Sea Control - Sea Control 15IIA: SWO Leather Jackets!

Episode Date: January 15, 2020

https://news.usni.org/2020/01/09/navy-message-authorizing-swo-leather-jacket  

You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Aloha, shipmates. Welcome aboard Sea Control. It's our first emergency podcast. We've sounded the conch shell. Joining me today to discuss the rollout of surface warfare leather jackets is Jimmy Drennan, a.k.a. the Salty Millennial, a.k.a. the president of the Center for International Maritime Security. but today we're going to talk about the release of the naval message announcing rollout of surface warfare leather jackets. As always, our views do not represent the views of the Navy, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government. Jimmy, you are, in addition to all the side hustles mentioned above, a U.S. Navy surface warfare officer. Let me ask you, generally speaking, do SWOs like things? That's a great, great intro question. No, no, the answer is no. We hate things,

especially new things. We're very suspicious, skeptical folk, because we're used to being on deployment and then getting that nice steak and lobster dinner, followed by the 1MC announcement that deployment's been extended. So generally, we are very wary of good deals and new things. So yeah, we don't like stuff. And I think the leather jacket falls in that category. I gotta to say i'm not initially i am not a fan but uh i'll be the first to admit i haven't actually worn one i'm just forming an opinion with no factual basis um i am a millennial and i'm allowed to do that uh it's my entitlement on on this earth um so you know so deal with it yeah so what is uh what is your first gut reaction here because uh my my initial was actually pretty positive and

we can get into why in a minute but i want to hear about yours just just seeing pictures of it it it doesn't look quality item uh i know that's that's pretty harsh for you know having not even felt it or seen it in person but uh just my initial reaction you know i i feel like slows and maybe just navy in general has been kind of burned with um uniforms uh over the past couple decades you know the the blueberries and just the the abysmal rollout of those uniforms and then their eventual demise you know the fact that they they melted to your skin but we didn't know about that until years later the rollout of fire retardant variant coveralls because they found out that the coveralls that we had been wearing also melted to your skin or at least or

maybe it didn't melt your skin but they weren't they weren't fire resistant which is helpful for a shipboard uniform so they uh they gave us the the frv coveralls which were basically burlap sacks that got rolled out in a matter of uh weeks and um you know i think they may have gotten better uh over time uh and they they did but uh that to me is what the leather jacket looks like just something that was sort of hastily put together and rolled out to the fleet but you know Hey, I gotta say, Admiral Brown doesn't look half bad wearing it. I will admit, you know, he's got the right look with the swole finger in the picture and just the command presence. I'll be fair and say that that doesn't look bad on him. Yeah, he wears the hell out of that jacket, but the shoulders are always thrown back. As you call it, the SWO finger, a.k.a. our knife hand, looks incredible.

I was like, okay, I'm ready. Let's go. Who are we fighting? So I like it. So I did have the opportunity to wear test it this summer. Okay. It's like wear test might be the wrong word, fit test. And I was positively surprised about it.

I remember going back to my room at the Newport Chalet and telling my wife about it. I was like, oh, I just tried this uniform on. So a quick anecdote about like why I was positive about it. It's like I showed up to the, not to the Navy, but to an ROTC unit in September or August of 1999 and got weighed in by Gunnery Sergeant Boffman there as 6'1 and 129 pounds. like as the scale registers 129 pounds the gunny looks at me is like what the blank is the matter with you it's like nobody's no human adult male's body should be constructed like this so when i put this jacket on was really the first time perhaps in my entire life where i've had a jacket that

actually fit me and look good i do have some concerns about which direction we would go with zipper on this thing because like the zipper is a can be a single point of failure for the jacket but as far as the fit and the material and the way it felt like i was positively blown away by the jacket the second reason why i like is this is the first time the navy has given me a uniform item since 1999 or it will be the first time that the navy has given me something since 1999 you're telling me i have to do minimal administrative work and you're going to give me something i'm generally in and the third is that yeah it it appears to upset aviators that we're getting these jackets it's like at the very least yeah just the people firing off 15 memes in

a row is any indication it's at least a little bit under their skin even if they would say it wasn't you know i'm yeah relatively i think if they liked it you know i don't know that it would be might even be worse if they liked it so it is kind of nice you know they're all up in arms about it they say oh well this is this is a that's not a leather jacket this is a leather jacket and then they're they're sharing all these pictures of you know um ted williams or yeah or john boyd you know or these uh legendary you know 1940s 50s uh heroes and you know it's just funny because aviators don't look like those guys either so you know i think they they in their minds they do which you know that's fine that's that's um that's what an aviator does you know he lives in his own mind i

mean and so in fairness like we're all kind of like that six panel meme come to life like this is what i think i do this is what my mother thinks yeah this is what my spouse thinks i do yeah and i've seen the you know that's that's that's a there's a swole version of that there's an aviator version of that and they're they're pretty pretty spot on to be honest with you but But, yeah, so when I've seen the aviator reactions on Twitter, you know, with just the eye rolling and the, you know, here's a real leather jacket. It is kind of refreshing to go, you know what, I don't mind something that pisses off aviators this much. So I'm with you on that. You know, I buy into all of the reasons that you like it.

