Odd, to put it mildly…
The U.S. Navy has replaced the admiral in charge of the Office of Naval Research with a civilian who has reportedly worked as a Department of Government Efficiency staffer, according to the service.
Rear Adm. Kurt. Rothenhaus, who has served as chief of naval research since June 2023, has been reassigned and replaced by Rachel Riley, who most recently acted as a senior adviser for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a Navy public affairs official confirmed in an emailed statement Thursday.
Riley worked at HHS as part of DOGE, the The New York Times previously reported, a job her LinkedIn profile shows her holding since January 2025.
Full article, HERE from Navy Times.
I have to say this one makes no sense to me. I worked there for 13 years, granted for an SES and GS-15, but the leadership were a Navy Rear Admiral (usually with R&D or acquisition background), and a senior Navy Captain as the XO.
Riley has no R&D or acquisition background but apparently was a ‘team lead’ in organizational transformation and organizational design for efficiency and speed of government organizations. And apparently she also worked on Chinese issues, in addition to being fluent in Chinese… Odd…
I can’t help but wonder how she will get the clearances she needs to be involved with certain projects/programs, much less understand the details of advanced research programs.
But that’s just me, and I’m no longer there. But I have heard a few folks I knew are bailing after the news…
Sigh…
The Navy has apparently botched every single R&D and shipbuilding program for the last 20 years. A person with no experience in it is bound to be better than somebody raised up in that broken system.
And do we really believe flag officers who survived the Obama and Biden purges are smart enough to understand the technical details of anything?
Maybe this is an attempt to remove CCP influence. I expect the PLAN has agents probing the ONR full time.
I think it’s a probe into Naval expenditures, with the hope some wasteful uses of tax dollars are not being used to line the pockets of those with control, nor to stroke the egos of officers that bask in the light of their self-importance.
McC- NO they haven’t blown every R&D program. I know a number that were successful. Shipbuilding is a different issue.
Rick- They were and still are, I’m sure.
Jess- I did see a lot of ‘political’ interference with some of our projects…sigh…
There are basically four explanations coming to mind.
One, the Admiral was desperately needed to address some sort of problem in the organization he was transferred to.
Two, the Admiral was a problem where he is, and the new hire is preferred for some reason.
Three, ONR’s relationship with academia is a special problem where PRC influence is concerned, and this is a patch on that.
Four, ONR and cost savings and/or misappropriation of defense research spending is the important issue.
Re:, one, transferred to an IT/security organization as my lack of Navy Fu unpacks it, and had an IT/security organization background. This counts for more than one point, because recall the stuff with Microsoft and the unclassified cloud.
re: two. Was there a hiring related white mutiny at ONR during late spring semester? Is this related to Hegseth’s attempts at cultural reform?
re: three, I know ONR hires PhDs and MSs from academia, and also hires those for work within academia. (I’ve just been advised that I am biased, a whiner, and slacking off. So I don’t have anything to legally say about defense spending inside the academic world, nor about information controls. If I know anything I should report it through appropriate channels, and not merely say shit on the internet. I have recently skimmed a bit that one JSR-23-12.)
Anyway, on four, it may be in my interest that DoD, DoT, and DoE have spigots flowing into basic and fundamental applied research.
As an interested citizen, but a complete outsider, I think Jess has a point. A glaring example, all these years later, was the WWII torpedo problems and the resistance to change.
When business as usual isn’t working, change is necessary. Change always brings risk. One of three things usually happens. Things get better, things get worse, or things don’t change much at all. Anyway you examine it, the odds are 2-1 in favor of change.
Also, political assholes who are on the left may still be skilled enough when it comes to technical understanding.
(I do have questions about whether narrower technical understanding is always the correct criteria.)
There’s a detection hypothesis around the speculation that current circumstances break conventional understanding, and outside the box reforms are necessary. There is an alternative explanation that ordinary screwballs are merely saying so to justify violating best practices. More conventional people might estimate the second more often. More contrarian people might estimate the first more often.
Maybe it is just my old age and engineer brain, but I strongly suspect the current administration plans to change the entire development strategy for the Navy and the rest of the armed foces where advanced weapons and systems are concerned, going from the slow plodding near perfection before release bureaucratic system to a fast iteration design/test/update/re-test/deploy system much as is being used by SpaceX. Now that would put our defense capability on steroids to overcome the two other current worrisome opponents. Are there pitfalls? Sure, but there are also benefits.
Yeah, SpaceX is maybe a lesson with respect to NASA, and there could be broader implications.
I just know that the full picture is more than my own expertise covers.
great
nice
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