Top Shoe
I was very pleased to see a piece in San Diego Union-Tribune this morning about the establishment a Top Gun-type school for our Surface Warriors. VADM Tom Copeland, Commander of Naval Surface Forces established “Top Shoe” (my term, not his) to foster a generation of young surface warriors who really know their craft, not just their weapons systems. For those outside of the Navy, there are a few terms which you should probably know. Aviators are know as “Brown Shoes” because they wore brown shoes with their working uniforms and their aviation green dress uniform...
Read MoreWas the QDR Written by a Presbyterian?
I commented last week on my expectations concerning the QDR and I wasn’t disappointed when I got around to reading it yesterday. After reading it through a couple of times (available here), I was still pretty much confused about what it was trying to say. And it didn’t look much like a strategy document to me…mostly filled with budget numbers and reasons why we couldn’t do this or that because of it. In the end, it’s definitely a document very much “informed” by the realities of the budget. I came away with the impression that it was less about...
Read MoreMeatball, Lineup & Angle of Attack
The House Intelligence Committee is looking into the apparently surprising Russian response to the crisis in the Ukraine. I’m only a junior assistant policy wonk (one tour on Joint Staff as a policy guy) but as I heard this news on the radio this morning, a few random thoughts popped into my head which I thought I would share. The first thought that came to mind is the similarly between intelligence analysts and meteorologists. In the end their forecasts are just a guess…albeit an educated one. It seems as though regardless of the accuracy of their reports, they seem to get a pass...
Read MoreSECNAV and Mowing the Grass
As I was reading the morning news, I saw a piece in The Hill about SECNAV Mabus’ comments regarding the savings associated with “scrubbing” the $ 40 Billion or so the Navy spends on service contracts. Service contracts can be just about anything from feeding Sailors in the chow hall to fixing the leaky toilets at the 4 Star’s headquarters building. SECNAV says “We know we can save significant amounts of money just by setting up things like contract courts, which require … contracting officers to come in every year and justify the contracts.” I don’t...
Read MoreStealth Works in the Budget Too!
First thing: Yesterday’s blog on Shared Services fell flat on the website with only a handful of hits. I take it the world of Shared Services is not so hot on the list of “interesting” topics. But there’s still a lot of money to be saved there. In fact, I would contend that there’s a lot of money floating around in areas that most people don’t find so interesting. It’s the uninteresting that ironically is the most interesting in terms of budget cutting. They escape scrutiny during the year-to-year budget battles, floundering in cash. The big...
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