Sea Control - Sea Control 241 - The Future of Navy and Marine Corps Learning with John Kroger

Episode Date: April 15, 2021

John Kroger joins host Andrea Howard to discuss his time as the Navy's first Chief Learning Officer and what he sees as the future of Navy & Marine Corps education.

Hey folks, Jared here. I've talked about our feed previously. I'm going to keep talking about it. There are two existing Sea Control feeds out there. The feed that you want to be listening to is labeled simply Sea Control, and it includes the phrase Simsex Flagship Podcast in its description. So that's Sea Control, Simsex Flagship Podcast. That's where you want to be. Please rate and review the new feed as well. This episode was recorded twice, and I want to thank our guest, John Kroger, for bearing with us through some audio issues. Mr. Kroger is the former chief learning officer for the Navy, and you're going to hear him discuss both his time in that office, as well as where he thinks the Navy needs to go from

here. This episode was edited and produced by Dr. Ed Salo, and your host this week is Andrea Howard. Please check out everything going on over at the main website, simsec.org. We just completed a retrospective series on the 1980s maritime strategy, as well as Naval Intelligence Week. And our next call for submissions for Project Trident is out, so if you're interested in contributing to the discussion on maritime infrastructure and trade, submissions are due April 19th. For more information, check out our website, simsec.org. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, The Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcast. On

that note, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Greetings, Sea Warriors. Let's dive, dive back into sea control. I'm Andrea Howard, one of your SimSec hosts, and today we're discussing the recent push for higher quality Navy and Marine Corps education, as well as the future of the endeavors in their parent institutions. We're joined by the most incredible guest for this topic, John Kroger. Mr. Kroger's previous positions include Assistant U.S. Attorney in New York, Attorney General of Oregon, President of Reed College, Visiting Professor and Leader in Residence at Harvard University, and the first

Chief Learning Officer of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. As a reminder, all opinions expressed are our personal opinions and are not representative of the institutions with which we may be otherwise associated. Thank you so much for joining me, sir. A real pleasure to be here. Thank you. Great. Before we kick off our discussion on education within the Navy and Marine Corps, I'd just love for our listeners to hear a little bit about you. So why did you enlist in the Marine Corps, sir, and how did that experience influence your journey to become the Navy's first chief learning officer? I enlisted in the Marine Corps on my 17th birthday.

My motives were like those I think of a lot of people who enlist. Part of it was that I didn't have enough money to go to college at that point. Part of it was that I wasn't ready to go to college. I wanted an adventure. I wanted to do something that was different from what most of my peers in my high school were doing. And for me, the notion of the Marine Corps, what it offered would be a chance to be the very best. And that resonated with me at age 17. I don't think at that point I would really say that my goals were patriotic.

I mean, the notion of serving our country was in the back of my mind, but it was more self-development probably that urged me on. What changed for me during my time in the Marines was that deep commitment to putting your country before yourself. When I was in the Marines, that notion was stressed every day that service to country comes before your own well-being, service to your fellow Marines comes before your own well-being. And that's had a huge impact in my career. My views over time of how best to serve the country have changed. I've been an educator. I've been a prosecutor. But that instinct that we all have an obligation to try to make the community and the nation stronger has fueled virtually all of my work. My stint back in the Pentagon as chief learning officer was really

inspired directly by that. So the Marine Corps' commitment to my education was profound. And the most important piece of that commitment, I'd been admitted to college to go to Yale. And my start of my freshman year was actually going to be one month before my enlistment was over. And instead of having me finish out my enlistment and going to college a year later, the Marine Corps actually cut me orders to go to college. My last set of orders said, go to New Haven, put on civilian clothes, go to college and discharge yourself after a month. And that commitment stayed with me when I had a chance to come back to be chief learning officer of the Navy and Marine Corps. It was in part with an idea in mind that I would pay that forward by trying to help

