The head of the U.S. Navy spoke at a military conference Tuesday about the need for the service to prioritize speed and risk-taking to remain constantly prepared for an international armed conflict.
Navy Secretary John Phelan delivered remarks at the 38th Annual Surface Navy Association National Symposium in Arlington, Virginia, and extolled the virtues of “radical transparency,” an end to “stupid” practices, rolling the dice on calculated risks and maintaining a posture that is ready for war at any time to better the service’s current and future fleets.
“That results in accountability and moving from a compliance-based organization to a performance-based organization,” Phelan said.
The Navy secretary emphasized the importance of sculpting the service into an organization that did not penalize individuals for raising their hand and pointing out problems, instead welcoming a culture that prioritizes accountability.
He said he noticed a desire within the Navy to change. Internal discussions within the service, according to Phelan, have noted that there is a problem with taking accountability, both with regard to the Navy and with Navy customers.
But the Navy secretary is just as concerned with owning mistakes as taking swings that might lead to them.
Phelan preached the importance of risk-taking by increasing production and ramping up shipbuilding efforts with a decreased fear of failure.
Speaking about his time before the Navy as a CEO and businessman responsible for founding several investment companies, Phelan said it became increasingly difficult to embrace risk as his companies grew larger and more successful.
Despite that hesitancy though, Phelan said he still tried to prioritize taking calculated, smart risks. Unconventional thinking and experimentation, for Phelan, were the foundations of success.
The same applies to the Navy, he said.
According to Phelan, there is currently the notion that something has to be perfect — right out of the gate — once it is ready for testing.
This doesn’t have to be the case, he said.
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Phelan hopes to move the Navy away from a zero-defect mentality and increase speed.
An uptick in output can lead to mistakes and failures, but from those failures, lessons can be learned, he reiterated.
During his visits to shipyards, Phelan said he’d also noticed “stupid” practices that resulted from underinvestment and should be fixed to improve conditions for workers: A bathroom a mile away from welders; a supply bin two miles away from welders and pipefitters; bad parking that caused hour-long delays for workers getting into the office — these were logistic issues that Phelan said needed solving.
The Navy secretary further emphasized the need to outpace near-peer adversaries like the People’s Republic of China — which he said by 2030 was projected to possess nearly half of the overall global industrial capacity — in order to maintain maritime dominance abroad and specifically in the Indo-Pacific.
In 2022, China had approximately 1,800 ships under construction, whereas the U.S. had five, Phelan pointed out. China also had roughly 100 million people working in manufacturing, whereas the U.S. had fewer than 13 million, according to the Navy secretary.
Phelan said he visited a defense company that made missiles, whose name he declined to mention, on a Thursday at 11:00 a.m. and was shocked to find only 18 people working that day in a 250,000 square foot facility.
The lack of boots on the ground drove him to ask a question he said he’s asked many times during his time as Navy secretary:
“What would we do if we were at war?”
The U.S. needs to prepare so that it can fight international conflicts whenever it is called upon to do so, Phelan said.
“We should behave like we’re playing Miami or Indiana [football] every weekend,” he said.
That type of vigilance is hard to maintain, but if warfighters are doing it, so should everyone else, he said.
Conflicts can break out at any time, said Phelan.
“‘I wish’ is a really bad thing when it comes to warfare,” he concluded.
Riley Ceder is a reporter at Military Times, where he covers breaking news, criminal justice, investigations, and cyber. He previously worked as an investigative practicum student at The Washington Post, where he contributed to the Abused by the Badge investigation.
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