Retired Lt. Richard L.W. Smith, a 22-year Navy veteran and submariner who died from cancer at the age of 79, was buried Wednesday on Moloka'i, where he lived.

Joining the Navy in 1948 and later becoming an officer, he served on the submarines Bugara, Pickerel, Guitarro, Catfish, Greenfish, Blackfish and Cusk, and was in service during the Korean and Vietnam wars, according to his family.

The Navy sent three service members as part of a military funeral honors detail. One carried the American flag, another helped fold the flag, and a bugler played taps.

Smith's daughter, Gay Vance, who lives in California, felt her father deserved more. Specifically , she thinks there should have been a rifle detail to fire a salute — something she recalled from military services years ago.

When Vance learned that there would be just three Navy members as part of her father's burial, she asked around and that's when she was acquainted with Defense Department policy and public law.

The Pentagon, in a 2007 instruction, said military honors requires a minimum of two uniformed military members, in addition to a bugler, if available.

Military services are "encouraged" to provide additional honors, including a firing party or color guard.

"I accepted what I learned about the law, but by experiencing it, I don't think it was right," Vance said of the three-member detail. "It felt empty, incomplete."

It's up to commanders to provide more than the two- military-member minimum.

Gene Castagnetti, director of the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl, said the "21-gun salute" is not well understood by the American public. That honor is reserved for the president and heads of state, he said.

A rifle salute, on the other hand, can be rendered with seven or five or three doing the firing. Castagnetti said the Marine Corps is the only service that sends a full detail — including rifle team — to every Marine veteran's burial.

Agnes Tauyan, a Navy spokeswoman, said, "When resources are available and with advance coordination, we do our very best to provide more than the minimum requirement to honor our departed heroes."

Castagnetti said it's no small commitment for the military branches, with seven or eight services a day at Punchbowl alone. With other cemeteries across Hawai'i, honor details can be stretched thin.

That said, Castagnetti, a retired Marine, also thinks it's a "slap in the face to all our veterans if they can't get the full military honors that they most certainly have earned through their service and sacrifice."