The Navy’s new top officer has no shortage of challenges to confront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations since September, is at the helm at a time when demand for his force is peaking, but the resources to fund it are shrinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Deployments in recent years have stretched to nearly\u00a0The Navy is wrangling down deployment lengths that\u00a0had stretched to almost <\/span>11 months. That’s worsened a maintenance backlog and any sense of normalcy sailors and their families had hoped for after years of high optempo.That’s a lot of wear and tear on ships and sailors.\u00a0The fleet was also struggling to \u00a0dig itself out of a maintenance backlog that threatened to disrupt any remaining sense of normalcy about deployments for sailors and their families.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Navy must make the case for buying\u00a0Budget pressure makes it unclear how the service will The compressed budget also presents\u00a0serious questions about how the service is\u00a0going to pay for<\/span> tens of billions of dollars-worth of new ballistic missile submarines, while still purchasing\u00a0new\u00a0fighters jets and warships — not to mention attack submarine which are also growing in importance<\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n The service is working to integrate On the personnel front, sweeping changes to retirement and compensation programs were undergoing radical change and the Navy struggled to cut down on the number of uniforms it pays sailors to own and maintain. There are also questions about how the\u00a0Navy will\u00a0integrate <\/span>women into its <\/span>previously closed combat billets in the SEALs and Special Warfare Combat Crewman communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And on the international front, challenges from China’s growing dominance of the Asia-Pacific and a resurgent Russia threaten\u00a0to draw out the smallest fleet since before World War I even further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an exclusive interview with Navy Times, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John\u00a0Richardson talked about the challenges he faces with pushing down deployments to his stated goal of seven months<\/span>, handling issues in the South China Sea, shrinking the number of uniforms sailors buy and designing a fitness test that’s more relevant to sailors’ jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Check out the stories below to find out what CNO had to say.\u00a0Click the stories embedded below to find out what CNO had to say.\u00a0Some quotes in the stories\u00a0have been edited for brevity.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Deployments:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n Fitness:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n Women in the SEALs:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n The South China Sea:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Navy spy case:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Navy’s new top officer has no shortage of challenges to confront.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":70406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":65,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[12,65],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3231],"class_list":["post-40670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-your-navy"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"HMAY4MKZ5BCXDOAL4F6GEQOHYM","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-navy\/2016\/04\/22\/top-officer-discusses-challenges-facing-the-navy\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n