This month the CIMSEC Warfighting Flotilla will be hosting sessions on the implications of naval tactical nuclear weapons and contested maritime logistics in the Pacific. If you haven’t already, sign up through the form below to become a Flotilla member and receive the invites to our upcoming off-the-record July discussions. The full listings for these upcoming discussions are featured down below.
Feel free to visit the Flotilla homepage to learn more about this community, its activities, and what drives it.
______________________________________ Upcoming July Sessions ______________________________________
Bringing Back Naval Tactical Nuclear Weapons
Tactical nuclear weapons were commonplace aboard warships during the Cold War, but were removed as nuclear arsenals shrunk in tandem with decreasing tensions. Now that all great powers are modernizing their nuclear arsenals amidst a new era of competition, the choice to exclude tactical nuclear weapons from U.S. naval forces may have to be reconsidered. What are the implications of fielding tactical nukes at sea? What are the gaps in seaborne nuclear capability between competing great powers? Join us to discuss these questions and more as we consider the possible roles of naval tactical nuclear weapons.
The Pacific is a sprawling theater, yet many forces and critical areas lay well within range of China’s military capability. U.S. and allied forces will be challenged to provide logistical sustainment that can traverse large oceanic spaces yet still be risk-worthy enough to brave the opposing weapons engagement zone. What novel sustainment concepts can meet these challenges? What are the implications of failing to provide effective sustainment in a Pacific conflict, especially to stand-in forces? Join us to discuss these questions as we consider contested maritime logistics in the Pacific.
By Captain John P. Cordle, USN (Ret) and K. Denise Rucker Krepp
Part Three
When these authors’ previous “Hard Truths” articles were published, there were two goals. The first was to encourage senior leadership to talk about the problems of sexual harassment and sexual assault, and the second was to challenge mid-grade leaders to take tangible actions to prevent it. In our focus on statistics and the process, however, an important part of the equation was missing: the human cost and the broken process’s impact on victims.
As a result of the “Hard Truths” articles, numerous victims reached out with their stories. Although we sometimes refer to them as victims, we prefer to call them survivors as this creates a standpoint of empowerment; readers will note this choice mainly in the vignettes. Among the survivors’ stories we heard, there were some common and familiar themes, some of which certainly deserve an explanation in this forum. But some were revelations, and based on additional research, they deserve closer scrutiny. This third part in the series breaks these lessons into three categories: mental health, victim blaming, and the justice system.
John: First of all, mental health. Much has been written about the challenges encountered by servicemembers seeking mental health treatment. The Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy (MCPON) himself shared in 2022 that it took him six weeks to get into treatment. It is well-known that the nation and the Navy are challenged in this area, but what seems to be missing from many of the official reports is the almost 100 percent correlation between sexual assault and sexual harassment victims, and their need for mental health resources.
Currently, no demographics sources examine the overlap in suicidal ideation and suicides and sexual assault/sexual harassment. However, many of those who came forward anonymously shared that they had experienced such thoughts, in some cases even acted upon them. Several reported a diagnosis of PTSD, or other syndromes that resulted in not only the need for ongoing treatment, but also negative impacts to their professional career, both tangible and intangible. In several cases, the need for mental healthcare, combined with their status as a victim, led them to become a “burden” to the command, and they were often sent to remote workstations, sometimes alone, to remove them from the hostile environment that was causing them stress. This placed them in more danger of self-harm and isolation by removing their support system. Others reported being denied orders or community transfers due to the treatment for mental illness—the very condition caused by the original trauma of the assault.
The takeaway here is that a complete re-thinking of the process is necessary. It should be automatically assumed that the victim of sexual or other forms of harassment or assault will need immediate and continuing mental healthcare. The Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV) instruction allows for 30 days of “convalescent leave” in such cases, but this barely scratches the surface.
Denise: Second, victim blaming. Another common thread was that in almost every case of those with whom we spoke, they became the target of significant questions about their professionalism, performance, and behavior after they reported the sexual harassment and/or sexual assault. From the survivors’ perspective, their commands were attacking them in an attempt to protect the command and the perpetrator instead of solving the problem.
