July 2011 - Navy
By RADM Casey W. Coane, USN (Ret)
Editor’s note: On the thirteenth of May, the Association
of the United States Navy (AUSN) interviewed the CNO,
ADM Gary Roughead in his Pentagon office. This was our
third interview with the Navy’s Chief and we asked him
to reflect as well as to discuss the status of some major
programs.
AUSN: CNO, thanks as always for making
some time for the Association to come visit with
you. Our mission is to advocate for the Navy,
but it is always helpful to our members to hear
from the man at the top of the Navy.
CNO: Well, it’s good to see you again and
I appreciate the advocacy role that you play
for the men and women who serve.
AUSN: Now we are approaching the end of
your tour and I suppose you can see that timeline
coming, so how about if we ask you to
reflect a bit on your four years at the helm?
What do you look on as your proudest achievement?
CNO: Well, there are several things that I
am very pleased with that we have been able
to do. One of the objectives that I had coming
into the job, and looking at the fiscal environment
and the budgetary environment, I knew
that stability was going to be important to us.
We were probably heading into a bit of chop.
I am pleased that, on the ship building side,
we have moved to two Virginias [a year] as
we said we would and we’re moving along on
the SSBNX. I was thrilled when we got the
authorization to proceed with twenty Littoral
Combat Ships (LCS). We’re building Joint
High Speed Vessels (JHSV). We’ve restarted
the DDG -51 line. I think we have worked our
way through some of the quality problems
that we had with the LPD-17 class. Also in
Naval Aviation, with additional Super Hornets; moving
up the Joint Strike Fighter; the P-8 is doing well in test;
and we have the HH-60 R and HH-60 S out there. So, as
I tell our Sailors and the people that I talk to all the
capabilities that we are putting into place for the future;
for the most part, you can go and put your hand on them
[now]. As you go through a period where you are potentially
going to be challenged budgetarily, power point
slides don’t get it. I think we have great products going.
Clearly, another area that I am very pleased with is
the move that we have been able to make with what we
call Information Dominance. The reorganization within
the Navy that allows us to look at information and cyber
and the information battle space in a way
that we have never been able to look at
it before; to be able to make investment
decisions that cut across the Navy in ways
that we have not been able to do before.
The reactivation of TENTH Fleet, our cyber
fleet, and the work that they are doing has
taken off much faster than even the stretch
goal that I gave them.
AUSN: You seem to feel that the Navy is
leading in the cyber area because of the things
that you are doing?
CNO: I really do believe that we moved
more boldly than other organizations. We
moved in a much more integrated way that
took into account our organization, our
investments. It took into account looking at
a different way to operate globally. Most
importantly, it took into account, as in all
things that we do, that which is the deciding
factor in everything and that is our people.
We created the Information Dominance
Corps. I have been able to go out and visit in
the field the folks that we have working and
I am extraordinarily impressed with what
they are doing; and I’ll be the first to admit
much of which I can’t understand myself
being a bit of a dinosaur. But the comments
that I hear from other services and other
agencies about how they perceive the Navy
positioning for the future [are encouraging].
I am also very pleased with our diversity
initiatives; and, as you know, that has been
a priority of mine. I really do believe that
Navy leadership, the leadership demographic, has to
represent the country. To be able to get these talented
young men and women with diverse backgrounds, diverse
experience, diverse ethnicity into the Navy makes us a
stronger Navy; and so I’m pleased with that.
I think in all of those areas it is important that the
momentum be sustained. As we look at the development
of this budget that we are about ready to put together
for 2013, which will consume the bulk of the remaining
time I have in the Navy, the intent is to maintain that
momentum, mindful of the budgetary realities that we
will be faced with.
AUSN: That is a pretty big list of things that are going
well. Is there any one thing that you look back on and say,
“I didn’t quite get that one done the way I wanted to?”
CNO: I think that you always want to be farther down
the road than you are. In many of the areas that I just
mentioned, we set some pretty aggressive stretch goals.
I’m pleased that we are either there or in many instances
beyond it. I think that the area that I spend the most
time on now, [and] I wish that we had been able to
divine the future a little bit better than we did, but I
think that many were surprised on the economic situation
that we face and the impact that it would have on our
retention, being extraordinarily high retention. How do
you put in place policies and programs so you can fare-in
the adjustment that you have to make to control this
extraordinary retention. We’ve never had retention like
this in the Navy before. I wish that I would have had a
clearer crystal ball than I did; because when you have to
make adjustments quickly, I know that affects our Sailors
and their families and so I wish that we could have been
able to divine the future a little bit better.
AUSN: In listening to VADM Ferguson (Chief of Naval
Personnel) and the programs that he has been talking
about, it seems that you are pretty well positioned to lead
turn the next event.
