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APRIL GENERAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING: VADM William Galinis Presents to VSRA Membership

The April General Membership Luncheon meeting was held at the Sheraton Norfolk Waterside Hotel on Tuesday, April 18, 2023. The guest speaker was VADM William Galinis, USN Commander, Naval Sea Systems Command. He thanked everyone for the warm introduction as it was a privilege to be there with so many familiar faces in the room. It’s like coming home.

VADM Galinis shared that a few weeks ago, Admiral Gilday brought everyone together to speak to the Navy Flag Officers of NAVSEA and Senior Executives of Corporate Navy to converse about the state of the Navy and the environment across the world that we are in.  The theme was dubbed, “The Critical Decade.” Seeing the things that are going on across the world today, it’s a different world today than it was a year ago, let alone fifteen years ago. This is the environment that our Sailors and Marines sail into every day. We need to think about that and be mindful of that. VADM Galinis continued on to say how important our industry is and what it does for our Navy and Country. 

VADM Galinis referred to the 60 Minutes interview with Admiral Paparo aboard the USS Nimitz out in the Western Pacific, quoting “It’s our duty to be ready.”  That goes to everyone within the sound of his voice. If you don’t get an increased sense of urgency when you walk into a shipyard or down to the waterfront, you really need to think about that. This is the world we are in today. VADM Galinis reiterated that watching Admiral Paparo and Admiral Gilday during the 60 Minutes episode, they gave a pretty good view of what they are thinking about and where the challenges are.

VADM Galinis stood up a war fighting readiness director within the Naval Seas System Command that was led by a Flag Officer with a small staff. They included everyone in business codes, contracting, financing, HR, as well as operations group SEA 21–CNR Sea Teams, and the folks that oversee and work in the public shipyards, warfare teams, supervisors in ship building as well as all program teams. They also included the seven PPO’s that they have across the three different platforms, submarine, carriers and surface ships in the warfare system both for surface and undersea platforms. It’s literally an all-hands-on deck evolution.

VADM Galinis continued with the reason he stood up this war fighting readiness team was because when the fleet goes to sea, whether they be subs, ships, or planes, they practice being ready for that war fight every day of the week and twice on Sunday. At the System Command level, they probably don’t spend the time thinking about that, and they should. The intent here was to bring together a relatively small team to deliberate about how the Navy’s largest System Command should be ready to respond if something should happen. The team is coming through some things they need to learn that goes beyond the typical battle damage assessment and repair on ships. As important as these are, what they do at NAVSEA goes beyond that from the Warfare Centers and what they do for the fleet onto the type Commanders that are writing tactics and doctrine.

VADM Galinis continued that the area they have been exercising in the most is the Cybersecurity area. If you work in that area or touch it, make no mistake, that is an area they continue to carry risk in every day. As of recently, they had a very significant cyber event across the enterprise with one of their contractors. It’s something that they need to be mindful of.

VADM Galinis stressed the important work our industry does and continues to do.  You should be proud of the work you do, but can’t be satisfied. There is projected to be 4,000 days of maintenance delay, and we’ve got to fix that. He stated that there are the three big rocks that cause delays and the first one starts with planning. They were making progress with planning in terms of getting products on time and getting projects completed. They have trailed off as of late with only 30% of the benchmarks being hit, mainly on the Navy side, as they get ready for the maintenance they conduct at the shipyards.

VADM Galinis continued that the second part is material procurement. Some materials have a year’s lead time to get them ordered. A lot of that has to do with the modernization work that is done along with long lead times for all other materials as well. This has caused a significant problem.

VADM Galinis stated that the third part is waterfront execution, the folks that work on the inside of the fence line. What do the operating systems of that shipyard look like? How do you measure shift to shift, day to day to track your team’s progress in meeting the next availability, key events, and milestones? Do you have a good integrated master schedule to execute the work? Do you have the right resources?  Did you get the Navy Modernization Team’s schedules? We’ve got some work to do, and there are a lot of folks working on it.

VADM Galinis continued that these are the three things to get after. The challenge to all of us is the learning elements. How do we take the lessons learned from work that is done at the waterfront and get that rolled back into the planning and products? Whether it’s modernization or maintenance, we need to be sure we aren’t repeating the same things during the next availability.

VADM Galinis mentioned the importance of small business. There is no bigger advocate in the Navy for small business than Secretary Del Toro. He ran a small business after leaving the Navy and is now serving as the Secretary of the Navy. He’s holding the Navy accountable to make sure that they are providing a level playing field and meeting our targets in terms of small business. Across NAVSEA, they contract $3 Billion to small businesses annually. There is another 20-25% in surface ship repair that goes to small businesses when they are awarding contracts through the larger primes. There are a lot of opportunities, as they have a proactive Office of Small Business Programs directed by Ms. Anne Bannister.

To tie this all together, VADM Galinis spoke about the “Get Real, Get Better” effort of the Navy. It’s something that leadership is working hard to get out to the fleet. This came about two weeks after starting his job, when the USS Bonhomme Richard fire happened. That was a gut punch coming into this job. He’ll never forget that Sunday afternoon walking into NAVSEA Command Center and getting the situational picture four hours into the event. Then the realization set in that there was no firefighting agent in the fire. They knew at that point that they had lost the ship although there was heroic effort on the part of the crew in San Diego to try and reverse it. When something is burning that hot for that long, it’s hard to turn the tide. As the investigation went forward, they took a step back and looked at all the major fires in the past 15 years. There were 14 that they keyed in on, the Miami, Oscar Austin, and certainly the Bonhomme Richard, and what they found was a lack of sustained learning. The highest performing parts of the Navy and other organizations were struggling. This was part of what they now refer to as the Major Fire Review Panel that was the follow-on to the investigation that came from the Bonhomme Richard.

VADM Galinis continued that at the same time, the Navy was being challenged by then Secretary of Defense Maddox to get our Fighter Fleet back in the air. Less than 50% of our Fighters were mission capable at that time, so there was a lesson learned from that. Combining those two efforts and the learning driven by CNO Gilday and Vice Chief Fletcher, they took a self-reflected look across those events and questioned what we learned from it. What are we doing to fix it and make it sustainable? Those events were the real genesis of the Navy’s “Get Real, Get Better” effort. It’s all about the war fight and learning. VADM Galinis referred to WWII and how many times Admiral Halsey fought the battle of the Pacific through war games and learning events.  It played into the victory that we achieved in that part of the world in the 1940’s. We are working to build on that learning culture in the Navy. It’s our ability to critically assess ourselves, starting at the individual level, team level and commanding the Enterprise. That’s the way they are approaching it at NAVSEA, and it is a big part of the Command Leadership Forum in the next month that will tie into the warfighting piece. It’s all about warfighting, and how do we learn quickly?

VADM Galinis provided the example of Ukraine where there were two key points.  One being the Ukrainian Army had the ability to learn and adapt quickly. They took technologies off the shelf and weapons they had not trained on or used rapidly, and integrated them into their tactics and into their force. You can see the results when used against the Russian Army. The second is the Power of Leadership, especially at the NCO level. For the Ukrainian Army this has made a world of difference.

With that VADM Galinis stated that everyone in this room are leaders and leads teams of leaders. The leadership in this room needs to assess themselves and learn, and then pass that onto your teams. This is the “Critical Decade.” Your Navy Leadership and Department of Defense are taking it seriously. It is changing and influencing the conversation and strategies in how they manage the business.  


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