As a young Coast Guard officer in 1998, I witnessed the victim blaming. In 2014, female veterans testified at Congressional hearings about the victim blaming that had occurred in the 1980s and 1990s, and it still continues in 2023. Powerpoint slides will not stop the victim blaming because to most folks the victim is someone they do not know, someone that they cannot relate to. The most effective way we have found to stop the victim blaming is to hold conversations and ask people what they would do if their spouse, partner, sister, brother, mother, father, grandmother, or grandfather were sexually assaulted and then blamed for it. Creating a hypothetical that is relatable makes people better understand the problem and changes their perspective when they, too, are notified of sexual harassment or sexual assault in their command.
John: The third issue was the justice system itself. One victim described it as “a chess game, where the victim has the white side of the board and has only pawns; the accused and their defense team have the black side of the board with all of the knights, bishops, kings and queens able to move much more nimbly than the victim” – with the result an almost unavoidable “checkmate.”
In Part Two, we discussed the relatively small number of prosecutions that result from unrestricted reports. In looking into a unique aspect of the legal system, however, we discovered an incredibly blatant loophole. Unlike civilian defendants who are charged with a crime, the UCMJ allows the defendant to choose between trial by jury of his peers and trial by judge. We decided to do some digging at one regional legal office to determine the outcomes of cases under trial by judge and trial by jury. The results were astounding.
In one major fleet concentration area, defendants who chose trial by a judge are acquitted at a rate of 100 percent over the past five years, while the conviction rate for those who chose trial by jury was closer to 50 percent. This presents a wide-open door for assailants to drive through using the legal process on a path that almost ensures acquittal. Although the data is not fully available, we found enough open-source information to cause concern. From what we can tell, there are no female judge advocate court judges currently serving on the bench, which not only creates a lack of diversity, but also the opportunity for inherent bias. We included this information to increase transparency and advocate for this disparity to be investigated further. Table 1 demonstrates these acquittal rates:
*Note that between 2017 and 2022, at least one Region Legal Service Office (RLSO) has never ruled Guilty on a Sexual Assault (Article 120) in any Judge Alone case.
**Note: In 2019 there is one Judge Alone case where a service member was found Guilty; however, it was not for Sexual Assault. It was for providing alcohol to a minor.
Denise: Another common thread was the dearth of legal advisement available to victims compared to perpetrators. The victims—survivors—we spoke to were often told by both legal and Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) personnel that they would have to “recuse themselves” from providing advice because they were assigned to the command where the alleged offense took place. When the victims went to the RLSO, they found that they were often relegated to a line almost akin to a suspect with no resources, who has to take the “next public defender” available.
The defendant, on the other hand, could normally avail themselves of all the resources assigned to the parent command, and often—the majority of alleged assailants being senior to the victims—has the financial resources to seek outside counsel, often in the thousands of dollars per month to fight their case. Some good news here: in July 2023, SECNAV announced that sexual harassment victims will have access to the same legal resources as sexual assault victims—a significant improvement in the process—but more needs to be done.
Before we move to recommendations, we want to share a few vignettes from those who reached out to us after Part Two. We have changed them slightly to protect the individual while also maintaining their accuracy.
Denise: I joined the sexual assault community 30 years ago. I have lived with the pain of crime for over half my life. The crime that occurred in the summer of 1993 influenced my decision-making processes when I served as the Maritime Administration Chief Counsel. In the summer of 2011, I was approached by a whistleblower alleging sexual assaults of students at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (the fifth federal service school) and at sea.
I immediately requested an Inspector General investigation into the crimes and I was forced to resign my job for making the request. The Secretary of Transportation banned me from the Department of Transportation headquarters building. I suffered a miscarriage after being forced to resign and I did not have additional children because I was not sure if I would have the financial means to support them. The job market for me was bleak because everyone in the industry knew that I was persona non grata. But the crimes in the military and the maritime communities continued, so I testified twice before a Congressionally mandated panel in 2014 and at a 2019 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hearing. I advised Congress and I have written extensively on the issue. In a 2014 essay I wrote on how failure to act would impact the overall health of the military. It is a message I continue to share today because men and women will not join the six services if they fear becoming yet another sexual assault victim.
Survivor #1: As a second tour Division Officer, I was running the pre-commissioning detachment in San Diego while everyone else in leadership was in Maine at the shipyard. The Command Master Chief came out often and he always had inappropriate comments and questions for me. Because this was the 90s and “handle at the lowest level” was pounded into us, I confronted him and told him to stop. He did. Or so I thought.
