(Rant mode on)
So, do you think that the admin burden on the other parts of the Navy, much less the other services, is less? Or that the pressure to manage cultural values to a more standardised community view is less? Or the push to ensure a workforce profile in line with the community profile is less? Or the pressure to declare forces ready for operations? Or to ensure, not minimisation of risk but zero risk? Those things are certainly not unique to the surface Navy; and that is what better than half that report is about.
They appear, regrettably, to be a function of a Western society which seems to think war should be fought like a video game without real casualties, that somehow believes the West has something to be ashamed of, that the world is a nice place and that all one needs to do to achieve your aims is to defer to everbody else’s allegedly legitimate desires (pace, the Workd War 2 generation) and nobody will ever take advantage of you, that providing equal opportunity to all is more important than ensuring that you are always capable of winning, and that is unwilling to accept that humans are fallible and that therefore mistakes can and will be made even by the best people you have- and that doesn’t mean should immediately sack them. Unless of course they’re politicians and then it doesn’t matter, because, after all, they are only human.
And to this observer (a.k.a. old fogey) at least those attitudes seem to be widespread in the (real) democracies at the moment (most of Europe, Canada, NZ, Australia, the UK and not least the USA) possibly to our ultimate cost.
Does the emperor have new clothes?
(mode off)