Navigation Brief
ALEXANDRIA – Good Evening, Drifters
A friend of mine delivered something fun into my inbox a few weeks ago and I thought it was worth relaying to you. This is the special treat I have promised for some weeks now.
It’s a speech from the late, controversial Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, the father of the nuclear Navy. Whatever else you think of him, he’s one of the most remarkable officers in the US Navy’s history and fielded a nuclear fleet with an unrivaled safety record.
When he passed in 1986, then Navy Secretary John Lehman (who also forced Rickover into retirement because of his runaway power and control over too many aspect of the Navy) released a statement summing up his career thusly:
“With the death of Adm. Rickover, the Navy and this nation have lost a dedicated officer of historic accomplishment. In his 63 years of service, Adm. Rickover took the concept of nuclear power from an idea to the present reality of more than 150 U.S. naval ships under nuclear power, with a record of 3,000 ship-years of accident-free operations."
The speech we’re going to revisit tonight was delivered, for some reason, to the FBI, and was called: “The Role of Engineering in The Navy.”
Maybe I’ve misread my audience in thinking that a speech delivered in 1974 by a dead admiral would be a treat for you, but you did sign up for a Navy-specific newsletter.
Let’s Drift!
-DBL
Rickover From The Great Beyond
Figured the way to do this would be to just write it like a news story, as if I was covering to speech from the back of the room, since that’s what I do best. It’s a little odd, given that I was -10 when this was delivered, but we’ll do our best.
Keep in mind that while I think there are a lot of things in here that ring true today, the Navy has changed a lot since 1974 and many of the things Rickover complains about may not be relevant today.
The Navy’s top nuclear officer bemoans poor engineering practices in the fleet
By David B. Larter
WASHNGTON – The Navy’s line officers have throughout the service’s history routinely undervalued engineering, have learned the wrong lessons from its successes and have imposed bad engineering on the fleet, the head of the Navy’s nuclear enterprise told a group of FBI agents Friday, and said the fleet’s ships are poorly designed as a result.
The Navy’s over-empowerment of line officers over technical experts has made it very difficult for the engineers and technicians in the Navy to have their voices heard and keep programs on track based on sound engineering, Rickover argued. To fix it, the Navy should restore a system where the technical aspects of ship design are taken out of the Chief of Naval Operations and is given back to the Secretary of the Navy to oversee.
“The loss of professionalism among the engineers, and the interference of line officers in technical matters, has resulted in naval ships of questionable design,” Rickover told the audience.
Over the years the Navy’s line officers have grown increasingly powerful in which they have limited technical expertise, he said.
“To understand the overwhelming and detrimental effect of these changes, it must be realized that every officer and civilian in the Offices of the Chief of Naval Material and the Chief of Naval Operations regards himself as senior to the Commanders of the technical Systems Commands, and feels free to introduce his thoughts, questions, and desires into any technical matter coming through his office,” Rickover said.
“These people involve themselves in every aspect of ship design, construction, and procurement, including the construction of shore facilities and settlement of contract claims.”
The growth of the Chief of Naval Operations staff has gotten in the way of sound engineering practices, Rickover argued.
“The staff of the Chief of Naval Operations has grown in recent years until it now includes 65 admirals. Rickover bemoaned. “This is about twice as many as were assigned to Fleet Admiral King’s staff at the height of World War II.
“In addition, the CNO staff has more than 300 captains in comparison to only 187 billets for captains to command all ships and squadrons at sea. There are also over 320 commanders on the CNO staff, as well as many senior civilians and lower-ranking officers. These staff officers get involved in technical matters for which they have no qualifications.”
Management over Expertise
In addition to the erosion at the top of the Navy, the service is spoiling its young by teaching them that technical expertise is less important than management, Rickover said, recalling a junior officer who told him that he could learn to do the Rickover’s job in six months.
“It was not his fault,” Rickover said. “It was no crime for him to give this answer. He had been taught by his supposedly responsible and knowledgeable professors that his job was to ‘manage.’ It will take some of these men years to unlearn the Annapolis social science propaganda, and some never will. … The Navy is raising a generation of officers who believe that technical training is not essential and that they can rely on management techniques to make decisions.”