Fast forward to nearly a year later, and the XO calls me into his office because I was the Legal Officer. He’d found a First Class crying in berthing during the Berthing Inspection and it came out that the CMC had been steadily harassing her for months, and while she confided in one of her fellow First Classes (who worked for me!), they didn’t think they could do anything because he was the CMC. Thankfully and unsurprisingly for my leadership, they took immediate and dramatic action to protect that First Class and, as it turns out, a handful of other females. It also turns out that he had started with the one female Department Head, worked his way through the DIVO and the two female Chief Petty Officers, all of whom “handled it at the lowest level” and moved on until he found victims that didn’t think anyone would do anything.
That XO and CO did the right thing. But what if I had told them a full year before? I didn’t tell them not because I didn’t trust them, but because I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do.
Survivor # 2: I was sexually assaulted by a peer at my last command, and there was a trail of harassment and abuse that led to it that I ignored and minimized because that is what I was trained to do. Since I was singled out by my Chain of Command and retaliated against for making the report against such a “highly regarded” peer, I chose not to file a formal report as it seemed like there was just no chance of justice. It has been two years since then and I’m doing much better at my current command, but I haven’t stopped hearing stories like my own and the experience hasn’t stopped influencing my career in (primarily) negative ways. My assailant is still out there and will likely do it again.
Survivor #3: I joined the Navy in 2017 with dreams of becoming an officer. By 2019 I was a second class being accepted into Officer Candidate School. My dreams were coming true! However, while I was enlisted, I was left by my division at a command function black-out drunk. An E-7 told the security guards that he would take me home, and he did not. I was sexually assaulted and dropped off at my car bruised and not fully clothed. The next day my best friend picked me up and took me to get a safe kit done. I was very scared and thus filed restricted. The SAFE kit crew did not perform a toxicology report on me.
When I received news that I was accepted to OCS, I went unrestricted with my case. Naval Criminal Investigative Service had performed a wiretap on the accused and my chain of command began retaliating against me, to include isolation in a warehouse. In a general court martial under Article 120, the accused has the right to choose between a jury trial and a judge alone trial, a fact that I believe is exploited by the defense in such cases, and a path that almost always leads to an acquittal. I do not plan on going into the details of the Court Martial except to say that the man who raped me was found not guilty, so my assailant is still out there and will likely do it again.
Where to from here?
It bears mentioning that each of these survivors went on to report significant mental health issues, ranging from PTSD to Conversion Disorder to feelings of anxiety and even suicidal ideations. All cited the lack of a formal mental health recovery plan as part of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) process.
In addition to the important recommendations of the independent review committee report, we would like to add the following:
Fully capture and disclose the Navy-wide breakdown of judge versus jury results using an independent body like the GAO.
Remove the option for trial by judge from the UCMJ. Make the accused face a jury of their peers.
Revise the OPNAV instruction to require immediate referral to mental health resources for all victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault.
Remove the limit of 30 days’ convalescent leave.
Mandate a blood test for the presence of date rape drugs and blood alcohol level for any rape kit test at all military treatment facilities.
Set a requirement that legal counsel for the defense must have equivalent years of bench experience to that of the defendant’s team. Set up a legal advice hotline for defendants to seek counsel and ask questions about this complex process.
Rescind the policy of handling sexual harassment at the “lowest level.” It is against the law; treat it as any other crime and prosecute it.
Add a requirement for a formal mental health assessment and treatment plan for all victims of sexual assault and sexual harassment.
Review and change Article 120 of the UCMJ to include language that protects inebriated and black-out drunk Sailors. The current Article only covers incapacitation and most judges rule against exploring the interpretation of this law.
Most striking to us was the extreme commonality between the stories of those who spoke out. Victimized by a shipmate or supervisor, they found themselves victimized again by a system stacked heavily against them, with little hope for justice, or even fairness. This leads us to make one final recommendation to anyone who finds themselves a victim of sexual harassment or assault, one that we found to be the most common advice on a website for victims: call 911. “Don’t leave your fate in the hands of those who facilitate the behavior” was the advice we heard over and over, “to a chain of command with unprepared personnel and overly complex process. Sexual assault is a crime – let the police handle it.” That is probably not the best answer in the long term, but after this journey, unfortunately it is the advice we would give our children if they were in the military. One additional story from a victim of abuse provides an interesting and slightly different perspective.
Survivor #4: My name is Olivia Stahle, and here is my story.