CNO: Right, we know what we need to do is to be
ready, but I can’t discount the impact that it has on the
young men and women who enjoy what they are doing,
who find great fulfillment and satisfaction in what they
are doing and whose families enjoy the Navy life. To tell
someone who loves the Navy as much as we do that,
regrettably, it is time to go is hard.
AUSN: That’s a good segue into the next question as we
understand that you are speaking of the need to involuntarily
reduce head count in the Navy. We understand that
we are going to draw down about 9,000 in the coming
budget year?
CNO: It’s a little less than 9,000. Some of that number
is what is absorbed in the individual augmentee plus ups
that we’ve had. But we are coming down; we’re coming
down because that is the number of people that we need
to do the jobs that are in the Navy. Some of that is driven
by the mission; but also, as you look at the type of capabilities,
particularly on the shipboard side where you’re
adjusting crew sizes and things like that, it all is part of
the equation. I think that it is important to realize that
the end-strength that we have is not an arbitrary number
of that which we can afford. It is really based on the
capabilities that we have and the jobs that need to be
performed in the Navy.
AUSN: So the numbers that we are going to come down
don’t mitigate the fact that we are putting some 6,000 billets
back at sea?
CNO: Exactly, that is another area that was a high
priority for me, particularly this last year as we did the
budget, and that is to go back and make the adjustments
to the “optimal manning” decisions that we had made.
At the time, those were good decisions. The ships were
younger; the Navy wasn’t as busy. But as the ships have
aged and we have become busier, we’ve begun to see
the wear and tear at the pace we have been operating.
So, that will include people going back on board ships.
It will include reestablishing regional maintenance
centers. I think that benefits us in two ways; one, it gets
the maintenance closer to the ships because it is right
on the waterfront. I also think that it gives our young
Sailors a great opportunity to come off sea duty, go there
and do something they like to do, gain extraordinary
experience, and then take those skills and experience
back aboard ship when they go back to sea. I always
valued getting a Sailor from one of those maintenance
facilities aboard my ship. They came aboard and were a
whiz at whatever they did. I think it will help from a
career perspective for our Sailors, but I also think that it
will improve the maintenance and readiness of our ships.
AUSN: Yes, sir. Our Reserve cadre has always been a
good source of that civilian workforce skill set that when
you bring them back aboard, they are pretty well-trained.
CNO: Absolutely, and I think that the way that our
Reserve Component Sailors...I’m searching for the right
words here but maybe being a little bit parochial or
bold, I do not believe that there is any organization
that I have seen that has been able to take the Active
Component and the Reserve Component and mesh them
together in a way that when you sum the parts you get
more out of it than what the equation would say. We
have relied extensively on our Reserve Component in
the last decade. Whether here, Iraq, Afghanistan, or
Djibouti, every where I go, I see them, and the thing that
gives me the greatest pride is that I cannot tell whether
I am talking to an Active Component Sailor or a Reserve
Sailor. We talk about total force; we talk about one
Navy; and we’re there. I cannot say enough about how
well that has gone.
AUSN: Again, as you reflect on your four years at
the helm here, this is different here, being at the top,
Washington, the issues that you face to man, train, and
equip, what is the best recommendation for a skill set that
your relief needs to come with?
CNO: I would say the best thing to come with is to
be able to look at issues and remove emotion from the
discussion and from the decision. It is very easy, I think,
to have thorny issues presented to you, because, in most
cases, the issues that I deal with are those that have
difficulty coming to solution, have too many competing
perspectives, or are of such significant magnitude to
the Navy, the nation, and to our people that, clearly, the
obligation and the responsibility is mine. To be able to
look at those and to be able to strip the emotion away
and really get at it that way I think is important.
AUSN: A tough task we would imagine?
CNO: Well, I think that whenever I get into a situation
that tends to try that, I simply think of the impact that
it has on the Sailors and their family and try to do the
best for them; and so it is very easy to put myself in a
comfort zone. If you always hold that up as an objective,
it is pretty easy to get there.
AUSN: Now that we have a budget for the rest of the
year, are we able to restart some of the ship availabilities
that were delayed?
CNO: I think we’ve done very well. We took a very
realistic look at the Continuing Resolution and we, very
unemotionally, very accurately predicted what the
impact would be. We laid it out. We looked at different
points down the calendar, if the budget were passed,
what we would be able to recover. I think that by taking
that longer view and not assuming that everything was
going to clear up in a month or two months, we could
look at it and make some very good decisions. We have
recovered all but one availability. The other thing that
affected us, and we are still working our way back to it
now, is that we like to give our people a few months
notice before transfer. We really had to neck that down
and we’re walking our way back, trying to recover all
the orders that we can. That is an area that VADM Mark
Ferguson (CNP) is working on very very hard.
That said, as we went through this experience with
the longest Continuing Resolution that any of us can
remember and maybe the longest ever, I think it is
important that all of us be thinking about next year and
the importance of getting a budget as early as we can.
