VCNO Conversation with a Shipmate
Admiral Michelle Howard on Issues Facing Today's Navy
17 September 2015
All Hands Magazine's MC1 Andrew Johnson sat down with Vice Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michelle Howard to talk about her time at the academy, issues currently affecting the Navy, and gender integration.
Johnson: At All Hands our goal is to create content for Sailors by Sailors and one of the things I like to do is help our Sailors throughout the fleet get to know a bit about their senior leadership, so I really appreciate you taking time for us. One of the things I really want to get started with is the decision to be in the Navy. You graduated high school in Air Force country more or less with an Air Force tie in the family, yet you ended up in Annapolis and joined the Navy. Ma'am, tell me a little about that.
Howard: Well the first step was actually making the decision to go to a service academy and it turns out that was not an easy step. I saw a documentary and thought well that is what I want to do.
I went and talked to my older brother who made it pretty clear that women were not allowed to go to service academies, it was against the law. I was in shock. That was just hard for me to think that there was a world where girls weren't allowed to do the same things as boys.
So I went and talked to my mother and she confirmed that was the law. Service academies were closed but then she made a great statement; she said, 'look your young, your only 12 you may change your mind - but in a couple of years if you still want to go, you apply and if they are still closed to women we'll sue the government.' She started me on a road of understanding the importance of persistence but she also said something that is even greater wisdom. She said 'you might apply and we have to sue the government,' and she said 'in the end the supreme court might agree with you that the law needs to be changed but by that point comes you might be too old to attend. But if another woman gets to attend instead of you that's just as important.'
Johnson: So even before entering the service academy in Annapolis you encountered obstacles. We all encounter obstacles throughout our career whether you're in the Navy or not. Talk to me a little bit about your drive and what helped you get through some of those obstacles.
Howard: Annapolis teaches you the meaning of shipmates, so I had roommates and we still actually refer to ourselves as roommates for life, and we made a pact our first summer there to make sure we got through. It was a pretty simple pact - that if any one of us felt like we were going to quit we had to convince the other roommates that it was our genuine desire to leave and that we weren't being pressured to leave. And all four of us got through and graduated.
Johnson: It's been a little more than a year since I had the opportunity to attend your most recent promotion ceremony and it doesn't seem like it has been that long ago. I remember when you referred to ordering the four star shoulder boards for the female uniform and how funny or entertaining that was [because they didn't exist for females]. Talk to me about what you have done, what you're proud of, accomplishments you have made, where you see struggles or things we need to look for going into the future.
Howard: So those shoulder boards might be a good place to start because I would say what I probably did not foresee was the impact of the promotion. And the rest of the story is vanguard was the company that made the shoulder boards and it was an all-woman team that put them together. Each of the seamstresses and tailors have their own individual role from cutting the cloth to actually sewing the stars and the embroidery for the stars and they took photographs of themselves putting together the first set of women's shoulder boards. The company sent them to me and asked me to sign the photographs for each of the women, and I was definitely very pleased and proud to do that. They saw themselves as literally sewing themselves into a part of history.
Johnson: So as the 38th VCNO, gender diversity is one of your hot topics and something you really want to place emphasis on, how is the navy doing on that?
Howard: So we're about 17-18 percent women. I think about when I started and we were around five percent women. The biggest changes in policy that impacted our growth was one, in 1967 we took the cap off the percentage of women who could serve. It used to be constrained by two percent across the armed forces and with the all-volunteer force that meant all the services started recruiting women as well as men. So we've been steadily ramping up. And then for us, the Navy, the biggest change was the repeal of the combat exclusion law and opening up of ships and fighter aircraft to women just gave us tremendous opportunity. So since then we have had women COs of destroyers and cruisers, a woman commanding a carrier strike group and then most recently we've moved women into submarines. ... So from EOD to Seabees, most of the Navy is open to women and wherever I travel now as vice chief I see women doing everything and doing it well, and so we should step back and pat ourselves on the back on how far we have come. Where I think we need to go is we need to understand that this is about looking for the best folks who want to serve in the Navy. Our country is actually a little bit more female than male right now we're reaching the point where close to 60 percent of our college graduates are women and we're a technologically focused force so we need to recruit that educated brain power and bring it into the service and so we're looking at all of the policies on how we employ women and where women can serve and trying to speed some of those processes up.
Johnson: So in terms of opening up opportunities you have been on the forefront of several of those opportunities how would you describe the opportunities that are now available for women in today's Navy?
It's exciting. If someone had asked me when I was a lieutenant commander and the combat exclusion law was repealed whether or not women would have been serving on submarines, I'd say eventually but I'd be old and retired at that point.
Howard: So the fact that it's already underway is just significant and so the Navy should feel good about what we have done and where we are going. Probably what's even more delightful to me as a leader is there's been a generational shift in how we see each other as people, and my belief is our younger Sailors and officers, its not a thing with them and that says a lot about the future of the Navy and why we'll continue to be a great Navy.
