By Mie Augier and Major Sean F. X. Barrett

This is the second part of our conversation series with General Anthony Zinni, USMC (ret.) on leadership, strategy, learning, and the art and science of warfighting. Read Part One here. In this installment, General Zinni shares his experiences with wargames, Desert Crossing and Millennium Challenge 2002 in particular, and discusses how the differing objectives of service chiefs and combatant commanders manifest in wargames. Gen Zinni then touches on the U.S. military’s overreliance on technology and draws parallels from the business world to inform approaches to great power competition.

What are some of the challenges to organizing effective wargames?

Zinni: When I was at Quantico, we started going through a phase where everybody was into board games and tactical decision games, and that sort of thing became really popular—parallel to maneuver warfare development. I came away with several impressions. I think gaming was more valuable at the lower levels, at the tactical level, maybe lower operational level. I think there you can construct the game in a way at the division level or below where nobody is promoting anything, and you can design games to learn specific things and bring out specific points. As you go higher up, I found there was too much in the way of service politics and other things that were injected into the games.

There are a lot of assumptions about capabilities that belie reality or truths and other factors. For example, I found that when playing with the Army after they first introduced the Apache helicopter, you couldn’t shoot down an Apache helicopter. No matter what you did, that was impossible. They were defending the program, and they wanted to build it up.

When I was a two-star, I was in charge of the Marine Corps side in a game we used to do with the Navy every year. The game was more designed to showcase what capabilities we wanted and really focus on things where Navy-Marine Corps cooperation was needed to gain the capabilities, either because of the way they had to be employed or because of the way budgets work. It usually ended up being kind of a swap meet. We had to find compromises because the budget wouldn’t support everybody’s wish list. When we went through the massive Millennium Challenge games with Joint Forces Command, I watched how the games became more designed as proofs of capabilities—preordained proofs of capabilities—rather than—as much as they advertised it—open testing, having a real willingness to fail, and all that.

If somebody talks about a game, I am usually highly suspicious about what the purpose is, who is designing it, and who is sponsoring it. To me, that is critical. The other thing I found in gaming is the intelligence guys always present you with the indestructible, undefeatable enemy. They love to do that. You must overcome that to an extent.

What are some of your experiences that showed the value of wargaming?

Zinni: When I was Commander-in-Chief at U.S. Central Command, we were on-and-off bombing Iraq when Saddam did not cooperate with the UN inspectors. At that time, if Saddam didn’t cooperate, President Clinton immediately wanted to pull the UN inspector out and hit Saddam. It always worked. Saddam brought the inspectors back in, so President Clinton gave us the okay on anything we wanted to target, basically, you know, make it painful. Since we knew these opportunities arose, we didn’t just want it to be haphazard targeting. We deliberately targeted air defense systems. Although we couldn’t plan on when he didn’t want to let inspectors in or when he’d give them a hard time, we had a systematic way of taking down his air defense systems when these events occurred, and we were very successful. President Clinton OK’d us bombing downtown Baghdad and taking down his intelligence headquarters and a couple of other things. It was called Operation Desert Fox.

Saddam knew when the inspectors left, he was going to get hit. In the past, we always had to bring a few things in before we could launch strikes. One particular time, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs GEN Shelton asked me, “Could you do something so that virtually, as soon as Richard Butler (who was the head of the UN inspection team) is out, you go?” And we did. The battle damage assessment was phenomenal. Four days of strikes. The targets were really large ones. We usually used either the Swiss or the Polish embassy in Baghdad to give us feedback. Well, suddenly—and I’ll get to the gaming piece of this—they started saying, “You guys have to know what you are doing here because this last set of strikes really shook the Iraqi government. The normal hostile rhetoric afterward was gone. They were shocked by the targets you hit, and there are all kinds of rumblings on the street.” We were even getting some feedback that there were some Iraqi generals talking about taking out Saddam if those kinds of strikes continued, and giving feelers to our allies, too.

The next thing that happened, I got calls from both Jordan and Kuwait saying they were getting this feedback, too. Their worry was that if we struck the government to the point that it was overthrown, or hit a target that shut down communications or whatever, they could see major uprisings and then massive amounts of refugees streaming across their borders. I got asked by the national leadership of both countries: What’s your plan if this happened? What’s your plan for massive refugee outflows? What’s your plan for a government that totally collapses, which it could from your airstrikes, and the country becomes a mess? I realized that our war plans were only designed to take out the Republican Guard and take down the military structure. There was nothing in our war plans, or in what we were directed to do, that talked about the post-kinetic period. I thought I could do my job—take out the military—in less than three weeks. But who would be in charge of rebuilding Iraq or creating a new government?

I sent a request up through the chain to the Department of Defense and Department of State asking who had the aftermath plan. I had a feeling it was going to be a total mess. We needed a post-kinetic plan that meshed with our military plan. Well, the answer we got is no one was thinking about this. I asked if we could do a study on what Iraq would look like if the government collapsed, or if we had to go in and take out the military. What kind of Iraq would we find? The State Department, CIA, and all the intelligence organizations agreed to be involved, and my chief of staff said, “Let’s contract a study.” We went to Booz Allen (BA), and the BA people recommended we do a wargame instead of a study because as we discovered things, what we were really after was: what are our options, what should we do? You should put yourself in a position where you have to make those decisions, so you know what kinds of decisions are necessary. Only a game can generate that.

I committed to a couple of weeks up in Washington so we could go through this. We did it, and it is now declassified. It was called Desert Crossing. We went through the game, and I was frankly shocked at what everybody’s consensus was—that when we went into Iraq to take down the Republican Guard, that wouldn’t be very difficult at all. The problem we would have, even with the forces we had in our war plans, which was overwhelming force and which Rumsfeld threw away, was what happened after that. My intention was to get control of everything right away. The one thing I learned in places like Somalia and elsewhere is if you lose momentum, it is hard to get it back.

Unfortunately, the results of the wargame were that this place was going to come apart like a cheap suitcase. I went back to the State Department and DoD and said, “Okay, we looked at this, and this is what we see happening.” And by the way, everything out of that wargame is exactly what happened when we did go in later. This wargame was in 1999, my last year at CENTCOM, and no one was willing to stand up and plan. The State Department wasn’t going to own up to it. They did not want to get involved in the planning. Nobody else at DoD or anybody else wanted to take this on. I told my people that if this were to happen, either because there was an intentional decision to go into Iraq, or because of our airstrikes and everything we were doing, and the country internally imploded, we would be forced to go in, so let’s plan for it.

My chief of staff said, “You know, a lot of this stuff we are looking at is not us. We don’t rebuild governments, and we don’t know how to build economic systems and all that.” I said I didn’t care. We were going to plan and assume we’d have to take it on. I said, if nothing else, we might not be able to understand what had to be done, but we could at least help identify the problems and what we expected might happen. At least we could have an outline of the things we needed to consider because we might be putting together a pickup team to get them done. We began the Desert Crossing planning based on this even though we weren’t tasked with it.

When the decision was made to go into Iraq, this surprised the hell out of me because there was no need to go into Iraq. Saddam was no threat to anybody, nobody was afraid of him, and we had bigger fish to fry in Afghanistan. Then I saw Rumsfeld throw away the war plan. He thought he could do it on the cheap, which really told me that the new plan was going to exacerbate the problem tremendously because you were not going to have control of the people, you were not going to have control of key facilities, you were not going to have control of the borders, and all of this was going to come back to haunt you.