build a better educational system, particularly for our enlisted sailors and Marines. Part of being a good citizen, like you said, and having that patriotic duty to your country is to learn the history of the nation and to contextualize yourself in the current issues that are facing the nation and therefore as well the role that every sailor and marine is playing and as a cogwheel within the larger machine that is the national security infrastructure. So to that degree, why is it important that every sailor and marine pursues higher education and what were your primary goals when you accepted the role of chief learning officer? Well, the overwhelming goal for me was to create the new U.S. Naval Community College, which has admitted its first students

this January. Its pilot program went live with 600 students from the Marines, the Coast Guard, and the Navy. And the goal there really was twofold. I mean, the primary goal was to recognize that in the new cognitive era, as weapon systems become much more complex, as software and the digital world and the cyber world take over virtually everything in terms of our operations, we're just going to need a much more technically proficient enlisted force. So one of the major goals was to create really high quality degree programs for our enlisted force that would get them prepared for the coming age militarily. So you'll see as the Naval Community College develops a real focus on very practical majors, including engineering,

data science, and cyber capabilities that the fleet has identified as big needs. I would say the other thing for me in the back of my mind was to try to create better educational paths for our enlisted team. Lots of people use their educational benefits to pursue degrees or courses which are not very valuable. Often, they're programs which won't transfer to civilian universities or that won't have much credibility in the marketplace if they get out of the service. And so part of my goal and that of Randy Cosentino, the new president of the community college, was to create degree pathways

for the enlisted force that would have real value if people left the services and wind up in the civilian world. Definitely. And that Naval Community College partner pairings has extended to include Northern Virginia Community College, the University of Arizona, University of Maryland Global Campus, Alexandria Technical and Community College, and the State University System of New York. And there is a pilot program, like you said, that is currently underway with about 600 students. Do you have any outstanding items that you'd still like to see fulfilled from the 2018 Education for Sea Power initiative? And what other opportunities do you foresee maybe on the officer tied to educationally that could benefit the force? I would say the sad reality is we

accomplished about 5% of the agenda of the Education for Seapower report. It ultimately did not have the kind of backing it needed from civilian authorities in the Trump administration to get as much traction as I would have liked to have seen. I think the big unfinished business is a major emphasis on officer education. You know, if I had to put a metric on it, I think we need, you know, to triple the amount of officers being exposed to very high quality military education,

both at our own great military educational institutions, but also at great civilian universities. You know, the central conclusion of the Education for Seapower report was that, you know, world where our economic and technological advantages have virtually disappeared, you know, vis-a-vis China in particular, our primary advantage is going to be an intellectual one. And we have to take that intellectual preparation seriously. It's everything from

having senior managers with great business degrees that can help us manage programs in the Pentagon much more effectively to a much higher percentage of our officers going through very high quality, very practical, strategically focused education at places like the Naval War College. So I see that agenda as very much an unfinished one. I think it's an open question to what extent the Biden administration will adopt the Education for Seapower report and its goals. You know, it was very closely tied to Secretary of the Navy Spencer. when he left the Trump administration, the political impetus behind emphasis on education really disappeared. And so I see that hopefully as something that the new administration will

pick up and support as part of a broader shift in focus toward human capital. Your answer has paved the way for one of the central tenets that I want us to weave into our conversation today. And that's the notion of the military being a unifying force at this time in our nation. So we do have a new administration that has come into office and new leadership. But ultimately, the military historically has been a driver for progressive social change and for unification of the nation. And so to that extent, you know, I'll speak personally, I was able to go do a Marshall Scholarship after commissioning. And although I did go overseas, I still saw the effects of having, you know, educated officers enlisted in

an environment where they're able to directly interface with civilian counterparts and to bestow some of that patriotism that you mentioned into those conversations and to just show a critically thinking side of the military and have the military be a major contributor to conversations about the future of our nation and the international arena and international security. So I'd love for you to speak about how you envision via this lens of education, but even just a larger strategy forming ability of the Navy and Marine Corps to serve as a unifying force for our country. I worry that there is a civil-military intellectual divide. When we talk about a civil-military divide in the United States,

