December 1999
Written at the invitation of Navy Times, this op-ed was not, I believe, ever published. Its points remain valid.
WASHINGTON – From time to time a sad headline in Navy Times announces an accident in the fleet. Last week it was the death of seven Marines in an H-46 helo training accident off the coast of California. Today, like everyday, and sailors, Marines will climb into H-46s and C-130s confident that these are safe aircraft flown by competent aircrews. If not flying, they know they will be safe performing any of the other dangerous evolutions in their daily routine.
Why this confidence? The military is a dangerous business, even when no one is deliberately shooting at us. When we tell our spouse and kids, “Not to worry. I’m just as safe in that airplane (or ship) as I am driving down the freeway to the base,” are we just whistling in the dark?
It comes down to trust-trust in our shipmates, trust in our equipment, trust in ourselves. Where do we get that trust? Ultimately we get it from accountability, from trusting the climate of accountability in our command and in our Service.
Accountability. What does it mean?
Accountability is a very hard-nosed, unforgiving kind of military quality-assurance program. How does it work? In two ways. On one side accountability concerns judgment. Did an individual in authority make a sound decision? On the other side accountability checks procedure. Did an individual or a team follow the correct procedure? Did they have sufficient training and experience to be skilled in that procedure? Were they provided the right equipment to perform the procedure?
Accountability kicks in when something goes seriously wrong and there is an investigation. Ordered up by almost anyone up the chain of command investigations come in all sizes from the informal, one-officer style to the highly formal versions with lots of lawyers. One thing you can be sure of is that plenty of trees are going to be turned into paper once one starts up!
A well-run investigation will not only tell us what went wrong but deliver the fleet some more lessons learned. We learn from our mistakes. That is why we can safely climb into that airplane today or join the refueling team on deck tonight. Virtually every one of the Navy’s safety precautions has been paid for in blood. Sometimes investigations uncover new problems, like a part that was designed wrong; sometimes they turn up old lessons, like Don’t cut corners on your training program.
But not everything can be reduced to a check list-especially when you get to the level of the commanding officer. Here is where Navy has a special handle. Any commanding officer can be removed for a simple loss of confidence in that CO’s judgment and leadership. It does not happen often-and usually it happens only after an investigation has raised grave doubts-but every officer in command in the fleet today knows that she or he has that special accountability.
How is accountability doing in today’s Navy? I for one worry that our ultimate safeguard is getting a little tattered at both ends: procedure and judgment. Why? Bad investigations, for one reason. Doubtless the H-46 investigation will be a good one. It is one thing to investigate something technical like an aircraft accident or a fire in a ship’s switchboard. But a very big, very public mistake like shooting the Chinese embassy in Serbia gets the press involved, gets the President involved, and investigators do not dig down through the politics to the accountability bedrock.
It will get worse: our computers and networks are diffusing responsibility. If a team on one ship fires a missile from another ship at a target selected by a civilian in some building ashore according to a flight plan plugged in by a contractor, who is actually responsible if the missile hits a train full of civilians instead of the bridge the admiral targeted? What if the chain of command runs through admirals and generals from different countries?
What needs to happen? We need to see the chain of command adapting to these new challenges so that, even if the mishap draws intense press coverage, we can still count on accountability when we drive into the base.
And the next step is to ask a question: our professional culture of accountability — is it still there?
Captain Seaquist commanded four warships including USS Iowa. He now works on conflict prevention in troubled areas of the world.