John C. Harvey, Jr, Admiral, USN (Ret)
Where have we as an organization drifted in the last quarter century when it comes to addressing command accountability and responsibility in our newly structured “Enterprise” components and the focus on a static understanding of “efficiency” in an organization that exists, ultimately, for combat “effectiveness.”
Today we have the pleasure of a guest post on just this topic from John C. Harvey, Jr., Admiral, USN (Ret).
Admiral, over to you.
In his recent post discussing SecNav’s actions in Guam after seeing first-hand the unacceptable conditions in the Palau Hall barracks for the Sailors and Marines billeted there, CDR Salamander touched on a number of issues that collectively point to two closely related areas of supreme importance to the Navy - first, the dilution of command accountability and responsibility and second, chains of command lacking clear lines of authority, accountability and well-defined reporting relationships.
Indeed, as reported in the Task & Purpose Newsletter, in a 5 May email followup to SecNav’s actions in Guam, VADM Scott Gray, Commander Navy Installations Command, “... called the conditions of the Guam barracks a “failure of leadership” across multiple commands, stating that the barracks are “clearly way outside any reasonable standard” and “clearly lack any sense of ownership.”
When the investigation is completed regarding the decision to place our Sailors and Marines in grossly substandard barracks, I suspect it may be difficult to either clearly identify the “decision-owner” or find evidence of a strong, sustained response by the unit commanders involved standing up for the welfare of their people.
These same issues of lack of clear leadership and accountability and blurred lines of responsibility, authority, and accountability within the relevant command structures figured prominently in the 2021 Red Hill fuel leak disaster, the July 2020 BONHOMME RICHARD fire and the 2017 FITZGERALD/MCCAIN collisions.
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