I called down to CENTCOM. I was retired, but I talked to the deputy commander. I told him, “You guys are crazy.” First of all, the war plan that Rumsfeld was talking about involved far too few troops, meaning we’d get overwhelmed, and that place was going to erupt in many different ways, and we’d be unable to control it. And I said, one thing we needed to look at was Desert Crossing because that would give us an idea of what to expect. He said he’d never heard of Desert Crossing. We had worked on that plan up until I retired in October 2000. Whatever was done on that plan at CENTCOM afterward was completely blown off by the leadership there.

You know, when you are retired, you don’t like to go back and poke around your last command. I mean, it is just not done. However, a number of the staff that were still there contacted me and told me about the plans they were being forced to put together, the troop cuts, the assumptions being made—it was just going to be a disaster. And of course, it was.

My point in all of this is that in that Desert Crossing game, we had a specific objective in mind—to learn what was going to happen. Let’s put together the best minds, the best intelligence organizations, and we had every one of them there. They very accurately gave us a picture that we had not put together before that. Unfortunately, it got lost in translation and transition and amidst arrogant people that came into leadership at DoD and elsewhere. Colin Powell understood it, but that’s not who President Bush listened to on this. We ignored everything we learned from that game.

The COCOMs have very specific requirements they are looking at, as opposed to the services that are looking more broadly at future capabilities. How does this impact the effectiveness of the wargames and exercises they both conduct?

Zinni: The gaming with the COCOMs is very different from service-level gaming, which is trying to validate or prove capabilities that the services want and need to get the budget for. At the COCOMs, you are gaming war plans. That is basically what you do. In exercises and in gaming, you usually have specific things you either want to test or learn, and they tend to be things you are testing or want to learn that affect a war plan or a contingency plan, or something along those lines. And of course, having been a former COCOM commander, I’m going to tell you that ours were honest, and the services’ were not.

However, sometimes when you bring allies in, you have to be a bit careful because, first of all, intelligence sharing becomes a problem in some of these things, but you also don’t want to embarrass allies. For us, to play a game and get defeated, we can take it as the result of wanting to learn or test something. For some allies, that is politically unacceptable. They were more into looking good coming out of the game, and that overrides learning. As CENTCOM commander, in exercises and gaming, I worked very hard at trying to get our key allies to embrace more free play. I found that the key was you have to get the top guys onboard with that, because below that, they aren’t going to accept it unless they know they can make mistakes and that will be okay. They may look bad and fail at something, but it is supposed to be a learning event—rather than one where your main concern is about looking bad in front of your boss. So, I think there is maybe more honesty in the gaming with combatant commanders. That is sort of driven by how you are exercising real-world war plans and operations. You can’t polish over or become pollyannish about something that isn’t real, but there are times when you must be careful with that, like I said, with allies and when you have a concern with intelligence sharing.

The other thing is you don’t want to take too much on in a game. I always felt you got more out of the game or exercise if you had a specific handful of things you wanted to learn and focus on, as opposed to trying to eat the big enchilada and do the whole war plan. That gets too unmanageable, and it gets too diffused and diluted. If you look at specific parts of, say, a plan or whatever you are trying to do, and pick five or six things you really want to focus on, the game is much more meaningful.

How were you involved with the Millennium Challenge wargame?

Zinni: I was a senior mentor. Back in those days, Joint Forces Command wrote joint doctrine and conducted joint training and joint wargaming. They brought in retired generals to be senior mentors and to play the red team, as Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, USMC (ret.) classically did with Millennium Challenge, when he exposed all the things we mentioned earlier—trying to be too scripted or prove capabilities, rather than being true and honest with open testing and free play.

They advertised Millennium Challenge as this super, all-time greatest military exercise game. It was going to involve forces from all over the military. This was going to be a proof of concept of the U.S. military writ large. They had a scenario, and they placed this big emphasis on if we failed, that was fine. It was going to be completely free play, and we’d go wherever it took us. Supposedly. Well, when I got there, I asked who was leading the red team. They said Paul Van Riper, and I said, “You guys better have your stuff together because you are going to die.” They kind of blew me off, like this was going to be a piece of cake.

They started the game, and there was a lot of media attention. After the first two or three moves, Van Riper had sunk half of Fifth Fleet and destroyed a corps. They stopped the game because it was now turning into a disaster. They brought everybody in and said they were going to restart the game because some things didn’t go right or whatever. Van Riper didn’t do what they thought or assumed he would do. They thought they had him figured out, had the “enemy” figured out.

They started the game again—same result. Van Riper kicked their butts, and now they stopped again. People were coming down from the Pentagon, and this was becoming a problem. They then said they were going to start for a third time, but this time they told Van Riper what he had to do. He said if they wanted him to go by a script, they had to advertise that it was not free play—that it was scripted. You can’t advertise something as free play when it is really being scripted—that is dishonest. They told him they were not going to do that, but that Van Riper was going to be scripted in many of the things that he could do.

The next thing that happened was a bunch of the majors that were down there revolted and went to the media, and of course Van Riper then became a superstar for every young officer in the military. Malcolm Gladwell even wrote about it. This went all the way up to the Joint Chiefs, and the Joint Chiefs dissed Van Riper and didn’t defend him. Van Riper became the hero for everybody involved in Millennium Challenge below the rank of one-star.

Are we overreliant on technology for solutions? What are some potential pitfalls of this approach?

Zinni: Yes, it is in our nature to become overreliant on technology because we created this dependency on it, and in addition to that, in some ways, we don’t leverage it enough. Every time I get into a discussion with someone about facing a peer-level military threat, it always comes down to the same thing: Well, they’ve got missiles that are going to crush us. The answer is always that we must go after those missiles, we must find them, and shoot them down. What everybody is losing sight of is one of the first things I ask: How does the missile know where you are? Then there’s a fall back: Tell me how they target you. The missile is back there, and you are out here, and they can’t see you. Something is targeting you. Is it a satellite? Is it a recon unit? Instead of wasting all this effort and resources on new technology to kill the missiles, could we blind their missiles? Could we deceive the missile in some way? Maybe the focus of our technology should be on defeating targeting, and maybe the ways we defeat it is to give it a false image, to blind it, to deceive it. To address the threat through better tactics, using what we already have. No one ever talks about that. Everybody just pushes the technology to kill the missile. My point is that it is not just overrelying on technology. Sometimes it is not knowing how to use technology through tactics to build an advantage.

In Millennium Challenge, the blue force was totally dependent on monitoring the red team’s communications, so Van Riper did not use any digital technology. He used motorcycle couriers and all kinds of alternative, simple sources of communication. He did nothing that could be captured or intercepted, so they were totally blind. They put all their eggs—that they would have superior technology to intercept his communications—in one basket. They assumed he would never initiate the fight—that this enemy would be so overwhelmed he would not attack during the build-up phase. Of course, Van Riper immediately attacked. It was a beautiful thing to watch! When we make too many assumptions, it becomes a vulnerability.

The Commandant of the Marine Corps recently published a new doctrinal publication on competition. From your business experience, what are some lessons learned that might be applicable to this new mindset that the service and DoD writ large are adopting? What does it mean to compete with a peer threat below the level of an actual conflict?

Zinni: In the business world, when you look at competition, you look at three things. When you go after a contract or something, you bid on it and put a proposal out there. Your reputation begins with that proposal. For the customers you are dealing with—let’s take the defense industry, and you are dealing with the Defense Department and services you are going to provide—you are going to be known by the quality of those proposals. If you have a series of proposals that have flaws in them, you are going to get a bad reputation and soon become uncompetitive. That’s how you first establish your reputation in a competitive sense.

