SNA 2024 — In her first major speech as the chief of naval operations, Adm. Lisa Franchetti called for the Navy to get “more players on the field,” urging improvements to ship maintenance, ship construction and embracing new unmanned and advanced platforms.
“To be able to do the things that our nation is asking the Navy to do, we need to have more players available to do that,” Franchetti told reporters following her remarks here on Tuesday afternoon. “And that’s people players, that’s platform players. … It’s all our platforms. It’s all of our capabilities — that warfighting ecosystem that we need to put together.”
“So, it’s not a number,” she added, ostensibly referencing the Navy’s overall ship count, a metric Capitol Hill has pressed her recent predecessors to focus on more intently. “It’s an ecosystem of all those things put together.”
Franchetti, who had been serving as vice chief of naval operations until then-CNO Adm. Michael Gilday retired last summer, was confirmed as the most senior Navy officer in early November. With one exception for an appearance on a panel at the Reagan National Defense Forum in December, this year’s Surface Navy symposium was her first major public engagement as CNO and one with a predominantly Navy audience.
Her remarks in many ways were akin to the ones that former CNOs would give a crowd at SNA: impressing upon attendees the role the Navy plays in global security, lauding recent accomplishments (in this case shooting down missiles and drones in the Mediterranean and Red Seas), and offering a number of historical references to Navy legends of old like Adms. Elmo Zumwalt and James Holloway.
But Franchetti’s first major keynote speech both as the Navy’s new CNO and the first woman to serve as a full-fledged member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff also speaks to the moment she finds herself in. At a time when the Pentagon is coming under increasing scrutiny from Capitol Hill over what it prioritizes, Franchetti’s approach has been to relentlessly focus her message on warfighting — and little else. Moments before she was scheduled to take the stage Tuesday, Franchetti’s office published a paper outlining the her priorities titled “America’s Warfighting Navy.”
“Our priorities. We will focus on warfighting, warfighters, and the foundation that supports them,” according to the paper. The single-page document, although light on specific details, goes on to set the tone Franchetti envisions for her tenure, reinforcing the Navy’s core values, its mission and purpose in defending the country’s national interests.
A Break With Her Predecessor
Serving as vice chief under Gilday, Franchetti had been a silent operator, making minimal contact with the press and the public. Meanwhile, Gilday in some respects was outspoken as CNO, bluntly criticizing industry for its excessive lobbying and at one point swiftly defending a junior Navy officer who Republican lawmakers publicly attacked over a video discussing how their ship held a spoken word poetry event.
With a much more traditional messaging style focused simply on “warfighting” and “warfighters,” Franchetti, even from her first moments as the prospective chief of naval operations, appeared to sidestep of some more politically controversial issues that her predecessor would occasionally tackle head on.
For example, Alaska’s Sen. Dan Sullivan, R, during Franchetti’s nomination hearing went after the reading list published by Gilday because several books focused on the subject of “racial politics.” The senator said he didn’t take issue with what sailors chose to read in their down time, but questioned why the Navy’s senior officer would promote those books to their force.
Franchetti responded she wasn’t aware of the process that selected books for the reading list, but said “if confirmed, I will develop a process and I will focus on warfighting, warfighters and winning,” largely ducking the issue and pivoting back to her message.
In a similar moment at the same hearing, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., asked Franchetti to respond to what he described as a Navy ship crew holding a celebration related to the LGBTQ community and suggested the event would “divide” the Navy’s “team” unnecessarily.
“For the last 38 years, I’ve been focused on building teams that can fight and win our nation’s wars,” Franchetti responded. “I’m focused on warfighting, warfighters and winning and that’s what our military needs to be focused on.”
To cap her speech off on Tuesday afternoon, the new CNO used a nautical phrase reserved for when ships find themselves in a dangerous or dynamic situation and must quickly rev up their engines to move swiftly.
“All ahead flank!” she commanded.