I would add one more. and that is if wearing a leather jacket means that i get to wear khakis more often then i am in if i could go to work tomorrow in khakis instead of my wannabe army uniform that i'm wearing now i would be a happy man so i can't imagine wearing the leather jacket with the green camis it just that doesn't seem to make any sense at all i don't think that's the intent from what i read in the message i think it's supposed to be just with khakis right i actually read it as like it's for shipboard use so in your camis maybe with the coveralls but i have the same reaction as you's like i can't really fathom wearing this item underway with

any other uniform other than khakis yeah is it looks yeah i mean it looks good with the with khakis and uh i should caveat this by saying i have no fashion sense whatsoever so it looks yeah takes care of our our decisions in the morning when what we're going to wear yes uh but you know i did get a note from one of my friends like hey i hope you realizes that badasses in leather jackets only speak in top gun quotes that's 75 of what i do every day anyway so i have yet to see the problem yeah i can also speak in um battleship quotes too so So we have Battleship. Yeah.

We'll always have that. That was kind of a letdown. So we talked about the aviation community's response, which seems a little sensitive. From SWO's, now, I did some informal polling via Facebook the other day, so I can report some data there. But it's like, what have you gathered from the folks that you hang out with? Yeah, no, that's a good question. I think that the crowd that I tend to attract with my my online personality tends to be fairly negative and they want to they want to bitch about the Navy, you know, and to be fair, that's that's kind of that's my whole that's my whole thing with the salty millennial is kind of an outlet for that, that kind of communication. But, you know, in general, you know, a bitching sailor is a happy sailor.

So we always seem to, at least in this whole community, I think we seem to enjoy griping about things and feeding off of hate and discontent. And there's just there's something about our culture. I'm not even saying it's really wrong. It's just it's just kind of our nature. I think we kind of need to get a handle on it. You know, something I was going to bring up earlier is, you know, we spend the first half of our career, first part of our career kind of hating on everything. you know we're when we're when we're ensigns and junior officers and you know everything that the big navy or the man puts down on us uh is awful and we want to resist it and then at some point

there's this uh there's this switch where we become senior officers and we're put in charge or maybe even put in command and then all of a sudden everything that the navy does is uh we have we have to embrace it and uh whether we like it or not we feel this need to i guess pretend is the right word i'm not sure like we like it and it can be so you know just disingenuous we try to tell our sailors every order or policy item or new piece of guidance you know and i'm talking about more than just uniforms but uniforms can be just an example i think it comes across pretty pretty disingenuous when we try to tell our sailors we you know we we like every order we get it's uh you have to have the the nuance you have to be able to make an actual decision

for yourself and if you're a junior officer then you know what it's okay to like something and if you're a senior officer it's okay to not like something uh that the navy does and uh you know just judge each each thing on its own merits and uh and then when it comes down to it and you get an order you know a lawful and ethical order then it's time to follow it you know and and uh You know, I think most of the SWOs that I have seen, at least, and I will admit that I'm in a little bit of an echo chamber. You're pretty resistant to the SWO jacket. But if the Navy tells me that I'm going to wear a SWO jacket, a SWO leather jacket, and I have to wear it, which I know it sounds like we're not being told we have to wear it. It's just something that we can we can earn.

So that's that's cool. But I mean, hell, if it's if it's if it's a new part of my uniform compliment, then OK, I don't like it. But I'm going to do it because I'm a grown up and and I'm OK with that. So, yeah, I just think that we might do a little better to to just embrace this idea that we could not like something. And as professional military officers, we're going to do it anyway. That this is all, by the way, this is stemming from a conversation I had with an admiral about leather jackets and about whether, you know, they are beneficial to improving the esprit de corps of the of the SWO community. the admiral and i got into the conversation uh based on me being snarky on the internet like i

like i tend to do yeah he brought up some good points but uh you know the fact that uh that i that i didn't like it i i didn't shy away from that i'm not ashamed of the fact that i that i'm saying publicly i don't like the leather jacket it's no it doesn't make me a bad person or a bad naval officer and just i'm still gonna wear it i i don't like it but that's okay you know just my opinion i'm allowed to have that opinion anyway that was a rambling response to um uh i i think that um that i don't like it and then and those that are in my echo chamber also don't like it but i mean i am very i actually i'm genuinely interested to hear what you're what you're hearing from somebody who who does like it and whether or not you're seeing a more balanced

