Teamwork, flexibility, & sustained combat power: Interview with Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark

Sea Power, Oct 2002 by Peterson, Gordon I

We must keep a focus on manpower. We should never forget that our turnaround in readiness began with funding the manpower accounts properly and buying the increase in end strength we needed to allow us to train the right people for their shipboard assignments and to assign them to their ships seven and eight months before deployment. Shipboard manning is better today than it has been in at least a decade. Full funding for spare parts and all the other components of current readiness followed. We have reaped enormous dividends during the combat operations of the past year as a direct result.

Is there a risk that the Navy will mortgage its future readiness if there is not an increase in the Navy budget's top line allocated for recapitalization?

CLARK: It is a two-part answer. Number one: We must have funds to recapitalize. In the near term, I believe the nation must commit the funds to do that. The nation is committing more funds to defense, so I do not want to be accused of saying that the Navy needs more money without the recognition that the budgets being proposed have markedly more resources in them. Some of those resources are being spent to address the readiness shortfalls in spare parts and maintenance that have built up over time. What is key is that it is costing us more to operate today's Navy and its old air force because of the past procurement holiday.

Number two: An increase in the top line is not needed if we can determine how to channel our resources more effectively. One of the messages you will hear this year in Sea Power 21 relates to "Sea Enterprise." We must figure out a better way to use the resources that our citizens give us. I do not take it as a given that the onus is all on the Congress to provide more money. Part of the responsibility is ours. I do not want my Navy to miss this message: Our task is to be better stewards of the resources that are being provided to us by the people of the United States of America.

We will be searching for resources to divert to recapitalization, but I have no expectation that I am going to be able to find them instantly and rechannel them where they are needed. We will be engaged in this work for several years. You will hear more about it as we unfold the details of Sea Enterprise and the vision of Sea Power 21.

Earlier this year you tasked your staff to increase ship and aircraft procurement rates by the end of the Future-Years Defense Plan [FYDP] to 10 ships and 210 aircraft per year. What is being done to achieve those levels-and will they be sufficient to reach needed buy rates?

CLARK: We have several initiatives underway. This year we implemented a divestiture examination called "Skunk Works." We pulled a team together to ask the people actually working the problem in the Navy to give us their ideas on ways that we can streamline and improve the efficiency of what we do. Without getting into the details of the '04 submission [i.e., the FY 2004 Department of the Navy budget request] before it is approved by the secretary of defense or the president, you will see movement in this direction next year.