we're often talking about social or political values. Those are real differences. The armed forces are generally slightly more conservative than the nation as a whole. And particularly, our enlisted force tends to come from less regional diversity than one would expect. For example, the southeast of the United States is overwhelmingly overrepresented in our enlisted force. So there are certain social differences between the civilian population and the military population. But I think intellectually, the gap is huge and growing. I think the way in which people in the Pentagon think about geopolitics is radically different, for example, than people think on Wall Street or in major tech companies. I think that how people conceive of organizational

problems, of developing new technology, of managing people, of risk management and strategy are radically different in the civilian world right now than they are in the military. And I think that's a potential danger. You know, one thing that people have noted is a concern about the extent to which there's true integration of civilian political leadership and military leadership in the Pentagon. And I think that problem is exacerbated by this intellectual divide. One way to tackle that is by certainly sending a larger percentage of our officers to world-class civilian educational institutions. You know, it's a great opportunity for people in the armed forces to learn to think the way their civilian counterparts do.

It's also a great opportunity and will make the country stronger if future business and political leaders in the United States have a deeper understanding of how our officers think, which I think is critical. Frankly, they would probably have a radically different perspective on the United States if they were exposed to the really high quality of our officers. So I think there's a real gain there. Think tanks, I think, can also play a big role. You know, one thing that I would like to see going forward is a greater number of fellowships that blend officers and civilian national security leaders in programs to study international relations and and strategy. Because, again, I think we run dangers that civilian leadership and military leadership will think about geopolitical problems differently. And that will, particularly in a crisis, make rational decision making a lot more challenging. I could not agree more that there should be these opportunities for outreach between active duty personnel.

And like you said, think tanks and tech industry, you've been a pretty big advocate on LinkedIn for the formation of blue ribbon panels where which are going to facilitate these private public or correction, these public private partnerships and allow military leaders to get the best minds on and subject matter experts on new and developing technologies and integrate those into strategies. So you're currently the vice president at the Aspen Institute. And how do you think that Aspen Institute and these other think tanks, although you already mentioned it, I'll press up on a little bit more. How can they get military personnel more directly involved? If you could speak a little bit about your Rising Leaders program and the ability of active duty personnel to become security fellows at your security conference, which I was able to do in 2016, that would be fantastic. Yeah, Aspen has always had a strategy group which brings together a very diverse array of national security thinkers to think about emerging challenges to the United States and how to respond to them. And that's been incredibly effective. I guess what I would say is not just at Aspen, but overall, we probably need an increase in that kind of an activity by an order of magnitude. You know, to bring 20 or 30 people together is powerful, but we need programs that scale.

So one of the things I'm trying to think about is ways in which we can have a radical increase in the number of engagements between civilian and military thinkers on these problems. I would love to see a little less isolation of our military intellectual institutions. The more we can encourage interactions between, for example, the Naval Postgraduate School and places like MIT and Caltech, the better off we will be. Similarly, the Naval War College is a long history of interaction with civilian universities. But if we could increase that so that our scholars are exchanging more and we're increasing that civil military mix, I think that would be something that's very powerful. I guess I would add to this, and I think it's extraordinarily important as we think about U.S. advantage over China. one is the potential of our alliances and partnerships you and i've talked a bit about this before the notion of great power competition has sort of focused people on the united states versus china and i and i conceive of our geopolitical position is a little bit different

which is china facing off against potentially two great alliances nato and the emerging quad in the Indo-Pacific with the United States, Japan, India, and Australia. One way to strengthen those ties is not just through military exercises, by bringing a much larger number of international students to our military educational institutions. This is something Secretary Esper called for that got derailed by COVID, which of course brought travel and most intellectual exchange in person down to a bare minimum. But his notion was to substantially increase the number of international students coming to places like the Naval Postgraduate School and the War College, as well as our other very good service schools. And I think that would be great. I mean, I think

we focus a lot on operational interoperability, whether our weapons systems and our communication systems work with our allies and partners, but there's an intellectual interoperability that's also critical. That ability to think through strategic and tactical problems in similar ways and understand the different strategic traditions of our partner countries. And that would really be harnessed by greater intellectual exchange. So that is something I'd like to see in the coming years. That's a great segue. I'd love for you to talk more about the priorities of professional military education institutions and balancing their coverage of maybe their combat operations and post-combat consolidation and stabilization, advice, like you said, as well, this exchange

internationally. So, you know, without obviously putting the onus on you to be the authority or to set the priorities for these institutions, you know, what do you think that the Naval Academy and Naval Community College versus the Naval War College and Naval Postgraduate School and Marine Corps University could focus on? And I'd love as well to get your opinion on war gaming and the ability to also utilize that as a means to develop those connections abroad. Let me talk about just two big priorities. One is we need much greater technological capability in the officer corps going forward. Very often in our naval officers, they've got an engineering background. The pace of technological change is blistering at this point. And so one area where