Johnson: There are topics that are not as pleasant but equally important. One of those is sexual assault prevention and response. I feel like the conversations are frequent and the education is definitely growing but in your mind how is the Navy handling that and where are we now when it comes to SAPR?
Howard: Well first of all I agree with you. Like everyone else I took both the bystander intervention training this year and the sexual assault prevention response training and I think the training is spot on - a combination of education, interesting, and really gets folks thinking about their behavior and what their responsibilities are. Coming out of last year's survey one of the things that was a real plus was our Sailors said that when they see something happen nine out of 10 of them say by golly I did something about it. They either went to the chain of command or they directly intervened. They took steps and so we have a pretty good foundation of Sailors who are willing to help Sailors. Shipmates helping shipmates - the goal is get that to 100 percent. And what's more important is we've got to get to a place where there is no need for bystander intervention; that we have great command climate across all our units and that our Sailors treat each other with dignity and respect and that work is a fun place, a great place, and is a place with purpose and that all of our Sailors go to work and take deep pride in who they are and what they are doing for their country.
Johnson: Another one of the areas you've really spoke a lot about, and that you're an advocate for, impacts that Navy family as a whole - not just the active and reserve Sailor but also our civilian counterparts and definitely the family members of all those groups and that's cyber information and awareness. Why is that domain so challenging?
Howard: From my perspective we have transitioned into another domain and we're really grounded in the physical world. We understand land, we understand air and Sailors understand the maritime domain. The challenge of cyber is it's a pretty new domain. When you look at the birth of the internet and the World Wide Web it has snuck up on us created another dimensionality for us to operate in that we're having a hard time absorbing. The other challenge is, because of the way it has crept into every aspect of our lives ... you cannot do your job today whether you're an administrator or a fire control technician without somehow being involved and working in this domain
So the threats are very similar to the threats in the physical domain. My sense is particularly for our Sailors who are considered digital natives that they have a lot of trust in this domain and they need to think about it the same way they think about taking care of themselves in the physical domain. If you wouldn't go to the ATM after dark because there is danger, there are certain things you shouldn't do on the internet for those same reasons. There was a report that in 2013 somewhere around 13 percent of folks who were on social media had their profiles stolen, so you could lose your identity, you could lose your finances. I was surprised at the number of Sailors who don't even have anti-virus software on their personal laptops, so we've got to teach people that it's a great domain you can have fun in, but you have to protect yourself in this domain.
Johnson: In terms of the threats we are facing, as you mentioned, this is fluid domain and something that is consistently changing. Anything that's got technology near it is going to do that. What can we do to stay out in front of it?
Howard: So the first thing that has to happen is that we have to understand the domain and what it means and when I have spoken publicly not just to Navy people but to audiences - the hardest piece for us to wrap our minds around is the time component of this domain and what it means to us. So the example I use is that when I first got my computer back in 1997 I ordered it from gateway it had the cow markings on and it didn't work. I ended up calling a help rep and the guy was in India. I'm sitting there in Leavenworth, Kansas and he says 'let me take control of your computer.' We should not take that for granted when you talk about the fourth dimension it is the collapsing of space and time. So it's like this in a physical world. We think of the shortest distance between two points as a straight line - when you think about the fourth dimension the shortest distance between two points is to bring the two points together - space and time meet that is the essence of one day time travel. But for us here on earth this is what's happening. I'm sitting in Leavenworth, Kansas, there's a guy in India and he says 'let me take control of your cursor' and space and time met on my computer in Kansas.
A guy on another continent at the speed of light has control of my machine and so we have to understand we have physical effects in this domain.
At the speed of light we will be operating simultaneously in the cyber domain while we're operating in the physical domain so we not only have to be able to drive ships, shoot weapon systems in the maritime domain we have to be able to understand at the same time at the speed of light there will be effects in this domain
...that can be lethal or also ours to employ when we go to the war fight.
Johnson: You mentioned the anti-virus software and how surprised you were that so many weren't using it I guess conversely that is the most common one we think about. What else could we be doing to prepare ourselves to combat that cyber threat?
Howard: So some of it is fundamental education and it's this continuum of how much do I need to know, am I an operator, do I just flip the light switch on and in order to flip the light switch on ... do I have to understand how the power plant works? Well for us as warriors there's somewhere in between that knowledge that's important for us to know. You have to understand fundamentally how computer systems work, how network systems talk to each other. There's a hardware component to this that's the individual machine but it also consists of cables and fiber and how all of that works together and then you have to have some fundamental understanding of even what happens in your laptop. ... I don't think everyone has to be at the nuclear power plant level of understanding, but we have to know a little bit more than switching the light switch, which for many people is just turning the computer on logging in and moving out into the domain. We got to get to a level of knowledge and education that says, 'well I understand what a great tool this is, what a great resource this is, but also what my vulnerabilities are.'
Johnson: So we covered a lot of different topics. Was there anything you wanted to add or anything you would like to say to Sailors throughout the fleet?
Howard: They are doing a fantastic job. I would like them to continue to focus on being the best Sailors they can be and continue to think about taking care of their shipmates.