The new Navy secretary is inheriting a mess: Here's how the Navy wants to fix it
By: David B. Larter, February 4, 2017 (Photo Credit: MC3 Matt Brown/Navy)
Businessman Philip Bilden is on deck to become the next Navy secretary after eight years of declining readiness inside the world’s most advanced fleet and profound cultural shifts inside the traditionally hide-bound Navy.
Under former Secretary Ray Mabus, the Navy made a policy of directing money away from operations and maintenance in order to keep funding shipbuilding, an effort to arrest the precipitous decline of the fleet’s size, which has dropped from more than 500 ships at the end of the Cold War to today’s 274.
At the same time Mabus pushed hard for major cultural shifts inside the fleet, including the inclusion of women in combat roles in the Navy and Marine Corps, unisex uniforms, gender-neutral ratings titles and opening the services to transgender service members.
https://www.navytimes.com/articles/the-new-navy-secretary-is-inheriting-a-mess-heres-how-the-navy-wants-to-fix-it