But I also believe that, as we look to next year, we have
learned a lot from this one; and we’d better keep those
lessons in our pocket. I am hopeful that we [will have] a
budget, but it is quite possible that we could see another
CR; and we need to make sure that if we are in the same
bind next year, we don’t repeat some of those thorny
things that we had to tackle this year.
AUSN: As we talk about the FY 2012 budget that we
are heading into now and as we look at the five major
accounts, one might assume that procurement is where
the hit might be. Is that how you see it or what worries
you the most?
CNO: No, I don’t see it that way at all. As we go
through the budget process that is on the Hill and as we
put FY 2013 together, I look at what’s the total capability
that we want the Navy to have. I still find the maritime
strategy that we set forth three-and-a-half years ago to
be a very good template to use, as I have said many
times. I use the maritime strategy to determine that
which we are buying and that which we are training to.
If it fits into those categories [of the strategy], it’s valid.
If we are working on something that doesn’t seem to fit
into one of those categories, then I question why we are
doing it. I believe that the last couple of months have
validated the strategy. If you look at just the last two
months (April & May), what we have done as a Navy,
obviously maintaining with constant performance the
most survivable leg of the nuclear triad. Having the
force structure forward in the Middle East and the
Western Pacific so that, as events took place, we could
respond to them – being that deterrent force.
Particularly, in the Middle East as we see changes the
likes of which we have never seen before sweeping that
region. The fact is that, for the most part, we have had
two aircraft carriers and ballistic missile defense ships in
place. The fact that we, on very short notice, projected
power into Libya and provided for sea control as the
operation was unfolding. Right there are four [strategic]
capabilities. We’re still going to counter piracy, that’s the
maritime security capability. And then, I think all of us
are very proud that a deploying force on its way to
CENTCOM to fight in Afghanistan found itself doing
humanitarian assistance in Japan, our humanitarian
assistance, disaster response core competency.
I think it is all relevant; and so, for me, it is not
necessarily procurement but how does it all lay together.
On the procurement side, I think it is extraordinarily
important that we keep in mind that you can make
procurement decisions but those decisions are going to
affect the industrial base. The industrial base, as it
applies to the Navy in ship building and aircraft
manufacturing, is pretty lean and fragile right now. So
it might be easy to say that we can take [out] a ship,
that allows us to save a lot of money; but it may begin
to unravel the industrial base. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.
And [even] if it doesn’t completely unravel, you get into
inefficiencies [so] that you end up paying more for
equipment later on. We put all that on the table, remove
the emotion from the discussion and then debate and
then make the decision in the best interests of the Navy
and the nation.
AUSN: Let’s look at a couple of programs. Obviously, we
made a big change last fall with the Littoral Combat Ship
(LCS) to get both hull forms approved by Congress. So,
congratulations on that success.
CNO: Thank you. There was a lot of great work on
the part of a lot of people and some terrific support by
members in Congress that I am very grateful for.
AUSN: Well, I’m proud to tell you that we talked to a
lot of those folks up on the Hill.
CNO: Thank you.
AUSN: What is your assessment of the program now?
Are we going to move ahead at the price you think we can
afford?
CNO: Absolutely, I really do think that we will. The
fact that we have the two production lines going; the
fact that that segment of the shipbuilding industrial
base knows that the work is out there, I think, allows
them to realize the efficiencies and get the economies
to lay in the workforce to become very skilled and
expert in building these ships. I think this is very
positive. We looked hard as we were going down the
path of deciding to change the strategy, hard at what
are the implications of having two variants going
forward. I was comfortable in making the decision that
we were early enough in the program that there are
means to synchronize the training even though the
ships themselves are different. A huge factor for me is
knowing the competence, the professionalism, and the
intellect of our Sailors. When folks were talking about
you can’t do both, my view is they didn’t know our
Sailors very well. I’m comfortable with that dimension
of it. I believe [that] operationally having the two
different designs will give us greater operational flexibility
because one ship can do certain things better, and
the other ship; other things better. They both do the LCS
mission extraordinarily well.
AUSN: Have you made a basing decision yet?
CNO: We’re going through that process now that
involves not only where do we want them operationally
but also we have to take into account and go through
the environmental assessment process.
AUSN: Is your basic mindset that you want both ships
on both coasts?
CNO: We’ve had that discussion. You can say it is
easier to have all of one type on one coast and the other
on the other coast or all of one type in one port. But, to
get back to my earlier point about the operational value
you get by having a mixing of them, I think you do want
to do that; and because you are early enough in the
program, you can plan for that.
AUSN: You could use multiple ports on each coast,
though?
CNO: I think so, absolutely, and we will work our way
through that. There will be a lot of factors taken into
account.
