Retired Marine Corps General J. Michael Myatt is organizing San Francisco’s 2010 Fleet Week, and he’s going to follow my April 2009 suggestion of making the celebration an operational event. Here’s what the General sees coming for the 2010 Fleet Week:
“We also want to take advantage of the military capabilities for disaster relief for the earthquake we know is coming. The naval services [ed note: And many San Diego-based vessels] contributed a lot of help in the Haiti earthquake, for example. We have a saying in the Marine Corps: Never introduce yourself on the battlefield. We want to introduce the civilian leadership of the Bay Area to the military commanders during Fleet Week for a tabletop exercise and two-way dialogues for emergency planning.”
Nice. This looks like it’ll be one of the best Fleet Weeks we’ve seen in awhile.
In the meantime, I’ve updated the post where I proposed this change in focus (the original version is here). Please enjoy this blast from the past:
The Navy is limiting domestic port calls and trimming participation in celebratory West Coast Fleet Weeks. From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Times are so tough that the U.S. Navy is significantly downsizing the fleet that usually shows up at San Francisco’s Fleet Week every fall. Instead of five or six ships as in the past, the Navy will send only a single ship this year.
The reason is an anticipated tight Navy budget, said Cmdr. Dora Lockwood, public affairs officer for the Third Fleet, based in San Diego. “Right now we plan to send one ship to San Francisco,” she said. “That could change, but I doubt it could change to zero ships.”
Lockwood said the Navy also plans to reduce its ceremonial participation in other West Coast Fleet Week events during the year as part of a reduction in what the Navy calls “port calls.” Other Fleet Week events are held yearly in
Seattle and Portland, Ore.
With the budget tight and Navy recruitment up, some in the Pentagon may feel no real urgency to “sell” the Navy to the rest of the USA.
That rationale makes a certain amount of sense, but with a big all-services procurement battle looming, this pull-out of Big Navy from large non-Navy ports poses a certain political risk. At best, a port call is “presence” in a direct diplomatic, physical and economic sense. In the worst case, the Navy’s inability to get out and “see the nation” risks making the Navy an insular force, too used to the safe homogeneity of big-base culture of San Diego or Norfolk to understand (or enjoy) other places in the USA.
Mutual alienation increases the chance of political friction or communication missteps.
Don’t take my word on this–go read Captain Chuck Nygaard’s USNI April 2009 Proceedings article, “Reengaging the Navy, at home and abroad.”
(This dynamic skipper’s efforts to get his ship, the USS Vicksburg (CG-69), engaged during a Charleston, South Carolina port call is a distressing must-read for all domestic naval diplomats.)
A naval pull-back from legacy ports is particularly disheartening for the West Coast. The Bay area (and all the other big non-Navy West Coast ports) suffer disproportionately from a mass-media/partisan-driven effort to characterize these communities as anti-military bastions. Fleet Weeks are the only real opportunity to disabuse that notion. And disabuse they do–honoring the Navy with enormous community-wide participation, huge crowds and (aside from a handful of widely-promoted freaks) enormous goodwill.Those people who do want to turn out and support the Navy will be ill-served by an accountant-driven, fearful Navy intent on domestic disengagement.
Of course, the marketing gurus may know something I don’t. Perhaps the Blue Angels aerobatic team is, as far as Fleet Weeks go, the primary crowd-pleaser and ships are just extra garnish for speedy F-18s. Perhaps. but, then again, marketers cannot argue with the three-to-four hour wait people happily en
dure to get aboard an actual Navy vessel (that’s a line of folks eager to see the JFK–which is, from where these people were, oh, about 2.5 hours away).
There’s a term for such an event. Like, oh, say, “worthwhile” or
“valuable”.
But, to better appease the bean-counters (who don’t value time citizens spend in ship-tour lines) we must ask a simple question: How might the Navy derive better value from these largely ceremonial “Fleet Weeks”?
First, leverage all available symbolism. If San Francisco is to get a single ship, make that ship something that will tug at the local heartstrings. The USS San Francisco (SSN-711), newly returned to service after running aground, would be perfect. If the boat could manage to carry out some sub gymnastics, popping up during the Blue Angels finale or some such thing, that’d thrill everybody. So, if a single ship is required, something meaningful makes a great story and sends everybody home happy. (I don’t know what might strum heart-strings for a Portland or Seattle’s fleet week, but surely there’s something.)
Second, leverage NORTHCOM and raid Homeland Defense coffers to run Fleet Week as a homeland defense drill. The spurned Bay Area,
Portland and Seattle Fleet Week venues are all “at risk” of major disaster–earthquake, volcano, etc–where the Navy will be a primary instrument of engagement.
Pentagon beancounters can dismiss domestic port calls as insignificant and costly puffery all they want, but no accounting methodology can argue with the historical record. In the most recent major U.S. coastal quake, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake (some readers might remember it as the earthquake that i
nterrupted the World Series), the Navy, within hours, committed 15 ships to earthquake recovery operations, with 35 ships ultimately providing assistance (details here-.pdf). The Navy helped in 1906 and in many, many other instances in Ports throughout the country.
When else but during a Fleet Week will a similar concentration of Navy vessels be available to work with local municipalities?
For that matter, when was the last time the Navy participated in a major domestic disaster drill outside the San Diego/Norfolk bastions? Is the Navy just going to “wing it” during the next big West Coast Quake? Somebody’s got to do some contingency-plan testing, and Fleet Weeks are as good as any opportunity to do just that.
I don’t know. Maybe this lack of engagement reflects something exclusive to the economically-pressed Surface Warfare community, but..even the folks who drive F-18s are are reaching out to local first responders…in Reno, no less.
“Operationalizing” Fleet Weeks might be a game-changer–rather than doing the costly, time-consuming process of shepherding throngs of local folks through a security screening and an odious guided tour, the focus can now change to a dynamic pierside lesson on how the ship interacts with shore, with locals watching (and perhaps participating) in the exercise. Sailors could get distributed throughout the region, too, working, again, in public, at various exercises.
[Editor’s note: Look how well the Marine Corps’ recent visit to Boston went–Marines landed in Boston Common, went to schools (by helo, no less) and landed on a beach. It was awesome. And the MV-22 Osprey did good too…]
A win-win for all involved.
A Fleet Week drill would certainly be a very different project. But suddenly, in just a day, a million or so residents and/or spectators would get a quick, direct to-the-gut lesson in just how important the Navy is to their urban non-Navy enclaves.
(And, as an added bonus, the Navy gets a good dose of local knowledge–before the next big disaster hits…)
There’s a platform issue, as well. For ship tours and a ship parade, glamor counts. Big warfighters are the “big draw.” On the other hand, tying a port call into an exercise might be a good reason to bring in less costly logistical/MSC-operated vessels. Those platforms might be less glamorous, but tying them to a homeland defense mission suddenly makes these ships quite attractive. Why not give a T-AKE or a T-AOE a star turn? They work hard enough…don’t those vessels deserve some admiration, too?
The unsung heroes of the fleet–the odd-job contract haulers (like, oh, the Maersk Alabama), the Army’s Navy, the MSC fleet–deserve a good fleet week too. With a homeland security/disaster response foci, they might draw a good crowd, cost less, and allow a more direct, less security-encumbered round of public engagement.
After all, who says the combatants have to get all the fun? It’s high time for an operational Fleet Week.
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