I really think we've got a lot of progress to be made is in education on technology. Certainly at the enlisted level, that's a major goal of the Naval Community College. The Naval Postgraduate School has been a neglected resource. It is potentially of immense significance as the pace of technological change accelerates. It has been underdeveloped and underinvested in, Probably underappreciated. And I think if we could really decide to invest in NPS with a major increase in its facilities so that they can really do world class classified education that's at the intersection of two of their strengths, technology and operations research. I think that would be very important. The other thing that I would stress for officer education is more officers going to business school. And the reason for that is very simple. One of the things I noted in the Pentagon is there's a massive jump from the 05, 06 level to the 07,

08 level. People are promoted because initially they're very good operators in a particular weapons system. They may wind up being an incredible commander of a particular boat or ship or of a squadron. All of a sudden, they're wearing a star or two. They're managing programs with tens of billions of dollars of throughput. The skills and capabilities required to think what are, in essence, product development problems, resource management problems, risk management problems are just radically different than anything most people are exposed during the first 20 plus years of their career. And I think that taking an advantage of getting more people into world-class business schools so they can think along with their civilian peers

about these central questions of organizational management are really important. You know, Our officers are warriors, and yet when they become senior captains and admirals, they are going to be primarily runners of a $200 billion a year organization. I worry a little bit that we don't have the organizational management skills and capabilities needed to do that with the kind of agility that will be required to keep up to speed with our peer and near-peer competitors. A great example that I can provide was at the Aspen Security Forum in 2016. General Carter Hamm spoke to the group of us who were collected there. And he was he was very genuine in saying that before he became AFRICOM, he had never really had the opportunity to work in Africa or to really understand the history of the continent and the politics within the different nations of that of that arena. And so it's like you said, it's difficult for people to make that transition, I think, into higher leadership when they're then forced into roles that vary incredibly from the tactics and operational level thinking that they're supposed to be doing beforehand. One way to think about this problem, after World War I, the Navy did a comprehensive study of education, concluded that one-tenth of your career as a naval officer should be spent full-time in education.

We have never hit that metric. So for me, you know, it's not just that we haven't achieved the goals of the Education for Seapower report. We haven't even met the goals of a report produced in the immediate aftermath of World War I. And in part, that's been driven by operational tempo. You know, I understand that there's all kinds of different models of educational delivery now that can facilitate better education while people are on their current active duty stations. The Wall Street world, for example, you know, a lot of people are not taking time off for a full-time business school program. They are doing a low residency program where they spend a few days each month on campus and do the rest of their work virtually. That's something that's consistent, right, with assignment to a lot of shore duty stations. So I think if we are a lot more creative, we can increase the intellectual development of our officer corps without unduly impacting the operational tempo for pilots and ship drivers. And for me, again, this goes back to the Education for Seapower report. That report concluded it would be a strategic disaster if we didn't make that investment, not only in the capabilities of our officers, but in retention.

You know, I do see some of our very best officers leaving because they don't think they're going to get the educational opportunities in the Navy and Marine Corps that they would like to get out in the civilian world. And trying to make sure that we're offering those opportunities early and enough in a career to retain our best people is essential. I'll return to an earlier question that I snuck in there. Do you think that wargaming is one of those tools that can be utilized while personnel are active duty? to increase their intellectual aptitude. You know, I took a wargaming class when I was doing my master's at King's College London with Dr. Philip Saban.

