The areas of surface line officer skills most desperately in need of overhauling are shiphandling and command at sea. It has become a frequent practice for one or two, or a very few officers, to be the only ones in a ship who conn during certain evolutions, such as entering or leaving port, or making the approach to a pier. Such discrimination must he halted and a reasonable amount of training must be provided to all line officers.
Significant strides have been made in the last several months to remedy some of the ills of the professional aspects of the seagoing officers’ career, and some additional measures may be immediately pending implementation; these have been long-needed and are greatly appreciated by those concerned. We yet have a long way to go.
Those surface line officer skills—shiphandling and command at sea—for which there is absolutely no source of qualification outside the Navy are precisely the ones for which adequate planning and programming, and specific standards of qualification are not provided for within the Navy. The standard surface line officer career pattern not only fails to build progressively on experience, and fails to provide sufficient depth of exposure to those officers who will need it to best perform some specific assigned function, but it also denies the necessary development of certain skills. Further compounding this unhappy pattern, we have a training scheme which appears to treat each major course of instruction and its immediately subsequent utilization as a unit package which has little or no relation to past training and experience, and possibly none to future use. In the long view, the training scheme is more like a multi-directional chain reaction than the traditional basics-to-specifics pyramid. Our shiphandling and command at sea qualification scheme has broad general boundaries, but with a multiplicity of standards for qualification, and with a large element of chance affecting the potential to qualify.
For the most part, each surface line officer must search out and plot his own route to success in shiphandling and command at sea. This is certainly not the best means for placing each officer in the jobs for which he is best qualified, nor for ensuring that each billet is filled with a qualified officer. We seem to be developing our surface line officer resource by means of “crisis management,” providing only for next immediate goals rather than having an effective long-range plan based on known and anticipated needs.
The shortcomings which exist are neither new nor are they the results of a failure to recognize them in the past. The Secretary’s Retention Task Force (Alford Board, 1965) stressed that “aviators, submariners, and staff corps groups all get specialized training, but the surface line officer does not.” A major portion of this problem was addressed in a recent article.[*] The author of that discussion, Captain Bowling, prescribed building these dwindling skills through deliberate retouring of officers to the same force within the surface warfare specialty—such as amphibious, antisubmarine, logistic, or mine—and to the same shipboard departmental areas such as operations/navigation, or weapons/deck. Under this proposal, the line officer would be divorced from engineering duties, using only EDO, WO, LDO and senior enlisted personnel to perform these functions. It is considered imperative that this general concept be followed, eliminating the fallacy that the line officer can be a jack-of-all-trades in modern naval warfare. Instead, we need to build sufficient depth of experience in each specialized type function so that each can be performed with a high level of competence.
The additional areas of surface line officer skill acquisition and use which desperately need overhauling are those of shiphandling and command at sea. To this end, the problems which must be faced are a long-range determination of numbers of officers required and the standards of qualification in each specialized skill, the development of training schemes and the different career patterns which will build the necessary depth of skill in each area, appropriate recognition for the surface line officer, and consideration of other possible best uses of available surface line officer talent. We need to assess our surface line officer resources, match these with specific needs, and channel officers into that area which best suits their capabilities and interests and the needs of the Navy—at a much earlier stage of an officer’s career than is now being done.
Shiphandling. Of 306 surface line officer students at the Naval Postgraduate School responding to a shiphandling qualification survey in the summer of 1970, 56.5% of those formally designated as Officer of the Deck Underway—Fleet Task Force Operations, OOD (F), had not conned the ship in which they were serving through each of the major evolutions normally performed by that ship type at the time they were so qualified. At the time of designation, 51% of the “qualified” officers either had never anchored or moored to a buoy, 30.4% had never moored to a pier or nest of ships, 14.7% had never conned for approach and maintained station alongside another ship underway for refueling, replenishment, or highline; 2.2% had never practiced in task force maneuvers which were appropriate to ship type.
