Far Worse Than You Could Imagine

 

Jeezus H. Christ! There's rust on the BARREL of the CIWS, FFS!
Right outside the effing skipper's chair! He should be flogged with
electrical cord -plugs on- in front of the crew, daily, until he personally
has scraped off every flake by hand, hisownself! You could power
a CVN for the next two decades just from 20 generations of chiefs
at Arlington Cemetery spinning in their graves at this affront.

The other day, WRSA linked to a recent great read by Cdr Salamander, who's probably known to Pentagon brassholes as Cdr. Cassandra, on just exactly how f**ked up the US Navy has gotten.

Before you head over to RTWT (which you should do), hydrate.

Because you're either going to cry a river, or be vinegar-pissing mad, either of which is going to take a full tank.

TL;DR:

The Navy sucks ass right now, because going back to 2009 (perspicacious readers may note a specific change of administration that correlates with that timespan), all flag- and general-rank promotions were run through a filter of pre-woke communist civilian and military zampolits. Only ass-kissing toadies need apply. The current can't-sail-can't-shoot-can't fly-can't-fight genderfluid diversity Navy is how that plan worked out.

GIGO.

In short, when the only admirals the Squids promote are ass-kissing back-stabbing four-star fuck-ups, the entire Navy takes it in the neck. And. It. HAS.

Add a decade, and you get ships that should rightfully be re-named shits, because they all look like something that came out of a whale's alimentary canal, inside and out, and if the paint looks that bad, imagine what a shitshow the officers and crews are.

You can't even blame this on the blue-haired transgender enlisted, because the fault was letting them up the gangplank in the first place; everything else is just gravity working, plus time, and salt water. Both literal, and metaphorical.

There's a simple cure, in about three parts. Sadly, Cdr Salmander's once-wonderful comments seem to have gone away (we can guess why), so we offer our cure here.

1. Retire/Fire The Admirals

Fish rot from the head down. So does the Navy.

The US Navy currently has 232 admirals for 480 ships. That means that the Navy is about the smallest it's been since the Great Depression, which weakness was precisely what led Japan to cull the numbers of ships even lower one sunny Sunday morning in December. Yet we have nearly one admiral per two ships, and one admiral per 1000 enlisted men. In WWII, with the largest Navy in American history, there was one admiral for every 130 commissioned ships.

We should go back to this ratio immediately.

Congress - not the White House - should select the two best admirals from the pack, and retire the other 230 tomorrow. And CNO Goldbrick should be the first one out the door. The ship runs aground on your watch, and you own that. B'bye, Goldbrick. Followed in quick succession by the other 229 gold-braided @$$holes.

By just next payday, we'd have saved the Navy over $1M, and continue to do so every two weeks, forever.

That saved money should immediately be diverted to ship maintenance, which translates to $5K per ship, per month, forever. That buys a regular supply of Brasso, paint, swabs, and scrapers.

When they start looking like brand new factory-fresh ships again, we can split the budget into thirds, and use the other two thirds for training, and buying warfighting reserve stocks.

2. Retrain The Leadership

The CO, XO, all officers, and all chiefs on the above USS Rustbucket, and every similar-looking sistershit in every class, should immediately be relieved, reduced to E-1, not separated, but rather assigned to the Leading Petty Officers as cleaning detail help on the ships to which they were assigned, until further notice. They will now be working for the non-rates they formerly supervised. All ships to be cleaned by all hands, from keel to antenna mast around the clock until one could eat from the decks and drink from the bilge. Then drilled in basic job duties, including ship handling, seamanship, damage control, and warfighting tasks only 24/7/365, until there's a 480-way tie for the Excellence E.

Any task squeezed out by this should be assigned priority Z, meaning "not to ever be attended to unless peace breaks out, and the Navy is scrapped".

Some will notice this puts a large burden on the sailors already in the fleet. This is true, but there's a remedy.

