The U.S. Navy Is All About Warfighting and Combat Readiness
It’s all “warfighting,” all the time, for the next four years while Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the newly installed chief of naval operations (CNO) or top-ranked U.S. naval officer, presides over the U.S. Navy. It seems Admiral Franchetti is a one-note instrument. Combat readiness is the note—and it’s the right note.
Admiral King’s jeremiad against excess detail in orders to the Atlantic Fleet makes more plainspoken and thus better guidance than a concept that derives from the U.S. Army, and thence from the 19th-century Prussian Army. We will not be control freaks embodies sound command philosophy. Empowerment for junior people need not be dressed up with vague, fancified language.
Simplify.
So Admiral Franchetti is off to a good start on the whole. Two huzzahs rather than three.
About the Author: Dr. James Holmes
Dr. James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College and a Distinguished Fellow at the Brute Krulak Center for Innovation & Future Warfare, Marine Corps University. The views voiced here are his alone.
