THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 9, 1996 TAG: 9608090468
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 75 lines
The Navy's future is to ``steer by the stars and not its wake,'' Adm. Jay L. Johnson said, in his first public address as the country's new chief of naval operations.
``And I would also submit you can't see the stars unless you hold your head up high,'' the former F-14 Tomcat pilot told 900 sailors at Oceana Naval Air Station Thursday.
The Navy's troubled past is ``absolutely'' behind it, he said.
Johnson, 50, was attending to his first order of business in his new job - flying from Washington to reassure the fleet that he intends to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, Adm. Jeremy ``Mike'' Boorda, in stressing the Navy's commitment to its people.
``I am Mike Boorda-trained and very proud of it,'' Johnson said at a news conference following his appearance at Oceana, and before another visit with 1,200 sailors in Norfolk.
``So my commitment to these wonderful sailors will not diminish for as long as I am CNO,'' he said. ``That is one of the first - and, I think, one of the most fundamental - messages I needed to deliver. I said it before, but I needed to say it eyeball-to-eyeball.''
Johnson had served as vice CNO for barely two months when the popular Boorda committed suicide May 16, delivering a broadside to the service's morale. Johnson, tapped to be acting CNO and then confirmed Friday as the Navy's top admiral, took the service's reins at one of the most troubled points in its history.
Even so, the Navy has not wavered from performing above expectations, he stressed.
``Today is a typical day for the U.S. Navy,'' with 362 ships and nearly a half-million people on active duty and in the reserves, he said.
``Today 58 percent of those ships are under way; 29 percent are forward deployed,'' he noted. ``We are committed, worldwide, from the (TWA Flight 800) salvage operations off Long Island, N.Y., to the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf and all the areas of the Pacific. We are executing to the nines.
``You can't do that with the precision and rigor it is being done with, if you're a low-morale, hangdog outfit.
``I am not saying we can't do better, because we can and probably always should. But I submit we couldn't do the job we're doing if we weren't as professional as we were and our morale wasn't high.''
Asked at the press conference whether the Boorda tragedy and earlier scandals had blurred the Navy's focus, Johnson replied that his sailors ``are pretty well focused on the priorities,'' adding: ``We are absolutely the greatest Navy in the world. What I am trying to do is build on that, not reconstruct it.''
Johnson has been a near-fixture in Hampton Roads for the past 20 years: flying fighters out of Oceana, attending the Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk, and commanding Air Wing One and Carrier Group Eight from the carrier Theodore Roosevelt.
Before leaving the area in March he led the 2nd Fleet, headquartered aboard the command ship Mount Whitney in Norfolk, where his duties included steaming to Haiti for Operation Restore Democracy.
As he begins his four-year term, Johnson said his first challenge will be to take care of the Navy's people, including families.
His second challenge will be to focus on innovations within the service, ``to get the most innovation out of all that technology and operational savvy out in front of us, to build a Navy for the 21st century.''
In addition, he said, the Navy must have the right structure with which to execute its mission, and it must balance a need for immediate readiness with long-term recapitalization of its ships, airplanes and weapons systems.
He called the Navy's proposed arsenal ship a ``complement'' to the carrier battle group, not a replacement for carriers. He said he supports a return to a 15-carrier force, rather than the 12 authorized by Congress. MEMO: The color photo was improperly credited in the printed edition. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN, The
Virginian-Pilot
Adm. Jay L. Johnson told sailors lined up to greet him at Oceana
Naval Air Station to keep their heads up as the Navy moves forward.
KEYWORDS: U.S. NAVY by CNB