demonstrated they can be bold, take a few hits, then enhance their fighting position based on their experience.

Now What?

The habits the Navy learned over the past 25 years will be tough to unlearn, and there are not really any easy solutions to the challenges going forward. There are also not any good metrics to evaluate—before the bullets start flying at least—to determine if the Navy gets this right. But that’s okay. The first step on the road to recovery is identifying you have a problem.

Regarding overmatch—the Navy must keep it. But more importantly, it does not stay comfortable with it. The service should use what Jared Diamond called “constructive paranoia.” The Navy must urgently look for ways to enhance its advantages, and never be comfortable in our current fighting position.

U.S. preeminence as a naval force must be sustained, but neither retaining this lead nor job security come from eliminating risk. Job security comes from the potential adversaries out there who are outpacing the United States; those adversaries who have already shed the yoke of strategic atrophy. This is a whole-of-Navy effort, and everyone must be on board. Senior Navy leaders understand this, and I think people at the tip of the spear understand this. Unfortunately, the bureaucracy that runs the Navy sometimes might not. With fiscal challenges only getting larger, we must get the people in the middle of the Navy bureaucracy to shed that yoke as well.

The Navy also must sustain and rapidly grow the culture in which it empowers improvement at all levels, and make it an all-hands effort. For an individual to learn rapidly, they must understand why their duties are important; they must be vested in the mission of the organization. Otherwise, where is the drive to build the proverbial better mouse trap? If leaders in an organization have not made the team believe trapping mice is important, then the mouse catchers will merely maintain the status quo. Ensuring sailors know their jobs are important—and they can individually make or break the success of a mission—will make the people who know the problems best come up with the most effective solutions. This sort of attitude is derived from the command culture, and it is driven from the top of each organization in our Navy.

The Navy will overcome strategic atrophy, and maintain its preeminence as a naval force, one ship and one sailor at a time.