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SLIDESHOW | images | 220204-N-BL637-1001 NORFOLK (Feb. 4, 2022) Rear Adm. F.R. Luchtman, right, reports to Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Michael Gilday, as he assumes command of the Naval Safety Command during the establishment ceremony for the Naval Safety Command. The Naval Safety Command serves as the naval enterprise lead for non-nuclear safety standards, expertise and oversight of the Navy Safety Management System (SMS). The command will operate with the requisite authorities and responsibilities to establish a SMS that provides defense-in-depth and ensures the Naval enterprise is both safe to operate and operating safely. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Sean Castellano)

Below are the remarks as delivered:

Good morning, everyone.  It’s really nice to be here this morning.  It’s actually – an honor to be here this morning, and I appreciate the invitation from an old shipmate to come down to Norfolk; to have a chance to escape Washington for a day.  First of all, good morning to each of you, to Admiral Caudle and the whole host of admirals.  And, General, it’s good to have you here as well.  I think we have every service represented.  We have our civilian leadership represented.  Mr. Schwartz, it’s great to see you here today.

Let’s see, we have the Marine Corps.  We, obviously, have the Army.  We’ve got the Coast Guard.  Is there anybody active-duty Air Force in the audience?  Anybody serve in the Air Force?  Or do you know anybody in the Air Force?  That’s good enough.  (Laughter.)  All right.  Sir, thank you.  We’re taking full credit.  We do have an Air Force veteran in the room.  And lastly, to the Luchtmans, it’s great to have you here today in the front row.  And thank you for your lifetime of service in supporting your husband and your dad.  Thank you.

I appreciate that story.  The real benefits of getting around to every shop on every ship was the fact that I committed to only doing emails right after breakfast and then right before I went to bed.  So it was – it was days free from my computer.  And it’s probably the most fun that I’ve had, and possibly the most productive I’ve ever been.  But the real importance of doing that was really about learning.  And that’s what I hope is the biggest takeaway that you have today from this ceremony.  This is really our Navy’s commitment to be a better learning organization.  And the Safety Center’s going to play a key role in that.

It's not every day that we get to establish a new command.  And standing here in Hampton Roads, you can feel the gravity of this moment.  There is a special energy here, and we should take a moment to appreciate what the establishment of the Navy Safety Command means to all of us.  Although deeply consequential, the significance of today’s establishment can be summarized simply.  A vital change to the way our Navy conducts its vital mission, a mission that is growing in importance every single day. 

The competition at sea is heating up, and it demands the full measure of our navy’s focus, our skill, and, really importantly, our fighting spirit.  The Navy Safety Command will enhance our ability to safely operate across the globe, and in turn, help accelerate America’s advantage at sea, which will lead to security, influence, and prosperity for our country, and for our allies and our partners around the world.  It’s been said that the sea is a cruel master.  To use it and fight from it requires the utmost of human skill and ingenuity.  In our profession, risk follows us around 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  There’s no escaping it. 

I’m reminded today as we have nearly 100 ships deployed at seal across the globe – we’ve got ships in the Adriatic at the tip of the spear as Russia is on the border of the Ukraine.  We have ships in the high north, in the North Sea, and further north, but by the Arctic Circle.  We have submarines beneath the sea around the world.  We are in the Middle East.  Why?  Because that AOR happens to be a maritime AOR with three critical chokepoints.  We’re in the far-west, in the Pacific, and beyond. 

The risk that we face intensifies as soon as you clear that sea buoy, as soon as you leave the channel, as soon as you rig for dive, and as soon as you go feet wet.  The environment we operate can be the very enemy itself.  Conditions at sea can change dramatically and without warning.  Heavy weather is a constant danger for mariners, as are the hazards that come with training for the high-end fight and keeping our platforms battle ready.  Importantly, dangers do not just exist underway.  Routine maintenance periods and extended availabilities come with a host of challenges.  Fire, flooding, and other hazards can occur if there’s a lack of procedural compliance and oversight, deficiencies in training, and material conditions, as well as a misunderstanding of requirements. 

Put simply, there is almost no aspect of naval operations that can be separated from risk.  But risk can be controlled.  Unfortunately though, over the past several years we have seen instances of substandard outcomes.  And in some cases we saw tragic results, like the Bonhomme Richard fire, along with 14 other major fires within the last 12 years.  To me, there are two key factors preventing us from reaching our full potential.  First, there is the gap between our most and our least capable performers.  And it’s too large.  There is unacceptable variability in our performance.  This variability cuts across different units, organizations, and communities, both at sea and ashore. 

And second, the root cause for this performance gap is an outdated approach to institutional learning and problem solving.  For too long we have focused too much – although instructions are important, as are rules and checklists – I would argue that we have focused too much on them, particularly as we face a daunting adversary – peer adversary now.  We need to be dynamic.  Our learning needs to be dynamic.  And we need to be more innovative.

The trends that I mention cannot continue.  If we do not put better elements in place, our maritime edge will over time fade.  That’s real.  The challenges of our time demand that we face things differently, that we do things differently.  That’s why we released a new charge of command last month that directs leaders at every level to be disciplined in execution and deliberate in assessing and managing risk.  That is why we’re instilling a get real, get better culture throughout our Navy.  Safety Command plays a big part of that, which is all about building better leaders and empowering teams at every single level to self-assess and to self-correct, to learn and to innovate, and to solve problems more effectively. 