And it was a wacky experience because it is hard to approximate and make rules that translate into a game situation for, you know, capabilities of your different assets or to replicate kind of the historical outcomes of previous battles. So yeah, I'd love to hear if you are an advocate for wargaming

or kind of the party that has a little bit more trepidation around them. Huge advocate, huge advocate. Without straying into classified areas, I would say that, for example, some of the wargaming activity that's going on in the Naval War College is probably the most essential intellectual development activity that the Navy is currently pursuing. I guess I would say a few things in terms of caution. One is that we don't have a comprehensive strategy for war games, how we're trying to use them to develop our force. And we've got lots of little pockets of excellence, each pursuing their own particular angle. And I think some greater coherence and coordination across the Navy and

Marine Corps would be great. The Marine Corps is making a major investment in war gaming, but it's not very closely coordinated with what the Navy is doing. And given the shared focus on the Indo-Pacific. I think it would benefit everyone if those wargaming centers of excellence were in constant communication, sharing skills, sharing capabilities. The other thing I would say is there's some dangerous misuse of wargames going on. People will run a non-automated wargame once or twice and try to develop from those experiences strategic insights. And I'm not a fan of that. I would say that when you're doing an in-person war game, it's primarily one for your intellectual and professional development. You're getting a chance to make decisions, see them play out.

If it's done in real time, getting some sense of the pace of contemporary digital military operations. All of that is incredibly valuable. But I would say that any particular strategic or operational insights that come from running one game occasionally may be very misleading. So I would say that as we're thinking about wargaming to develop operational insights or to guide development of weapon systems, those need to be fully automated wargames that are run you know, thousands of times through a broad range of variables before one starts to reach any conclusions, for instance, about what weapon systems might be most valuable. I worry that we're not at the highest ranks, particularly proficient in understanding the value and power

of automated war games for strategic planning, as opposed to, you know, those in-person war games where you run one every few months, which I don't think is the kind of sustained practice that will produce reliable results. The other thing too that I've noticed is that a lot of the folks who are engaging in these board games don't understand the assumptions that are behind them

because ultimately it seems like it's mostly civilian or academic personnel who are generating these board games. And so, like I said, you have to find ways to bound the capabilities into rules that translate for the games themselves so do you think that the information you know technology right within the navy could be utilized maybe in in furthering this cause i personally have that as kind of my biggest advocacy point within the navy right now is that

it's are the future of the force and there are so many different applications in which they can be plugged into whether it's operation of autonomous vehicles in theater or maybe more for this academic and therefore strategy generating purpose of running war games. And I'd love to hear how you kind of would reflect on that prospect. Well, I would say big picture, if there's one significant weakness in the Navy right now, it's our IT capability. You know, the reality is that every single weapons system we're developing or deploying right now is dependent on IT. We could operate against targets like Afghanistan or Iraq without any concern that our IT capability would be disrupted. Obviously, that's not going to be true against peer and

near-peer potential adversaries like China or Russia. All of our space-based systems could be disrupted. All of our IT communications could become compromised. The reality is that our number one sort of moment of fragility comes long before we're deploying ships or subs or missiles or aircraft. It's in a cyber and IT and space-based war that we are not prepared for. And so as we think about what kind of educational backgrounds we need, what kind of civilians we need to recruit and retain, that should be paramount. The current information warfare community is too narrowly conceived. Virtually every operator going to need to be an expert in IT as well as their operating system. So, you know, I think to some degree right now, the Navy is run by, you know, people

who are commanders of submarines and pilots of aircraft and captains of ships. And we're going to need people who are IT and software experts wearing three and four stars. And that will not come easy. It won't come until we have a community in the Navy that's an IT community that's as respected as those others. But that is the direction we need to head. Certainly, I think the foundations are being laid. The focus at the Naval Academy on mandatory cyber education for all midshipmen is a good step. But we have a long way to go in terms of a reconceptualization of the capabilities we need in the officer corps. Right. I mean, the selection of Admiral Gilday as chief naval operations was the pretty strong signaling that the information warfare and cyber