Let me draw parallels with the military. Basically, what you are doing is you are putting out proposals to allies and potential enemies. In other words, you are framing yourself. This is going to be your reputation because if you can’t live up to it or have a reputation of claiming things that don’t work or whatever, then you begin to lose credibility, and you begin to tempt the enemy to test you.

You also need to realize you can’t compete across the entire spectrum. You need to identify the signature capabilities that really make up the heart and soul of your company and build your reputation around them. In a military sense, these are the things you must be the top in—let’s say missile defense, or nukes, or whatever. There are certain things that are so critical to your essence and what you are doing that you need to focus more on them.

The third thing, which is critically important in the business industry, is you need your best people where you touch your customer or your client. In the business world, I want to make sure I have people out there who have customer intimacy, familiarity, and trust. They are my selling point. People want to come back to your company because of these people. Relating this to the military: Who are your combatant commanders? Who are your senior generals? Who do you put out there as military attachés, or the military people who are negotiating or interacting with allies? If the enemy is in the Middle East, he is looking at the CENTCOM commander, and your customers and allies are looking at that commander, too.

One of the problems the military has is that capabilities are not centrally determined. Every service, every service secretary, and every service chief fights for something, and we don’t have a good way of looking at tradeoffs and risks. What happens is when there’s a budget cut and you need to take risks, it is sort of salami-sliced across the DoD, and no one, particularly at the top, has enough power to say we are going to do this, but not that. This was Eisenhower’s complaint when he talked about the military industrial complex—the military wants everything. They didn’t come to him saying we are going to take risks here, and this is how we see the budget. He just had four services wanting everything. That becomes part of the problem, particularly if you relate that to “signature capabilities.” You must pick which ones are your signature capabilities and are most important for you not to take risks in—and even more importantly, where you are willing to take risks, and what the tradeoffs are.

In business, you measure yourself against what I call a competitive set. For example, say I am on the board of a real estate investment trust that owns 12 hotels. We are basically a small hotel company—a real estate investment trust. We have about a dozen competitors in our peer competition set. You watch that set very carefully. Investors who are going to invest at that level will look at you compared to the others. If you apply that to the military, peer competitor means “the big guys” (Russia and China), but there are capabilities within our military that are not necessarily designed to be about the big fight.

We don’t do so well in the “least likely” conflicts, like when we get caught up in the Iraqs, Afghanistans, Somalias, and Vietnams. We don’t do well in that competitive set. I always say you never fight the war you prepare for. Logically, you should prepare for the war you don’t want to fight, but that means for all the others, you don’t have the perfect capability to engage in them. Some of that is not military related; it is political will, which erodes over time if you are not showing success. I think you saw that in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

General Anthony Zinni served 39 years as a U.S. Marine and retired as Commander–in–Chief, U.S. Central Command, a position he held from August 1997 to September 2000. After retiring, General Zinni served as U.S. special envoy to Israel and the Palestinian Authority (2001-2003) and U.S. special envoy to Qatar (2017-2019). General Zinni has held numerous academic positions, including the Stanley Chair in Ethics at the Virginia Military Institute, the Nimitz Chair at the University of California, Berkeley, the Hofheimer Chair at the Joint Forces Staff College, the Sanford Distinguished Lecturer in Residence at Duke University, and the Harriman Professorship of Government at the Reves Center for International Studies at the College of William and Mary. General Zinni is the author of several books, including Before the First Shots Are Fired, Leading the Charge, The Battle for Peace, and Battle Ready. He has also had a distinguished business career, serving as Chairman of the Board at BAE Systems Inc., a member of the board and later executive vice president at DynCorp International, and President of International Operations for M.I.C. Industries, Inc.

Dr. Mie Augier is Professor in the Graduate School of Defense Management, and Defense Analysis Department, at NPS. She is a founding member of NWSI and is interested in strategy, organizations, leadership, innovation, and how to educate strategic thinkers and learning leaders.

Major Sean F. X. Barrett, PhD is a Marine intelligence officer currently serving as the Operations Officer for 1st Radio Battalion.

Featured Image: U.S. Marines assess a terrain map during a simulated amphibious assault of exercise Talisman Sabre 19 in Bowen, Australia, July 22, 2019. (U.S. Marine Corps/Lance Cpl. Tanner D. Lambert)

By Mie Augier and Major Sean F. X. Barrett

This is the first of what we hope will be several conversations with General Anthony Zinni, USMC (ret.) about leadership, strategy, learning, and the art and science of warfighting. General Anthony Zinni served 39 years as a U.S. Marine and retired as Commander–in–Chief, U.S. Central Command, in 2000.

In this installment, General Zinni discusses themes in his “Combat Concepts” lecture, his recently completed doctoral dissertation, his time at the CNO’s Strategic Studies Group, and the state of strategic thinking.

Were you influenced by any particular interests, books, or mentors?

Zinni: First, on people, General Al Gray was probably the biggest influence on me. I’ve known him since I was a captain. He had a set of people. He mentored us and sought us out all the time. He was unusual to us junior officers. He was willing to talk about things we were interested in—tactics, leadership, and those kinds of things. It was hard to find senior officers who really had that kind of connection. Plus, his personality was such that he drew people to him. He seemed to understand what we were going through, what we were thinking. You must remember we had come back from a couple of tours in Vietnam, so our first decade in the Marine Corps was formed by Vietnam. Of course, he was there, too—more senior, but he really understood what we saw and our reaction it.

Lieutenant General Mick Trainor was my battalion commander. He had a reputation in the Marine Corps for being a highly intelligent officer, and he was someone who really understood warfare, especially in Vietnam. He was another mentor—I have had several, most of them later made general officer—so I was a pretty good chooser of mentors [laughs].

In terms of books, I read a lot, but I don’t have a particular way of listing them. I talk with Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper about this a lot. He really focuses on specific books, and I don’t. I read a lot of books. I always get taken aback when junior officers ask me, “Can you give me a reading list or a list of recommended books?” I say, “You should read all the books you can get ahold of, and then sort out what you think are the important books.” Usually, they get onto doing that. But it’s also a lazy way of saying, ‘I don’t always remember what I’ve read in all these books’—I gather it in and hopefully integrate it.

One of the big themes in your well-known “Combat Concepts” talk is the need to extend maneuver thinking beyond warfighting concepts to application. For you, General Gray, and others, it seems this wasn’t a contrast. Maneuver warfare was a way of thinking and a practice at the same time.

Zinni: Yes, I would say it’s a way of thinking. It is more a way of how you form concepts about operational art. However, what I felt was lacking in some discussions was going to the next step—to application, to practice. People who didn’t want to take that step bothered me. Execution is just as hard as conceptualizing. John Boyd talked about that. He took the concepts and talked about applications. He was the maneuverist who tried to bring in some form of application. Of course, General Gray was that way, too. He was always interested in application. He asked us all the time, “How would you translate that into action, or into application?” He always wanted to take it to the next step, but it was rare to find people who thought conceptually like that—and then extra rare to find people who tried to translate it into application.

Regarding your experience in Vietnam, it seems like, for you and your peers, it was a very formative part of your career. It became critical for what drove you and others to embrace education, self-study, learning, and some more maverick ways of thinking since it was obvious the things we were doing needed to change. How can we foster that kind of maverick thinking in our organizations today? How well do you think we are doing?

