Flotilla Notes Series

“Like war itself, our approach to warfighting must evolve. If we cease to refine, expand, and improve our profession, we risk becoming outdated, stagnant, and defeated.” –Commandant General A. M. Gray, USMC, MCDP-1, Warfighting

By CDR Paul Nickell

Perpetual administrative burdens, general military training, perfecting PowerPoints and quad charts, cataloged trackers for trackers, and continuous connectivity to every servicemember erodes the quality of the military’s preparation and conduct of warfighting. Few practical steps exist below the four-star level that can offer substantial relief from these numerous demands, but warfighters must still strive to exercise deliberate management and find ways to put warfighting first.

Despite being immersed within myriad administrative milieu, warfighting is our purpose. Denying this is to deny the immutable warrior ethos shared by every generation. While leaders have openly stated that warfighting is the top priority, this imperative has not been effectively translated into the deckplate reality of the warfighter’s workload. Their focus is thinly spread across many tasks, many of which are only indirectly connected to warfighting. Deliberate management is the means of leadership to address this challenge. Characterized by intentionality and firm commitment, the deliberate management of warfighting acknowledges that putting warfighting first is a constitutional aspect of service. Deliberate management therefore embraces the related leadership challenges of preserving the warfighting focus amidst the tide of lesser requirements.

Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication (MCDP) 1, Warfighting, offers practical steps to emphasize warfighting preparation that each servicemember can implement now. Some of these steps pertain to focus areas that include doctrine, professionalism, training, professional military education, equipping, and personnel management.

Doctrine contains the foundational beliefs and values of warfare communities on how they expect to operate and fight. Leadership must urge warfighters to learn doctrine, engage in discussions on it, and question its tenets. Professionalism compels these intellectual behaviors from practitioners of war. A cornerstone of effective military leadership is fostering a continuous learning culture with a growth mindset that necessitates coaching, mentorship, and counseling to attain competitive warfighting skill.

Training, distinct from readiness, propels us to take to the field, to steam underway at sea, to take flight, and to frequent simulators. Training encourages units to seek more opportunities for disciplined repetition and failure to garner invaluable experience, and to learn warfighting by actively practicing it.

The benefits of Professional Military Education (PME) encourages leaders to seize every educational opportunity to send personnel to schools, in-person or virtually. PME serves as the mechanism to foster a common language of warfighting through the study of service doctrines, wargame lessons, historical combat operations, and adversary literature. PME offers opportunities to study warfighting at broader levels that go beyond that of the tactical unit, such as fleet-level warfare and the operational level of war. PME affords warfighters some of the most expansive opportunities to deepen their warfighting expertise, where they can focus on their education without being encumbered by the numerous administrative and maintenance burdens that can dilute warfighting focus on the deckplate or at the squadron.

Equipping necessitates an investment in the right tools, but not just hardware for warfighting capability. It also means intellectually equipping warfighters for learning, including carefully curated unit professional libraries, warfighting journal subscriptions, and structured discussion time that incentivizes servicemembers to engage with one another on warfighting content.

Personnel management stands as the capstone of warfighting prioritization. Managing for warfighting is fundamentally about people, and cultivating their expertise and professional development as warfighters. Empower every servicemember with concrete imperatives to deepen their warfighting focus, within the allowable authorities and responsibilities, and then trust them to carry out those duties with unwavering accountability.

These six focus areas, when interwoven, develop the competitive warfighter. Ultimately, the prioritization of warfighting depends on prioritizing the servicemember. Operational plans, technology, and service capabilities are meaningless if leaders are unable or unwilling to invest in the training and education of their people. In a time of great power competition and rising global strife, a failure to prioritize warfighting first is irresponsible and a failure to those we lead.

Commander Paul Nickell is a PMBA student at the Naval Postgraduate School and a Senior Course student at the Naval War College. He is part of the naval aviation community having commanded a P-8A squadron, and facilitated learning at the Navy’s Leadership and Ethics Command for future Major Commanders, Commanding Officers, Executive Officers, and Command Master Chiefs. His academic focus has been on organizational learning, vertical development, and executive coaching as foundational aspects for learning organizations.

Featured Image: Philippine Sea (Oct. 4, 2023) The U.S. Navy’s only forward-deployed aircraft carrier, USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76), steams in the Philippine Sea. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Caroline H. Lui)

Flotilla Notes Series

By Barney Rubel

Management, defined as the effective use of resources, is a process and skill that permeates the preparation and execution of warfighting. Commanders can prioritize several specific areas to improve their warfighting management.

Time management is essential. As the CO of a strike fighter squadron, I practiced time management in terms of how much flight time I devoted to different mission areas. There were a limited number of flight hours available during the turnaround cycle based on budgets and the cost of fuel. A Hornet outfit had to be competent in both air-to-air and air-to-ground operations, and these skills were perishable. Of course, there was also carrier qualification, instrument qualification, and other areas that placed demands on time. As CO I had to balance all of these in the context of the individual capabilities, limitations, and idiosyncrasies of my pilots, and with due regard for safety. The goal was to produce a combat ready squadron by the time our carrier sailed on cruise.

