Come As You Are
In a recent comment about a sparsely attended ASW exercise, ComNavOps happened to suggest that the event would have made a good opportunity to conduct a no-notice, come as you are, scramble type exercise to see what our first day of war capabilities would look like. Well, now I’m going to formally propose that we should be conducting this type of exercise several times per year, all across the fleet. Let’s find out how many ships could actually sail on no notice (I’m betting not many), how quickly we could actually load weapons (I’m betting we’d encounter all kinds of obstacles and shortages of weapons, equipment for loading, and manpower), how many ships have full crews (none!), and how many ships are actually combat capable at any given moment (I strongly suspect none).
My understanding is that the Army conducts this type of no-notice mobilization on occasion although I don’t know the frequency, scope, or results.
The Navy used to conduct a few no-notice exercises for the pre-positioning ships. I don’t know if they still do or not.
Wouldn’t it be incredibly informative to order a squadron of destroyers to sail on a moment’s notice and conduct a live fire missile exercise? What do you think the result would be?
We need to start behaving as if we’re just a moment away from war and start realistically preparing for it.
Some of you will roll your eyes and say that’s overdoing it. Aside from the fact that that’s exactly what the Navy is supposed to do, life at sea is always just a moment away from combat and disaster. I’ll bet the Cole, McCain, Fitzgerald, Antietam, and Port Royal all wish they had treated day to day life a little more like combat and as if their lives depended on it – because they did and they were all unprepared.
Now is the time to try these exercises. Now is when we can afford to make mistakes, as long as we learn from them and correct the errors. Now is our golden opportunity to prepare for war so that fewer people will die while we relearn war when it actually comes – and it always does.
Right now, CNO Richardson – no notice - order the fleet to sea and see what happens.
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