AUSN: How about the warfighting modules, are they
coming along to your satisfaction?
CNO: They are. We’ve taken delivery of them. We’re
going to continue to test during the loading on to the
ship. The beauty of the mission module to me is that
we are going to be able to inject new technology for the
particular mission, particularly antisubmarine warfare
and mine warfare, in ways that I predict will allow us to
field the technology faster and less expensively because
we are not having to go in and rip up the ship to do that.
I wish I had a dollar for every ship-alt that I saw with a
lot of things being torn apart. It will be good from the
standpoint of capability insertion, but I am also kind of
excited about what other mission modules that we may
be able to put into the LCS. Are there ways, for example,
better to provide for irregular warfare operations? I’ve
been giving some thought to what role a mission module
could play in the world of Information Dominance? I
think that it’s important that we don’t go roaring off,
particularly looking at all of the other investments that
we have to make in the Navy; but LCS is going to give us
a degree of flexibility and a rapidity of technology insertion
potential that we have not seen before.
AUSN: Let’s discuss the replacement for the Ohio class
(SSBNX). We’ve read that the cost of one of those vessels
could be as much as half of your shipbuilding budget for
the year. How are you attacking that issue?
CNO: The first thing that we are doing is beginning
the design process. Looking at that phase with eyes
wide open, it is going to be a significant segment of the
shipbuilding budget. [We are] doing everything we can
to minimize the cost while fulfilling the important
deterrent mission that it has to fulfill. The key element
of that is stealth, and so that is where the focus is. What
do you need to do the mission and don’t compromise on
stealth. Those boats will be patrolling in 2080. That
said, it is important that as we deal with that, looking at
the other demands in the shipbuilding budget, starting
now nine or ten years out, how do we make it all work.
It is a significant chunk and yet, at the same time, it is in
my opinion the leg of the triad that we know is the most
survivable.
AUSN: We have been talking about ships and submarines;
I suppose that we had better get to airplanes. The F-35
program, what is your assessment of where we sit today
with the F-35C?
CNO: Where we sit with the F-35C is working
through the test program, and I am pleased that we are
on track to do that. I think that it is very helpful for us in
the Navy to have been able to have in the budget some
additional Super Hornets. That will allow us to bridge
into the F-35C without a negative effect on strike-fighter
capacity. We have to get to that airplane and the capability
that it brings. I am also very supportive of the Marine
Corps and the F-35B work that they are doing. [I am]
also pleased that the Marines will purchase five
squadrons of “Charlies.”
AUSN: That was a big decision. It solved the issue of
Marine “Bs” or “Cs” aboard the carrier?
CNO: Right, and I think that what it does from the
standpoint of TACAIR integration with the Navy and the
Marine Corps flying the same variant, it will be great for
the two Services for deployability, the interoperability.
On the “B” [we are] fully supportive and, in fact, we
have taken one of our big deck [amphibs] out of the
deployment rotation to support that testing to be sure
that we are as efficient as we can be. I want to be able to
respond and make sure that when it comes to shipboard
testing, shipboard interface, we are going to be there;
we will support the Marines because that airplane also
brings great capability. I’m looking forward to seeing the
first “Charlie” land aboard an aircraft carrier.
AUSN: CNO, thank you so much again for making time
for us. We always appreciate that, knowing how busy your
schedule is. We certainly wish you the best as you get to
the end of this tour.
CNO: Thank you and thanks for all that you do to
support the Navy and those who serve and have served.
About Chief of Naval Operations
Admiral Gary Roughead
Admiral Roughead is a 1973 graduate of the United
States Naval Academy.
Among his six operational commands, Admiral
Roughead was the first officer to command both classes of
Aegis ships, having commanded USS Barry (DDG 52) and
USS Port Royal (CG 73).
As a flag officer, he commanded Cruiser Destroyer Group
2, the George Washington Battle Group; and U.S. 2nd Fleet/
NATO Striking Fleet Atlantic and Naval Forces North Fleet East.
Ashore, he served as Commandant, United States Naval
Academy, the Department of the Navy’s Chief of Legislative
Affairs, and as Deputy Commander, U.S. Pacific Command.
Admiral Roughead is one of only two officers to have
commanded the fleets in the Pacific and Atlantic, commanding
the U.S. Pacific Fleet and Joint Task Force 519, as well as
U.S. Fleet Forces Command, where he was responsible for
ensuring Navy forces were trained, ready, equipped and
prepared to operate around the world, where and when
needed.
Admiral Roughead’s awards include the Defense
Distinguished Service Medal, Navy Distinguished Service
Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit,
Meritorious Service Medal, Navy Commendation Medal,
Navy Achievement Medal, and various unit and service
awards.
Admiral Roughead became the 29th Chief of Naval
Operations Sep. 29, 2007. He and his wife, Ellen, have an
adult daughter, Elizabeth.