What We Should Really Do to Try to Fix the Navy

First thing would be to take the people who caused the situation of undermanning, overextension, undertraining and slashing repairs and do one simple thing: Shoot all of them.

Donald Rumsfeld, Vern Clark, Ash Carter, Ray Mabus, Jonathan Greenert, and most of the congressional Tea Party, for starters.

Read this and you'll understand why. The blood of the dead sailors from the USS Fitzgerald and the USS John S. McCain are on their hands.

This is a photo that was sent out by a Navy PAO:

That, according to Cdr. Sal, is the USS Wasp. There was a day when no sane First Lieutenant, let alone ships' captain, would have tolerated so much running rust.

Contrast, if you will, this photo:

That photo was of a Cold War USN warship's boat's davit which had a bad limit switch. The davit's winches raised the davit's arms past the shut-off point and bent the arms. Shit happens. But the one thing you don't see in that photo is running rust.

I heard a lot of stories about how bad it was post-Vietnam, when ships had to be creative in order to obtain parts and supplies. From what I can see, things are far worse, now.

Nobody in the Navy these days has the balls to look their bosses in the eye and say: "With all due respect, unable to comply."

I knew of one ship's captain, one time, who refused to sail because his ship did not have enough boiler technicians to man the plant, let alone enough who were watch-qualified. He was the hero of the waterfront. But I'll bet that he tubed his career and he knew it at the time. Yet he likely chose to do it that way, rather than end up on the bad side of the green table following a major accident or fire. That took courage, integrity, balls, whatever you want to call it.

Qualities that were scarce then, and scarcer now.