domains were going to be paramount in these coming years and are going to continue to be. And as a fun note, I was the first Naval Academy class that was mandated into taking those cybersecurity classes. And they really have actually proven valuable out in the fleet and just providing that basic understanding of some of our operating platforms. I do want to pivot because, you know, we've foot stomped the fact that, you know, there needs to be more technological education, and we're in total agreement there, there needs to be more simulations of future scenarios that can be used to inform strategy making. But the third kind of pillar of education that is often lacking too, and especially at the junior officer level, where our role is really to

be focused on tactics, is history and the study of lessons learned from the past. So in your DOD Reads podcast interview, you underscore the importance of history analysis by mentioning the Falklands War as one of the best contemporary case studies for analyzing tactics and limited warfare. I'd love for you to elaborate on this notion and to explain how history should illuminate decision-making within the Navy and Marine Corps. You know, one of the things that's unique about our current situation in the Navy is that, you know, we haven't fought a major naval battle since 1945. We have basically been in the luxurious position of having command of the seas and being able to project power more or less wherever we want or wherever we are on the globe.

And that is obviously changing, particularly through the dramatic expansion of Chinese naval power, so that we can imagine the kinds of naval conflicts for command of the seas occurring in in our immediate future. The Falklands conflict is the single one that I would point out if we're having people think about ways in which history can guide thinking. It's interesting for a number of reasons. One, the distance from the UK to the Falklands is roughly 7,000 or 8,000 miles. It's roughly equivalent to the distance between the United States and the South China Sea. The logistical challenges of fighting in a sustained level at that distance are profound. And so the Falklands is really interesting for helping people think about the way in which logistics impacts operations.

I think we often think logistics being an add on. We figure out operationally what we want to do and then the United States can do virtually anything. So we add enough logistics to make it happen. And in fact, I think we've got it the other way around. When you're fighting at that distance, logistics becomes the envelope in which you operate. You know, it helps you see the importance of much greater logistical sophistication in the Navy and Marine Corps. You know, the second thing that, you know, I would say about the Falklands is that it's pre-digital, but it's the only significant naval warfare in the missile age. And it's remarkable the impact that, you know, the tiny number of Exocet missiles Argentina had, less than a dozen, tied the Royal Navy up in knots and radically changed how they operated.

One can apply that to a scenario where you're talking about an adversary not having a dozen missiles, but having 5,000. And you can see very quickly the lethality and the impact on tactics that is necessary. You know, the primary lesson of the Falklands was that they need to keep their carriers well outside missile range. Is that even possible any longer? You know, those raised very interesting questions. And the Falklands, study of the Falklands helps you think about the ways in which in the missile era, a lot of our power projection assumptions might need to change. I would say the third thing that's really interesting to me about the Falklands is the rules of engagement. One of the things that happened is a very violent war in which Argentina never attacked the UK's mainland and the United Kingdom never attacked Argentina.

They were able to have a violent military resolution of a conflict without having it escalate. And as you think about the South China Sea, that is one of the sort of primary things one would want to think about is are there ways in which the United States and China could potentially have a war that would not extend to something devastating? And that was achieved by rules of engagement, which were constantly shifting. And so, you know, one of the things that I think we need to do when we war game scenarios involving Taiwan or the Spratly Islands or the South China Sea is involve our lawyers, because our lawyers, you know, from the State Department and the National Security Council are the ones that are going to be setting the rules of engagement, which will allow or not allow us to to operationally pursue various options. And one of the things the Brits learned during the war is somewhat subtle changes in rules of engagement wound up having massive technological and operational impact on the conflict. And so we need to war game rules of engagement, which will contain a potential war, but still allow us to pursue our full military advantage. War gaming is the key. Bringing in lawyers is the key. How else do you think that the Navy can better own its process of developing new strategies?

