Adm. Greenert fields questions from Enterprise crew

There was no question too small - and no topic too big - for Adm. Jonathan Greenert during a whirlwind visit to the aircraft carrier Enterprise.

Almost four months into his job as chief of naval operations, weeks before the release of a pared-down defense budget, the Navy's top-ranking officer flew aboard Thursday specifically to talk shop with sailors.

Greenert was happy to take questions during an all-hands meeting in the carrier's cavernous hangar bay as it steamed about 100 miles off the coast. (Will deployments get longer? Will the Navy scale back funding for college classes? How will tensions with Iran affect the ship's coming deployment to the Persian Gulf?)

But the four-star admiral, a submariner by training, seemed to most enjoy turning the tables and peppering everyone he met with questions.

After dining alongside a group of junior enlisted sailors, Greenert made a beeline for the galley. Donning a paper cap, he plunged into the steamy kitchen where a team of cooks (culinary specialists, in Navy parlance) had just finished preparing batches of blackened catfish, macaroni and cheese, steamed broccoli, and rice pilaf.

As he shook hands and passed out commemorative coins, the admiral talked to each sailor on duty.

Where are you from? How long have you been in? What do you want to do in the Navy? he asked. Some sailors got additional queries: Why did you want to be a culinary specialist? What was the hardest item on tonight's menu to make? What time do you start preparing dinner? (Answer: right after lunch is finished.)

Before leaving the galley, Greenert spent a few minutes with the ship's assistant food service officer, Master Chief Petty Officer Thaddeus Wright. The two talked about balancing heat-and-serve offerings with dishes made from scratch, and making sure culinary specialists are taught to cook, not just warm up food.

The payoff is twofold, Greenert said. "I don't want the food to be bad, and people not to learn," he told Wright.

Wright said he was thrilled that the admiral spent half an hour in the galley, an often-overlooked spot in a ship with eight nuclear reactors and its own airport.

"I would never expect to really see that," he said. "He wants to make it right."

In separate sessions with aviators in a squadron ready room, and with chief petty officers in their mess, or private eating quarters, Greenert dug deeper: Do sailors have adequate training? Is equipment holding up under the stress of back-to-back deployments? Do spouses have the support they need?

He asked the chief petty officers about hazards to young sailors, including predatory lenders and "Spice," a synthetic form of marijuana that's banned by the Navy and illegal in Virginia.

Amidst the serious discussions, Greenert and Rick West, the master chief petty officer of the Navy, or MCPON, had some fun with the crew.

In front of a thousand sailors, they sang "Happy Birthday" to the ship, which celebrated its 50th in November.

Both handed out hundreds of shiny metal command coins, which have no monetary value but carry their own cachet.

During the all-hands meeting, Greenert shared his vision of the Navy, boiled down to a half-dozen words.

"War-fighting first. Operate forward. Be ready. Those are the six simple words I tell my staff day in, day out. That's the way we look at things up there, and that's the way we'll operate during my tenure," he said.

"Operating forward" is nothing new, but some of the specifics Greenert described may have been news to Enterprise sailors, who returned from deployment in July and are headed back to the Middle East in March.

In coming years, U.S. ships won't just make port visits in Spain and Singapore - they'll be stationed in those nations, at the invitation of their governments.

Four guided-missile destroyers, equipped with ballistic missile defense capabilities, will operate out of Rota, Spain, Greenert said. He estimated that the first of those ships would relocate in two years, with all of them in place by 2016.

It's too early to say whether any Norfolk-based destroyers would shift to Spain, he said.

Similarly, there are plans for a number of U.S. littoral combat ships to operate out of Singapore, on the Strait of Malacca, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

Having ships already on station saves both money, in the form of fuel, and time - it takes about three weeks for a ship to travel from the West Coast to the Strait of Malacca, and about a week to get from the East Coast to the Mediterranean.

In response to questions about not having enough crew members on ships, Greenert said, the Navy has begun to shift more billets from shore duty to sea duty. And top brass are considering offering incentives to sailors on shore duty who want to go back to sea.

In an interview, Greenert said the Navy is studying the feasibility of rotating crews on more classes of ships. The service already assigns dual crews to coastal patrol ships, mine-hunters and ballistic missile submarines. A while back, the Navy considered expanding the practice to destroyers but decided not to after a pilot program.

Now, Greenert said, it is re-examining that option.

The Enterprise sailors, who will be at sea for work-ups for a few more weeks before heading east on deployment, have more immediate concerns - such as Iran's threat to close off the Strait of Hormuz in response to sanctions over its nuclear program.

"Things are warm" with Iran, Greenert said, but he cautioned sailors not to get too caught up in the international political rhetoric.

The majority of recent actions between the Iranian navy and the U.S. Navy in the Strait of Hormuz have been professional and in accordance with international standards, the admiral said.

"You guys are pretty good at what you do, and Iran has a pretty good sense for that."

CNN reported Friday afternoon that two U.S. ships - the amphibious transport dock New Orleans and the Coast Guard cutter Adak - were harassed by Iranian speedboats on Jan. 6. No shots were fired, and in the Coast Guard incident, the small boats backed off after the Americans established communications with a larger Iranian naval vessel.

While that issue and others will keep the new CNO busy, Greenert clearly enjoyed taking a break from the Pentagon and spending time with sailors.

"Doing this is more exciting than any damn thing I do," he told the crew. "I got to go the White House and have a chat with the president - that was pretty cool. But this tells me more, and I get more out of this, than anything else. My job is to enable you all to go out and do your jobs... to see you all able to do it is very satisfying."

Kate Wiltrout, (757) 446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com