A retired USN very senior officer shared this opinion via email.

[RED]

Sorry this is so long but it is also very true !

Quote: The Navy is clearly broken. From recruit training to the USNA to the CNO one is hard pressed to find much to be happy about.

The most capable ship in the Pacific is of no use in the Indian Ocean or Atlantic. There are two overriding imperatives for this nation. We must rule the waves and the skies. Our control over either is long gone.

Naval Task Forces are like any other military endeavor. It must be balanced and function like a team. Our weak links will be the fissures the enemy attacks. The synergy between submarines, sub hunting, mine warfare, long range patrol, carriers, destroyers etc is a complex symphony backed by massive logistics and maintenance challenges. It?s communications networks are exceeding complex and highly vulnerable to a sophisticated enemy. The Navy has led the way on developing aircraft that can do everything while doing very little very well. The number of aircraft on a carrier keeps shrinking. Payloads are decreasing in favor of high precision which demands superb intelligence and targeting. Neither has been imposed on a sophisticated enemy.

Personnel issues are nightmare. The widespread fraud and corruption in recent scandals in the Far East were shocking. Amazing was how easily those leaders were compromised for very little.

There is no doubt that the Navy must come back to basics. Not just in work ethic, maintenance, engineering, organization, RD&A, education, training, ship building, size of the force and morale, but in forging the shipmate culture. Finally, the Navy should work hard and play hard. The boring grey suits and grey faces of the Oliver Cromwell like Puritans running the Navy leave no room for fun unless you like drag queen shows and a human interaction training regimen that turns shipmates on each other.

I would encourage any doubters to pay a visit to 10 ships and five facilities. Dirty ships, sloppy sailors and systems ?down? are more the norm than the exception. Watch the stature, presence and stride of the crew when they head on liberty. View how they are attired and talk to them in a local restaurant. The results might be shocking.

Final thought. If the Chinese do attack Taiwan there is every chance we could lose too much of the fleet. It would be not unlike landing more troops at Dunkirk. Reinforcing failure. My advice would be to pull back, wake up and prepare like hell for the bigger fight later. Quote.

[Vern Humphrey]

It'll never happen with Democrats in charge. In fact, it won't happen at all -- the country is bankrupt and unable to fix problems any more.

[blackhawknj]

The Oliver Cromwell like Puritans created the New Model Army, one of the finest fighting forces the world has ever seen-the Red Coats of the British Army came from Cromwell's Army, the Commonwealth Navy under Robert Blake established England's naval supremacy. And i doubt they would have approved of drag shows, etc.

[Vern Humphrey]

The Oliver Cromwell like Puritans created the New Model Army, one of the finest fighting forces the world has ever seen-the Red Coats of the British Army came from Cromwell's Army, the Commonwealth Navy under Robert Blake established England's naval supremacy. And i doubt they would have approved of drag shows, etc.

Cromwell also converted England into a military dictatorship. That worked so well that when he died, they invited the King to come back!

[blackhawknj]

Charles II had to make so many concessions to Parliament for the Restoration that in many if not most respects the Parliamentary forces won.
"You can have all the materiel you want but without morale it is largely ineffective." George C. Marshall

[Vern Humphrey]

Charles II had to make so many concessions to Parliament for the Restoration that in many if not most respect the Parliamentary forces won.

The Revolutionary Army had a clique that aimed to make us a military dictatorship. Washington squashed it, and the officers loyal to him later formed an association, "The Sons of Cincinnatus" taking the name from a famous Roman who was appointed Dictator and who laid aside his power when the crisis was passed. They invested money -- and one of their investments was a city in Ohio.

[blackhawknj]

A number of people I have known who have left active duty since the 1990s have spoken of the lack of camaraderie, the attitude that "it's just a job", more recently the PCness and woke culture, the double and triple standards, the creation of favored groups, etc.