Those are a lot of nice words, but at the very core this is about war fighting.  It is about readiness.  That’s why we’re taking this important step today in transforming the Navy Safety Center into the Navy Safety Command.  Safety Command will serve as the key enabler of our Navy’s ability to get real and to get better.  It will be charged with evaluating how our entire Navy, from the fleet commander down, manages safety and risk.  Yes, we will continue to collect data.  We will continue to analyze, report, and disseminate that data, and provide transparency as to the safety status and safety trends across our entire fleet.

This includes a modern, digital survey routine, which is designed to empower sailors, Marines, and civilians by collecting their insight on how to bolster their unit’s safety culture.  Additionally, Safety Command will implement the Navy’s Safety Management System, which is a formal organization-wide approach to enhanced risk management reduction, problem solving and, really importantly, critical thinking.  It will move us away from reacting – reactively managing safety, to proactively managing risk by making sure accountability for risk is held at the appropriate level.

And as part of this Safety Management System rollout, we are changing our senior leaders – we are charging our senior leaders to empower all hands to self-assess, self-correct, and to learn.  We need everybody to think critically about risk and to make sure risk is effectively communicated up and down our chains of command.  Because at the end of the day, risk falls not just on institutions, but it really falls on individuals, the men and the women who have chosen to wear the cloth of our nation and support our national interests. 

So we owe it to every sailor, every Marine, and every civilian to make sure that they have the training, the experience, and the tools they need to apply their skills in every situation.  Together with the Learning to Action Board that we’ve established at higher echelon, the Navy Safety Command will ensure our broader naval enterprise is learning, implementing, evaluating, and upholding lessons learned and best practices.  In thinking about Navy Safety Command and the need to elevate it from center to command, really going back to where we were in the early ’50s when we established this organization – and it’s grown and changed over time – I thought about the beginning of World War II.  I thought about the interwar period.

At that time, the person in my job was Admiral Stark.  He was the CNO.  And at that time he faced similar problems as he looked at a peer adversary.  And our Navy thought about how do we prepare ourselves for a potential fight?  How do we prepare to defend the nation?  And they concluded at that time, just like we have done recently, that our Navy may not be quite the learning organization that we aspire to be, that we claim – that we even claim to be.  So back then, through War Plan Orange, through war games, through analysis, through experimentation, through exercises, the Navy changed, it evolved, and it got ready for war.

We don’t have that luxury now.  We need to put our foot on the accelerator.  And the Navy’s been on a journey, I think, when I consider the collisions that we had with two destroyers in 2017, when I think about the fire that we had on Bonhomme Richard, or the fuel spill that we had out in Hawaii.  After each of those incidents we’ve investigated, we’ve studied, we’ve come up with reports, we’ve come up with instructions and checklists.  But institutionally, there’s still that variance between commands that do really well and commands that do poorly.  And that’s the gap we have to close.

We have to encourage everybody to think about how they do better in every aspect of their job.  How do you self-assess, or how do you have the discipline to self-assess how you’re doing, if you’re a division chief how your division is doing?  You see yourself and where you are, you know where you want to be, how do you do that gap analysis to close that gap, to leverage those things that you’re really good at, to accelerate it?  How do you break down barriers that are preventing you from reaching that point that you aspire to?  That’s the problem – that’s the challenge that we face.

So the Safety Center, much like INSURV, is going to take a look at our commands, our units, our squadrons, our submarines, our ships’ ability not only to comply with safety instructions, but really – the real magic is going to be their ability to take a deeper look at our commands’ ability to self-assess and to self-correct.  And that’ll be the most important grade that those commands get, to have the wherewithal on a daily and weekly basis to self-assess, to consider where they are, where they need to be, and to close that gap themselves.  So in the larger scheme of things, in becoming a better learning organization, that’s the real role of Safety Command.  That’s the real vision for this command.  That’s one element of a much broader campaign that we have in the Navy.  And we’ve got a lot of work to do.

So without a doubt, back to my prepared remarks, I consider us fortunate to have Admiral Caudle and his team helping us on this journey.  Since we announced our intent to establish Navy Safety Command last year, the fleet forces team has steamed at flank bell to bring management system online.  We’re also lucky to have the leadership of Rear Admiral “Lucky” Luchtman, the Navy Safety Command’s first commander.  A distinguished combat aviator and seasoned warfighter, Lucky brings a winning combination of warfighting, leadership expertise that we need to realize the potential vision that I just described. 

To the team here at Navy Safety Command, you are absolutely critical to maintaining our Navy’s fighting edge.  The course of our Navy depends upon your ability to share expertise, drive down performance variability that I talked about a few minutes ago, and raise the alarm every time you see us veering off track.  You will be key in identifying and correcting problems across the fleet before they grow into large, systematic issues.  You are the cornerstone in this endeavor.  You will set the example for so many of us. 

Ladies and gentlemen, our naval power comes from the unity of our purpose.  And we can never lose sight of that.  Together we will keep our sailors and Marines safe for the security and the prosperity of our nation, and people all across the world.  And together we will instill a culture of improvement and learning so that the seas remain free and open for a better tomorrow.  And together, we will enable warfighting readiness to protect that fragile thing that we call freedom.  So, Lucky, Command, let’s get to work.  I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today.  Thank you all for everything that you do.  God bless you.  (Applause.)