Here is a good piece on the organizational design of the Navy and the Chief of Naval Operations from Admiral Hyman Rickover’s 1974 speech, The Role of Engineering in the Navy.
When Congress established that position, it was clearly understood that the Chief of Naval Operations — the Navy’s highest-ranking military officer — was subordinate to the Secretary of the Navy, and that his job was to prepare the Fleet and keep it ready for war. He could give recommendations on the shipbuilding program, but not make the decisions. He did not control the technical bureaus which were concerned with ship design and construction; the chiefs of these bureaus reported directly to the Secretary.
The Navy was divided into what was called a bilinear organization. One line of authority and responsibility, that for operational matters, extended from the Secretary to the Chief of Naval Operations. The other line extended from the Secretary to the chiefs of the bureaus. Ship design and construction were handled by the Chief of the Bureau of Ships who reported directly to the Secretary. Occasionally a Chief of Naval Operations attempted to expand his power over the bureaus. Admiral King tried to do so during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt at once saw the issue. Roosevelt was no novice in naval affairs. He had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1920 – not only a long period of time, but also during the years of World War I. The President gave as his reason for opposing King that:
“We ought not to have all the administrative problems of personnel and material, shore establishments, production, etc., go up through the Chief of Naval Operations. When you come down to it, the real function of the Chief of Naval Operations is primarily naval operations- no human being can take on all the responsibilities of getting the Navy ready to fight. He should know all about the state of that readiness, and direct the efforts of it… If they are not ready to fight, or are slow in getting ready, it is his function to raise hell about it. Details of getting ready to fight ought not to bother him.”
And, mind you, this was said when the Navy had not yet reached a fraction of the technical complexity it has today. Roosevelt clearly understood the distinction between the role of the line officer and that of the technical officer. Unfortunately, some of the policy makers who came later did not.
President Roosevelt clearly understood that the job of organizing, equipping, and training a military service was far too vast a responsibility for any one person to possibly control. No person could have the knowledge or attention to make such weighty decisions. In the 1960s, the CNO’s staff centralized a lot of the functions that had been resided with the bureau chiefs. Requirements, personnel, resourcing, logistics. As more and more decisions came under the service chiefs, the greater their staffs had to grow to absorb it all.
The service chiefs and service secretaries are literally the only two people in the service where authority is integrated to get any significant effort underway. But policy makers should remember that information is decentralized. Pieces of information that are important as to whether an idea is successful or a boondoggle cannot be reported up to that level in a short PowerPoint brief.
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