A sad assessment of our once proud US Navy

The 2017 Navy Secretary’s Readiness Review can be found here.  SecNav Richard Spencer ordered the review after several mishaps – two involving fatalities - demonstrated that today's sailors have problems driving ships.

There’s good news and a bad news in the review.  The good news is that review identifies that the US Navy, while still preeminent, is in rather bad shape.  Budget cuts, declining numbers of ships and crews and an increased operational tempo are the main culprits identified in the review for today’s decline in naval readiness.

That’s all good and fine as far it goes.  It brings to mind the old Marine Corp adage: They’ve been asking us to everything while providing us with so little for so long now they think we can do anything with nothing at all.

If you want the nutshell version you need to look no further than the first recommendation found in the Exec Summary and on page 78.  The #1 recommendation from the review board is that the US Navy Re-establish readiness as a priority. To me that is gut blow to every single sailor in the US Navy above the pay grade of Seaman. 

RE-establish?  YGBSM.  WTF?  Who UN-established readiness as a priority?  Find them and have them keelhauled under the 1,000+ foot long USS Teddy Roosevelt.    

My guess is that if you took that approach you’d be keelhauling a great number of wannabe go along to get along The Empty Suit azzsniffing Admirals starting with CJCS Mullen, former SecNav Ray Maybus, the idiot PacCom Admiral that, when assuming command, declared climate change his #1 threat. No dickweed, not having 7^th Fleet sailors capable of navigation and basic seamanship is your #1 threat in the world’s largest ocean.

Note:  When you command the entire PacCom AOR, an AOR that contains China, N Korea, Malaccan Pirates ect. and you think that climate change and fuel efficiency are your #1 concerns you are one of two things: a self-serving, clueless, azzsniffing, rank grabbing azzweasel or just a plain clueless weasel. 

Here’s an interesting note from the review:

The Navy’s readiness standards for training opportunities, certifications, maintenance availabilities, and manning quality and levels, have been thoughtfully established. However, the Navy allowed these standards to erode to the point that they are nearly ineffective, especially in the case of Forward Deployed Naval Forces in Japan.

That sounds a lot like Lex’s oft repeated lament of the decline in military standards, “First you lower the standard.  Then you ignore the results.”

The primary culprit in the Navy's long decline to my way of thinking is the absences of mission oriented, combat focused leadership.  Instead of blood and guts warfighters like Hulsey, or even the more cerebral warfighters like Nimitz, the senior leadership of the Navy - it seems anyway - is populated with azzsniffers like Mullen and Locklear.  

I do not think we need to worry though.  As of Jan 1^st the military will be forced to accept transgendered (we used to call them crazies) recruits.  One thing we know for sure from opening all MOSs to women and homosexuals is that adding one more pampered group that will suck millions of dollars out of the budget will surly fix whatever it is that is ailing our once proud Navy.