The Navy saved my life. When I joined at the age of 24, I was trying to improve my family’s situation. I thought if I changed the circumstances, changed the location, and changed the trajectory of our current environment everything would be ok. It was not.
What my command did not know was that I was in a terrible domestically violent marriage and had been at that point for a few years. They also did not know that one of the very first programs I became familiar with in the Navy as a C school student was FAP, or family advocacy program. It certainly was not my desire.
The reason I did not tell anyone was because I was embarrassed. Here are comments I’ve heard – “If he beats you, why do you stay with him?” “If your marriage was really that bad, you would have left him already.” “You seem like such a smart girl. Why would you stay in something like that?” “Just leave him. He’s an anchor dragging you down.”
I have answers to those questions now that I did not have before. I stayed with him, because I was afraid of him and what he would do when he found me once I had left. You see, I tried before, quite a few times actually, to leave. But every time I did, one of two things happened – either he would convince me he would get help, or he actually figured out where I was staying and long hours ensued. There is also the aspect of love, children, financial circumstances, religious belief involving divorce, and the sheer legal consequences of a divorce. I was too embarrassed to tell my shipmates, colleagues, and leadership because I feared these questions. I didn’t have good answers at the time, because I was always anxious and afraid. I didn’t feel I deserved a better life, because I didn’t make the best choices initially. It turns out, I have a real talent for being an electronics technician, and I earned the respect of those around me. I would have been mortified for anyone to think less of me. So, how did the Navy save my life?
I finally got the courage to divorce my husband, but he had not yet moved out of our house on base. One night, my neighbor called the military police after she witnessed my former husband’s abusiveness. I’ll never forget what the MP asked me. “I just have one question for you. Do you want him to stay, or do you want him to go?” Without skipping a beat, I answered I want him to go. They took his ID, and he couldn’t get back on base. It was late in the night before I realized, for the first time, I was safe in my house. He couldn’t get to me. The Navy saved my life, my future, and my family just by the mere circumstance of me being safe on base. It took a while for that security to fully set in, but once it did, I never looked back. I’m still proud to call myself a United States Sailor.
Conclusion
This concludes Part Three, which we provide in the hope that leaders at all levels will take the time to truly assess the system and the data, truly engage with their people, and take what we both feel are the drastic actions needed to drive a cultural course correction, where such actions as sexual harassment, sexual assault, and by extension domestic abuse are not tolerated, facilitated, or dismissed but instead vigorously and competently prosecuted.
Our work does not end there. Below we have provided an immediate action checklist we assembled with some of the survivors with whom we spoke. We are also including another resource for survivors, one that offers a comprehensive, care-based approach for survivors of sexual assault and sexual harassment. These resources are part of a larger conversation that needs to happen, especially as news stories about sexual assault in the maritime community continue to break. But with conversation comes action, action for every survivor making their way through indescribable pain. We end this series with that call to action, and we also dedicate our words to all survivors–we see you, we hear you, we support you.
Leaders: it is time to course correct.
IMMEDIATE ACTION CHECKLIST IF YOU ARE SEXUALLY ASSAULTED:
Do not shower or change clothes.
Go to a medical facility – insist on a rape kit and toxicology screen.
Write down what you remember in as much detail as possible.
Decide on Restricted or Unrestricted Report.
Unrestricted: Call 911 and/or report to Military Police.
John Cordle is a retired Navy Captain who commanded two warships, was awarded the Navy League John Paul Jones Award for Inspirational Leadership, and the 2019 US Naval Institute PROCEEDINGS Author of the Year.
K. Denise Rucker Krepp spent several years on active duty in the U. S. Coast Guard, graduated from the Naval War College, and served as Chief Counsel for the U.S. Maritime Administration. Krepp also served as a locally elected Washington, DC official and Hill staffer. She is a longtime advocate for the rights of sexual assault and harassment victims.
Featured Image: CHARLESTON, S.C. (May 14, 2022) Sailors stand at attention during the commissioning of the Navy’s newest Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. (DDG 121) in Charleston, S.C. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Dylon Grasso)
Jaime Karremann joins the program to discuss his book on Dutch Cold War submarine operations, In Deepest Secrecy: Dutch Submarine Espionage Operations from 1968 to 1991. Jaime is a naval journalist who writes primarily for his Dutch website Marineschepen.nl.
