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CNO Says Combat Operations Lay Foundation for Future Navy
Story Number: NNS031010-18
Release Date: 10/10/2003 4:32:00 PM
By Chief Journalist Walter T. Ham IV, CNO Public Affairs
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (NNS) -- The lessons learned from combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan laid the foundation for the Navy of the future, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark said Oct. 8, at the U.S. Naval Institute’s Warfare Symposium, a two-day gathering of naval leaders and institute members to discuss Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.
The CNO said superior readiness allowed the Navy to give the president more options and bring more firepower to the fight during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Seventy percent of the Navy’s surface ships and 50 percent of its submarines were deployed, including seven carrier strike groups, three amphibious ready groups, two amphibious task forces, and more than 77,000 Sailors and Marines.
“I think we ought to be able to offer that kind of response every day of the week,” CNO said.
“Readiness counts. One of things that we’re talking about doing is to make sure that as an institution, we establish a set of attitudes that reinforces that we are going to live a lifestyle of readiness. We are going to insist on a culture of readiness.”
Clark said future deployment schedules will be based less on the old six-month “heel-to-toe” deployment cycle and more on mission requirements, which will make the Navy more flexible and less predictable.
“I believe that predictability can be a liability,” Clark said. “I believe that the Navy has been too predictable. If you want to know what we are planning to do next, you just need to go to the Navy exchange and ask the cashier, and they will give you our schedule. I think we need to think about new ways to do this.”
Clark added that by early next month, the Navy will be “re-cocked and ready again, just like it was the third week in December” prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom.
“We need to think in terms about our ability to respond, our ability to surge,” Clark said. “We want to recognize that the world of tomorrow is a more uncertain world than the world we live in today – and we are going to be ready to respond.”
For more on the CNO, go to www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/cno.
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CNO Sees Transforming Navy - 11/24/2003
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