Originally Posted by
Excargodog
Which makes the decline of the defense industrial base supporting the Navy, the decline of Navy surface fleet sustainability, and the disastrous engineering and tech maturity mistakes accepted by Congress for Navy procurement all that much more important. The only thing more alarming than the Navy's recent procurement debacles (Zumwalt Class DDGs (a "class of only three ships because they became too damn expensive to buy? The whole LCS debacle, the HUGE maintenance backlog affecting even those ships that actually can get to sea)
https://news.usni.org/2024/05/07/gao...diness-concern )
That was post-cold war fallout. A generation of leaders had to do *something* to re-engineer the structure and operating philosophy of the Navy, and that was a bit outside of their wheel-house (pun intended). There was uncertainty as to who the opposition was, GWOT was a distraction, it was unclear what direction PRC would head, and RU seemed downright friendly friendly for a while (until vlad needed external bogeymen for all the usual reasons).
Zumwalt was like the F-22 and SSN-21... cold war super-weapons which were no longer affordable. But in all three cases the technology developed was rolled into less costly versions which could be procured in quantity. Well the surface navy is still hashing that out but I think they'll get there now that the priority opponent and the mission are crystal clear.
In addition to the usual organic DOD dysfunction, you also have to allow for the injection of massive pork into the process.
Originally Posted by
Excargodog
It's always been that way (as long as I've been paying attention which is about four decades), and always surprised me that they relieve so many. My gut feel is that it's such a long and hard (and nerve-wracking) road to command at sea that some CO's are bit warped in their outlook by the time they get there. I knew one such, although he was warped all along and just managed to hide it long enough to get command (which lasted exactly four months). I've also know many great CO's... recall the Navy has many hundreds of command-at-sea jobs and even more ashore.
Also there's always been a consistent base-line of reliefs for operational reasons, which almost always amounts to hitting something with the ship. That's just the nature of naval warfare, and they try to encourage CO's to avoid such expensive evolutions by relieving those who do as a matter of course.
The recent uptick seems to be on the personal behavior front... DUI, affairs, being mean to the new generation of sensitive JO's, verbal harrassment, etc. That's why I think the issue is more of an emotional/personality one.
Oh well, at least the system seems to catch them on the back end so that's good.