Prove the money was redirected and that the new funding amount for maintenance is insufficient that it caused the rust you specified, and that the rust levels are greater than other time periods.

You want to me to look at a photo of rust and get mad and then believe you about funding?

The captains have enough leeway, they can get the deck stripped and repainted if they prioritized it.

Of course, their commanders provide the environment that allows or requires them to do other things instead.

Probably too many other ‘must do’s’ and other problems.

If the command gives a rip about its reputation then these things will be addressed first. Everything from swabbing and sweeping decks, high dusting, polishing fittings, etc. It will look immaculate. Only on deployment do these appearance priorities start to drop due to operational concerns or tempo.

But the surface Navy is not a good community and is filled with self-interested officers that are more concerned about progressing their careers than training their people or maintaining their gear. It's why the collisions happened and it's why people died because of those.

The Navy has a huge culture problem in the surface community and until someone with the authority to address it decides to, things won't get better.

It's a big factor that led me to leave the Navy and go onto other things.

I'd constantly be trying to do something a different way that I could prove was more effective and be told not to do it.

Anyways that's my two cents on the topic.

I'll assume that's a reasonable take but the person I replied to went for an overly simplistic "government bad" line hence the style of my life