One Team Ready to Fight

Acting Secretary of the Navy Johnson Finds Navy-Marine Corps Team Coiled for Action

By RICHARD R. BURGESS
Managing Editor

Sometimes visitors to the Pentagon office of Acting Secretary of the Navy Hansford T. Johnson are given blue caps embroidered with American flags and the words "Navy-Marine Corps: One Team-One Fight."

That phrase sums up the points Johnson made about the services over which he presides in an exclusive interview on 28 February with Sea Power. Johnson--who became acting secretary when his short-term predecessor, Under Secretary Susan Morissey Livingstone, stepped down--assumed his post at a time when 51 percent of the U.S. Navy's ships were deployed at sea and most of the combat forces of the U.S. Marine Corps were staged in the Persian Gulf region.

"We've never had a better, stronger relationship [between the two services]," Johnson said of the Navy and Marine Corps. He cited as an example the recently announced plans for the integration of Navy and Marine Corps tactical jet squadrons, strongly supported by both the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) and the Commandant of the Marine Corps.

Johnson, the first retired Air Force general to lead the Department of the Navy, was appointed by President George W. Bush as assistant secretary of the Navy for installations and environment, a position he still holds and which he expects to resume full-time when a new secretary is appointed.

Johnson wasted no time after becoming acting secretary in flying to the Persian Gulf to visit the Sailors and Marines that his department has provided to the U.S. Central Command in the face-off with Iraq. He was impressed with the Marines he met in Kuwait. Johnson--who has a son deployed to Kuwait in the Marine Corps Reserve--remarked with pride that none of the Marines asked him, "When do I go home?" His meetings with the crew of the Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln--which is on its way to setting a new record for length of time deployed for a carrier since the Vietnam War--were equally reassuring.

With so many Sailors and Marines currently deployed for an open-ended commitment, Johnson is paying close attention to morale and personnel retention. "We could not ask for a better climate," he said. He believes that the current high levels of retention will continue to remain high because the Sailors and Marines see the focus and respect of the nation on what they are doing. He also stressed the importance of taking care of military families in the face of so much uncertainty, especially in deployment schedules. He expressed the hope that the Navy League and other service organizations will help to meet the needs of military families.

When asked about current personnel levels, Johnson pointed out that the Navy is trying to reduce its number of personnel. "We are trying everything we can to pull down our staffing," he said. Personnel costs are the largest item in the Navy's budget and, therefore, new ships are being designed with smaller crews in mind. The Navy is experimenting in this in several ways. "Optimal Manning" is a concept being tried on the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Mobile Bay, in which 57 crew billets were eliminated. Johnson said that the experiment was going well.

"We have to do a better job of outsourcing," Johnson said in discussing the increasing use of contractors to support the sea services. He noted the success of the Military Sealift Command (MSC) in using merchant mariners to man its ships and that the Marine Corps units in Kuwait are using contractors for certain logistical functions. During the recent buildup in Kuwait, 11 ships of the MSC's Maritime Prepositioning Force were offloaded in only 16 days.

Turning to material readiness, Johnson said that he was aware of the potential for increased maintenance backlog for ships and aircraft in the wake of the current deployment surge. The Navy Department is working hard to bring some depot-level support to deployed ships. One experiment, Sea Swap, involves the crews of two Spruance-class destroyers swapping ships in order to keep certain hulls deployed for 18 months, avoiding the wear and tear of time-consuming, expensive transits. Even though the Navy's attack submarine (SSN) force is currently stretched thin, Johnson said there was no similar plan for crew swaps for SSNs, but "we could do it if we had to."

With regard to the deficiencies in the budget for shipbuilding, Johnson acknowledged the CNO's goal of a 375-ship Navy and the problems of reaching that goal, but explained, "We live in a world of balances. ... We will go down in numbers so that we can leap to a new class of ships." He is pushing to have production of the Virginia-class SSN ramped up to two hulls per year. The transformational Littoral Combat Ship is moving forward through its milestones, and may share commonality with one of the ships envisioned in the Coast Guard's Deepwater program. "The Coast Guard has never been a stronger partner," Johnson said.

Stressing the Navy's commitment to theater ballistic-missile defense (TBMD), Johnson said that the Navy has devoted one of its Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers, USS Lake Erie, to the Missile Defense Agency as a dedicated test bed for the development of the Standard SM-3 missile and other TBMD technologies.

Johnson also praised the Navy's working relationships with international navies in the global war on terrorism. He noted the success of the joint headquarters of the combined task force engaged in maritime intercept operations in the Middle East, and the participation of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force in an overseas military operation for the first time. He also noted that allied navies have escorted every U.S. ship passing through the Strait of Gibraltar on their way to the Middle East.

As assistant secretary for installations and environment, Johnson is in the forefront of the Navy's process for the next round of base realignment and closures (BRAC), scheduled for fiscal year 2005. Citing the need to reduce and consolidate infrastructure, Johnson said, "The nation needs this BRAC; this will be the last BRAC for some time." The 2005 BRAC will be different from the previous BRACs, Johnson said, in that it will look at functions first--before bases. In the past, each service prepared its own recommendations. The 2005 BRAC will take a more joint-service approach, looking at the force structure envisioned 20 years hence.

With the coming closure of the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Facility on the island of Vieques, P.R., the fate of Naval Station Roosevelt Roads remains a question. Johnson affirmed that the need for the base is now greatly reduced but stressed that the Congress has to approve any decision regarding the future of Roosevelt Roads.

Johnson took the opportunity to praise the Navy League and the support that its headquarters staff and local councils give to the sea services. *