Of this population sample, 7.5% had never been designated qualified as OOD (F), with 34.8% of these having completed two full tours of sea duty, at least one of which was aboard a destroyer type ship. Considering lieutenant commanders in the sample (98 of 306), 11.2% had never had the conn while mooring to a pier or nest of ships and an additional 18.8% had conned three or less times during some normal and significant naval ship evolution. Further, 83.3% of all the surface line officers surveyed were of the opinion that the shiphandling experience provided to surface line officers is not adequate. Of these same officers, 64% felt that rigid Navy-wide standards for shiphandling should be established, with it not being possible for an officer to qualify without meeting those standards. A significant additional number of officers expressed the view that standards should be established by ship type rather than a single standard set throughout the Navy.
The current pattern for qualification as a naval shiphandler lacks overall planned objectives and programmed means to assure the desired ends. To begin with, we are not making effective use of the facilities currently provided for this purpose. The YPs at the Naval Academy appear to be well-suited for use in the early development of shiphandling skills. Although these vessels are used extensively, there is no scheme which ensures that each midshipman receives certain prescribed conning experience. The Officer Candidate School at Newport also has vessels of this type, but much less conning experience is provided than is given at Annapolis and, again, no specific requirements are fulfilled by each officer candidate. In the case of NROTC midshipmen, no provision is made for any training of this nature. Destroyer School initially provided valuable experience in some of the weaker areas of shiphandling for many of our junior officers. More recent graduates of this school, however, indicate that this experience is progressively being reduced, apparently as a result of increasing demands in other areas of training.
The primary means relied on for training OODs has been on-the-job training after commissioning. Results from the previously cited shiphandling survey indicate that experience provided in the course of normal shipboard tours of duty also leaves a great deal to be desired. When an officer is assigned to his first ship, his potential to qualify as a shiphandler is primarily dependent on the attitude of his commanding officer, and secondarily a function of ship type, billet assignment, operating schedule, and numbers of officers competing for qualification. Unfortunately, inequities in distribution of available shiphandling experience among junior officers has always existed in a sizable number of ships. It has been a frequent practice for one or two, or a very few officers, to be the only ones in a ship who conn during certain evolutions, such as entering or leaving port, or making the approach to the pier. If we are to make the best use of our total surface line officer resource, such practices must be halted and a reasonable amount of training must be provided to all officers.
The recently-instituted junior officer shiphandling competition may well have a very desirable effect on attitudes related to turning the conn over to our less experienced officers. The assurance given by CNO that commanding officers will not be penalized for minor scrapes and dents incurred as a result of this will hopefully reduce reluctance that has been in many cases to allow our junior officers to conning experience they should be getting. It remains to be seen whether the end result will be equitable distribution of the available experience among all those who should be getting it, or marshaling of the lion’s share of it behind some apparent champion among them who will make a good show for his command in the competition.
It is considered that the concept of reasonably equitable distribution of shiphandling training will have to be enforced in some manner if it is ever to be expected to be practiced widely. It is suggested that the requirement for compliance with this concept be evaluated and scored competitively in the course of regular inspections of all ships’ training records and procedures.
In addition to inequitable distribution of available experience, we have the problem of some important and unique evolutions, such as underway replenishment or task force maneuvers, not being conducted frequently enough by some ships to provide the opportunity for all officers to practice them. If all necessary types of conning experience cannot be provided in the course of normal operations, it should be required that ships be scheduled for such operations for from one to several days, as necessary, each quarter, specifically and solely for this purpose.
We need to determine the minimums of type and quantity of shiphandling experience each officer must be exposed to, ensure that this experience is provided, and impose some reasonable time frame within which qualification should be fulfilled. If such a schedule is not met, the reason for lack of fulfillment should be provided.