Zinni: Well, from my experience, it must start at the top. You need license to be a maverick. That is how most effective change comes about. In my dissertation, I looked at our senior military leadership during World War II. If you look at George Marshall, Earnest King, or Hap Arnold, they were not necessarily mavericks, but they believed in the freedom to innovate. They believed in cultivating thinkers and mavericks that acted and thought differently. They protected the Nimitzs, the MacArthurs, and the Stillwells—all the guys in the Pacific at that time that I looked at. These were majorly flawed people. Nimitz ran a ship aground when he was a young officer! MacArthur had a checkered past, was not very well liked in the Army, and his actions in the Philippines were disastrous. Stillwell was a character nobody liked to be around. But Marshall and King saw in them what was needed for that war. They had rebel spirits. Marshall and King recognized the war would be different, so they sought out the innovators, the thinkers, and that sort of cascaded down.

The top leadership out in the theater began to move the traditionalist thinkers aside. They did not take an axe to, or fire, everyone. Rather, they moved them into positions where they couldn’t influence or affect the process of change. The first fleet commander at the Guadalcanal landing was an old school guy who didn’t get it, so Nimitz moved him out and brought in Halsey to lead the fleet. That basically saved the day at Guadalcanal.

You can go down this concept of innovate, test, adapt, and adopt. This goes all the way down the ranks to squadron officers figuring out new formations, new patterns to fly. It gets diffused in the organization where it breaks down resistance. It is not kept as something separate, which is a problem we have today and what causes most organizations to fail. Your whole organization must feel part of the team and involved in change. Isolating a special section of super innovators in an organization fails 95 percent of the time in the corporate world. Everybody resents them.

In your dissertation, you mention the importance of seeing things in a strategic or visionary way. Why has there been a decline in national-level strategy and strategic thinking?

Zinni: Well, I think there were flashes of strategic thinking of some quality, maybe with George Washington, but that was more operational. Then, I think the next time you see it is Grant as a commander. Lincoln knew he needed a strategy but didn’t know how to develop one until he found Grant. But that was a moment. The next time you see it is with Roosevelt because as soon as Pearl Harbor was attacked, he called in Marshall and said, “We need a strategy.” He started to give the principles of a strategy: we will become the arsenal of democracy. What that meant is we will go to our strengths, which was our industrial base, and we will out-produce the enemy. We were producing more tanks in a month than the Germans could produce in a year at the height of their industrial capability. In 3.5 years, we built 90 carriers. He also said we must get our act together with our allies. He went to the UK, formed the Combined Chiefs of Staff, and said it is Europe first. These are strategic principles.

Marshall, who thought and acted strategically, started putting these things together. On the Navy side, they were thinking strategically in terms of the Pacific, but in the Atlantic, it was more of a support role. Certainly, Hap Arnold and strategic bombing was also being thought about. You see strategy in wartime. The greatest time of U.S. strategic thinking came from 1944 to 1950. Truman was President; Marshall was Secretary of State and then Defense. You have people like Vandenberg who worked with them across political differences. If you look at that period, we were stabilizing the world economy, we created NATO, we passed the 1947 National Security Act. All these things were happening, and we were developing the ideas of deterrence. That carried us through the Cold War. There were moments when it lessened, like during the Vietnam War, where we had no strategy, and Korea was not much better. But the overall grand strategy was solid in terms of how we were dealing with the peer threat.

You began to see it wane, and when the Cold War ended, it totally ended our strategic thinking. When George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev talked about a peace dividend and a new world order, every reporter asked them, “What does that mean? How do you build a new world order? What is this peace dividend?” They never provided an answer. Bush got so frustrated he said, “Oh, you mean the vision thing”—the vision being a key element to strategic thinking. One needs a vision, but he couldn’t be bothered by it. Subsequent presidents also dismissed it. Obama, for example, said something like, “I don’t need any Kennans,” when he got pressed by a reporter.

What the heck is your strategy if you don’t have a vision? We totally lost the ability at the senior leadership level in America to provide, at the very least, strategic principles and underpinnings. Instead, we went off and launched conflicts in places like Afghanistan and Iraq with no idea of what we were trying to do. I blame the uniformed military for a lot of this because it is their job to ask those questions. I had retired, and I was asked by a subsequent commander at CENTCOM to come to his headquarters and talk. I talked to him at length. He was frustrated. He said, “You know what, I don’t know what I am supposed to do. I have no idea what I am supposed to do.” He had a war going on in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he has no idea what the political objectives are, what the desired end state is, how it ends.

If a lack of national-level strategy makes it difficult for our organizations to do anything strategic, how do we get better at it again?

Zinni: That’s a key question, but it is hard to answer because we change administrations every four years. Even if a President gets eight years, his cabinet turns over at least once during his time, so there is no consistency. No one who comes into these offices goes through a strategy course before becoming Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense, or the National Security Advisor. What strategic education or training do they have? The problem is that in the military we build this tremendous planning and thinking construct, and the whole thing—as magnificent as it is—ultimately relies on plugging it into a strategy, a vision, an end state.

The only time I personally saw a moment of strategy was in the 1980s when we had fixed the military, if you will, with the all-volunteer force, and we began to test operational skills. That became a critical point to be promoted and be successful. The military decided to take on at least some of the upper end of operational art and strategy. You had the Maritime Strategy, AirLand Battle, Deep Battle—these at least were high-end, conceptual ways of doing business. I always told people I was at the bottom end of strategy as a combatant commander. I had to have a theater strategy, but I had no delusions that I was preparing grand strategy or anything like that. I was where strategy touched operational art.

I had to have a theater strategy, and I had to have a matching set of applications to go with it. I had no real guidance. I was basically on my own. I read everything that said “strategy” on the cover. My staff piled it up on tables in my office: content from all the other combatant commanders, the National Security Strategy, every country plan in my area of responsibility. I read all the DoD and State Department stuff. It was not very useful. First, very little of it said anything. Then, when you looked at it, even the terminology for the same things was different. Everybody made up his own, and there were so many inconsistencies in what was going on. There were no driving principles, no driving strategic goals and objectives. Nothing drove or directed our processes.

You know, Goldwater-Nichols, most people miss the part that says the President will provide a strategy within the first 150 days of his or her presidency. Then, every year it is to be updated, with the budget, and sent to Congress. I think Goldwater and Nichols tried to elevate the debate about how the resources being provided had to be based on strategic understanding and coherence between the providers in Congress and the executors in the Executive Branch. It never happens that way.

You were involved with the Navy Strategic Studies Group (SSG). How did you get involved with it, and would that be something we could reinvigorate to help nurture and educate strategic thinkers?

Zinni: You know, it started out that way, as a forum to do just that. My group may have been the last one that was truly doing a strategic study. The SSG was originally formed by the Chief of Naval Operations to take a strategic issue and spend a year studying it. Then, come back and answer the question the CNO wanted studied. This later deteriorated, maybe during the group after me, into doing studies on recruiting, manpower, things like that.

We had an interesting one. The Maritime Strategy had been on the street for a while, and the CNO wanted to know if it was getting any reaction from the Soviets. We spent the first half of the year delving into intelligence to see if the Soviet commanders responded to the Maritime Strategy. We spent the second half of the year determining whether they responded in a way that necessitated an update to the Maritime Strategy either to counter their reactions or take advantage of their reactions.

