It should come as no surprise to readers that the state of the United States Navy is similar to the state of the U.S. civil service writ large — bloated, slow, indecisive, and struggling to execute its core function. Once a dynamic fighting force able to seize control of the globe’s two largest oceans, the Navy today is about as effective as a floating DMV. Long maintenance lines have left ships rusting and unimpressive. Young officers no longer seem to desire squadron or ship command, once prestigious and coveted postings. Talent leaves early, mediocrity is tenured.
The Navy has a new boss, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, and with her new posting come formidable challenges. The service has been captured by bureaucrats, timid officers, and civil servants who have spent their careers chasing out promising young officers who took a look around their ships and said to hell with this. You can find many of these top performing junior grades on Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and in prominent international law firms. These days they are harder to come by in the fleet. Franchetti is well regarded in military circles, considered a natural and gifted leader. With the threat from China dire, hopes are that she can return the Navy to a “meat-eating” mindset. That is, a culture that builds out dynamic war-winning leaders and ceases the practice of mindless promotion of leaf-eating bureaucrats and administrators to the senior ranks.
It is worth establishing what “bureaucrat” means. At least in military terms.
The bureaucrat is one who cares more about his station and career than about the mission. Bureaucrats hate risk because risk has little benefit. Bureaucrats see their goal as a pension at the highest allowable rate because bureaucrats find comfort in government and have a difficult time in the results-orientated private sector. Bureaucrats hate leaders because leaders are a threat to the bureaucrat. Leaders define success by the accomplishment of a mission. Bureaucrats define success as proximity to their boss’s posterior and the creation and implementation of administrative function. New functions create the need for more bureaucrats. This is, of course, pleasing to the bureaucrat.
The bureaucrat seeks out his natural enemy, the leader, and burdens him with so many administrative obligations that the leader quits in frustration and shoves off for Wharton or law school. The vast multitude of Navy problems are not difficult to diagnose. The service is swollen with bureaucrats who believe that office administration and servicing the bureaucracy — rather than winning wars or finding and sinking enemy ships — is the mission.
The latest Navy’s bureaucratic tomfoolery is that of a frozen missile sale to Taipei. Taiwan has a desperate need for more anti-ship missiles. The island nation has been enveloped by the Chinese navy in recent years and, therefore, mobile coastal batteries are an urgent need. The Taiwanese have asked for new Harpoon and SLAM-ER missiles to help get Beijing off their throats. These missiles are superb at tracking and thumping mobile targets at sea with their quarter-ton warheads. In proper hands, these weapons would give a hungry China pause.
The Navy, of course, has been unable to meet the need, claiming complexities in the contract. It is important to remember that the government bureaucrat loves to make simple things complicated. This justifies the need for the government bureaucrat. Here we have a system that Taiwan immediately needs and wishes to buy, a sale that the combatant command in the Pacific supports and the State Department has okayed, and a Congress that has said get a move on. Yet the missiles won’t reach Taiwan until 2027 at the earliest. Why?
Bureaucrats.
The Navy’s contracting apparatus is an utter mess. That’s the problem. Not the contract itself. There are too many cooks in the kitchen, there is too much red tape, there are too many people doing too little, and there are no clear lines of accountability. No one gets their bottom swatted when programs soar over their delivery dates. To wit, many of those officials are instead promoted. Inertia is not unique to the Navy. Pentagon acquisitions are in such an appalling state that new offices, such as the Army Futures Command and the Defense Innovation Unit, had to be created just to help circumvent the existing structure. But the seagoing service deserves particular ire given that this need is so pressing and their contracting bureaucracy is so inept. The Navy’s “this is complicated” just doesn’t hold water. The sale is complicated because bureaucrats made it complicated. A real leader is needed to come in and slash the Gordian knot, along with the Navy’s sad excuses for busted time lines and an ineffective acquisitions hierarchy.
Perhaps that leader is Admiral Franchetti. Taiwan needs missiles. Everyone, from Congress to the State Department to industry, are saying “go and go quick.” The Navy cannot do it because bureaucrats have ground the Navy to a halt. Admiral Franchetti has a long list of priorities before her. The first is her nomination being confirmed by the Senate, which is a longer story. The second is putting the leaders back in charge.
In the meantime, Americans may consider asking some questions about the overall performance of their civil service, not just the navy. And whether or not they are getting their money’s worth.