Dale Rielage recently spoke with CIMSEC about the role of Navy staffs in command and modern naval warfare. A retired Navy Captain, Dale has captured the lessons of his long experience in the Navy Staff Officer’s Guide: Leading with Impact from Squadron to OPNAV, a new book in the U.S. Naval Institute professional series. A long-time CIMSEC contributor, he has been a critical voice in professional debates about how the Navy should face the challenges of the Pacific and China as a pacing challenge. In this conversation, Capt. Rielage discusses the enduring value of naval staff work, how commanders and their staffs can best work together, and what fleet-level warfare means for preparing navy staffs.
Why a book about staff work?
Why indeed? Of all the services, the Navy probably has the most negative view of its own staffs and staff work in general. Our identity is grounded in the first six frigates of our Navy. We remember them as independent commands, sent abroad under legendary captains with general orders to defend the interests of the new nation. To this day, the concept of “sustained superior performance at sea” does not include much place for staff work. We get together with shipmates and tell sea stories, not staff stories, right?
And while that identity is core to who we are as a service, it is also incomplete. More than a century ago naval warfare reached a level of complexity that requires a commander to be supported by a team of professionals – a staff – to inform and execute their operational design. And the sinews of maritime power are built over years through complex processes and interlocking decisions made by Navy staffs.
I have always been befuddled by staff-adverse naval officers who criticize their manning, their communications plan, their logistic support, the tactics, techniques, and procedures that their teams are taught in schoolhouses, the design of the platforms they operate, and other essential functions. They know on some level these functions are the product of other naval professionals working through a staff process, and yet the criticizing officers do not want to invest in that process.
So first and foremost, I wrote this book to convey two core truths. First, staff work matters. It does not win the fight, but it can lose it before it ever begins, and sometimes years before. Second, naval officers are not born knowing how to be effective staff officers. Like any part of the naval profession, it is a learned skill, and true professionals will apply themselves to learning it the same way they hone their craft at sea.
How is a staff assignment different than serving in the operating forces? What unique opportunities and perspectives can officers encounter on a staff assignment?
First, I would point out the diversity of Navy staffs, ranging from a destroyer squadron to a major type commander. Navy staffs serve ashore and afloat, and many in both categories are, in every sense, operational every single day.
Trying to generalize across that diverse population, staffs tend to be indirect contributors to success, providing the means for other forces, present and future, to do their work. Staffs are also often focused on a longer timeframe than the forces they serve – whether that is the operation-after-next, or conceiving, designing, and delivering a new naval platform. In some cases, staff issues endure indefinitely – think about providing naval stores to the fleet. This reality means that few staff officers experience the start or the end of a project. They shape long-term work that is then handed on to others to continue.
This dynamic means that the success and rewards for good staff work are rarely direct and immediate. Some officers never get past their need for instant gratification and struggle through their staff experience as a result. There is an element of unselfishness in good staff work. An officer has to be willing to work hard and thoughtfully on things that may not come to fruition for years, and if they eventually do, the contributing officers may not earn distinct credit.
That said, staff work can also be a uniquely rewarding experience for a developing naval leader. Staffs usually deal with a larger scope of action than do individual operational elements. For an officer who aspires to have influence or to command beyond the bounds of a single platform, a staff job is where that broad insight and vision is usually first developed. A staff tour also often offers opportunity to work directly with more senior leaders. We learn by example. A staff tour is where you get to see senior Navy leaders grappling with hard challenges up close, day after day. You also often have the chance to expand thinking beyond the stovepipe of a single operational community. A large naval staff has just about every type of naval professional – all the warfare communities, restricted line specialties, civilians, contractors – all dedicated to the mission. It can be a unique learning laboratory for the officer who is willing to invest the time and effort.
You explicitly note that a staff functions to help a commander exercise their authority, and that the authority of the staff derives from the commander’s responsibilities. What does a staff need to understand about their commander and their intent to best support them? How can a commander set enduring guidance to effectively empower the staff?
Staffs are about command – either supporting a commander’s decision-making or carrying out their decisions. That means any staff is a creature of the commander. An effective staff officer understands that fact and immediately focuses on a couple key questions. First, what matters to the commander? How do they take information most effectively? Who do they interact with up and down their chain of command? I am always concerned about staff officers who never consider these fundamentals and struggle as a result.
Commanders who are served by a staff need to learn to use their staff as an essential asset, no differently than they might have learned how best to use an afloat command structure as young officers. Clear and deliberate communication to the staff of their needs and expectations is no different than writing clear, thoughtful night orders, but it is much rarer.