A deemphasis on engineering and technical expertise resident in the Navy and instead outsourcing that to industry, and a corresponding shift to emphasizing management skills, will have long-term consequences for the Navy, Rickover agued.
“I have learned from many years of bitter experience that we cannot depend on industry to develop, maintain, and have available a technical organization capable of handling the design of complex ships and their equipment without the Navy, itself, having a strong technical organization to oversee the work in detail,” he said, adding that “management systems are as endemic to the government as the Black Plague was in Medieval Europe.”
The emphasis on management over technical acumen in naval officers, and the empowerment of line officers over technical experts in technical matters, combines to push bad engineering practices on the Navy, he said.
“For example, over the years, with monotonous regularity, representatives from large and well-known companies propose to undertake - at Government expense - studies of small, high-speed ships propelled by small, cheap, light-weight nuclear power plants,” Rickover said. “These proposals are enticing to officer managers who do not understand the technical flaws, and are swayed by the miraculous achievements promised by these representatives- with their high-sounding management titles- who seek Government contracts.
“My people and I find that the technical bases for these proposals are unsound. When we object to these schemes on scientific and engineering grounds, we are told that we are unimaginative and stubbornly conservative, that we could make these systems work if we really tried and wanted to do so.
“Such an argument reduces all engineering to the simple matter of personal will. We are constantly faced with people who believe in the idea of overcoming existing difficulties by trying something even bolder and more difficult. Like all exaggerated gallantry, such a course is attractive but unrewarding.”
Misreading History?
Part of the issue is that the Navy repeatedly misreads its own history and that success has made the service blind to its own past shortcomings, Rickover argued.
“I study naval history from the perspective of an officer who is interested in the development of his profession,” he said. “To me, most of these histories are seriously flawed. With a few notable exceptions, they are written by the victors to hail their own achievements.
“It is true in any walk of life that past success can engender a dangerous confidence and complacency that can lead to future defeat. In the glow of victory, all error is forgotten.”
During his speech he offered several examples from history to prove his point.
When the Navy designed its first battleships, the Navy had line officers in charge of ordnance and gun systems and not engineers, which often put aspirational requirements on ships that didn’t pan out and caused delays.
“By and large, the worst errors were caused by the imposition of the opinions of line officers on technical matters,” Rickover argued. “The result can be seen in the Navy’s first three battleships, one of which was the famous Oregon. The Bureau of Ordnance, headed by a line officer, proposed a turret and gun arrangement based on the hoped-for success of technical developments.
“When these did not materialize, the turrets had to be redesigned. As a result, when any of these ships swung its guns to deliver a broadside, it heeled over to such an extent that the armor belt on the side toward the enemy dipped below the waterline, giving no protection to the ship.”
Rickover pointed to the rise of U.S. seapower in the U.S. Civil War, only to see its preeminence fade quickly because it overestimated how clever it was.
“We believed the Monitor was the embodiment of sea power, yet the turret and armored hulls had already been developed in Europe,” Rickover said. “Wrapped in the security of ignorance, we became slave to the Monitor-type. We had faith in them as major combatant ships long after other nations had recognized that they were only a brilliant improvisation to a specific problem. The main line of naval progress remained in Europe.”
The decline after the Civil War was reversed only by importing technical expertise from Europe, chiefly England, in the late 19th century, Rickover said.
The admiral wrapped up his speech by acknowledging he has been a frequent critic of Navy policy, but defended his actions by pointing to his success in fielding a nuclear Navy.
“When I am told that I should not attack any of the policies of the Navy Department, it is the same as saying that a son should not warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen over it,” he said.
“Perhaps, in the end, the facts of life, like a sheepdog with an awkward flock, will finally nudge the Navy toward common sense. But I doubt it. Had I refrained from attacking the policies of the Navy Department over the past 25 years and not gone to Congress and the Atomic Energy Commission, we probably would not now have our nuclear Navy which is a prime factor in keeping war from this country.”
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That’s it for tonight, hope you enjoyed that little exercise. Here’s the whole speech for anyone interested!
The Role of Engineering in the Navy
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