What was eye opening to me was interviewing a defector who was with the GRU. I was going over things we did operationally to see how the Soviets responded to it. He put up with this for an hour or two before he finally started laughing. I asked, “What’s so funny?” He said, “You are going about this the wrong way. Do you understand that you feed the Soviet Army?” Reagan had approved grain sales to Russia after their five-year plan failed and they had big food shortages. This was very controversial in the United States, but Reagan saw this as a benefit to our farmers. He got enough support in Congress to do this, but this guy was telling me, without that, the Soviet Army doesn’t eat! That made us think we might be going about this the wrong way. We were thinking in terms of kinetic exchange, battlefield stuff.

What if we cut off outside resources? How dependent is the Soviet Union on outside resources? We looked at dependencies—this was one, but also other dependencies on raw materials and food stuffs. Then we looked at a broader maritime strategy. We could blockade the Pacific ports of the Soviets. Cutting off supply and resupply of critical elements was of greater strategic advantage than what we were thinking about doing kinetically on their maritime flanks. These were the kinds of issues we were thinking of in the SSG.

We are just not very good at strategy anymore. Back when we had a decent approach to it, during Desert Storm/Desert Shield, we at least had some idea strategically. We did not want to make Iraq the 51st state; we didn’t want to own it. We wanted to stamp out Saddam, then go to containment, and do it in a way that we didn’t end up with a broken Iraq on our back. Brent Scowcroft understood the limits of the military there. He was an Air Force two-star, and you had James Baker as the Secretary of State, who was a former Marine officer, and also a decent strategic thinker. And, of course, you had Colin Powell as the Chairman, who had a lot of influence within the administration, above just being the Chairman.

They crafted the strategy to not go to Baghdad, and then the containment strategy after that, which we were able to define and refine down to just 23,000 troops, on any given day, containing Iraq. Less than the number reporting to the Pentagon every day. The effort was to avoid making those 23,000 waste their time, so we created live fire ranges out in Kuwait so they could get trained. We tried to create an environment with our allies for joint training that made the containment more than sitting around somewhere.

There was a flickering of some strategic thinking in there, but again, what you saw was a 4-star general, General Powell, who had a lot of influence in the government, and a National Security Adviser who was a retired Air Force general. They understood what the limitations were. But it was controversial. There were many politicians who thought we should have gone to Baghdad even though we would have been handed a mess, but at least back then, we had overwhelming force, which was a tenant of what Powell advocated. By overwhelming force, Powell didn’t just mean military force. He meant bringing in allies, making sure the international community is behind you, getting that UN resolution, because you want to have the overwhelming moral force, not just the military force. But they, and that kind of strategic thinking, got discarded and pushed aside.

Regarding the 1980s Maritime Strategy, what can we do now to get back to that kind of approach?

Zinni: I really think it is time to think about a Maritime Strategy, much the way we framed it back in the 80s. In the 80s, there were several motivations for doing it. We weren’t that far out from Vietnam. The concentration in the 70s was on rehabilitating the services from the effects of Vietnam, building the all-volunteer military, and creating more education opportunities in the military. When we hit the 80s, it opened up for the next step, which was sort of a renaissance, and we began looking at operational art.

You saw maneuver warfare, AirLand Battle, and the Maritime Strategy in the 80s. The Navy and Marine Corps came together and thought about a lot of questions pertaining to possible conflict with the Soviet Union, and people wanted to become more creative about how we would engage in such an operation. The Navy and Marine Corps said, “OK, how do we play in that? We are not central front forces. Is there a role on the flanks?” This opened and challenged thinking. Traditional thinking, for example, is you never take a carrier close into the shore. Well, we ended up proposing that carriers go into the fjords in Norway. We looked at seizing areas in the Mediterranean and the Baltic and then pressuring the flanks of any Soviet effort in the central region.  

What we looked at in the SSG was very insightful because those were things we hadn’t thought about at the strategic level. The SSG, unfortunately, fell off. Its high-water mark was in the 80s. By the time the 90s came around, the SSG wasn’t doing anything strategic. They became an administrative analysis group, rather than a strategic thinking group. It lost its strategic nature, and with the collapse of the Soviet Union, we went into a pause in our strategic thinking overall.

How do we make sure we develop people who are asking the right questions and not falling victim to biases and projecting what we want to believe, or what we want to believe is happening in other countries?

Zinni: It’s a great question, and I go back to people like George Marshall, who had the same question. What Marshall did—and General Gray was like this, too—Marshall wanted to know who his senior leaders, mid-range leaders, and maybe even some of his junior leaders were. Marshall spent a lot of time talking with his leadership, trying to understand who they were. There were always rumors about Marshall having a little black book about the leaders he thought were the best or had something. People later realized he never really had a black book, but he had a black book in his mind.

When World War II started, he immediately knew who he had to move out and who he wanted to move in. The people he identified early on as promising were put in at the division, corps, and field Army levels, and they were remarkably good. He then started to form these groups where he encouraged them to come together afterhours to discuss the art of war, operational art, and the profession of arms. He wanted this dialogue to continue amongst these groups that he established. General Gray and Lieutenant General Trainor did the same thing. Within these groups, they could begin to see who the thinkers were.

You must not only go after the thinkers, however, but also those who can lead, execute, and apply. You must marry the two together. There is a place for people who can only do the conceptual, but you are really looking for the future leaders who can tie the conceptual to the application. Our senior leadership needs to do what Marshall did and try to personally discover these people and identify them, and not just believe the system can do it on its own.

Read Part Two here.

General Anthony Zinni served 39 years as a U.S. Marine and retired as Commander–in–Chief, U.S. Central Command, a position he held from August 1997 to September 2000. After retiring, General Zinni served as U.S. special envoy to Israel and the Palestinian Authority (2001-2003) and U.S. special envoy to Qatar (2017-2019). General Zinni has held numerous academic positions, including the Stanley Chair in Ethics at the Virginia Military Institute, the Nimitz Chair at the University of California, Berkeley, the Hofheimer Chair at the Joint Forces Staff College, the Sanford Distinguished Lecturer in Residence at Duke University, and the Harriman Professorship of Government at the Reves Center for International Studies at the College of William and Mary. General Zinni is the author of several books, including Before the First Shots Are Fired, Leading the Charge, The Battle for Peace, and Battle Ready. He has also had a distinguished business career, serving as Chairman of the Board at BAE Systems Inc., a member of the board and later executive vice president at DynCorp International, and President of International Operations for M.I.C. Industries, Inc.

Dr. Mie Augier is Professor in the Graduate School of Defense Management, and Defense Analysis Department, at NPS. She is a founding member of NWSI and is interested in strategy, organizations, leadership, innovation, and how to educate strategic thinkers and learning leaders.

Major Sean F. X. Barrett, PhD is a Marine intelligence officer currently serving as the Operations Officer for 1st Radio Battalion.

Featured Image: Sgt. William J. Puckett, an assault amphibious crew chief with Alpha Company, 2nd Assault Amphibian Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, watches from the turret of his AAV as Marines with his unit conduct a Gator Square after disembarking from the USS Whidbey Island off the coast of Camp Lejeune, N.C., Sept. 10, 2014. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Justin Updegraff / Released)

By Commander Christopher Nelson, USN

Professor Pauline Shanks Kaurin, a professor in the College of Leadership and Ethics at the U.S. Naval War College and the Admiral James B. Stockdale Chair in Professional Military Ethics, joined me to discuss her new book, On Obedience: Contrasting Philosophies for the Military, Citizenry, and Community. It’s a great read and an incredibly timely book. We discuss Captain Crozier’s firing, if we should have an ethicist on the Navy staff, and just which philosophers she would bring back from the past to star on a podcast about ethics and philosophy. 

