By Jamie McGrath
Warfighting is as a lot a tradition as it’s an exercise. To foster warfighting tradition, commanders should embody it in each facet of their command – from coaching to administration to wreck management to routine ship operations. Each facet of shipboard life is related to warfighting and due to this fact needs to be handled as such. This ethos begins with the commanding officer, however should even be embraced by the wardroom and the chief’s mess.
There are strategic paperwork that may assist on this course of – the CNO’s crusing instructions or the SWO Boss’s “Aggressive Edge” doc for instance. However these guides should be translated into the native actions of the command. This begins with a command philosophy that emphasizes warfighting – not as a footnote, however as a central theme all through. Warfighting, nevertheless, goes past a well-crafted command philosophy. Warfighting should be harassed in all the things the commander does – coaching, drills, zone inspections, Captain’s Calls, and even NJP. The command ought to at all times handle the query – how does what we’re doing proper right here and proper now put together this command for immediate and sustained fight at sea? If a command can’t successfully reply that query, then it could must reexamine its priorities, or its management.
An oft-repeated however worthy instance is CDR Ernest Evans’ preparation of USS Johnston (DD 557) for her deployment to the Pacific Theater of operations. CDR Evans’ commissioning remarks, virtually a yr earlier than the ship’s heroic motion on the Battle off Samar Island, had been prophetic – “[T]his goes to be a preventing ship. I intend to go in hurt’s approach, and anybody who doesn’t need to go alongside had higher get off proper now.” These weren’t simply hole phrases or bravado. Evans meticulously ready his ship and his crew in order that when the decision got here, he and the crew of the Johnston, with out hesitation, turned towards the enemy and attacked with all weapons regardless of insurmountable odds.
Some would argue that it was simpler to foster a warfighter mentality throughout a warfare, as Evans and his crew had been in 1943-1944. However whereas the crucial for warfighting was extra obvious then, it’s no much less actual at the moment. Fight programs drills, harm management drills, engineering casualty management drills, deck evolutions, watch group coaching, and preventative and corrective upkeep are the areas emphasised by wartime commanders, and they’re areas of ship operation nonetheless in use at the moment. Instructions that undergo the motions simply to finish the minimal “required” coaching are lacking the chance to inculcate a warfighting spirit. These occasions can and needs to be rigorous and warfighter-focused. And they need to be ruthlessly critiqued in order that classes could be discovered and utilized.
Sure, there are a number of distractions in at the moment’s Navy that CDR Evans was not burdened with, however the crucial stays. Warfighting should be on the forefront of all the things a command does, and that begins with the CO.
Capt. Jamie McGrath, USN (ret.), retired from the U.S. Navy after 29 years as a nuclear-trained floor warfare officer. He now serves as Director of the Main Basic W. Thomas Rice Heart for Chief Growth at Virginia Tech and an adjunct professor within the U.S. Naval Struggle Faculty’s Faculty of Distance Training. He served in a wide range of ship varieties and operational workers positions and commanded Maritime Expeditionary Safety Squadron Seven in Agana, Guam.
Featured Picture: PEARL HARBOR (Might. 22, 2015) Cmdr. Thomas Ogden, potential commanding officer of the guided-missile destroyer USS Chung-Hoon (DDG 93), passes via the sideboys throughout a change of command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. (U.S. Navy picture by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Diana Quinlan)
