Back to the matter at hand, without a way to quantify or screen for the type of leadership people claim to desire, I don't think there's really a way out of the supposed problem. I'll say that the Admirals I have been exposed to at the Combatant Commander Level through the Fleet Level have all had their minds focused on the mission and not a single one brought up anything like "USS NEVERSINK needs to get their NFAAS done - and jeez louise - would you look at CVW-90000 - they haven't completed human trafficking in persons yet!!!!" and have more been like "Hey, when is USS NEVERSINK getting the [insert systems/weapons upgrade that allows them to do mission x]; also, it's important to me CVW-9000 does SFARP/HARP/have red-air training." Where I've (privately) disagreed with those Admirals was on methodology and personality, not focus. With that said, even if they were all just "yes men," what do we want, Admirals who tell our politicians no? No to what? Missions? GMT? Both? I say the following because earlier in the thread people talked about needing a USFF that tells COCOMS "no," but if anyone has ever seen an SDOB, they'd see that USFF and CNO routinely recommend against certain (many) deployments and list the maintenance and crew/PERSTEMPO impacts. Guess what? They hardly ever win when the COCOM says he needs it - they sign against it and then the SECDEF signs his paper that effectively says "too bad, deploy Ship/Airwing/Submarine X to this COCOM by this date." To GMT, what are they going to say to the Senate? "uhh Yes Senator, the two hours we spent this year on extremism combined with the 1 hour we spent on human trafficking training were just too much for the fleet to handle, so we canned them." Come on, get real. For anyone who has worked on sourcing, they know the methodology is almost never giving "no," for an answer, but "yes, you can do that, but the impacts to other missions are the following." I can only think of one time in my staff tour we flat out said no, but even then it was "no, Admiral, because the ship does not have the capability you think it has and it never will. What you are asking us to do with that ship is literally impossible without massive, unplanned, unpaid for upgrades."
So instead, we should focus less on "are we screening the right people," because I would contend we are actually more an organization of processes and analysis than we are of the "bold" leadership that some are desiring here. Maybe we should analyze some of those processes, like the Navy at the 4 Star CNO/USFF Level has to tell COCOMS and the other services "hey, we really need these types of protected maintenance cycles. You will no longer be getting ships and we will be unable to source when requested ships are in a protected period." (To be fair, out in PACFLT, this was basically the answer to not letting FITZGERALD and MCCAIN happen again, but I don't think it's fleet wide.) We also need to look at the processes of COCOMS requesting assets. Instead of having them be rewarded by playing CYA and constantly asking for more more more, incentivize them to either ask for less, or ask for more with enough lead time (obviously crises happen, but again, anyone reading and SDOB often can feel like some of the crises might be a little overblown for the assets that are requested), or incentivize them to... literally do anything other than ask for more to play CYA. Match ships with the right missions. Re-evaluate which missions we have committed to globally - think about how stretched thin we are constantly sourcing ships at a 1.0 or 2.0 presence for missions that are literally endless and without defined goals. Is that the Navy's fault? I doubt it, perhaps in some cases, like somehow convincing CENTCOM they NEED a carrier there all the time and they seem to panic without one, but in others, they are clearly defined by treaties the Congress and/or POTUS have signed off on, so that would require other action beyond the scope of Naval leadership.
We also need to recapitalize our shipyards - if we want this big fleet - we need to define what ships will make it, justify why, and figure out a plan to build and maintain them at a better rate than we are currently doing. Then, once we get them and maintain them, we should be sure to not abuse the hell out of them with 8-11 month ill-defined deployments every 2-3 years.
And back to GMT, I don't know that I'm frustrated at most of the training. The training itself isn't without value, altough the same training every year certainly has diminishing returns. What frustrates me more is the links seem to never work, are we eLearning, NKO, JKO, TWIMS now? F there's no computer available. Ugh, the printer won't map. Ugh the printer is out of toner and supply is closed. Ugh I just did it in September, why does it need to be done again in October just because it's a new FY? It's that kind of stuff that drives me insane. Again: process.
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