I’d like to start with a personal question if you don’t mind. You’re a parent and a professor. Indeed, you mention your sons early in the book when framing the word “obedience” for readers. How does your training as an ethicist shape your decisions as a parent?

First, I tend to have perhaps a shorter trigger on certain things (especially lying or deception) because I think, teach, and write about ethics. My kids will tell you I take ethics way too seriously. Second, I also spend a ton of time with my kids talking about their decisions and why they are making the decisions they are. They know they have to make an argument if they want certain things (and they are quite good at it!) and that I will expect them to justify and have reasons for their actions. Third, because I focus on a communal and care approach to ethics, they know that I expect them to think about how what they do impacts other people. As teenagers, this is a tough one, but both my boys are quite empathetic and considerate (when they choose to be). Lastly, I value independence, especially of thought, which leads to some interesting discussions and negotiations about rules and standards.

So, any advice on raising ethical children? And where, if ever, does that advice have practical overlap with leading a platoon of soldiers or a division of Sailors? Or another way to ask it: Does the familial and the martial share ethical elements? Where do they diverge?            

I think there are some similarities in that you want to develop capacities for moral deliberation, judgment and action, as well as practices like care, empathy, and moral imagination. For my children the stakes are different than for the military officers I engage with and they have more leeway to learn from their mistakes. This means that for the military there has to be more emphasis on practicing these things before one gets into a situation where they are necessary. Members of the military are also members of a profession which my kids are not, so that brings lots of specific norms, values, and obligations in addition to those which are part of their personal morality. And of course, my children are not yet fully morally and legally responsible in the way that members of the military (as adults) are.

You make an important distinction in your book between loyalty and obedience. What are they and how do they differ?

These are both largely social virtues that are rooted in relationships; in the case of obedience within specific communities of practice. Obedience is also largely a virtue about a specific action or series of actions that one is being asked to carry out. Loyalty is more about a long-term relationship or connection (which may involve some actions) where there is a shared commitment to certain ideas, projects, values, or ways of thinking. This is not necessary for obedience. I can obey the POTUS whether or not I agree with his political perspectives. As such while there is some overlap, it is not necessary. One can be loyal and be disobedient, as well as obedient and disloyal.

Let’s dig into the relief of Captain Brett Crozier a bit. Plenty of folks have already spilled ink with their opinions and choosing sides and voicing frustrations. But I want to step back for a second. So here’s the question: You get a phone call from the Chief of Naval Operations and it’s the day after the captain’s letter hits the press. The CNO asks you if you don’t mind coming to his office since he has…questions. So, he asks you: “Pauline, what ethical questions should I consider when thinking through this event?” What advice do you give him?

I would probably have him read my article on the subject before we talk!

For the CNO, the issues of the profession are important. What are his moral obligations to the Navy? To the Secretary of the Navy? To POTUS? To Crozier? To the sailors of the USS Theodore Roosevelt? What is the basis of these obligations? Is it about rules and policies? Is it about care? Is it about what is best for the most people? Is it about what it means to be a good CNO? What are the specific obligations that come with that office that others might not have? In particular, I would ask him to seriously think about whether preserving the reputation of the Navy is a moral obligation here and especially given the leadership challenges of the last few years, whether there are other moral obligations that are more important.

In addition, senior leaders also have to think about second, third, fourth, and fifth order implications of their decisions and actions for a variety of stakeholders. All of these effects will have ethical dimensions that need thinking through. I would hope we could talk through all of these things together, since being an ethical leader is not just about one’s own morality, but about the larger community of practice and its context (in this case, the military profession).

Should we have an ethicist on the Navy staff? On the Joint Staff? Frankly, I don’t know if we do. But don’t hospitals have ethicists? These are people – and the question of who gets a ventilator during the pandemic is pertinent – that help administrators and physicians make important policy decisions for their patients and their organization. Why not have the same?

In the military this question is complicated. We do not necessarily have persons trained in ethics as an academic discipline on senior leader staffs. We do have JAGs who weigh in on legal matters and chaplains who might provide moral advice on a personal and command level, but their training (as is appropriate) is generally more religious in nature.

The Navy does have academic experts like myself, my counterpart at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), and others trained in ethics as a discipline at the U.S. Naval Academy and other places like the Naval Leadership and Ethics Center (NLEC) and Senior Enlisted Academy here in Newport. Some have pointed out that there might be a need for a dedicated ethicist position. That said, my door is always open, as is that of my NPS colleague. We regularly write and speak on these issues and are always happy to engage.

I’d like to call this next question the “Hollywood Hypothetical.” Pauline gets stuck in a telephone booth with Bill (Keanu Reeves) and Ted (Alex Winter). Keanu says you have to go back in time and find three philosophers and bring them back to 1) start a military ethics podcast and 2) debate the firing of Captain Crozier for the first episode. Language barriers aside, who do you shove into that phonebooth? Why? And what’s the name of your kick-ass podcast?

Kaurin: Divas and Warriors: Let’s talk about military ethics!

I would definitely have Aristotle, David Hume, and Annette Baier (a contemporary philosopher who focuses on trust and care, but is also a Hume expert). That said, it would be fun to have Bill and Ted stay on to be the peanut gallery and offer comic relief.

Is disobedience often adjudicated and vindicated? What I don’t have a good feel for is all of the disobedient acts in U.S. military history, some investigated or written about, and then vindicated. Many may never reach the threshold for publication or they fade away in paper stacks or computer drives. Simply, and you use General Milley’s quote in your book, can we capture and should we talk about and publicize accounts where servicemembers practice “Professional Disobedience”?

I think in general disobedience is tacitly (through military practice and culture) and explicitly (in UCMJ, ideas like good order and discipline and the chain of command) discouraged for largely good reasons. In practice, particularly in combat situations, we find a much greater tolerance for something like Milley’s disciplined disobedience or the negotiation that I talk about in my book. These instances might not be what we think of as full, explicit disobedience (although occasionally that happens), but something less than obedience to the orders as given. I talk about some of these in the book, but military history is filled with people exercising professional judgment and discretion to do what they think is indicated in a given situation – often for specific reasons.

I do think we should talk more about some of these cases, if only to open the discussion and help people develop the capacity to make these kinds of moral judgments as members of a profession and as citizens. It’s complicated.

What can we learn from other militaries – past and present – on how they thought through building an obedient military culture? Are there any particular nations that for you, personally, make for a fascinating case study?

In the book I discuss how the Brits handle this through the idea of a “Reasonable Challenge” which provides a framework and process for making these kinds of judgments without undermining a general culture of obedience. Many historical warrior cultures also seem to have ways in which they might think about obedience in ways that are less bureaucratic than our contemporary militaries. Clearly a reasonable level of obedience is necessary, but exactly how much and how it manifests can vary quite a bit. Looking at history, art, literature, film, and culture can give us a view on other ways of doing things that are worth interrogating and considering.

You refer to the professor and writer Elizabeth Samet later in your book. You cite her book Willing Obedience as a book that does a good job of capturing how Americans – through the 18-19th century – discussed obedience versus autonomy. They explored this tension in fiction, memoirs, and other texts. Do you believe this is the best way to explore ethical tensions? How else can we explore these tensions?