I know that's a very pat question, but who else should be brought into the fold? And what sort of capabilities do we really need to be planning to actually have in the fleet? Are we moving away from this 500 plus ship model? Like I said, who should be brought into the fold and what should they be working with? we are at something of a crisis in terms of our force assessment process in the department of the navy um you know the trump administration was a complicated place in which to develop strategies and and shipbuilding plans based on those strategies and where we're left right now was really kind of a ground zero. You know, the Navy had a force structure assessment. Secretary

Esper set it aside, created his own assessment. That assessment was not approved by the White House. And so we're kind of back at square one. And I suspect that the Biden administration will pick up all these various pieces and work with the CNO and the commandant on a new naval force assessment plan and associated shipbuilding plan. I would say the biggest thing I would recommend is I don't think currently we have the strategic planning capabilities in the Department of Navy to do that at an optimal level. That's not to say that the people working on those force assessments were not good, but the reality is ESPR set aside the Navy Marine Corps plan because it was not sufficiently analytically rigorous, wasn't sufficiently creative, was not

well enough thought out. You know, I hate to be controversial, but I think that was the correct assessment. And so what I would like to see is a much more focused strategic planning capability in the Department of the Navy, jointly run by the Navy and Marine Corps, one that brings together the insights from all the war games that are being conducted throughout the Navy Marine Corps enterprise, that takes advantage of some of the operational research capabilities we have at the Naval Postgraduate School, takes advantage of the war gaming that we're doing at the War college to a much greater sophisticated degree and brings thinkers from outside think tanks to reflect as well. You know, the amount of wargaming that was done in support of the

original plan was insufficient to give people confidence that it was the right force structure. So I think we have a lot of work to do. And unfortunately, it's going to be very time pressured because there's a lot of pressure from Congress to develop a new shipbuilding plan moving forward. So, you know, I think this is an area where a more sophisticated strategic planning capability would serve us well. It is one thing to create the plan to the, like you said, and then it's another thing to actually execute it. And so you've had the opportunity to interface with staff from the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee, and have highlighted the Navy's acquisition creditability problem with

programs like the Ford, Zumwalt, and LCS ship programs. Can you elaborate on this problem and your recommendations to mitigate it? Yeah. I mean, look, of all the services, the one with the biggest challenge on Capitol Hill right now is the Navy. And that is in part because everyone recognizes with the strategic focus on the Indo-Pacific, the Navy is critical. And yet the Navy has by far the most bumpy track record in terms of coming up with a clear plan and then executing it. Certainly a giant chunk of that is, you know, around our failures in terms of surface warfare, you know, acquisitions. The faith on Capitol Hill that the Navy has learned lessons from the Ford and Zumwalt and LCS programs is not deep. And that's undercutting

their willingness to underwrite, for example, the Navy's uncrewed vessel program. So I think, you know, I think a major emphasis for the next administration's secretary and undersecretary needs to be rebuilding the relationship with Congress. You know, I think that relationship is frayed. It was very interesting. The departing undersecretary said that, you know, it was his opinion that we needed term limits in Congress. The Navy shouldn't be blamed for its past acquisition problems. That was not a particularly helpful statement. The reality is, while we don't blame any current administration for what happened in prior administrations, it's important that the Navy indicate it's learned something from its failures. And I feel like we've never gone to

Congress with an honest account of the failings of the Ford, Zumwalt, and LCS programs and said, here's what we've learned. I think if we did that, it would go a long way towards starting to shore up that relationship. Similarly, members of Congress have asked to be involved as observers in our strategic war games. And I think that would be wise to do. We should not be viewing them as antagonists. We should be inviting them into the process to help us think creatively how we move forward. I mean, the questions, particularly around unmanned vessels, are remarkably challenging. You know, more perspectives, including outside perspectives, will be very valuable. So I think moving forward that rebuilding that relationship is essential.

I'll put in a plug. There was a SimSec interview by one of my co-hosts in which Mike Gallagher, the representative from wisconsin expressed that exact desire to put me in coach i want to participate in these war games and to you know have the ability to interface and be part of the decision making well and you know in my you know in meetings with the staff of the house and senate armed services committees it's interesting they expressed kind of a frustration they don't know how to help right legislation is a very crude tool and so they recognize that we have big challenges here. They want the Navy to succeed. They want to know how to help. And I think creating a new dialogue where we can be a little more open about our failures instead of constantly

