Maintaining Morale Among Young Sailors
Mission and purpose matter. And the U.S. Navy has faith in its young sailors, said Rear Adm. Kavon “Hak” Hakimzadeh, commander for Carrier Strike Group 2, when asked about maintaining morale during longer deployments.
Hakimzadeh was speaking alongside fellow Navy panelists during a WEST 2025 session in San Diego.
“That faith is well placed,” he told the audience. “When you give them a mission and you give them a purpose, they come through for you every single time. The thing they don’t love is B.S.”
Open communication is key, Hakimzadeh emphasized. And when an adversarial threat is clearly approaching, there is no concern about mission.
Still, the speaker asked listeners to be empathetic toward today’s fighters, many of whom are between the ages of 19 and 24. “The people that win for us … are sitting at consoles having to make decisions about how to defend their ships and how to engage various adversaries with various defensive capabilities.”
With that, Hakimzadeh shared his lessons learned about maintaining morale within these young sailors.
First, there is no such thing as redundancy in combat; there is only defense in depth. During moments of attack, Hakimzadeh wants to ensure the integration of every layer of defense between his operators and the ship full of sailors.
Second, he outlined the mastery of craft. “Sitting in the scope and understanding exactly what you’re looking at, as a young sailor … that level of skill is not something we necessarily always train to in the basic phase,” he said.
When you give them a mission and you give them a purpose, they come through for you every single time.
Expertise in this field comes only from continuous training and commitment to months of training.
“A lot of the defensive systems we have out there … rely on taking shots at optimal positions, and there are optimal times at which you can take a shot, and that requires tactical patience,” Hakimzadeh said, drawing attention to the qualifications and training necessary to prepare sailors for warfighting capabilities.
Mastery of the craft and equipment must be built into training, he said.
Finally, Hakimzadeh spoke on procedural compliance and the difficulty in convincing people to take those necessary extra steps. “The sailors who are operating the [defensive and offensive] equipment, we’ve got to make sure they recognize the value of strict procedural compliance.”
WEST is co-hosted by AFCEA International and the U.S. Naval Institute. SIGNAL Media is the official media of AFCEA International.