response so what i would tell you is it's 70 30 was a negative opinion and that's fine like i can go through like some of the objections and what was the other thing that was interesting was like some of the positives like the people who responded positively didn't reply in the group that i sent this out to they were interesting ashamed to admit that they liked the jacket or thought it was okay were they uh junior were they were they your folks or senior folks no and that's what one of the points i made to the group is like all these responses i came in because you know who am i talking to you here it's all commanders and lieutenant commanders for the most part there might be an odd lieutenant in there or something um i think my old ops officer chimed in but we're

not the target audience right oh fives and fours like the target audience if you're gonna build a spree to corey it's like you gotta build it from the bottom it's like hey are the ensigns and the jg's gonna find this school and kids basically who are in high school now and coming into college yeah if there's one thing that the last six months have taught me it's that i should not in any way attempt to anticipate what's going to be fashionable to the folks in that generation who's like i was back at swastika summer and 80 percent of the ensigns and jgs are rolling around with these terrible mustaches which i would have never thought would have been a thing it was not november either it was just this is how i wear my facial hair now just just just uh voluntarily

rocking the stash yeah this is this is what we do now and then the other uh the other you know sort of change moment for me was i was back home at christmas with my mother and my mother was telling me that high school boys are now getting perms which is as a person who has curly hair and has cut his hair short his entire adult life because he hates his curly hairs i don't understand why you would ever get your hair i can't even comprehend that yeah so you know my anyone who has seen me dress knows that i should not be commenting on fashion trends and what other people will find fashionable i should just stay out of that so there's that piece the other piece is like folks talking about the cost the cost of these leather jackets to the community look at

some of the casualties that we have to the spy radar and individual parts of that system can cost tens of thousands of dollars this is just a rounding error yeah yeah in comparison it was like the cost we're not going to develop some great capability because we decided to buy SWO jackets instead this is kind of a benefit for us and a nice to have so if you want to yeah you know i mean it's uh it's actually the cost thing is what uh got me into this uh conversation with the admiral about the low jackets because i you know i made a snarky comment on the on the internet something like you know oh you know we could be spending this money on uh improving readiness and in, in surface warfare training and blah, blah, blah,

and just being generally snarky. And, uh, he called me on it. And, uh, and it was, it was a fair point. Like you just said, it's a drop in the bucket. Uh, the amount we're spending on these jackets compared to the amount that we spend on readiness and training and maintenance and, and all these other things that are, that are very important. And, uh, and we need to continue focusing on, you know, it's a, it's more, his point was it was more about building the esprit de corps and like you

point out is it is not about the uh wars and above but the uh the younger generation is uh is the one that is gonna build that that esprit de corps and that slow culture and uh i think that's what they're they're going after so that's that's a good point and i definitely don't understand them either i didn't even know about the perms but i was i was already lost after uh after skinny jeans um i'm just uh it's it's not you know i i reserve but i reserve the right uh like like every generation before me to tell those damn kids to get off my lawn i don't know if i'm ever going to understand them but uh it's just part of growing up i guess a couple of sort of lessons learned here yesterday as folks responded to me one was that this has been tried before back

in the early 2000s and you know folks had a lot of the same reactions like oh we're not going to wear this underway never really caught on the second and i've lost my train of thought now i'm gonna interrupt you so that you can uh regain your train of thought but i was thinking about uh use actually wearing it and using it and and that's that that might be the difference you know we're talking earlier about whether or not people are going to wear this underway and you know what are we wearing underway we're in the the uh the green camis the nwu type uh what are the type twos i think it's uh embarrassing to admit it's been a it's been a been a bit since i've been underway but i'm seeing pictures of people wearing the green camis underway i don't know if it's like

by choice of the commanding officer or or what but i think those may be folks about to pull in so they're in their import uniform but okay with coveralls then i could see the leather jacket being worn with coveralls and that's my that's my point is it's not going to stick around if people don't actually use it and you know part of that is is getting the younger generation to embrace it But also part of it is getting the institution to embrace it and giving opportunities to wear it. I mean, if we're never wearing khakis, I'm not sure I see that this will catch on, but maybe with coveralls underway, I guess. I mean, I could see that, but it seems to me, with the pictures I've seen, I mean, the one picture with Admiral Brown in khakis, it seems like it's designed, it's a black leather jacket that seems perfectly partnered with the khaki uniform. Just to me, it's like you got to bring back the khakis to make it.

You know, it's it's the it's the Reese's peanut butter cup. You know, I mean, you got to you got to have both. If you don't, then I don't I don't think it matters how much people like it or not. If there's not like an like an institutional buy in and opportunities to wear it, then it seems like it might be another misadventure of the uniform board. But I don't know. Prove me wrong. The other major criticism I saw was like, oh, well, you know, we're just trying to create this cultural moment here as well. One, I think all those moments have to be created. Eventually, you have to create a tradition before it becomes tradition.