OOD qualification standards. Supposing that we do succeed both in increasing the amount of shiphandling experience generally provided to junior officers, and in ensuring that each officer has a reasonably good opportunity to avail himself of it, we still have the problem of establishing meaningful standards. With every commanding officer determining his own criteria for qualification of OODs, we have such a wide range of levels of actual qualification that such a designation has little real meaning outside the command which awarded it. Each commanding officer must, as always, decide who will conn his ship and what level of competence he requires. This does not, however, preclude providing additional external experience which would fill in known weak areas and providing every officer with at least some exposure to each major evolution applicable to all ship types. Neither does it preclude establishment of standards of qualification at some specific and universally known level.
It is suggested that two distinct levels of qualification as Officer of the Deck Underway be established. The first level would include the following minimum requirements:
► anchoring;
► getting underway from all kinds of moorings;
► emergency shiphandling procedures;
► approach and conning alongside for refueling, or highline operations;
► conning in restricted waters.
The second level would include all requirements of the first level, plus:
► task force maneuvers;
► mooring to a pier or nest of ships.
Any requirements in addition to these, to account for unique type evolutions and ship characteristics, would be as dictated by appropriate type commander and each ship’s commanding officer. Qualification for the Navywide recognized designation would be authorized to be accomplished at either of these levels in a commissioned ship of any type which is employed in such evolutions. Limitation in opportunity to qualify for the second level would prevail, of course, until such time as an officer either served in, or was given specific schooling on board some ship type which participated in task force maneuvers, and with ship types in which it is authorized for a shipboard officer to make the approach to a pier or nest.
Obviously, requalification would be necessary when making a change, either from shallow draft to deep draft ships or vice versa, just as is done with aviators going from single to multi-engine aircraft or from propeller to jet. By virtue of previous experience, however, such requalification should be a relatively simple matter. Change-over from one type deep-draft ship to another, on the other hand, should require nothing more than a practical check-out on specific peculiarities and certification by the new commanding officer.
Surface line officer development. In order to achieve the desired broad objective, there is needed a full career pattern of training and experience, directed specifically at qualification as a shiphandler and for command at sea. With the opening of the new Surface Warfare Officer School at Newport, each of the major stages of surface ship practical training is now covered at least in some degree. Lacking now is a means of viewing the available facilities as a total system through which each surface line officer should progress, first to the milestone of fully qualified naval shiphandler, then to the ultimate goal of command at sea (for those officers so designated). Obviously, the bulk of shiphandling experience would continue to be provided by the apprenticeship method for officers in shipboard assignments. Although this is both the best and most practical way of training naval shiphandlers, supplemental training needs be provided to fill gaps noted previously herein. In a total program, the Surface Warfare Officer School is pictured as the basic stage of supplemental formal training. In this training, actual shiphandling experience should be provided instead of simulation, with practice given in each major shiphandling evolution. It would be most desirable at this stage to use a vessel like the YP or the old PCEC, but an LCU might be a reasonable alternative. If a more sophisticated vessel could not be provided, there might even be merit in using an LCM, with officers actually taking the controls. It is understood that MineLant periodically provided training of this nature to officers assigned thereto, using MSLs and MSBs, and derived significant benefits from so doing. The point is that officers going to their first ship need to get the actual feel of handling a vessel in the water—virtually any kind of vessel—before they get their hands on, and responsibility for, any current vintage commissioned ship. Few, if any, drivers have mastered a semi-trailer-truck without first operating an automobile; no airline pilot has or will qualify first in a 747 and certainly cannot do so in a Link trainer; the same concepts apply to ships, in spite of the fact that we have a partially successful history of doing it the hard way. Eventually, all surface line officers should be programmed to attend Surface Warfare Officer School before reporting to their first ship. If anything, there is even greater need for such training in the case of officers going to larger ships, and particularly for aviators designated to qualify for any ship command. This is true because, while conning a deep-draft ship is generally more difficult than conning a smaller one, less maneuvering is attempted or permitted, with the result that there is less real experience to be had in deep-draft ships. It is therefore more difficult to qualify thereon in all aspects of shiphandling. If experience is not provided by some other means, officers with experience limited to such ships can never become fully qualified shiphandlers.