Commanders also need to cultivate trust with their staff in a deliberate way. The complexity of the issues that confront most staffs, their longer timelines, and interlocking structures can make it easier to bury unpleasant information, at least for a time. This is especially true when a commander has conveyed through their actions that they do not value candor. I will tell senior staff officers and commanders that if they cannot remember the last time their thinking was challenged by their staff – and I do not mean gentle pushback, but full-on disagreement – they are likely failing on some level.
I love General Omar Bradley’s recollection of his experience when General George C. Marshall took over as Army Chief of Staff on the eve of World War II. At the end of Marshall’s first week in the job, he gathered his team, including a young Lieutenant Colonel Bradley. The staff thought they had made a pretty good first impression on their new boss, and were bewildered when he expressed disappointment in their performance. Marshall noted that, while the staff was professional and thoughtful, in the course of the week no one had disagreed with him. That was, in Marshall’s assessment, a sign that they were not fully executing their duties.
SASEBO, Japan (June 9, 2021) – Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet Adm. Sam Paparo speaks to Forward Deployed Naval Forces, Commander, Fleet Activities Sasebo and tenant command leadership onboard CFAS June 9, 2021. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jasmine Ikusebiala)
You have chapters on the functional areas that correspond with the N-codes of a major staff. Given your specific background, how does the staff intelligence team (N2) best support the commander, and how can the commander best leverage their intelligence and information operations team? How can the staff N2 integrate with the other elements of the staff?
The Navy is about prompt and sustained combat operations at sea. That means an adversary, whether a real, specific adversary or a hypothetical future adversary, needs to be central to our thinking. The intelligence team, whether one Sailor or 150, is uniquely tasked to understand and articulate these adversaries to the commander and the staff. Early in World War II, Fleet Admiral Nimitz told his intelligence officer, then LCDR Eddie Layton, that his job was to be the opposing commander for the staff, and that if he did, he would provide the Pacific Fleet with the insight it needed. That remains true today. The danger is that the requirement to manage the process of intelligence, collections or targeting, or integrating with a wider information warfare enterprise, for example, has increasingly become seen as a substitute for deep understanding of the adversary.
Assuming that penetrating understanding is achieved, taking full advantage of it requires both that intelligence professionals understand operations and that operators understand intelligence. I have often reflected that, at its best, intelligence delivers a relationship, not simply a product. Leaders take insight from people they trust. For Navy seniors, that relationship is usually built through shared experiences in Navy staffs.
You note that with the return of great power competition, the fleet has now been defined by the Navy as its basic combat formation. The CNO is calling for a renewed focus on fleet-level warfare, but these fleets are a larger-scale entity than the CSGs, ARGs, and other typical formations of recent decades. How can the fleet staffs better manifest this operational warfighting role to prepare for great power conflict? How can large-scale exercises and wargames hone the warfighting skills of fleet-level staffs and their commanders?
It is interesting how the current challenges the Navy is facing are pushing it back to the integrated fleet model of naval warfare. From the beginning of the battleship era through the end of the Cold War, the fleet was the unit of action for the Navy. Only a fleet could integrate all the capabilities of naval power across a broad ocean area, defend and attack across multiple domains, and sustain that capability for as long as was required for strategic effect. The idea that a single small formation – and in naval terms, a carrier strike group or surface action group is small – could be the unit of action was really only tenable in limited operations against adversaries who were not peers in the maritime domain.
Today, the material elements of fleet-level operations still exist. Bringing fleet-level staffs back into warfighting is more challenging, in part because it is a cultural change, and cultural change takes time. Individual unit training is core to our operations – every officer knows training is non-negotiable for safe and effective operational performance. Training for fleet-level operations, however, remains a work in progress. One of the many reasons that the interwar Fleet Problems have gained attention recently is that they were true fleet-level exercises, stressing free-play combat against live thinking adversaries, with fleet staffs adapting to dynamic operational-level problems. There are many ways to train Navy staffs to work at this level – wargaming, as you mention. But to do so, they need to be truly dynamic events and not simply concept rehearsals. They also need to be more than one-off events that an officer may encounter only once in a tour. Repetition matters.
You focus much attention on how staffs communicate and the various approaches to sharing ideas and products. What can effective communication look like, such as for an individual staff officer, staff coordination more broadly, or how the commander communicates with their staff?
