USN Sailor: Troops are More Up to Date on Diversity Training than Ship Handling Skills

Given the massive increase in tensions with Red China, especially over the island of Taiwan, you’d think the Navy would be readying its sailors for, well, naval combat.

But, of course, this isn’t the American military of days past. This is the modern, woke military, filled with social justice warriors rather than real warriors.

As a result, your otherwise reasonable predictions of intensive combat training would be incorrect; instead, the Navy is focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion training.

Reports of that come from John Noonan on Twitter, who had this to say in response to a USNI News post saying that the USS Bonhomme Richard was lost because its sailors lacked firefighting training:

Oh. Well as long as sailors were up to speed on their Climate Change Adaption Plan…

“Training and readiness of the ship’s crew were deficient. They were unprepared to respond. Integration between the ship and supporting shore-based firefighting organizations was inadequate.”

He followed that up by saying:

Y’know, death by a 1000 requirements etc and so forth. Not all bad news. Talk with amigos still in the force and they recognize that they’ve become hopelessly unfocused after 30 years post USSR. Want to change and get back to fundamentals. But going to be hard in this Admin, alas

A stark quote from a senior enlisted sailor in the Report on the Fighting Culture of the Surface Navy: “I guarantee you every unit in the Navy is up to speed on their diversity training. I’m sorry that I can’t say the same of their ship-handling training.”

Noonan provided a link to a report on the fighting culture of the USN surface fleet. That report horrifyingly found that:

The results of this project are unambiguous. There was a broad consensus across interviewees on numerous cultural and structural issues that impact the morale and readiness of the Navy’s surface force. These include: an insufficient focus on warfighting skills, the perception of a zero-defect mentality accompanied by a culture of micromanagement, and over-sensitivity and responsiveness to modern media culture. Structural issues identified include lack of resources and consistency in surface warfare training programs, and the Navy’s underwhelming commitment to surface ship maintenance—a problem that spans decades.

Concern within the Navy runs so high that, when asked whether incidents such as the two destroyer collisions in the Pacific, the surrender of a small craft to the IRGC in the Arabian Gulf, the burning of the Bonhomme Richard and other incidents were part of a broader cultural or leadership problem in the Navy, 94% of interviewees responded “yes,” 3% said “no,” and 3% said “unsure.” And when asked if the incidents were directly connected, 55% said “yes,” 16% said “no,” and 29% said “unsure.” This sentiment, that the Navy is dangerously off course, was overwhelming.

And that’s not the half of it. The shocking report also found that the Navy’s focus on warfighting has lapsed to a dangerous degree:

One of the most concerning and consistent observations amongst interviewees was that the surface Navy does not promote or advance surface ship warfighting in a meaningful way. Finding and sinking enemy fleets should be the principal purpose of a Navy.

And why have they lapsed? Well, as Noonan noted, it’s because the focus is placed on woke priorities rather than warfighting:

Interviewers found this to be a common refrain. One recent destroyer captain lamented that, “where someone puts their time shows what their priorities are. And we’ve got so many messages about X, Y, Z appreciation month, or sexual assault prevention, or you name it. We don’t even have close to that same level of emphasis on actual warfighting.”

If America loses the next war, it won’t be because our equipment isn’t fancy enough. Rather, the Pacific Fleet will sit at the bottom of the Taiwan Strait, sunk by a volley of carrier-killing DF-21s and DF-26s because the Navy brass decided wokeness was more important than warfighting.

By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Parler and Gettr.