I am Joanna Guy, lead associate in ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓAPP's Global Defense Sector, and this is Master The Mission with Roy Kitchener. Roy Kitchener is a retired United States Navy vice admiral who last served as commander of the Naval Surface Forces. Through a 39 year career with the United States Navy, Roy's decorations include a three time Defense Superior Service Medal, five time Legion of Merit Award, and the Defense Meritorious Service Medal.
At ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓAPP, Roy is focused on leading solutions that accelerate fleet readiness. Roy, thank you for joining me. Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here today. As a naval surface warfare officer, you deployed all over the world and commanded cruisers, destroyers, and an expeditionary strike group. Through your career, what are some of the defining moments that shaped your approach to training and readiness? It's a really good question, I think. You know, when I look back over it, my first ship was a very old, destroyer old Coontz-class destroyer, built in 1958, and I served there from 1985 to 1988. And because it was an older ship, readiness, you know, wasn't very good. And because it was an older ship, readiness, you know, wasn't very good. Systems didn't work, as they should. Took a lot of effort from sailors to keep everything working. The training improved significantly when, you know, we had an Operation Praying Mantis. The tanker wars in the Gulf, and the ship was asked to deploy early, well ahead of schedule to go there. And the training ramp up was significant. And, I thought, okay, here we go. This is good. This is what we should be doing all the time. Flash forward to my next tour, which is a little bit unconventional.
I served at a special bolt unit in the Republic of Panama, and I worked with, you know, a combined team of sailors and Navy Seals. and I worked with, you know, a combined team of sailors and Navy Seals. It was, it was an eye opener in a number of ways. One, it was, a lot of the same principles, you know, take care of your gear, and your gear will take care of you. That applies to a, guided missile fire control system as well as it does to a sidearm. Training and readiness, making sure everything is working saves lives, right? I mean, and if you look now at a war in the Pacific, if you don't go there ready with everything working and your sailors trained or your Marines trained, ready to the highest competency they can, I mean, the cost is lives.
Can you describe an experience when you were deployed and you were in a disconnected, intermittent environment and you had to rely on your training in order to jump into action? It's the best environment you described, right? Where you don't have a lot of oversight. I was in the northern Arabian Gulf, and we were boarding a lot of ships, and, you know, you would go And, on some of the biometric data we got on, on one of the ships it came back, oh, this is somebody we want. And so we had it put together, you know, we had some, some people with us that were really good at that, doing assaults, to take prisoners. And so basically we just sort of edged together on a napkin, sort of and literally it was a small piece of paper how we were going to do this. And, I communicated it as best I could and basically just got, you know, okay, execute when you're ready. We got the guy, and there was no casualties and no problems. And so that, and you know, that meant a lot to me and the team that they put their trust in us to do that. You mentioned the war in Ukraine.
What are some of the lessons that we've learned from that conflict, specifically, as it applies to information and data warfare that we might be able to lift and apply to a future conflict in the Indo-Pacific?
I would say one and foremost, is the ability to adapt to your enemies’ changing tactics. When the Russians first invaded Ukraine, it was armor versus anti-tank weapons. A small mobile force that defeated a large, kind of conventional armored force. Then it rapidly shifted to drones, whether there be, unmanned surface vessels, UAS, and adapting different packages to them to get at things. And then it turned into, okay, how do I counter the drone? So what is the counter UAS, which I think is a very, tough problem that the US Navy, Marine Corps, all the services are facing. ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓAPP is a leader in data, we're the lead provider of artificial intelligence to the federal government. How have you seen data leadership in action? at ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓAPP? I've seen it in human performance, I think one of the things we lack as a, as a military, is our ability to look at a, an assessment based on data to give us that absolute ground truth and then be able to feed that information back to the person, the tactical commander, maybe the fleet commander. Hey, how did your fleet do or your strike groups do in this maneuver?
