Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle said the U.S. is concerned about Venezuela’s relationships with drug cartels as the Navy continues its build-up in the region.
Details of the Navy’s activities there remain classified, Caudle said. He added his main function as CNO is to provide the ships to “Southern Command the forces they need to do these new missions.”
The USS Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group left Norfolk over the weekend with its contingent of Marines. Three destroyers are also in the area, including USS Gravely, which is homeported in Norfolk. A cruiser and submarine are also reportedly headed to the Caribbean.
“The point is, me, the Chief of Naval Operations, is to give combatant commanders forces that they can employ to give the President and Secretary of Defense options,” Caudle said.
The Navy has been part of the Trump administration's expanded border mission since March, when the USS Gravely was dispatched to the Caribbean under a mission run by the U.S. Northern Command, which also controls the landside of the U.S. southern border.
The Pentagon and the White House have not said whether the build up of forces around Venezuela is part of the border mission, which has included the Navy working with the U.S. Coast Guard on drug interdiction.Venezuelan officials have strongly rejected being tied to the drug trade.
Caudle was head of U.S. Fleet Forces, based in Norfolk, before being confirmed as CNO earlier in the month. He came back to Norfolk Thursday in one of his first public appearances. He spoke to a group of roughly 700 sailors inside the hanger bay of the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman.
Sailors questioned the CNO about whether they can have better access to childcare and more comprehensive mental health services on smaller ships, like destroyers. A sailor asked Caudle about the time it takes to get medical care for sailors and their families.
“We need to do something to bolster the medical capacity,” Caudle said. “I think it may be the next big problem that's been riding below kind of the radar for a while, and it's just about to become a significant thing that leadership needs to be made aware of.”
When he was at Fleet Forces, Caudle said he learned that the average age of a doctor in private practice in Hampton Roads is 60 years old.
Over the last decade, the Department of Defense chose to close military medical facilities and send more patients into the community. Less thought was given to whether the private sector had the extra capacity to handle military patients, he said.
Sailors asked him to address the poor condition of Navy barracks and living space on board ships.
“My expectation of our barracks is what an expectation I have as a father going into a dormitory and a college with my daughters and saying,‘this is a place I want them to live?” he asked. “That's my expectation. So that is certainly a place with no mold, no mildew, light fixtures that work.”
At the moment, the Navy is in the middle of a service-wide survey of its housing for junior sailors. The Navy also needs to increase the number of beds, so sailors can live off of the ship, he said.
Caudle told the Hampton Roads sailors gathered on USS Truman that he plans to make his tenure as CNO about improving readiness and adopting a “sailor first” approach that pushes more authority toward rank-and-file sailors.
