Navy sacks carrier captain, pulls another carrier off station over Covid-19
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
China's been using this opportunity to seize up territorial claims in the South China Sea
> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/31/world/asia/Indonesia-sout...
If the chain of command fails you, you have no other choice but to go public when your crews’ well-being is threatened.
> “It creates the perception the Navy is not on the job; the government is not on the job. That's just not true."
I don’t believe anyone is confident the government is on the job, and this letter did nothing to change that perception. It simply confirms what the public already believes.
There's no evidence at all he is the one who leaked the memo. It may have been someone up the totem pole. Without knowing who leaked the memo, his being relieved of duty was premature and will only serve to damage morale. This was a very poor call by the acting Secretary.
Is there evidence of that?
There are formal and proper reporting channels for things like this. He went outside them, on purpose, to ensure the letter got leaked.
Not everyone agrees this was the right call:
https://armedservices.house.gov/press-releases?ID=2EFC2A13-1...
The other has been widely reported, this CNN article has quotes from SECNAV.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/02/politics/uss-roosevelt-comman...
When the captain made the decision to send the letter, wasn't he at that time superior to you in rank? But it's no problem for you to second guess his actions?
I guess I don't understand this chain of command business very well.
The Captain sent the letter to many people not in his chain of command, including someone who sent it to the newspaper (as he most likely expected would happen). That's not done in the Navy. Sending a letter like that to his superiors was perfectly acceptable. Getting it on the front cover of Navy Enquirer is not.
Yes, you are correct. You don't under this chain of command business at all.
Do you have a reference for this? The letter [1] doesn't appear to mention insufficient support, just that the cases were accelerating.
[1] Letter: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Exclusive-Captai...
I'd recommend rereading what you cited.
> Request all available resources to find NAVADMIN and CDC compliant quarntine rooms for my entire crew as soon as passible.
I read this as a new request for support for the "war free" plan outlined in the letter. Are you suggesting that he had already proposed this or another plan, but it was rejected or not completely fulfilled? If so, do you have a reference for this?
It would be useful if you could make it more clear what is your personal opinion/speculation vs publicly known. I'm trying to understand what happened.
> That by definition means the current support is insufficient.
In this context, that doesn't necesarily have to be true.
https://www.stripes.com/news/us/captain-crozier-captain-croz...
That's a very clear security violation.
As if I needed yet another example to share with anyone even considering enlisting in the armed forces why you shouldn’t. As long as the optics make it worth it, you’re disposable, regardless of rank.
He didn't get fired for leaking, he got fired for attempting to go around the chain of command.
Otherwise he's just another coward who mistreats people who actually put their lives on the line.
What weakens the USN is a lack of leadership. Almost every officer and sailor I know supported this Captain's actions and hold him as a true leader compared to the Navy Secretary.
Similarly, USA had no need to specially wait for provocation to back their allies in the region.
Countries in the region were looking with scepticism on US "security guarantee" for decades. And the last few years gave them even more reasons to move away from USA.
For example, both Philippines and Malaysia were at some moments seriously committed to conduct action on Spratleys, both times it was US who exerted extreme diplomatic pressure on them to not to do so.
They have all reasons to ask questions why do they have to spend diplomatic efforts on maintaining US security guarantee, if US is not willing to defend their land.
CPC's think tanks have long found that the best way to put pressure on countries in the region is through pressuring the US.
They make it look to US government that their relationship with a given country have "too high of a price," and raise risks, and stakes for the US.
Then they come to Washington, and say "hey, let's deescalate, and go back to making money. Just make one small concession on that island." Of course, in the end it will be not USA making concessions, but their vital allies.
Sometimes you don't get the hero you deserve, but the one that you need right now.
The problem is that letter shouldn't have been made public. He sent it to enough people to make sure it was made public, and that's why he got fired.
As an American the thought that he knew exactly what he was doing and felt he had no better option is quite disheartening.
YOU DO NOT expose the readiness of the unit, medical or otherwise.
This was akin to putting private keys in the git repository.
People have other problems and the Chinese can figure this out without the letter being leaked anyway.
I offered the IT security example alongside.
How long does one expect to work at, say, Apple, if one is careless?
Fun fact: no one dies if they leak at Apple.
As the global situation deteriorates due to the virus, remember to pray for peace. Because what does any authoritarian regime do when things get creaky? Start a fight to focus attention, that's what.
That's assuming this was carelessness and not intentional. But then again, I guess whistleblowers usually don't keep their jobs long either.
> Fun fact: no one dies if they leak at Apple.
No one will die from this leak either, obviously, yet they might if they don't get an adequate response to the infection
Certainly the hope, but this could fall short of prophecy.
Which is why, for all the points about rumors, you do make these sorts of official pronouncements.
"Loose lips sink ships" and all that.
Less fun fact: Maybe a dozen sailors will die (or have died) if the carrier sails and gets the rest of the crew on board infected.
Hmm, hard choice.
Among the things sailors are ordered NOT to do is talk to the media without running the communications by a Public Affairs Officer. There is also regular OpSec[2] training.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Code_of_Military_Jus...
I mean, I hear what you are saying, maybe the letter writer has to be sacked.
But how do we deal with ineffectiveness and failure to address the situation? There is a lot of that apparently and playing political games doesn't solve it.
To be frank, if the military can't become more effective, enforce real responsibility and outcome, put people in charge who make good decisions rather than pass the buck and look to get on with a defense contractor, we are done anyway and China knowing guys on a ship are sick that week is deck chairs on the Titanic so to speak.
First with how fast the coronavirus spreads and can last, this means essentially taking down the entire ship. Having an entire crew range from bedridden to slightly sick is not a good thing for opsec.
Second, the coronavirus is not just deadly to the unhealthy or the elderly. Even younger people can require ventilators or die as a result. You would be condemning those people to death.
Moldy framed the seriousness of the ship's condition on the stated fact of the sailors young age and the fact that not a single sailor on that ship had yet been hospitalized. He also stated that the ship has unique operating requirements, such as a nuclear reactor and expensive aircraft.
The Navy has its own calculus for the values at stake.
There will be a increase in wars over the next few years. The age of wars decreasing is on hold.
There is military action that might be needed at the moment. This is not a joke. We don't need skirmishes kicking off.
You're not going to keep the virus a secret on any ship. The solution is to try and get over it as soon as possible. Not act like it doesn't exist.
This is a silly point.
A Captain leaking a letter, is different to a country X trawling through thousands of accounts on social media for the truth.
At your point there would have been no point any high Chinese official calling alarm in January about the Coronavirus, we already know because China isn't a black box and people were seeing what happened so we all knew exactly what was happening in China.
> You're not going to keep the virus a secret on any ship.
Everyone knows the virus is on all ships (and many submarines) around the world. This was a Captain allegedly writing up exact intel and undermining his command structure.