This year, thanks to the information from the focus
groups, “we were much, much smarter about what we
did, what we offered,” he said. “We have to let them
know that we have a significant footprint of Sailors on
the ground over in Iraq and now in Afghanistan doing
nontraditional Navy jobs.”
The service plans 21 Navy Weeks for 2011, and the
key messages for the year, Cooper said, are:
■ “America’s Navy is a global force for good.”
■ “We are the branch of the military that fights on the
water, under the water and over the water.”
■ “Why what we do is important — water covers about
70 percent of our Earth’s surface, about 80 percent of the
Earth’s population lives near the ocean and about 90
percent of all international trade travels via the sea.”
■ “Our mission is to meet America’s threats far away
so they cannot harm us here.”
For more about the service’s Navy Week program,
visit www.navyweek.org.
Sea Services Panel
Leading into the Sea Services Awards Luncheon, typically the most anticipated event of any convention (see
page 58), was the Sea Services Panel on Oct. 22. The
theme this year was “The Decade Ahead,” and panelists discussed the myriad challenges facing their
respective services.
Robert Sutton, national vice president, Sea Services
Liaison, and a member of the Maritime Policy
Committee, served as moderator and welcomed panelists Buzby, Watson and Caponiti.
Buzby focused on three main themes critical for the
next decade: Department of Defense budgets, at best,
will continue to be flat, maybe even tighter; the MSC
will see a large number of new hulls entering its fleet;
and the command’s flagship cause — people.
“As we deal with those budgetary challenges,” he
said, “I don’t see any backing off of the requirements. I
don’t see us backing off of the need to be around the
world in a maritime way. That’s obviously the big chal-
lenge, how do we do that?”
The chief of naval operations “has challenged us to
both recapitalize our force and maintain our current force
through maintenance and revitalization, and to take care
of our people, as well, while maintaining virtually all the
missions we have, but with less money. That’s a real trick.”
In previous years of budget belt tightening, the
Navy offloaded some of its missions and ships onto the
MSC, which can operate a bit more efficiently and with
the same or better effectiveness, he said.
“We need to posture ourselves to be ready to accept
some of these new missions that may be coming our way,”
Buzby said. “We already see most of the Navy’s theater
security cooperation missions heading in our direction.”
He noted the Navy is looking
closely at MSC’s operational model
to see if it can harvest some of the
processes or methods for use in the
combatant force.
The next decade also will see a
large influx of new hulls into MSC,
built specifically for the command,
and fewer Navy castoffs. New ships
include double-hulled replacements for single-hull Henry J.
Kaiser-class tankers, “a whole new
class that’s coming, it’s in the
design stage right now and will be
at least as capable as the Kaiser
class,” Buzby said.
MSC also will be manning Navy
Joint High Speed Vessels, which
will bring “great flexibility,” he
said. The command also will have
a new replacement for its tugs that
have towing and salvage capability.
With “people” as his flagship
cause, Buzby intends to focus on
how mariners are treated, recognition, professional development and
leadership training.
KEN GODWIN PHOTOGRAPHY
Navy League National President Daniel B. Branch Jr., left, stands with New
Mexico Council member Richard M. Brown after presenting him with a Navy
League Distinguished Public Service Award. Brown was chairman of the Navy
League’s USS New Mexico Commissioning Committee, which oversaw the
commissioning of the Virginia-class submarine in March in Groton, Conn.
