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.
Last week Franchetti revealed her priorities for the navy while addressing the annual Surface Navy Association (SNA) National Symposium in Crystal City. Accompanying her remarks was a one-page précis titled “America’s Warfighting Navy.” In it, Franchetti pledges to “deliver decisive combat power,” focusing on physical capability; to “strengthen the navy team,” enriching the human element of maritime might through “world-class training and education” (warming the heart of this former trainer and current educator); and to “earn and reinforce the trust of the American people” in the institution’s ability to “field and maintain the world’s most powerful navy and the infrastructure that maintains it.”
Now, the days are gone when the chief of naval operations actually oversees naval operations, in the manner of Admiral Ernie King during World War II. King bestrode the service in all its dimensions. Nowadays a CNO’s job is to “man, train, and equip” the fleet, supplying battleworthy naval forces to regional combatant commanders. The CNO is a force provider, while regional commanders are the true executors of U.S. military strategy. Still, service chiefs are tone-setters, shaping the culture alongside their responsibility for matériel and human excellence. Battle-mindedness should be the default habit of mind, heart, and deed in the naval service. All else lies downstream from the service ethos. CNO Franchetti gets that.
And the rest? With apologies to Clint Eastwood, there’s little to condemn as ugly in Franchetti’s vision for the service. Goodness abounds here, while there are some bad aspects—or at least aspects open to question—to her vision.
First the good. Franchetti acknowledges that America’s post-Cold War holiday from history has ended. U.S. naval forces can no longer indulge the comforting assumption that they will operate, in the CNO’s words, “from a maritime sanctuary against........