In a real sense, all of this was an exercise in risk management. There was never enough time both in terms of actual calendar days and flight hours to bring everyone up to the highest level of capability. I had to decide where to take risks in mission area competency and make calculated tradeoffs. This usually resulted in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation down the line somewhere, but this is inherent to risk management in warfighting. This whole process works better if commanders go into it with a plan based on either direct operational experience, or at least a rational theory of how the unit will be expected to fight.

Naval aviation took decades to get risk management right with respect to mishaps. Prior to the late 1980s, mishap rates were brutal. In 1954 for example, the Navy and Marine Corps suffered 776 Class A mishaps, losing 535 personnel. When I transitioned from the A-7 world to the F-18 world I discovered “operational risk management.” The strike fighter community balanced risk and reward in terms of warfighting readiness at the type level, resulting in a more conservative approach to day-to-day operations. This did not mean that aggressiveness was sacrificed. It just meant that the criterion for accepting risk was grounded in preserving aircraft and crew for warfighting. The big lesson learned was the need to establish the right criterion for judgment in the management of risk. In my A-7 days the criterion was meeting the flight schedule at almost all costs. In my F-18 tour, it was preserving warfighting capability until needed.

We used to disparage management and extol leadership. After decades of naval aviation service, I learned that effective leadership at all levels requires competent management. Poor management increases what Carl von Clausewitz calls friction, which can take the form of dissipating effort down unproductive avenues, and by being forced to recover from messes caused by bad management in the midst of combat. Effective warfighting management will ultimately help minimize the friction experienced in war.

Robert C. Rubel is a retired Navy captain and professor emeritus of the Naval War College. He served on active duty in the Navy as a light attack/strike fighter aviator. At the Naval War College he served in various positions, including planning and decision-making instructor, joint education adviser, chairman of the Wargaming Department, and dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies. On occasion he served as a special adviser to the 31st Chief of Naval Operations. He has published over thirty journal articles and several book chapters.

Featured Image: ATLANTIC OCEAN (Aug. 4, 2017) An F/A-18F Super Hornet, attached to the “Blacklions” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 213 and carrying U.K. Carrier Strike Group Commander Cdre. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Hank Gettys/Released)

Flotilla Notes Series

By Capt. Matthew Sharpe (ret.) and GSCM Rich Feldman (ret.)

In Mask of Command, historian John Keegan identified cohesion as the fundamental attribute of Alexander’s Macedonian army. Cohesion united the will and spirit of the commander with that of his closest subordinate leaders, the men Alexander called his “Companions.” Alexander met frequently – often boisterously – with his Companions.

This was no process-driven board or cell. As Keegan explains, “[Alexander did not use] his circle of friends as a sounding-board for his plans. That was not their function; it was personality and character that were under test when Alexander was among his close Companions, the test of quickness of wit, sharpness of retort, memory for an apt phrase, skill in making insult, boast or flattery, capacity to see deep into the bottom of a glass, and no heeltaps.”

With Alexander and his Companions as a model, a select group of officers and enlisted leaders aboard USS San Jacinto (CG 56) met periodically to break bread, bond as warriors, and develop a shared vision of mission success. We called it the War Council.

The membership of San Jac’s War Council was strictly defined. It consisted of the command triad (commanding officer, executive officer, and command master chief), the department heads, and the departmental leading chief petty officers. No substitutes were allowed into War Council meetings. If a principal was unavailable, the seat remained empty.

The War Council served four purposes. First, to build shared awareness of the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead in San Jac’s mission – awareness that crossed department boundaries and was shared by the officers’ wardroom and the chiefs’ mess alike. Second, it provided a forum for innovation, an environment to discuss new and better ways to accomplish tasks. Third, it served to empower War Council members. Each had an equal voice, and rank did not determine the value of a leader’s input. Fourth, it sought to encourage division officers and junior petty officers to aspire to lead departments and ships. Junior warriors could look at the members and think, “I want to be able to do that.”

In one session, the War Council met for lunch with Vice Admiral Phil Cullom. San Jac was preparing for an engagement mission in Africa and Admiral Cullom had written the most recent Navy strategy on engagement. As conversation flowed freely and candidly, STGC Chris Lowden, Weapons Department Leading Chief Petty Officer, asked the admiral, “Since our mission is to influence people in the nations we visit, how can we assess the progress and success of our mission through their eyes, not our own?”

That question – that moment – captured the spirit and purpose of the War Council. The sentiment was contagious. People constructively challenged themselves and each other for the sake of mission success. This mindset – that the War Council actively cultivated – provided a positive impact throughout the ship.

Matthew Sharpe is a former U.S. Navy Surface Warfare Officer who commanded USS San Jacinto from 2007-2009. He lives and works in Virginia Beach and serves as an advisor to men’s Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) classes across the state. 

Richard Feldman is a former U.S. Navy Senior Enlisted Leader and member of San Jacinto’s War Council as Engineering Department Leading Chief.  He lives in Virginia Beach and continues to serve the Navy as an Engineering Technician for NSWC-Philadelphia Division. 

Featured Image: ATLANTIC OCEAN (June 6, 2012) The guided-missile cruiser USS San Jacinto (CG 56) approaches the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) for a fueling at sea. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Tommy Lamkin/Released)