Destroyer School should be viewed as the intermediate stage of supplemental formal training for the surface line officer. While this school was designed to fill the gap in training that existed in the case of destroyer officers, the training, practical experience, and shiphandling practice provided are all applicable and desirable for all surface line officers. In practice, Destroyer School is used to train officers from all type forces; it would be best to think of it in these terms.
Prospective Commanding Officer/Executive Officer class constitutes Part I of the advanced stage for all officers going to their first command and the Naval War College and Command Staff Course constitutes part II. Incidentally, officers in the career path for command at sea should not be given graduate level schooling in engineering fields. Management, international relations, or environmental sciences are virtually the only advanced curricula applicable to their goal. If we thought of these three stages of schooling with intervening shipboard tours as one total program to fulfill building of shiphandler skills and then command at sea skills, and kept the officers best qualified for these functions channeled progressively through each stage (and virtually assured of staying in this channel as long as they are so motivated and are mastering the skills required at each stage), then we would have the program which would meet our needs.
Recognition. A most significant factor, closely related to those of qualification and utilization, is the psychological incentive provided by appropriate recognition of each distinctively separate specialty group and for important achievement within that specialty. When the Legal Specialists were authorized to wear a separate corps device, not only were they accorded recognition due them, but also surface line officers were granted a degree of recognition by having one less group of officers sharing use of the device which identifies them as a separate group. Of all the officers in the Navy, the line officer group is one of few which has no distinguishing corps insignia used exclusively by it. Among line officers, the Surface Warfare Specialist is the only one who has no badge of accomplishment which marks him as qualified in the basic and most significant functional skill of his specialty. Even the Command at Sea Insignia, which was sought and fought for so long as a mark of achieving command of a ship at sea, was not retained as the mark of the ultimate accomplishment of the shipboard officer, but is awarded for command of aviation units as well. This has left nothing that is exclusively the mariner’s, in the service whose primary raison d’être is going to sea. indeed, we have a strange view of relative importance of various achievements when qualifying as a marksman with small arms warrants award of a medal, while qualification to conn a multimillion-dollar ship under all possible conditions remains one of the few distinguishable achievements which warrants no physically visible recognition. Insult appears to be piled on top of neglect in the case of recognition of the shipboard line accomplishment by not including the Command at Sea Insignia as an authorized part of a flag officer’s Uniform. Flag aviators wear wings, and flag submariners wear dolphins; is command at sea considered a lesser accomplishment? Of the surface line officers surveyed at the Naval Postgraduate School, half of them desired that a badge of recognition be awarded for qualification as an Officer of the Deck Underway (Fleet Task Force Operations). Of those not favoring such change, the singular reason given for that view was the desire to keep the naval officer’s uniform from becoming covered with a gaudy array of paraphernalia.
Based on rigid standardized qualification as a naval shiphandler, it is recommended that a ribbon (no medal) be created in recognition of this achievement. It is suggested that such a ribbon be royal blue, with a central gold clasp in the form of an anchor. Achievement of the first level of qualification, Officer of the Deck Underway (Independent Operations), would have one horizontal yellow pin stripe through the center, and fulfillment of qualification at the second level, Officer of the Deck Underway (Fleet Task Force Operations), would have two horizontal yellow pin stripes through the center of the ribbon. A possible alternative might be to award a badge similar to the present Command at Sea Insignia, minus the central gold star, for qualification as OOD (F), which would be superseded by and replaced by the Command at Sea Insignia, if and when awarded. In either case, command of an air squadron would be completely divorced from the Command at Sea award; perhaps such an achievement would more appropriately be recognized by the addition of a star on the aviator’s wings instead.
