David Sears is a New Jersey-based business consultant and author.
David's business consulting expertise encompasses executive and professional staffing, compensation and incentives, organizational change consulting, executive coaching and human resources process engineering. His book Successful Talent Strategies has been published by AMACOM. A forthcoming book Best Sellers , also to be published by AMACOM, profiles best human capital practices in solution selling across multiple industries.
David's early career included service as a United States Navy officer with extensive sea duty aboard a destroyer and a tour of duty as an advisor to the Vietnamese Navy during the Vietnam conflict. His book The Last Epic Naval Battle: Voices of Leyte Gulf chronicles the exploits of 60 sailors and aviators in the last and most decisive sea battle of World War II.
David has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MS in Industrial Relations from Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
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July 29, 2005
[Have an opinion about the issues discussed in this column? Sound
off here.]
Adm. Vern Clark has just stepped down after five years as chief of naval operations. He's been the longest-serving CNO in a half-century. I can actually say I knew him when.
During the (very) early 1970's, Vern and I both served as junior officers on the U.S.S. Gearing, a Newport, RI-based destroyer (and namesake of its ship class). Our overlap in the Gearing wardroom was brief. I was soon headed west on my way to an in-country tour in Vietnam. After Vietnam and a transition tour as a Navy recruiter I was on my way to a civilian career. Adm. Clark also left the Navy -- but for just a short time. It soon called him back. And the rest, as they say, is history.
During our time aboard Gearing (Vern was in engineering while I was in weapons) the ship itself was nearly history. Gearing by then was a quarter century old. Before very long she was decommissioned and sold for scrap.
Gearing's end might have come sooner, but during the 1960's her life was prolonged. She was "FRAMed," an acronym-turned-verb that stood for "Fleet Rehabilitation and Maintenance." The program was meant to breathe new life into a generation of aging destroyers. In truth, though, the post-FRAM Gearing was an odd vessel both in looks and performance -- a committee's vision of a fighting ship.
To bolster the ship's submarine warfare capabilities, two systems had been grafted on: ASROC -- basically a surface-to-subsurface missile with a depth charge warhead; and DASH, a drone helicopter. ASROC and DASH paraphernalia blunted Gearing 's clean lines and neither seemed to add much to her capabilities. I never got to see an ASROC launch, though I was told it was an awesome adventure in earsplitting noise and kidney wrenching vibration. I do remember the DASH team having the devil of a time coaxing the drone back home once it had been deployed.
Gearing still sported its main battery guns -- twin mounted dual purpose (anti-air and anti-surface) 5”38 cannons. The guns were accurate and reliable, but the electro-mechanical fire control system that slewed and elevated them was frankly no match for a subsonic jet aircraft.
The new systems were good in theory: the idea was to extend Gearing 's reach in the hunt for submarine prey. But ASROC and DASH couldn't make up for the reality that Gearing was aging and outmoded. Gearing was a proud ship, but she had been launched in the last days of World War II and was probably already showing her years by the time she participated in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis blockade.
That was the sordid story when it came to Gearing 's weaponry. I'm sure the same held true for the engineering plant. All in all Gearing presented an unlikely launch pad for an illustrious naval career -- never mind a climb to the top of the org chart. Clearly it was no launch pad for me. But it was for Adm. Clark.
During his five years at the Navy's helm (as recounted in a recent article in the New York Times) Admiral Clark pulled off some amazing feats, including improvements in white hat pay and benefits and speeding up the retirement of outmoded ships. Perhaps his most signal accomplishment was to be re-upped for a second term with the approval of none other than the ever scrutinizing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
But Adm. Clark also took his share of abuse -- both from without and within. Ratcheting up pay has been coupled with reductions in headcount. The Navy's "perform to serve" program curtailed re-enlistments to the extent that a ctive-duty navy personnel levels dropped by more than 20,000 people during Adm. Clark's watch. Fewer people mean fewer ships. And scrapping older ships (while building fewer new ones) leaves U.S. shipyards and government contractors with fewer maintenance and retrofit projects (in other words, not as many FRAMS).
Perhaps the most intense criticism has been spurred by Adm. Clark's efforts to perform as a team player among the joint chiefs. Some of the bloodiest military battles are internecine -- the zero sum competition for budgets and weapons systems among the armed service branches. This is especially true for the U.S. Navy, which instead of being 'boots on the ground' is "hulls in the water." Making and fulfilling a commitment to put the needs of the country above the parochial interests of the Navy (as Adm. Clark has done) means budget concessions, and risks grumbling from a bench of other high-powered admirals, both active and retired.
So, how might the experience of the Gearing factor into Adm. Clark's career in the Navy and his two turns at CNO? While I claim no unfailing insight into knowing what has influenced Adm. Clark over his thirty plus years of naval service, let me speculate a bit.
For one thing, having experienced the Gearing, maybe Admiral Clark first learned that an effective fleet is not made up of compromise ships. If he's been aggressive about phasing out the old while building newer and fewer (today's Navy has 287 ships, down from 315 in 2000) to meet shifting global defense challenges -- it may have been a lesson from the FRAM age. A corollary to this is the realization of where the Navy's real value lies: in the talents and dedication of its sailors -- the snipes and deck apes who get the most out of sophisticated systems while keeping even the most outmoded systems operational. They deserve the best -- whether the best is measured in terms of pay or quality ships.
I also have to speculate that Adm. Clark was somehow influenced by his ‘out-of-Navy' experience -- his tour of duty in the civilian world . And perhaps in a couple ways. First, it gave Adm. Clark a perspective on where he really wanted to be -- and how he wanted to serve. Adm. Clark departed, reflected and returned with clear enthusiasm. Second, it probably gave him an appreciation of the plusses and minuses of both worlds -- military and civilian. Wild speculation here, but it may have imbued him with the sense that both worlds work best through cooperation, collaboration and team efforts.
In the thirty-plus years since our days aboard the Gearing , my path never crossed with Adm. Clark's. That is until recently. With the publication of my most recent book The Last Epic Naval Battle: Voices from Leyte Gulf, I reached out to Adm. Clark for a review and endorsement. In his personal capacity he was happy to do it. His words for the occasion: “Our Navy's core values of Honor, Courage and Commitment support our great institution. The men who wore the cloth of our nation during this critical battle exemplified those admirable qualities. Their legacy made our Navy the finest in the world.”
Adm. Clark's words are a mirror to his own naval service and his tenure as CNO.
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© 2005 D.L.Sears & Associates, Inc. All opinions expressed
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