By Ed Salo
Blake Herzinger joins the program to discuss his recent article for Proceedings about embarking academics on naval vessels. Blake is a Pacific Forum non-resident WSD-Handa fellow and a U.S. Navy Reserve officer. He has spent 13 years in service with the U.S. Navy as an intelligence officer, with experience across the Indo-Pacific and Middle East.
Download Sea Control 416 – “The Navy Should Take More Academics to Sea” with Blake Herzinger
Links
1. “The Navy Should Take More Academics to Sea,” Blake Herzinger, Proceedings, January 2023.
2. “A Sea Ride With Australia’s Indo-Pacific Endeavour,” Bec Strating, Lowy Institute, June 2019.
3. “Australian Pilots Hit With Lasers During Indo-Pacific Exercise“, Euam Graham, The Strategist, May 2019.
4. “Sea Control 361 – Carrier Killers with Gerry Doyle and Blake Herzinger,” by Jared Samuelson, CIMSEC, July 10, 2022.
5. “Sea Control 391 – Indo-Pacific Maritime Hour with Blake Herzinger & Jimmy Drennan,” CIMSEC, November 19, 2022.
6. Blake Herzinger American Enterprise Institute Profile.
Dr. Ed Salo is a Co-Host of the Sea Control podcast. Contact the podcast team at Seacontrol@cimsec.org.
This episode was edited and produced by Nathan Miller.
Good show CIMSEC and Blake, Back in the day the approach of having academics and SMEs from “outside the Navy” on ships involved coordination with something called the Organizational Effectiveness Group (OEG). Not sure if OEG exists anymore, but all of my first four cruises (from 1989 to 199), included OEG reps, although most of them were Center of Naval Analysis types, often with Ph.D.s but in all sorts of different fields (Physics, Operations Analysis, etc).
My last cruise on John C. Stennis in 1999-2000 was different and more like what Blake is suggesting. Admiral Clemmens, PACFLT at the time, installed a purely civilian team from Price-Waterhouse to monitor us all the way through the workups and the cruise and their charter was completely open-ended. The cruise began in January 2000 and ended later that June. I’ve always wondered what happened with their report. As Combat Direction Center (CDC) Officer they spent a lot of time with me and my tactical action officers (TAOs) in CDC. I remember spending most of one day on the white board behind me helping two of them understand how the composite warfare commander concept (CWC) worked–I had served on an admiral’s staff as a CWC warfare area “coordinator” for Space and Electronic Warfare (SEWC), so I knew my CWC.
They also found my role as the principal assistant to the XO as the Integrated Training Team Leader (which technically was the XO). They seemed surprised that my team composed of all the other training teams put together all the GQ exercises for the ship, which we did on a much more regular basis than many other carriers.
So I totally support the Navy either bringing OEG back but with the Price-Waterhouse approach, or revitalizing it if it still exists out there somewhere.
Great Show, great topic.
best,
John T. Kuehn, Ph.D.
Professor of Military History
US Army Command and General Staff Officer Course