trying to sort of put a good spin on things. I think a more open and honest relationship about some of the challenges we've had would be really productive. On a more optimistic note then, what are you looking forward to in terms of the relationship between this new administration and the Navy, and what could you foresee as being achievable goals for these next four years? You know, I think there's a couple, I would highlight sort of three big things that need to happen. One is, you know, there's a huge amount of concern about readiness within senior admirals in the Navy. The feeling is that we, over the last few years, have been so eager to scrape as much money into the shipbuilding accounts as possible that we've

risked our readiness. And it's hard to make an independent assessment of that. The new administration will have to do that. But I would really encourage the CNO and the new administration to have a very open conversation about what the Navy feels it needs in order to be ready for war in the next six months or 18 months. Obviously, particularly for the carriers, ship deployment schedules have been heavily criticized for unsustainable record of deployed days. And they'd need to have a very open and honest conversation very quickly to get us to a shared understanding between the new civilian leadership and the CNO and his team about what kind of readiness investments are necessary and what is sustainable and what is not. I would say the

second thing is this whole question of force assessment will be central we don't have a clear accepted strategic plan and an associated shipbuilding plan um that's ready to go for congress you know the administration in its waning days sent something to congress um that you know announced the need for a 500 ship navy not our current 296 ship navy completely fanciful from a budget point of view. I mean, it was a political gesture, not a, a, a honest planning document. There's a real need to develop a long-term 10 or 15 year strategic plan for what the Navy needs in order to be able to meet its peer competitors in the Indo-Pacific and how that will be funded. You know, I, I would expect, particularly for the Deputy Secretary of Defense,

that will be a major focus is trying to get a plan to Congress that's credible and effective. The last thing I would say is I do think a shift to focus on human capital is really important. We focus on ship counts a lot when we think about the Navy. That's a very poor metric for effectiveness and power projection, right? If none of your IT works the way you want it in a combat situation, then the number of ships you have is meaningless. So I think a focus on new metrics of effectiveness that go beyond ship count is critical. Part of that has to be our human capital. Don't invest enough in our civilian workforce. We don't invest enough in our uniformed workforce. And so hopefully that will be an emphasis for the new administration as well.

fantastic those are three good lookups so to speak for the force in these coming years and i'll kind of leave it there in terms of our discussion of education and strategy i have one last question for you of a different flavor in 2009 you published a book entitled convictions of prosecutors battles against mafia killers drug kingpins and enron thieves how did the book writing process impact you and what advice would you give to our listeners who would like to write more? Well, it's a great question. I wrote that book for a very simple reason. I had spent a number of years as a prosecutor, mostly working on mafia cases in New York back in the day when the mafia was still kind of a thing. I found that I wanted to take time and really understand my own

professional life and to put my decision making under a microscope and think about the things I did well and the things I did poorly. And so for me, writing a book was the best way to self-evaluate my own career, my own ethics, whether I was achieving the kind of public outcomes that I wanted. I believe that it's an amazing tool. Writing, whether you're going to try to publish or not, is the best way, I think. Try to honestly assess where you are in your life, both personally and professionally. You know, it's hard for me to give people advice who would like to write more, because for me, it's just a daily activity that's so ingrown that I can't think without it. You know, I write pretty much constantly, some of which I publish and some

of which I don't. And for me, it's just a way of taking daily stock. It's a way of being mindful about where we are in the world, trying to not lose track of what's important to me. Thank you so much for that insight. I encourage our listeners who are on the fence about publishing or starting to write to reach out to our SimSec team if you do have a good idea and we will be happy to work with you to make that come to fruition. That's unfortunately all that we have time for today. I'd like to thank my guest, John Kroger, for joining us and for that amazing discussion on education and the future of naval strategy. Mr. Kroger, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? Sure. I am easy to find him at the Aspen Institute. So if people

Just Google John Kroger at the Aspen Institute. All my connection details will pop up. I'm also fairly active on LinkedIn. I keep Facebook to my personal life, but professionally, you can find me on LinkedIn. in. You know, right now, a lot of my focus is on the education side. So I write pretty frequently on inside higher education about the future of American education and giving that a lot of thought and hopefully would like to be able to support the new administration as they start thinking about some of these naval questions. Fantastic. We'll be on the lookout for you to continue to lead that charge. We'll be right back.