Every EEOCEIEIO officer, chief, petty officer, and other enlisted person on every shore base will be similarly reduced to E-1 status, and assigned to commissioned ships, until further notice. Ditto for every no-load shore-based job that doesn't actually and directly support the mission of the deployed fleets and ships. The Pentagon's Navy wing, outside of training, repair, and maintenance commands, and actual warfighting staff functions, would become a ghost town.

Boo frickin' hoo.

Every six months, those former leaders to be assessed for suitability for higher rank, including the option to work their way - six months per step - back to their prior grade and rank. That means in three years, a good chief could rejoin the goatlocker. In five to eight, an officer could rejoin the wardroom, and maybe even make it back to the skipper's chair. The promotion boards shall consist of the petty officers of each ship, and their decisions to retain, promote, or separate, shall be final, and shall last until the Navy is back on an even keel, or the last officer or chief either gets back to where he was, or separates from the service.

3. Remotivate The Sailors

The blue-haired gender-confused Navy is gone, as of 0800 the next day. Everybody reverts to being a he or she, based on at-birth body parts, and just to help out the sisterhood, everyone gets the same bootcamp buzzcut.

They get judged on military appearance, including weight control and physical fitness, on a single standard physical test, with zero sex or age norms, and graded accordingly. Everybody gets as many months to meet the new standard as they have years in the Navy. Fatassed screwball is the new fatassed screwball. And Unsat is a one-way fastpass to civvie street.

The only other measurement is military proficiency, in general conduct as a sailor, and in their MOS and grade-specific duties. A shipboard fire doesn't give a damn what your pronouns are, and you can either swing a 4x4 into place and carry a hose pack down three ladders and kick a fire's ass, or you can't. You can either read a radar screen, maintain a missile, or cook 300 meals, or you can't. And if you can't, you can join the yacht club, in the ample spare time you'll have right after Uncle puts you back on the pier where you belong.

And for all those enlisted LPOs in the E-5 and E-6 grades who'll suddenly be running the ships, for real, 24/7/365, for the next 5-8 years, the opportunities for advancement will be spectacular. Some of them are going to become officers, warrant officers, and chiefs in a big hurry, and every ounce of talent discovered should be ruthlessly encouraged and promoted, from every quarter.

Any BMWing (Bitching, Moaning, and Whining) from ashore, active duty or civilian, about anything that happens afterwards, shall be referred to a committee of all the E-4s in the fleets, for speedy and permanent disposition. With internet communications and real-time polling, this is not only do-able, it's imperative. And if your E-4s can't collectively figure something out, they shouldn't be E-4s.

Do that, and you'll have the ass-kicking world-beating US Navy last seen about 1990, if not 1945, by Christmas. 

Re-enlistment will hit 100%, and we'll have the fleet we paid for. And certain countries thinking they're the New Big Dog will be in for a rude awakening.

Do it not, and we may as well de-fund the Navy, and to save further time and effort, just send everyone in the U.S. free copies of Rosetta Stone Mandarin and Cantonese.

Some may think I'm too harsh on the sister service. On the contrary, a functional Navy is vital for US interests. Speaking as a former Marine, for naval gunfire support and amphibious transport, just for openers. Let alone the basic missions of carrier force projection, maintaining freedom of the seas by the surface fleet, and control of the shipping lanes and nuclear deterrence by the Silent Service.

We currently - and going back a decade and more - have a Navy full of Squids and Shitbirds. Starting at the E-ring in the Pentagon. Those at the bottom of the totem pole are that way precisely because of those at the top, whether by active sabotage, foolish encouragement, spineless apathy, or malign neglect and dereliction of duty. Period. Complicity should become a hanging-from-the-yardarm offense.

We need, and deserve, a Navy of sailors. History teaches harsh lessons to nations who fail to provide for their own defense, and we're dangerously close to the shoals of learning that lesson, in a Pearl Harbor sort of way. Hoping it doesn't happen is not a good plan.

Rather more drastic measures, just shy of actual guillotines, are needed. In haste.

If they don't work, I'm open to using actual guillotines, and keelhauling.

Ideally, before someone starts culling our fleets in the traditional geopolitical manner.