Turkey Trots to Water.

GG

This is a random thoughts post. Hughes and Cebrowski were the evangelists of the Navy leading into the 21st century. Right or wrong, we saw fratricide as a result of their ideas in Streetfighter. As part of the daily message traffic, in looking through the email I noted I received an email from Captain Hughes this week intended for a broad audience. It was a response to another email I had received that included as an attachment this speech from Admiral Roughead. Rather than reply to the email, I'll let this by my response.

The email got me thinking about something, if I were to post Hughes email on my blog (something I will never do from anyone I ever receive email from except when intended for that purpose), which contains brilliant substance for discussion btw, I would get 10,000 or more extra visits this week based on authors name and the content within. If I were to post Rougheads speech in full, I'd get 0, none, nada extra visits, because Roughead isn't an evangelist for the Navy and the American people could care less what he says, indeed he is incredibly obscure by modern CNO standards from a public interest perspective. If I knew who to ask, I'd ask how many times Rougheads speech has been downloaded from the Navy.mil website. I'd wager, not many, indeed I never read it until I got it in my email and as you know by now, I don't miss much online.

I could be wrong, but one analogy that popped into my mind is that Cebrowski was Nimitz, Hughes is Halsey. Nobody writes about the incredible strategic success by COMSOPAC, the stories discussed today are about strategic failures at Leyte and Typhoons. From the perspective of the Navy today, Streetfighter represents both the bad perspectives of Leyte and the Typhoons that Halsey is notorious for. The Navy's glass is half empty when it comes to those with a positive public image.

The Navy has no evangelist at all today, nobody to carry the public interest, hell the Navy has to conceal the facts to Congress and the public just to cancel a shipbuilding program. Today's Navy calls talking to the American people a "Conversation with the Country" where at most, only 200 people get a PPT presentation on the maritime services, and most Americans get nothing but the PPT unless you know which link to hit. I had an amazing time in Durham, and I discussed what I was exposed to, but how impactful was the Navy's MS evangelical effort in context?

Think about how the MS was developed, and now the NOC has been developed in a back room somewhere. Now compare this to the conservatives and crusaders debate taking place in places like the Atlantic and the Small Wars Journal. There is no comparison, the conservatives - crusader discussion is the most powerful discussion in the military today and I realized just how many are reading that discussion last night when I'm having a beer with friends in Albany, NY of all places, and 3 Iraq vet friends of mine bring up the debate as a beer topic like the conversation is a news story one would see on CNN. Testing this conversation, I brought up the DDG-1000 just to get 3 blank stares. 10 seconds later we were talking about Bacevich's article again.

Hearts and Minds... indeed.

We potentially stand on the verge of the largest ideological shift in American politics since before WWII, and the Navy is poised to publicly release its Operational Concept during the lame duck period of the most unpopular president since Lincoln. If timing is everything, someones watch is broken.

Question: Is this process indicative of building a 21st century maritime strategy? Answer: We all hope so, but we also hope the Navy isn't competing with the Army, whose hearts and minds strategy begins with the American people. Who is going to sell the maritime strategy when the Navy needs to make a public appeal for funding? The CNO? Will Congress or the American people even listen?

RR

The World Wonders.