Amid China’s warship expansion, Navy’s top military officer touts sailor-first focus

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - The U.S. Navy’s top military officer is in Honolulu, wrapping up a 10-day tour of the Asia-Pacific.

Adm. Daryl Caudle, chief of naval operations, visited U.S. bases in Japan, South Korea, Guam, and Hawaii, meeting with sailors and allies.

He also toured South Korean and Japanese shipbuilding facilities, part of a strategy to expand the U.S. Navy’s industrial capacity as Beijing rolls out more advanced warships, including a new aircraft carrier.

Caudle toured the barracks at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam Friday morning and talked with sailors about their living conditions.

Faced with ongoing threats from China, North Korea and Russia in the region, Caudle believes a “sailor-first” approach is critical to ensuring resilient and combat-ready forces.

“The quality of service, quality of life, quality of work, the way we actually build them, so they’re masters of their craft, is so important to the concepts of operations, so that we are the most lethal Navy every single day, until we get where our capacity is back to where it should be,” he said.

This as the Navy struggles to modernize an aging fleet and infrastructure, and America’s ability to build and maintain ships falls far short of the competition.

“The trajectory of those threats and their emergent technologies and capabilities continue to grow at staggering paces. So we have to sustain our ability to keep up with that,” Caudle said.

“We’re behind in shipbuilding, where that’s atrophied over decades in the United States, and it’s such an important part of our global presence here, our logistics here, our ability to defend ourselves and and have the deterrence mechanism necessary.”

“We just can’t overmatch with just size and capacity anymore. So our schemes of maneuver, how we counter target, how we do our targeting, how we do long range precision, lethal effects,” Caudle added.

Changes are underway, but will take years. In the meantime, the Navy is working with shipbuilders in South Korea and potentially Japan to reduce bottlenecks and fill in some of the gaps.

“All that structure and architecture necessary to field and launch and maintain a sustained world-class Navy that we have has been underinvested for decades, and so it’s become quite brittle. And so my goal is to work with Hawaii, work with the congressional delegation here,” he said.

“None of that matters if I can’t get that impressed upon in our budget. So money talks, it takes resources to do that, and Hawaii has my commitment to make that happen,” he added.

Caudle also emphasized a focus on people and the land, especially in the wake of the Red Hill fuel disaster.

“Hawaii is so important the United States Navy, but so is the culture and tradition and respecting the people here, and I think that’s founded on transparency and trust,” he said.

Still, many families impacted by the Red Hill crisis felt there was not enough accountability.

“Probably better communication of those accountability measures could have been done,” Caudle said, “and that’s always a balance we’re trying to strike with privacy concerns and good order, discipline and transparency, kind of triangle of balance, but I can assure you that accountability is always in our minds so that we don’t repeat these mistakes.”

Caudle says he supports reforming the Jones Act, a move that could help the Navy modernize faster and lower shipping costs for Hawaii residents.