BlackFive

More and more, Ray Mabus seems like not such a great leader of the greatest navy in the history of the world...over at Tom Ricks' blog at Foreign Policy there is a posting by a field grade officer about the new initiatives coming down from the Pentagon...

...As a serving active duty officer in either the Navy or the Marine Corps, north of O-3 and south of the FO/GO ranks, I wonder if the enhancement in personal readiness occasioned by breathalyzers will be worth the trade-off in flagging morale, professional insult, and perceptions of detached, out of touch senior leadership. I will tell you this:  Getting a breathalyzer after morning PT as a precondition for working like hell for the rest of the day has great potential to piss me right off.

While the "in the weeds" specifics of how the breathalyzer program will work are not yet revealed, the general contours of the program are that Navy leaders will administer breathalyzers to operational unit work sections duty sections -- apparently everyone on duty, including, presumably, ship and squadron commanders -- plus "random" samples of other sailors in shore and support commands...

Go read the whole thing.  The author is dead accurate when saying that using breathalyzers rather than better screening processes for character and leadership during selection is a good way to ruin the leadership of the navy.  This is nanny state kind of stuff and the SecNavy should be ashamed that this is happening on his watch.

This policy is either a giant, badly played joke or the Secretary is quickly becoming one himself.