I think that drawing on lots of different resources is important. My book and my work generally are inter-disciplinary and span historical time periods and cultures (including the future) for a reason. While philosophical texts and arguments are important to doing ethics, questions of ethics are ultimately questions about how to live, and how to think about and talk about how we live. It makes sense then, to pull from all the varieties of human experience to explore these questions. This approach also helps build empathy, critical and strategic thinking, as well as moral imagination; all of these are essential to being an ethical person.

To wrap up, what other books, films, podcasts, or poetry should people look into when they want to think about ethics in the military?

There are lots of great movies (and not just ‘war movies’) and elements of popular culture that are a good way to get into topics that then one might read about in a more intentional fashion. Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars is a classic in military ethics for a reason, but Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Nancy Sherman’s work on moral injury, Afterwar: Healing the Moral Wounds of Our Soldiers, and Shakespeare’s Henry also explore important issues in very different ways. Those who have served have reflected on their experiences, but it’s also important to read and engage the experiences of all impacted by violence and conflict for a variety of questions, concerns, and experiences. For me, it is less about the material you engage (I have my favorites), and more about the questions and mindset you bring to the material and how you reflect on it.

Pauline Shanks Kaurin holds a PhD in Philosophy from Temple University, specializing in military ethics, just war theory, and applied ethics. She is also Stockdale Chair and Professor of Professional Military Ethics at the U.S. Naval War College in the College of Leadership and Ethics. Recent publications include: “When Less is not More: Expanding the Combatant/Non-Combatant Distinction”; “With Fear and Trembling: A Qualified Defense of Non-Lethal Weapons” and Achilles Goes Asymmetrical: The Warrior, Military Ethics and Contemporary Warfare (Routledge 2014.) She was Featured Contributor for The Strategy Bridge and published in RealClearDefense, The Wavell Room, Newsweek, and Just Security. She lives in Newport, Rhode Island. The views here are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Navy or the U.S. Department of Defense.

Commander Christopher Nelson is the Deputy Senior Naval Intelligence Manager for East Asia in the Office of Naval Intelligence in Suitland, Maryland. He is a naval intelligence officer and graduate of the U.S. Naval War College and the Maritime Advanced Warfighting School in Newport, Rhode Island. The views here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Navy or the U.S. Department of Defense.

Featured Image: Soldiers, with the U.S. Army Drill Team, 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard), conduct a performance during the Meet Your Army event at Point State Park, Pittsburgh, Pa., May 4, 2019. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Dalton Smith)

By Dmitry Filipoff

CIMSEC had the opportunity to discuss commanding the USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) stealth destroyer with commanding officer Captain Andrew Carlson. 

In this wide-ranging discussion Capt. Carlson describes the goals of this unique warship, what it is like to experiment and field advanced new capability, and what the legacy of the ship may be for preparing for great power competition. 

What would you say are the unique challenges of leading this ship and crew compared to most other ships?

Certainly, managing the maturation process in automation, integrating advanced technologies with legacy programs of record, and the minimal manning model all come to mind. However, none of those challenges are especially unique to Zumwalt.

The truly unique set of challenges for Zumwalt has really been orchestrating the path toward reaching an initial operational capability (IOC). Not only because of in-stride adjustments and acquisition decisions for certain systems but mainly navigating the dual-delivery approach prescribed in the Acquisition Decision Memorandum signed December 22, 2007 by the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics.

DDG 1000-class ships undergo a two-phased activation approach, separating hull, mechanical, and electrical delivery (encompassing propulsion and support systems for safe navigation) from combat systems activation. DDG 1000 was originally delivered from the shipbuilder, Bath Iron Works, in May 2016. Since our arrival in San Diego in late 2016, the crew has coordinated with Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) for completing systems installation, activation, and testing, while subordinate to operational direction from the U.S. Third Fleet, and operating under the manning, training, and equipping functions of Commander, Naval Surface Forces, U.S. Pacific Fleet. This blending of delivery timelines and program milestones with fleet certification requirements and operational schedules presented a complex command and control relationship with shifting phases of supported and supporting efforts between the numbered fleet commander, the type commander, and NAVSEA.

Despite the challenges inherent in this approach, the benefits realized include an ability to achieve progress in each of the support roles to the different chains of command. Provided the ship systems met readiness levels, and the crew maintained training certifications under surface force guidance, Zumwalt was able to conduct operations at sea necessary for initial operational test and evaluation milestones as well as meet crew training and proficiency requirements while satisfying Third Fleet operational tasking. The best example of this was a Spring patrol in early 2019 after Zumwalt completed critical tier-1 certification requirements and eventually sailed over 9000 nautical miles, conducting first-in-class trials in Alaska, supporting engagement and security cooperation events with our Canadian partners in Esquimalt, British Columbia, and completed a transit to Pearl Harbor, all while conducting combat systems activation events and crew training sustainment.

Split delivery, though a necessary decision at the time, has been a challenging framework to operate in, though in retrospect, I am encouraged that the coordination between the fleet and NAVSEA has resulted in a meticulously managed progress toward achieving IOC, while providing opportunity for the crew to gain competence and confidence in operating Zumwalt and meeting operational tasking for the Pacific Fleet.

The Navy established a Surface Development Squadron that includes the Zumwalt. What is it like to lead a ship whose focus is experimentation, rather than, say, preparing for a traditional deployment?

I would adjust the framing of the question a bit to address the opportunity to experiment more explicitly, in addition to preparing for a deployment. The main focus of the ship is completion of developmental and integrated at-sea testing and achievement of initial operational capability. Along the way, because of first-in-class privilege, the crew also has the opportunity and even the obligation to experiment with the ship. The newer technologies in computing architecture, hull form, electric drive, and increased automation present incredible opportunity to experiment not only with technology and newer systems but in basic ship operations and tactical development applied to the class, and perhaps the fleet of the future.

The Surface Development Squadron establishment (created in May 2019 and now up and running today) and alignment of the Zumwalt hulls under one immediate superior in command furthers the opportunity DDG 1000 already enjoyed as a lead ship by positioning each ship under a commander charged with, among normal command duties, the rapid experimentation and developmental operations for technology and procedures. At the root of our training, maintenance, and operations, we are always looking for proficiency and the application of basic-through-advanced surface warfare disciplines in order to be ready for deployment.

The privilege of leading a first-in-class ship that gets to experiment was already a great job. Under a boss who supports, enables, and encourages experimentation, I have even more license and support to push the envelope in all facets of surface warfare. And this is all framed under a mindset of “preparing for a deployment” as it also includes developing the concepts of employment, adjusting and refining the training and certification models for this ship class, and proving out the best methods for integration with fleet and joint operations.

For a ship that will probably not experience a traditional deployment or reach its full capability soon, what keeps the crew interested and motivated?

Zumwalt Sailors have a long view. They have a problem-solving tenacity undeterred by ambiguity. And they understand that deploying is not synonymous with operating. We are able to operate, and need to operate, for testing, development, and validation so that subsequent ships and fleet units are ready when we do deploy. That is motivation enough to stay on top of readiness, training certifications, and maintaining proficiency in the very perishable skills of doing routine things in the maritime environment that, though dangerous, need not be unsafe.

