There was a time I truly believed that the Admirals in the Navy cared about Sailors and were smart enough to run the Navy efficiently and effectively. Early in my career I worked in an Admiral’s office, for a person who I grew to admire and felt could effectively fight our adversaries and win.

Nowadays, I can’t find a single Admiral that I would want to follow into battle. None. I’ve seen firsthand how our current Admirals obsess over minute details on PowerPoints that don’t matter, refuse to hold civilian employees accountable, and grossly abuse the military justice system. These so-called leaders got away with this gross mismanagement by running the infrastructure built up by previous generations into the ground. Well, that infrastructure is finally crumbling, with Navy buildings and ships rusting and rotting away, and the young people that once manned those buildings and ships leaving in droves. The Navy will miss its recruiting goals by 7,000, and you would think that would cause Navy leadership to think about all the surveys in the past that pointed to straightforward ways to improve the Navy.

Let’s be honest, you, dear reader, already know what’s coming next:

According to Franchetti, it will take “years” for the Navy to recover from these promotion delays, which have resulted in acting commanders leading Naval Surface Forces, Naval Air Forces, the U.S. Naval Academy, among other commands.

“As we look right now, our Navy is facing challenges all around the globe, threats from our adversaries,” she said. “We want to have the right people with the right level of experience in those positions. And as we continue to not have the confirmed people that we’ve nominated with that experience, we’re going to continue to see an erosion of readiness.”

It’s going to take “years” to recover from promotion delays? You mean delaying promotions of all the people that screwed up the Navy so far? That caused us to decommission ships from 2016? That broke our shipyards and crews? That continue to IA Sailors even today, so that they don’t get a shore duty break from arduous sea duty?

Never mind that the SOLE REASON for the hold on nominations was the DoD pushing commands to spend travel money (your taxpayer dollars) on abortion. ADM Franchetti fails to address that issue, and instead makes blatantly false statements about the effects of delaying promotions.

Which, BTW, aren’t delayed. The Senate could proceed and vote on each one individually, but that would open these people up to questioning about their past records…something most of them don’t want to do. Pesky Senators might ask “Hey Admiral, why did you run our shipyard into the ground?” or “Why did you make openly racist statements in the name of DEI policy?” These questions are pertinent, relevant, and totally undesired by today’s Admirals.

If you can, please write to your elected federal officials and tell them you aren’t happy with how the existing Defense Department Generals and Admirals ran our military, and ask them to do a bit of house cleaning. The media spins these stories totally one-sided. Much of the mediocrity in today’s military leadership cuts across party lines, so its an issue that both Republican and Democrat Senators and Representatives need to solve. Unless you write, and write a lot, its going to be swept under the rug.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. According to those agencies, everything is fine, and the Defense Department is doing a great job! Nothing to see here, move along now peasant!