General Mark A. Milley named the new ACS, Richardson, the CNO
Chief Tango sends us a link to the Washington Post which reports the announcement that General Mark A. Milley has been nominated to be the Army Chief of Staff. Also, John M. Richardson will be the new Chief of Naval Operations.
They will replace Army Gen. Raymond T. Odierno and Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert, whose traditional four-year stints leading their services expire later this year.
Carter called Milley a “warrior and a statesmen” and Richardson a “go-to officer” for many challenges the Navy has faced in recent years. He appeared alongside them at the Pentagon.
I like Milley, just from reading his bio. Those of you who served under him may have a different opinion. Apparentl,y Milley was commissioned as an armor officer but spent most of his career as an infantry and special forces officer. He has a second award of the CIB (Panama and GWOT) and an Expert Infantryman Badge. Anyone can make a mistake (become an armor officer) and recover from it (become an infantry officer). He’s an ROTC grad, commissioned from the Princeton program.
Richardson, on the other hand, is a Naval Academy grad and a career bubblehead. Again, those of you who have served with him know more than I do about him or his career.
On the upside, they can’t do much worse than their predecessors have done.
Category: Big Pentagon
Interesting, I was looking forward to GEN Milley court-martialing Bergdahl. Hope he has a good replacement.
If he elects to approve the court martial. I don’t believe that’s yet a “done deal”.
GEN Milley was also on Princeton’s varsity ice hockey team- a gritty defenseman who grew up in Masschusetts during Bobby Orr’s heyday. Didn’t have the talent to play pro hockey, but found his niche.
Not an altogether unexpected choice for CSA, but meteoric rise- 3 years ago, he was still in command of the 10th Mountain Division.
I don’t know Miley and never worked for him, but there are a few things that are striking in his bio. He starts off as an Asst. BMO and then a PL in the 82nd, then goes to command an ODA in 5th group (without SFQC). After his ODA command, he never sets foot in another SOCOM unit. 6 years later, the Army sends him to DLI for Spanish, then to Columbia for a graduate degree in international relations, giving him 1 year and 9 months of a very expensive education on the Army’s dime. He then follows up by using that education with a 6 month stint as the “Foreign Area Officer Training Program, United States Defense Attaché Office, Bogota, Columbia”. After that, not another FAO assignment.
I guess that my comments are more an indictment on the Army’s education and assignment process than the general himself, but it is problematic.
After looking at his bio, I see that his unit did the RIP/TOA with my unit in Bosnia. Again, while not an indictment am the general himself, the company grade officers under him were a pack of asshats, and probably some of the worst that I have ever seen.
I’ve not seen the official GOMO bio, so I can’t verify the claim on having attended SFQC, but I would doubt that’s the case given it was a requirement for award of the SF Tab when that was instituted in the late 80’s.
I wouldn’t read as much into his bio on the SF, Grad school FAO thing. There were many officers who served in SF who chose not to go into the SF branch when it was established in 88. Like today, officer had to make a choice and compare what the two paths might offer.
Likewise, in the 800K person Army of the 80’s the organization sent almost 300 officers a year to language and follow on FAO training with the expectation that only a small number of them would serve as FAO’s later in their careers. The Army doesn’t do that anymore due to its wastefulness, and its one of the reasons why there is a dual track system for field grade officer now.
What really surprised me yesterday with both the CSA and CNO pick, is that the SECDEF reached well outside the circle of predicted candidates. I think this says much about the SECDEFs desire to make serious long term changes to organization that have become a little to inbred IMHO. Less well reported today are the SECNAV’s statements on personnel reform which will be a game changer if Congress approves.
What did SECNAV say? i cant find it online.
http://www.navytimes.com/story/military/2015/05/13/navy-secretary-ray-mabus-naval-academy-changes/27234685/
The new acting USD P&R alluded that the request for legislation to significantly change how we manage soldier careers will be coming out at the end of the summer a few weeks ago, but this is the first opportunity that the leadership of the services has taken to discuss in depth.
NAVSEA08 (head Navy nuke) becoming CNO?
Oh, this ought to turn out good.
Last sub guy to be CNO was Frank Kelso… he had a little issue called “Tailhook” that bit him in the ass.
The current CNO ADM Greenert is a bubblehead.
NAVSEA 08 becoming CNO will be a lot of things, but fun to watch probably isn’t going to be one of them. Everybody on the blue and gold team should prepare for their @ssholes to be over torqued as they feel the wrath of the head nuke. Why can’t we get another airdale?
Doesn’t McCain chair the Senate committee that decides on whether these guys serve? If so, you’re probably gonna have that old Airedale poking up Richardson’s bubble butt with a bent clotheshanger.
I currently work in a shipyard that started doing work on CVN’s a few years back and our processes and procedures went from getting ship’s underway, on time to a mind boggling array of rules and regulations, everything from “verbatim compliance” to the temperatures at which you can apply paints and non-skid and all this had to be followed, even on non-nuke surface ships. Who brought all this pain and misery upon us? NAVSEA 08. That’s the type of leadership we’ll have at USN – verbatim compliance. Uggh.
Well, one looks tough as nails and the other looks rather…what’s the word… oh yeah…gay. But both are married–to women.
Richardson had significant time in the Navy’s special ops sub community, and is authorized at least one Presidential Unit Citation (which last I checked aren’t handed out to often), From what I have heard about the missions his ship did, it was ball of steel kinds of stuff.
He’s got an advanced degree from MIT, so I’ll accept that he’s no slouch in the brain department.
If you crossed Bobby Kennedy with Jimmy Stewart, he would look like Richardson.