The crew stays interested as well through first-in-class moments. We have the opportunity as the lead ship to live in the grey area and determine the way ahead for the ship class. Among our grading criteria is this path we pave for follow-on work. For example, the Zumwalt-class destroyer Michael Monsoor (DDG-1001) should meet or exceed many of our production, activation, testing, and qualification metrics. We absolutely measure our effectiveness more so by their successes rather than our own. Additionally, what we learn and experience has value to the current operating fleet as well as the ongoing research and development for future ship classes.

Finally, we focus on our team, our culture. Onboard Zumwalt we value civility, humility, teamwork, honesty, and integrity. We necessarily do this because those are characteristics of high-performing professional organizations, but we also make them a priority because they solidify our own crew as a team ready to lean in to the challenges involved in bringing a new ship class to life, and ushering in a new capability to the fleet. We are interested and motivated in each other, and that surpasses the challenge of succumbing to hard or wicked problems, and also counters dealing with the tedious nature of some of the more mundane things we do.

How would you describe the progress and process of the combat systems integration?

Challenging and rewarding, often simultaneously. In addition to ushering in advanced technology inherent in the Zumwalt design, we are poised at the intersection of legacy programs of record and new systems functionality that requires extensive testing beyond simple installation and testing on other hulls that have already passed through the crucible of being a part of a new ship class. Our situation has led to fascinating discussions and discoveries between design teams, engineers, industry leads, and fleet Sailors as we install, test, repair, modify, and operate various equipment and systems of systems onboard.

It is necessarily detailed and deliberate, and certainly tests one’s patience when testing identifies a flaw or corrective action, but each time the collective team of government civilians, industry leads, and Sailors punches through to a successful test or validation of system integration there is a tremendous sense of accomplishment and increased motivation to move forward. In some cases, our in-situ feedback can be turned around into rapid changes that affect not just the Zumwalt ship class but other fielding efforts across the fleet. We are also well-positioned to inform discussions on future ship classes with operator perspectives to aid acquisition deliberations.

What can this ship teach the Navy about preparing for great power conflict?

Logistics and self-sufficiency are not only critical enablers for prompt and sustained combat operations at sea, but need to be factored into requirements definitions, and design and acquisition decisions. We have spent many hours reviewing and modifying our ability to conduct repairs and improve self-sufficiency within the lifelines of the ship. Adequate repair parts storage, critically evaluated parts allowances, and onboard repair capabilities should always be part of ship design. This includes not only traditional hull, mechanical and electrical repair capability, but with the continuing shift of key components in systems and the networking of engineering control on par with sensor and weapon control, the reliance on network health and security, fiber optic repair, electronic redundancies, and computer architectures will require increased reliability and failsafes to ensure our ships and their systems can remain available in a sustained fight.

Including margin in space, weight, power, and cooling in our ship systems aids longevity of design and permits agility in our procurement to adjust to a dynamic strategic and operational landscape. Patience and prudent decision-making along the way are key components of a steady strain to deliver capability to the fleet that has not existed and will be game-changing in great power conflict. Investment in time, fiscal resources, intellectual capital, and deliberate maturation of critical technologies are key to the long view in procurement.

Significant advancements in maritime warfare capabilities like automation, stealth, and high power systems are expensive and require clear articulation of cost and risk balances. Once we have determined that these advancements are necessary to tip the scales in favor of our national interests, we have to be disciplined and principled to effectively follow through. But this is not a call to blind loyalty or to obstinate determination in the face of invalidated assumptions, or changing fiscal, strategic, or operational realities.

When we need improved and advanced capabilities, including ones the Zumwalt class brings, we will find that those capabilities are not something we can quickly surge if they do not already exist in the fleet. We will be glad that we committed in advance to gaining the advantages Zumwalt brings, especially in technologies and tactics that usher in new capability across the fleet. There’s a great quote from the movie Spy Game from Robert Redford’s character, Nathan Muir. His assistant, Gladys, (brilliantly played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste) muses whether or not he is being paranoid as she watches him prepare for foreseen challenges he expects to face. Muir’s response as a seasoned intelligence operative resonates with me: “When did Noah build the ark, Gladys? Before the rain…before the rain.”

Closer to my wheelhouse, I believe the more I sail and operate with an advanced warship like Zumwalt, the more I am convinced that technical competence and system expertise, procedural compliance built on a foundational knowledge of basic principles, and tenacity in solving hard problems remain timeless requirements of service at sea.

What do you think the legacy of the Zumwalt class will be?

Power, stealth, and people. More explicitly, power generation, redundancy, and smart power distribution regimes will become the norm across the future force. We will continue to see increased demand for high voltage systems, integrated power, and balanced distribution of power across a variety of inductive loads that include sensors and weapons, and even propulsion systems of the future.

Regarding stealth, the nature of our ship and her inherent stealth design has thrust forward into our tactical development an emphasis on signature control and emissions discipline that is not only supremely effective in the employment of this ship class, but is immediately exportable to other ship classes. A crew that can appreciate the use of the electromagnetic and acoustic spectra in the routine doesn’t need to be on a stealth destroyer to realize the advantages therein. Put another way, one doesn’t have to be invisible if you don’t let people see you to begin with.

I would hope for a stealth destroyer legacy that engenders a renaissance of basic warfighting disciplines in emissions control, operational deception, anti-submarine tactics, and an application of offensive capability distributed across the battlespace to not only decrease our detect-to-engage sequence timelines, but also complicates and reduces the decision space of an enemy.

Finally, the privilege of leading a concentrated grouping of talented, mature, and resilient Sailors reinforces continued appreciation for the maxim that Sailors mean more than systems onboard a warship. John Paul Jones had it right when rating the capability of a ship.

Any final thoughts to share?

Facing similar challenges to those faced by today’s Navy, our ship’s namesake entered office as the 19^th Chief of Naval Operations. With defense spending declining and a steadily aging fleet, Admiral Elmo “Bud” Zumwalt saw it as his job to ensure the Navy remained capable of meeting the current and future threats. Zumwalt’s embrace of innovation resulted in a number of new programs, such as the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate, the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, and the F-14 Tomcat, all of which had lasting impacts on the Navy’s warfighting readiness. We are similarly poised with advanced capability requirements, but constrained resources, and we need to fearlessly apply a pioneering mindset while critically evaluating the effectiveness and integration of new capabilities.

More important than fleet capability development, Admiral Zumwalt knew the primary force-multiplier of the Navy continued to be Sailors and, as a social reformer, began quality of life improvements for the fleet and the institutionalization of equality for minorities and women in the Navy. There is still much work left in both the modernization of our naval capabilities and making actionable progress in the area of equality. We are privileged onboard Zumwalt to uphold a legacy of ushering in new naval capability, but more so, to reinforce ideals the admiral voiced in Z-gram 66, that “there is no place in our Navy for insensitivity. We are determined that we shall do better…ours must be a Navy family that recognizes no artificial barriers of race, color, or religion. There is no black Navy, no white navy, —just one Navy—the United States Navy.”

Captain Carlson is a 1995 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. He previously commanded the legacy destroyer USS Higgins (DDG 76), the U.S. Aegis Ashore Missile Defense System in Romania, and a trio of coastal minehunters. He holds Navy subspecialties in space systems engineering and national security. The views here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Navy or the U.S. Department of Defense. You can follow him on Twitter @ruminantswo.

Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content. Contact him at Content@cimsec.org.

Featured Image: Jacksonville, Fla. (Oct. 25, 2016) The guided-missile destroyer USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) transits Naval Station Mayport Harbor on its way into port. (U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Timothy Schumaker/Released)