Communications is the life-blood of the staff. Yes, the book includes a section on how to use email and computer presentations as communications tools. I was surprised by how many experienced staff officers have told me that this part of the book was the most valuable for them, or would have been, had they known these tips when they were starting out.
Really, for new staff officers, the big lesson is being deliberate in their approach to communications. Pick the right tool for the desired effect; use it with care and intent. Communication – a slick brief, for example – is never a substitute for insight and expertise. Usually, however, naval officers coming into staff tours know their stuff, or they learn fast, but even brilliant ideas need to be shared with rigor, power, and persuasion in the right medium to have enduring effect at scale.
For commanders, the hardest issue is usually making time to communicate with their staffs. The best make time, formal and informal, knowing that this interaction – the provision of clear guidance and vision, the power of their example – ultimately saves time by aligning the staff to serve their needs, and, through them, the mission. The tyranny of the present makes that hard, especially in a culture that expects commanders to be always connected.
Rear Adm. Derek Trinque, commander, Expeditionary Strike Group 7 and Task Force 76/3, speaks with ESG 7 staff and subordinate unit commanders during a commanders conference at the ESG 7 detachment headquarters in Sasebo, Apr. 6, 2023. (U.S. Navy photo)
Throughout the book you share vignettes that illustrate what good (and not so good) staff work looks like. What can the career of Admiral Arleigh Burke teach us about how to do good staff work and what its legacy may be?
It says something that most naval officers do not think of Arleigh Burke as a staff officer.
When I was a young surface warfare officer, Admiral Burke was held up to us as the premier example of what we should aspire to be as warriors at sea. We all know the legend – Commodore Burke, commanding a destroyer squadron at a critical moment when the U.S. surface force was not doing well against the Imperial Japanese Navy. His style of command, perfecting innovative tactics and employing them with audacity, led to some of the most extraordinary U.S. Navy surface victories of the war. At moments when the material odds were essentially even, Burke simply out-fought his opponents.
It was only when a dear friend, Dr. David Rosenberg, shared with me his collection of Arleigh Burke’s papers that I grew to appreciate Burke as a staff officer. After his squadron command, Burke was sent to be Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher’s Chief of Staff. Mitscher commanded most of the fast aircraft carriers in the Pacific. Burke’s assignment was part of a thoughtful effort by Fleet Admiral King to ensure that surface admirals had aviator chiefs of staff, and that aviator admirals had a surface officer as their chief of staff. Burke struggled with this assignment. In his letters to his wife, Burke anguished about how he was failing as a staff officer, that he thought Mitscher disliked him, that he did not have a grasp of air power even though his job was employing the largest assembly of naval aviation in history.
In the end, Burke was brilliant. He formed an excellent team with Mitscher, and the two came to respect each other deeply. He took his tight, clear style of conveying tactical orders and scaled it to the fleet level. He learned how to fight not just a surface action group, but to employ the full multi-domain power of a modern fleet. Arguably, Burke’s staff work enabling Third Fleet’s drive across the Pacific contributed far more to victory than his relatively short period in operational command of DESRON 23. And in his later senior tours, including three tours as Chief of Naval Operations and a member of the Joint Chiefs, Burke’s ability to establish the shape of the Cold War Navy – remember, Burke was the CNO who gave the Navy its nuclear SSBN force – was through his staff. His papers are full of truly thoughtful notes to the OPNAV staff, focusing them on the important rather than the urgent, often with his trademark sense of humor.
So what I take from Admiral Burke’s career is twofold. First, he was a great warrior at sea, but his largest impact on the World War and his enduring impact across decades of our Navy came from him using that warfighting insight as part of and commanding Navy staffs. Second, even Arleigh Burke had to learn how to be a staff officer as part of his path to extraordinary impact on our Navy.
Captain Dale C. Rielage, USN (Ret.), is a former surface warfare and naval intelligence officer with eleven tours on Navy and Joint staffs afloat and ashore, including as an N-code Director in two Maritime Operations Centers, and special assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations. He is the author of several dozen articles on maritime and security issues.
Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content. Contact him at [email protected].
Featured Image: YOKOSUKA, Japan (May 7, 2021) – The U.S. 7th Fleet Information Warfare Commander (IWC) holds a conference with task force IW leaders throughout the 7th Fleet and Pacific Fleet. (U.S. Navy photo)
