No Sense of Urgency

In 1938 Boeing began concept development, and the Army Air Corps ordered two prototypes in 1940 of the long range bomber. The first plane was flown in December 1942. By December 1943, 100 aircraft had been delivered, but only 15 were operational. Gen. Hap Arnold interceded and changes were made in the engines, and by April of 1944 150 aircraft were operational. The first combat mission was flown the 5th of June, 1944. The 1,000th B-29 was delivered in February 1945. By the time production ended, Boeing had made 3,970 aircraft.

In October 1939 Henry Kaiser called together members of 11 shipyards, as well as people from the Navy and various contractors, to study the plans of the Ocean class freighter, to simply, improve and standardize the design. In 1940 they began to build, in the next 4 years they not only trained a new work forces, they produced 2,710 liberty ships.

In November of 1954 the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force approved an idea that was one page of text long; in July of 1955 the first U-2 flew.

Design work for what would become the A-12 (from which was later developed the SR-71) began in 1957, and it first flew in April of 1962 (the SR-71 first flew in August of 1963).

Between 1940 and 1945 US shipyards built 15 Essex class carriers.

In 1950 concept work began on a nuclear powered submarine - the first nuclear powered ship. The keel was laid in 1952, launched in 1954, she left on her shakedown cruise in 1955.

USS Enterprise was ordered in 1957, the keel was laid in 1958, commissioned in 1961, and following a shakedown cruise, the ship deployed for the Cuban Missile Crisis.

  Yet, in 1996 I heard a brief for the yet to be built Joint Strike Fighter. The first flight was 2006 (10 years), the aircraft wasn’t operational until 2015. To put that in perspective, 10 years after design work began on the B-29 was three years after the end of World War II.

Consider the Zumwalt class destroyer: $22 billion for 3 ships that took 5, 6 and 10 years to build, only two of which have been commissioned, and the operational activities of the two ships has been, shall we say, thin.

The list goes on and on.

It has been argued by some that the US, the service staffs, have no forcing function - whether a hot war or the Cold War. If there were only a forcing function, then the system (and the system is the service staffs - Uniformed AND civilians, contractors, and unions) would respond. Really? How has artillery shell production, or Patriot missile production or a dozen other weapon production rates increased since the start of the war in Ukraine? The answer is: not well.

Who is to blame? The accurate answer is “they all are.” The service staffs, the contractors, and the unions, settled on a process that is nearly impossible to change, a very difficult process to really stop anything at all, wrapped up in clever manufacturing schemes that ensures that many, many congressional districts are involved in virtually any program at all. Larger programs often have hundreds of Congressional districts contributing to a weapon system. I heard of one large program that had parts from 400 Congressional districts. (This isn't new: the first six frigates made for the Navy ended up having parts from all 13 states…) So, there have always been problems. But “it’s always been this way” isn’t a viable excuse for messes like the Constellation class and its now quite necessary cancellation.

Things used to get done. But what we have here now is a strange acceptance of this process by the people inside it. They don’t want change, they seem to actively resist  change. And everyone, the contractors, the unions and civilians (especially senior civilians in the Pentagon) all share the blame.

But, that said, no one gets a larger share of the blame than the uniformed officers, the senior uniformed officers in the services. 

Many - far too many - admirals and generals have accepted all the praise, all the accolades, all the de facto hero worship that a grateful citizenry has given them. Concomitant with those accolades is a belief that our senior officers are the very essence of professionalism and devotion to duty. But their performance in all these programs belies that belief. By squandering not only money, but precious time, we - our nation - has lost opportunities to have the right ships, the right weapons, the right training for our forces, for the defense of the nation and the taxpayers for whom they all work. It is not too much to say that because of their at best passive acceptance, and certainly in some cases active agreement, in this process, that many have disgraced the uniforms they wear and dishonored the flag under which they serve. 

Yes, there are good admirals and generals out there. But there are too many who seem to view self and career as more important than the nation. How else can you explain a debacle like Afghanistan? The Ford class CV mess. The Constellation class, the LCS, programs all the way back to A-12. The debacle of Afghanistan is illustrative: it wasn’t simply 2021, it was years and years of operations that arguably left the nation no safer but expanded manpower and taxpayer dollars and resulted in two decades of strategic misdirection and lost opportunities.

Ask yourself this: in the last 25 years how many admirals and generals pushed back on waste or indolence or tried to make the system work and got steamrolled? How many questioned a strategy in the Mid East that led to tremendous expenses but in the end left us with something, well, let’s just say, well short of victory? How many oversaw procurement programs that dragged on endlessly and then took jobs with defense contractors when they retired? 

How many admirals saw the signs of trouble: ships not getting needed maintenance, aircraft growing old and worn, weapons stockpiles ever more depleted, and never pounded on someone’s desk, never gave clear honest answers when called to testify, who even thought of resigning in protest?

In the end, it devolves down to a finely developed, rationalized (what’s good for me is good for America) careerism coupled with no sense of urgency. The bulk of the 3 and 4 star officers of the US Navy, to include the last 4 or 5 CNOs, and the last 4 or 5 commanders of Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), even though retired, should have letters of reprimand put in their official records. Thought should be given to reducing them in rank at least 1 grade. The civilian Executive Directors should be treated analogously. 

And then the senior officers, and senior civilians, the contractors, the union bosses need to have a fire lit under them. China’s navy is already larger than the US Navy and they are building ships faster than we are. Congress, and the Navy and the contractors are running out of time.