I mean, it's not like it's the first time we've stolen something from the aviators. We didn't have SWO pins like they had wings of gold first, and then we came out with SWO pins. Yeah, look there. I have very few possessions that I treasure more than my SWO pin just because of what it took me to get it. Yeah. If we're going to tie this to that and not how we feel about it now, it's going to be

like, OK, what does it look like 15 years from now? if implementation is able to happen. And that was another lesson learned. I recovered the train of thought. Here's what it was. It was an aviator friend of mine telling me that, hey, when he graduated from flight school, it took him, I think it was two years to get his jacket.

So the rollout will be important to success as well. It's just like, you don't want to falter here as we get away from the pier. And if we screw up the rollout, well. Yeah, that's true. That's true. You kind of get one shot. Hopefully we can manage that if we care about this enough.

And, you know, we seem to be making a fairly big deal about it with the message and the pictures and the articles and everything. And there's a apparently there's a SWO leather jacket program manager. So, you know, I don't know how you get that job. You know, it's a big enough deal to have a program manager. So, OK, so hopefully you can roll it out. I mean, I'm technically in the acquisition community and now I have a life goal. is to be yeah that leather jacket program manager and then i want to get stitched across the back of the jacket swole leather jacket program manager you'll you'll need to have like a flight two

of the swole leather jacket so that you could make a name for yourself and then and you know like uh rewrite everything in the program and then call it your own and call it flight two and then then you'll you'll get some big award for it well if it's really a swole thing i'm gonna call it flight two alpha yeah there you go it's like no no guys we're going all the way slow on this right i i can't wait to see the leather jacket flight two alpha uh any other thoughts before we you know it's the um the point you made about creating the moment um i see that side of the coin uh this that was part of the conversation i had with the uh not to be named uh admiral um But I see the other side of the coin, too. I mean, it's like the swole pin. It's important to you. Mine's important to me. But it's the things that I had to do and learn to get that swole pin that kind of imbue it with meaning.

And I think that the jacket itself is a good kind of like token, you know, it's a token that we can imbue with meaning over time, but that will be necessary. And we will need to focus on all of the hard stuff that comes with improving our culture and readiness and maintenance and training and just everything else. You know, all that hard work that we'll have to do as a community. And if we do that, then the leather jackets can kind of become like a lightning rod for that. So that, you know, I see both sides of the coin. And I guess I would argue that even without the token, we would still need to do all those things. Maybe it does serve to accelerate that stuff, but I don't know. We'll see. Yeah, I mean, I also think that the jacket is kind of the second piece of Swoflare, if you will, is a natural consequence of all the other communities now getting pins.

It used to be line communities had pins and that was kind of it. well now yeah everybody's got a pin how are we going to distinguish ourselves again here okay well we'll steal one more thing from the aviators and i'm okay yeah too i don't like this kind of gets back to to uh maybe the most important point that we've made this whole time is uh making aviators mad so uh i'm i'm good with it if that's you know i think uh in summary i'm good with it if it makes aviators mad and i get to wear khakis that's probably the greatest slow sentiment of all that's it and black shoes yeah god bless the black shoes i want to thank my guest jimmy drennan uh jimmy do you have anything in the pipeline that you're working

for publication you know i always have a couple of things going on for uh the the salty millennial is uh bound to snark off about something uh sooner or later so keep an eye on the naval institute blog and saltyherald.com eventually i will finish a series of articles that i've been writing for simsec called the bad day scenario you can find the first three on on the simsec website one of these days i will i will conclude that series but you'll have to you'll have to just wait with bated breath on that one because it's taken me a while so it turns out that uh the real world just kind of is is keeps on catching up to my to my thoughts and then i i end up writing and it seems like i'm just copying what uh what actually happens in the

press so well you know as usual uh the real world uh ruined everything so well i'll figure it out anyway yeah so there are things coming i'm not gonna make any promises on uh on when you'll see them but uh there are always new things on simsec so take a look uh on a daily basis uh simsec.org And we've got a couple of exciting projects coming up for 2020, so keep an eye out for those. And you can always find us on social media, Twitter, Facebook, and, yeah, lots of stuff coming up. And this has been a lot of fun, Jared. I appreciate you having me on the podcast and reinvigorating the Sea Control podcast. A lot of good interviews coming up.

Thank you. Very kind. We're looking at angry staff officer and Claude Baraby coming on to talk USS Constitution next weekend, a few other guests in the future. So very excited about what we're doing here. And thank you for the opportunity. For the listeners, thank you very much for tuning in, and we'll see you next time. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 Bully in the alley, why, why, bully in the alley, help me mama, bully in the alley, bully in the alley, shimbo now.