The Greatest Gathering of Men Since the Second Continental Congress

I used that phrase once a long time ago to describe the wardroom (officers) of the USS THOMAS S. GATES (CG 51), a ship I joined early in August of 1990. I was enjoying a bit of leave before joining the ship to head up into the Norwegian fjords for a giant NATO exercise. Saddam Hussein saw to the schedule changing, and I got a call from the ship on Sunday the 5th saying we were leaving on the 9th and you need to be with us. We came home late the following April.

Last evening, I was again in their midst, as a bunch of us are gathered for a cookout in Virginia Beach. These join-ups of shipmates become more important to me as time goes on, one of those processes that I don’t really understand but which I have come to expect.

We are as one would expect, a bit longer in the tooth. Our immortal Captain was there, the center of things as is customary. Hank Giffin is a big man (and I am not) and I will never forget meeting him for the first time and losing my own hand within his mighty handshake. He is also larger than life, and he taught a whole generation of future Admirals and ship captains to not only LOOK like you are having fun in command, but actually TO HAVE fun. I wish more with that responsibility today carried out this advice. We tend to tell the same stories when we gather, and to our credit, they remain consistent over the years. Every now and then a new one squirts out that I had no prior knowledge of, and it makes me smile.

I have on occasion, run into others in the Navy who had an experience like mine, where for some moment in time, they were part of a wardroom of great and good people. I love to listen to them, if for no other reason than to gain a truer appreciation for just how fundamentalist/missionary we GATES men must sound when we wax on about our time together.

One of our number declared that he would this very summer be cycling across the country. I feel certain that he will accomplish this goal, just as I am certain of there being something seriously wrong with him for wanting to do so. Another has had a set of serious medical setbacks of late, and I was prepared to find him diminished. But this was not the case, and his talent for storytelling remains unequalled. One greatly missed usual attendee was tending to a declining family member—I would like to have seen him. Of course we all talked about the guy still standing the watch with three stars on his collar, which we all knew would happen. We look forward to the day when he has the time to join us.

The ladies have aged better than the gentlemen, and they tend to keep to themselves when we get to the heaviest of tall tales telling. I talked with one whose babies I met in the days before we departed, and who are now grown women with families of their own.

On my way back up to Easton this morning, I set myself up with adaptive cruise control in order to frustrate the various constabularies along the way whose paymasters depend on the constant assessment of fines along roads where the speed limit changes with regularity. There are however, no devices in my car to guard against stupidity, and so when I did the U turn at the red light on 13 just outside the Sage Diner (no one driving in either direction on 13 or at the crossroad, 0830 Sunday morning) Johnny Law pulled me over and supplemented the Accomack County budget. I recommend the #7 Breakfast at the Sage.

Shipbuilding Update

I posted a mid-week edition here a few days ago with some thoughts on volatility in shipbuilding, and one of the means to address volatility that I pointed to was the use of Multi-Year Procurement (MYP) authority. This approach essentially obligates the government to buy ships over a number of years even though Congress appropriates money to buy them on an annual basis. If for instance, Congress did not appropriate money—or if the Navy did not request a ship it had already agreed to buy—the government would be penalized financially. Not the whole cost of the ship mind you, but a substantial enough penalty to make it painful, which sends a signal of intent that only a signed contract can top.

A day or so later I was reviewing testimony of Navy acquisition chief Nickolas Guertin before the House Armed Services Committee the week previous. The following exchange with Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA) caught my eye:

ROB WITTMAN: Can you give us an idea about what would the cost savings be with that commitment to buy in a four ship block those amphibious ships?

NICKOLAS GUERTIN: It's a great question and thank you also to the Congress for giving us those authorities. We've been doing very well with them in the places where we've been able to use it. We want to make sure we preserve that for the places that it makes good financial sense as well as good operational sense. We definitely have shown cost savings when we've done multiyear procurements. Actually, we don't get into multiyear procurements unless we can show cost savings. So that's a powerful tool and we use it to the maximum extent possible.

When I read the bolded portion of Secretary Guertin’s testimony, I shook my head and said to myself, “That’s dumb. What if there aren’t any real savings to be had, but there is benefit to be gained in stabilizing the industrial base?” And so, I re-upped a series of Tweets that I’d written on my shipbuilding piece and added my sense that it seemed unwise only to pursue MYP as a means to squeeze cost savings out of shipbuilders, especially when the levers they have (investment and labor) to respond to that squeezing works directly in opposition to the Navy’s desire for them to expand capacity.

Lo and behold, smarter people than I had already recognized this problem, and so the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act amended 10 USC Art 3501 to say the following:

(a) In General.-To the extent that funds are otherwise available for obligation, the head of an agency may enter into multiyear contracts for the purchase of property whenever the head of that agency finds each of the following:

(1) That the use of such a contract will result in-

(A) significant savings of the total anticipated costs of carrying out the program through annual contracts; or

(B) necessary defense industrial base stability not otherwise achievable through annual contracts.

Right there in black and white, Congress has given the Navy the authority to enter into MYP contracts in order to bring stability to the industrial base, not JUST to get at cost savings.

I do hope Secretary Guertin and his legal staff take this into consideration.

Watch Band Update

Some readers were curious as to the outcome of my latest “do it yourself” project, the changing of a watch band (it appears some use “watch strap”). Mission accomplished.