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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By J. Kb

9 thoughts on “The Navy discovers Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy”
  1. The real downside here is the learning to speak Mandarin is difficult.

    I hope that we get some assistance from our new rulers.

  2. There won’t be an invasion.

    It will be an invitation.

    Probably not in the midterms–but definitely in the 2024 cycle–the white house will request international observers/peacekeepers to “ensure election integrity” or some bullshit.

    We don’t have the big stick anymore and everyone knows it.

  3. One more reason to be on a sub, but as much as that last bastion is holding out, it is still crumbling. Glad I went in, glad I got out.

  4. The obvious question who is behind the subversion of our military. The answer, in part, is enemies domestic. The other part of the answer is enemies foreign. It clearly is in the interest of Red China to subvert and wreck the Navy and other military branches, in preparation for conquest of Taiwan and other parts of the world.
    The question is how long the Pentagon leadership participating in this will get away with their treason.

  5. “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”

    The answers are “no” and “no”. This crap started way before I retired 18 years ago.

    The leadership of today grew up in the “woke era”; they don’t know anything else so how could there possibly be any impetus to change?

    What’s more, the up and coming future leaders have also been steeped in “woke” culture their whole lives…probably even moreso than those currently in senior positions. It’s going to do nothing but get worse over time. In spite of much wailing and gnashing of teeth when stories about “woke” policies in the military academies come out, I don’t see them changing…not to mention the majority of leaders in the military don’t come from the academies, they come from traditional universities which are arguably even worse.

    As to your second question, this stuff had started before I retired 18 years ago and it’s done nothing but gotten worse. There are very few active duty military members that pre-date the beginning of the “kinder and gentler” military and those few there are, only stayed because they support the leftist agenda. The ones that didn’t support the policies are long gone.

    That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of warriors in the ranks – there are; and many of them have the desire and motivation to change things for the better, but they either don’t know how because they’ve never been exposed to alternatives and/or, they don’t have the support of leadership to get it done.

    I’m a proud retired “crusty old Chief” and I’m still proud of many of the individual sailors serving in my beloved canoe club, but I’m anything but proud of the organization as it stands right now. The current naval leadership and navy environment is an affront to my sensibilities as a veteran and to the memory of what the US Navy once was.

  6. This is on the money. I know Mark Montgomery, I worked with him in the Navy. He didn’t sugar coat things then, and doesn’t now. The sad part we’ve seen this coming since 2008…

  7. This is nothing new at all- the Royal Navy of England fell into a similar sort of nonsense during the Victorian era. At that time, spit & polish (and kissing up) were seen as the way to promotion, and things like proficiency in naval gunnery was utterly unimportant. In fact, it was well understood if a captain just dumped the practice ammo overboard, lest he mar the shiny paint on his boat.

    Happily, for them, Admiral Fisher got them into shape in time for WWI.

    1. I guess that’s where Gilbert and Sullivan came up with the song line “he polished the handle so faithfully, that now he is the ruler of the Queen’s Navy”.

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