A reminder:
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”:
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
And the Iron Law of Bureaucracy sunk the US Navy.
From the Daily Mail:
‘Every officer is up to speed on diversity training. Not so much ship handling’: Scathing official report finds US Navy is too woke for war because of risk averse, politically correct, control-freak top brass
A scathing new report commissioned by members of Congress has claimed that the Navy’s surface warfare forces have systemic training and leadership issues, including a focus on diversity that overshadows basic readiness skills.
The report prepared by Marine Lt. Gen. Robert Schmidle and Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, both retired, came in response to recent Naval disasters, including the burning of the USS Bonhomme Richard in San Diego, two collisions involving Navy ships in the Pacific and the surrender of two small craft to Iran.
The authors conducted hour-long interviews with 77 current and retired Navy officers, offering them anonymity to identify issues they wouldn’t feel comfortable raising in the chain of command.
The report found that a staggering 94 percent of the subjects believed the recent Naval disasters were ‘part of a broader problem in Navy culture or leadership.’
‘I guarantee you every unit in the Navy is up to speed on their diversity training. I’m sorry that I can’t say the same of their ship handling training,’ said one recently retired senior enlisted leader.
One of the key issues raised by the officers interviewed for the report was a concern that Navy leaders spend more time focusing on diversity training than on developing warfighting capacity and key operational skills.
‘Sometimes I think we care more about whether we have enough diversity officers than if we’ll survive a fight with the Chinese navy,’ lamented one lieutenant currently on active duty.
One recent destroyer captain said: ‘where someone puts their time shows what their priorities are. And we’ve got so many messages about X, Y, Z appreciation month, or sexual assault prevention, or you name it. We don’t even have close to that same level of emphasis on actual warfighting.’
The last naval battle in which the US fought was the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944.
Given that, it makes sense why the Navy has gone to shit.
Warfighting is hard. Losing has real consequences.
Paperwork, by comparison, is much easier and definitely much lower risk.
It’s much less stressful to judge an officer for promotion using the metric “did he get all of his paperwork done on time?” than “what was his win to lose ratio in his last few war games.”
Then there is the cycle of personal enrichment.
The military needs money and defense contractors like getting money.
Politicians like getting elected and donations from defense contractors help make that happen.
Also stock, lobbying gigs, and board memberships help politician’s spouses and retired politicians make moneny.
So in the absence of an enemy actively killing your sailors, which is the path of least resistance:
Dedication to warfighting where constant drilling and wargames create a cadre of skilled strategists who have little time for bureaucratic bullshit and politics.
Or:
An officer class that becomes a bunch of bureaucratic weenies that excel in paperwork and serving the petty interests of politicians to keep a constant flow of money and people between DC, the Navy, and military contractors?
Of course, it’s in the best interests of some Commander, Captain, or Admiral to push the diversity training that some Member of Congress wants because that means said Member of Congress will authorize funds for the Navy to spend on some contractor, so the contractor will hire said Naval Officer when he retires and donate to said Member of Congress’ reelection campaign.
Now the Navy has come face-to-face with the fact that it is full of sailors who have no idea how to fight at sea (and most can’t even operate the ship with complete competence) but are masters of filling out government paperwork and completing menial bureaucratic tasks.
The real question are: do they have the impetus to change and are there enough warfighters left in the Navy to effectively serve as instructors or has that knowledge been relegated to being found only in history books?
This problem may be worse in the Navy but it affects all the branches.
Our Generals are far less interested in warfighting than getting a seven-figure deal as a media talking head or on the board of the contractor or think thank, and it shows.
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