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What Does the Navy Do, Anyway?

© Andrew Willis

It’s such a shame that the general public doesn’t have a clue about what we do. I’m sure it applies to all of the services in general, but I’d bet that it applies to the Navy in particular. The Navy is more concentrated than the other services. We have only three major operating bases (Norfolk, San Diego, and Bremerton), which probably homeport 80% or so of our ships. Most of our air bases are close to those three locations as well. Our support bases are small and almost unseen. Most sailors don’t even know where Mechanicsburg, PA (the location of the Sea Systems Command, the Navy’s technical support and research organization) is or that we have an Air Station in Atlanta. The point is that unless you’re near one of the major fleet concentrations, the only sailor you’re likely to see is the local recruiter, not always the most reliable source of information on the Navy (no offense intended, guys; I used to be one of you).

Of course, there’s always the media. The problem there is that they like the military about as much as former President Clinton does. Prior to September 11, 2001, if you saw anything regarding the Navy on CNN, chances were good it was sexual harassment, gays in the military, or wasteful spending. Hardly the stuff of good press and high morale. Since then, almost everything I’ve seen on the news has been positive or at least neutral, but considering that most journalists tend to the left, and that they see the military as the cause and not the solution to the terrorism problem, I really am surprised that has lasted as long as it has.

How about the education system? Never mind, history is going out of style anyway. We don’t really need to know where we’ve been anymore. Even in colleges now they teach that the Founding Fathers were lying, cheating thieves who really didn’t care about the people… they only wanted to make money. And the military? Oh, please, bunch of warmongering baby killers. Don’t believe me? Check out any history class taught by someone in their 40s or early 50s who wasn’t in the military. How much do you think they’re going to teach about the military?

So where does that leave us? With the civilian-military gap that is wider now than when Thomas Ricks wrote about it so eloquently and with such detail five years ago. I’m not sure that there’s a solution at all to this problem that we as sailors can press. The best we can do is work in our own communities to present the best of the Navy. If we do that, people will ask us what we do. Our leadership, however, needs to crack down on things that’ll generate negative publicity and intentionally trumpet the good things we do. We need to work better with veteran’s groups and other support groups out there. Finally, we need our veterans and retirees to be active in education, civic groups and politics. We as sailors and veterans KNOW things that lifetime civilians don’t. We’ve seen and done things that they only dream of. We need to let them know why.

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