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Fleet Forces nominee brings broad experience

Bill Gortney knows naval warfare. It’s the prep work that he’ll have to bone up on as chief of Fleet Forces Command.

Gortney, a vice admiral and director of the Joint Staff, was nominated by President Obama on Jan. 23 to relieve Adm. John Harvey this summer.

His bona fides in combat are well-established. In the past decade, Gortney commanded Carrier Air Wing 7 and Carrier Strike Group 10, both while operating in the U.S. Central Command area of operations, and 5th Fleet in Bahrain. Gortney headed the Naval and Amphibious Element for CENTCOM’s Combined Forces Air Component Commander at the start of the Iraq War, and also served as 5th Fleet chief of staff.

Gortney obviously was intimately involved with the training of those units. It’ll be a different scale at Fleet Forces, however; he’ll be responsible for organizing, manning, training, maintaining and equipping 114 ships and submarines and 1,100 aircraft operated or supported by 112,000 personnel, as well as developing and submitting the necessary budgets. For starters.

“It’s going to be a little bit of a switch,” said retired Adm. Bob Natter, Fleet Forces’ first commander following the renaming of the former Atlantic Fleet. “In the past, we have had folks there ... who dealt with fleet and readiness and budget issues. So this will be a little bit of a change.”

Retired Vice Adm. Peter Daly praised Gortney’s selection but agreed that for all Gortney’s war-fighting and joint experience — he spent more than two years as deputy chief of staff for global force management and joint operations at Fleet Forces — training and maintaining close to half of the Navy will be a challenge.

“I think it’s an important piece of the job to understand how the building blocks of readiness are programmed and how those are laid in place,” said Daly, chief executive officer of the U.S. Naval Institute and Fleet Forces deputy commander under Harvey before retiring last summer. “And I think that’s an area where he was exposed to it at Fleet Forces in his previous job. But that’s probably an area where he’ll have to spend the most time early on, just to understand that.”

Natter said there are “intricacies” to master, “and it’s different for submarines, very different for air wings, different for ships. There is a learning curve there. And you’ve just got to go in and listen and pick it up as quickly as you can, and learn where you need to put your emphasis, and make it all work.”

“Because there’ll be some challenges,” said Natter, who led the command when the destroyer Cole was bombed in Yemen in October 2000 — when it was still known as Atlantic Fleet — and during the run-up to and start of the Iraq War. “There always are.”

Gortney, with a nod to the leader he’ll replace, said he welcomes the challenge.

“I am honored by the nomination, and if confirmed, look forward to serving our Navy as Fleet Forces and continuing the legacy of readiness championed by Adm. Harvey,” he told Navy Times. If confirmed, Gortney will be promoted to admiral.

Naval observers and industry insiders told Navy Times in late December that Gortney appeared to have the inside track on the job, saying he possesses the right combination of operational experience, knowledge of overseas combatant commander requirements and gravitas.

Tough act to follow

Harvey, who took command of Fleet Forces in July 2009 and is expected to retire, didn’t come to the job with an extensive training background, either. A nuclear-trained surface ship officer, his extensive experience at sea — he commanded the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group at the outset of the Iraq War — was complemented by a formidable background in personnel matters, including a stint as chief of naval personnel.

Yet Harvey, by many accounts, has excelled at the job, working to eliminate overhead, restructure lagging long-term ship maintenance and imposing a culture of accountability along the waterfront. The latter was most visible in his taking responsibility for improving the fleet’s condition before Congress and his forceful handling of the scandal involving videos made by Capt. Owen Honors, skipper of the carrier Enterprise, while serving years earlier as the ship’s No. 2 officer.

Gortney’s current job, to which he reported in July 2010, is his second go-round on the Joint Staff; he worked at the J-33 Joint Operations Department, Central Command Division, from 1998 to 1999.

Daly said that background, coupled with his operational experience, will serve him well at the helm of Fleet Forces.

“It’s very important because Fleet Forces … generates all the forces coming off the East Coast, and also has a special responsibility for standards for training all strike groups, East and West Coast,” Daly said.

The commander has to be someone “who understands what it takes to get there, what’s needed and what’s required when they’re at the tip of the spear,” he said. “And Bill Gortney represents that.”

In addition to its manning, training and equipping responsibilities for all Navy forces east of the Mississippi, Fleet Forces Command advises the chief of naval operations on all integrated war-fighter capability requirements. It also handles the Navy’s anti-terrorism/force protection, individual augmentee and sea-basing programs for the CNO.

But it is readiness — what Harvey called “my top issue every day” during Capitol Hill testimony on surface ship readiness July 28, 2010 — that will be Job One for Gortney.

“To me, it’s whether he’s a sharp guy, and whether he’s somebody who can understand the readiness and modernization balance,” Natter said. “Obviously, the CNO has a lot of confidence in him, so I assume that he can. But that really is what’s required ... whether he can put it all in perspective and balance near-term readiness and longer-term investment. We’ll see.

“He’s a good guy. He’s got a good reputation. And hopefully, he’ll do a good job down there.”

Daly said he is confident that Gortney is up to the task “because he has those other pieces … that’ll all fall into place for him. … I think he’s an excellent choice.”

Gortney is a 1977 graduate of Elon College in North Carolina. He earned a commission in the Naval Reserve in September 1977 and, in December 1978, was designated as a naval aviator. He has flown more than 5,360 “mishap-free hours,” according to his official biography, and made 1,265 carrier-arrested landings, primarily in the A-7E Corsair II and the F/A-18 Hornet.