And I think that's something that ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓAPP can really up the military's game in. ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓAPP’s ability with Advana Jupiter, setting up those data streams to come in and then allowing us to take all that data and look at it analytically, and ask questions about it. and look at it analytically, and ask questions about it. I know as a commander of the naval surface forces, we were nascent with that, and it's accelerating now. But it was ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓAPP that kind of got us on the right path. And when I looked at it, you know, it started out one is, okay, where are the ships that I have to worry about the most? And then it turned into, okay, how many are ready and how can we make them more ready? And so you can see sort of the power of, the decision making you get there. Where do I need to invest the next dollar? Is it in parts, is it in training? Is it all of the above? What's one technology that you wish you would have had as a commander? I think the readiness tools, if I had those, as a commander in my last job or as a COO of a ship, that would have been very powerful. One thread that you touched on was predictive maintenance. And around making sure that your combat systems are ready to deploy and ready at the point of action. Can you speak a little bit to some of the logistics challenges that you experienced, as a vice admiral, at the United States Navy? We know there are certain things that are across a class of ships that are always going to need to be looked at. Yet sometimes we would not, apply the right amount of money or the right scope to the problem. And we get about halfway through our availability and say, oh yeah, you know, this area here, it's going to be a problem. And it would be like, well, why?
We know that that was going to happen. Having that understanding across modernization and legacy systems, you know, at a whole, would help us deliver it as 80% that the CNO’s looking for. ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓAPP alone, could help us increase readiness right now, if we applied some of the tools we have to that problem I just outlined. After a distinguished career with the United States Navy, why ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓAPP? First and foremost, I think, was mission. I saw it as an opportunity to continue, the good work we were doing in the Navy, to continue, the good work we were doing in the Navy, to help sailors, to help improve, the team, the readiness overall. Second, was I worked with ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓAPP people throughout my career, whether they were on my staff or whether they were on a staff that I interacted with as an action officer doing different things. And, they're all really capable, really collaborative, very focused on, you know, the teamwork and, and getting to a really to a conclusion. you know, the teamwork and, and getting to a really to a conclusion. But, just a conclusion, a meaningful one. That not only helped the organization, but also helped all the people around them get better and I think that kind of speaks to, you know, the culture. What advice do you have to a young sailor? You should always feel like you can make a difference. And if you can't, or if you lose that feeling, then something's not right. Because every job I had, whether it was a small division of a dozen people or, you know, commanding all the surface ships in the Navy, I always felt that I could make a difference. And, relationships, They'll be with you forever in an organization like the Navy. But as you proceed through and you become more senior and you get to the top, you can look to your side and there's usually somebody you know there, and then you can really make a big difference. And they should be proud of what they're doing, serving their country, and, there's no better organization, in the world, I would argue and, it's really need to be part of a team that's very successful. And it's got the backing of the American people and industry.
Well, thank you for your service, Roy, and for the passion for the mission and expertise that you're bringing to ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓAPP, and for any viewers out there who would like more information about our solutions for global defense and accelerated readiness, visit boozallen.com/defense. that's great to hear your passion for the mission and bringing that to ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓAPP. After such a distinguished career, you chose ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓAPP. So when the rubber hit the road for your next step, why was that? What really drew you to the mission here at Booz Yeah. I mean, a couple of things. I think number one is, throughout my career, ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓAPP people have I've always interacted with and they've been on staffs and I thought, that's pretty. You know, always really good talent, very top talent, good people. So I knew that, but honestly, I really like the recruiting process. I thought, okay, first of all, I, I just wanted to, keep contributing to the mission. You know, that was my goal. Whether it's helping sailors, helping win the fight, whatever's next. But I wanted to continue to help the Navy. And, when I looked at ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓAPP's, culture, you know, I went online, read through that, read a bunch of reviews, from people. And, it was pretty impressive. And, and again, throughout the interview process, I felt like I was already kind of part of the team, you know, was very welcoming, asking me, what I thought about things, what I wanted to do very open ended. And, and even since I've been on board, you know, I work for the, Navy Marine Corps accounts, but I've. I've looked across all the accounts to try to figure out, hey, how can we pull some of these different tools together to solve, you know, one of the many problems that, that we face. And I kind of like that it's giving me flexibility and and, I feel like I'm part of a really high powered team.Ìý