Michigan Today - November 2007

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Stronger, more humane, more efficient

Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter is remaking the way the US wages maritime war and peace.

By David McKay Wilson

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Secretary of the Navy Donald J. Winter

On the coffee table of US Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter's office sits a University of Michigan football helmet, signed by Athletic Director Bill Martin and football Coach Lloyd Carr. They sent it to the Pentagon in May 2007 after Winter confided that several of his senior advisors had graduated from Notre Dame.

"They were concerned that my staff was loaded with Notre Dame alumni," says Winter, who flew out to this year's thumping of Notre Dame in September. "So they decided to provide me with some ammunition."

The Wolverine helmet on display in his fourth-floor Pentagon suite is a reminder of the years Winter spent in Ann Arbor in the late 1960s and early 1970s, earning his master's and doctorate in physics. That was Winter's first involvement with the US military. While at Michigan, Winter conducted research in radar and optical systems at the Willow Run Laboratories, which was then run by the university. Winter received his doctorate in 1972, just a few months before student protests forced the university to end its association with the labs, which had substantial contracts with the US Defense Department.

"I was one of the last to graduate before Willow Run got thrown out," says Winter, known in the Pentagon as the SECNAV. "It was a unique opportunity to see technology applied to real problems. But as I was doing my dissertation work at Willow Run, I figured it was a good thing to finish up and get out."

Get out he did, and Winter soon began a successful career in what President Dwight D. Eisenhower dubbed the "military industrial complex," moving back and forth between the defense industry and the Department of Defense over the past 36 years. After a stint conducting satellite research for TRW Systems in California, Winter moved to Washington, D.C. in 1980 to work for DARPA – the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – in the early years of research on the space-based defense system later known as Star Wars.

He returned to TRW Systems two years later, and continued his work with space projects while also climbing the corporate ladder. He become president of TRW Systems in 2000 and served in that post until  the company was bought by defense giant Northrup Grumman in 2002. He continued to lead that division of Northrup Grumman until he was nominated by President Bush to serve as the nation's 74th Secretary of the Navy.

As the Navy's top civilian, Winter is charged with training, recruiting and dealing with personnel issues for more than 640,000 men and women who serve for the US Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Department of the Navy.  His office sets the policies that are transforming the Navy to keep pace with the ever-changing global geopolitical landscape. Among the policies undergoing change are those dealing with the Navy's multi-billion dollar acquisition program, which has put Winter at odds with his former colleagues in the defense industry.

When he came to the Pentagon in 2006, he found a procurement system that he felt was weighted in favor of the contractors that provide equipment to the Navy, including the shipyards building vessels that can last up to 50 years. Winter's management team found huge cost overruns in a major new program. He cancelled a ship to be built by Lockheed Martin because the first of the Navy's 55 littoral combat ships, designed to patrol in shallow coastal waters, came in almost double its original projected cost of $220 million.

Winter has also been critical of industry for delays and the poor quality of some products delivered to the fleet. Late delivery and flaws in ships which have to be fixed before going to sea keep much-needed capabilities out of the hands of sailors and Marines.

Moreover, Winter says, shipbuilders have often been left to make decisions about key trade-offs in ship performance, crew size, logistics support, cost, and construction schedule. Winter believes strongly that the Navy must re-assert its control over the entire shipbuilding acquisition process. "The Navy owns the fleet, and the Navy is the customer; sometimes industry forgets that," says Winter.

Control over the process means that the Navy must make those crucial decisions itself. By re-asserting control, Winter hopes to leverage technologies and lessons learned from one program to others in order to drive down cost and optimize the Navy's investments.

He says getting tough with the contractors was an important part of his campaign to gain more control. The stakes are high. The Navy, which now has 276 ships, plans to boost its fleet to 313 by 2016.

"Senior management in these companies needs to know what's working and what isn't working," says Winter. "Our objective is clear: we want to make sure we provide our sailors and Marines with equipment they can depend upon and equipment that serves their needs."

While Winter pushes to improve the Navy's warfighting capabilities, he's also wants the Navy to do its part to win the hearts and minds of people around the world.

In September, the Navy brought humanitarian aid to Nicaragua to help with relief efforts following Hurricane Felix. In July, Winter was in Guatemala on the hospital ship, USNS Comfort, which was providing medical help as well as a battalion of Seabees to rebuild a school and improve sanitary conditions.

Winter, who has a portrait of President Theodore Roosevelt in his office, recalls that the former assistant secretary of the Navy sent ships on goodwill tours that also showcased the nation's military might.

"With a military force conducting diplomacy, there is an implicit understanding that, when diplomacy fails, other measures can be brought to bear on a situation," he says. "In other words, there is both a carrot and a stick. And carrots without a credible stick do not get you very far, especially in dangerous neighborhoods."

The new Navy also needs technological breakthroughs to help keep the nation safe and secure, Winter told defense researchers in August at a symposium in Anaheim, Ca., sponsored by DARPA, the Defense Department's research arm he worked for in the early 1980s.

Winter acknowledged that our 21st century enemies—the stateless terrorist cells that are sprinkled around the world—are using Internet technology as well as a savvy media perspective to counter the huge military advantage of powers like the United States. In fact, Winter says the US military's technological edge is not always a decisive advantage in today's world, noting that the suicide bombers of Sept. 11 and the improvised explosive devices used by the insurgents in Iraq are not technologically advanced weapons.

It's a far different world than the one Winter faced in the early 1970s when he left Michigan to devise the latest in military technology. More than three decades later, though, he still has faith that technology may play a role in making us more secure.

"With computing power, the ability to buy technology, geographical dispersion and the Internet, fourth-rate powers willing to adopt barbaric tactics can challenge a nation whose gross domestic product stands at over $13 trillion," Winter told the DARPA scientists. "Truly, this is a sobering thought, but one which should inspire us to find a more promising way forward."

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