Command at sea vs. Specialization. We have a deeply ingrained tradition and a virtual patriotic adherence to the concept that not only is command at sea the ultimate goal for all surface line officers, but that it is the only one. Such a view does not take into account that there may be other equally important uses of this same officer resource. In the face of increasing demands for in-depth education and specialization by operationally experienced officers, adherence to that concept would be a very serious diseconomy in officer use. The most recent command screening board designated less than one-third of the commanders, commander selectees, and commander promotion zone officers (year groups 1955, 1956, and 1957) to be scheduled for command at sea. Even considering that a smaller number than usual is now being designated for command because of current reductions in Fleet and Navy size, the normal percentage selected is still not high enough to expect all capable and ambitious officers to have a singular goal, which goal a large percentage, if not the majority of officers, can never attain, especially when significant alternate goals are available. Of the surface line officers surveyed at the Naval Postgraduate School, only 35.2% voiced the view that they aspire to command at sea as a primary goal. An additional 22.3% aspire to this goal primarily because they consider it to be the most probable route to a successful career as a surface line officer. The remaining officers (42.5%) felt they would prefer to spend the majority of their remaining career working in the field of their Naval Postgraduate School training rather than aspiring to command at sea, provided it would not jeopardize their future promotion. They further felt they could best serve both the needs of the Navy and their own interests by so doing.
It is estimated by the Future Professional Manpower Requirements Study Draft Report (FPMRS) of June 1969 that the requirement for P-coded billets (requiring specific advanced education) will grow from 4,775 (1969) to approximately 7,600 by 1974. A large number of officers receiving this training are from the unrestricted line category. The philosophy of such use is that of the subspecialty concept, which requires recent experience with the operating forces at sea in combination with the technical education for desired performance of assigned function. The FPMRS report noted that there is a conflict with use of line officers receiving this education:
“In the majority of fields, the billets currently authorized for URL officers could only be kept filled with educationally qualified officers by requiring them to specialize to a degree which would be incomparable with the essential seagoing elements of a URL career . . . the demands of the various Naval Warfare specialties limit feasible utilization of professional URL subspecialists in professional billets to 2-3 years in grade.”
Studies show that, with the current numbers of officers with advanced professional educations, all P-coded billets can be filled only if line officers are used in their subspecialties for four years in grade. It is further estimated that in order to qualify sufficient numbers of officers to overcome current shortages and meet forecasts of growth in professional requirements by 1974, a graduate school input of 1,150 officers will be required annually, based on 2½ years use of line officers in subspecialty in grade. Not only are these quotas not being met, but it is becoming apparent that there simply is not a sufficient officer manpower resource from which to draw qualified graduate school inputs in the desired fields to meet established goals. The planned input of officers to postgraduate school was 1,083 in fiscal year 1970, but that goal fell short by over 125 officers. To get even that number, 7,717 officers were screened in order to find officers who met the qualifications for the desired specialty areas. The number screened for the 1970 input represented virtually every officer not previously screened but who met the required level of performance, had completed his first sea tour and indicated a willingness to attend graduate school.
Out of the number screened, only 1,073 were found qualified and an even smaller number were actually available to commence schooling within the year following selection. Additional officers selected in previous years commenced school during fiscal year 1970, bringing to approximately 960 the number who did commence schooling during that year. Presuming that the P-coded billet requirements and the criteria of recent sea experience are a must, the major portion of professionally qualified subspecialists must continue to be drawn from the line officer source. The only workable course of action appears to be to increase the length of the period of use of these officers in each grade in order to fill the requirement.
Since only a relatively small number of officers have the qualifications to fulfill the educational requirements for advanced technical subspecialties that have been determined necessary in the Navy, it must be recognized that this resource is both limited and valuable, and that it needs to be developed and used to the fullest. It is suggested that the best course of action would be to adopt a new way of thinking with regard to the career pattern for this group of officers. The officers who can meet these qualifications must be used primarily in their subspecialty field, rather than permitting some other demands to take precedence. Many areas of technically specialized education may well have their most significant application afloat, but officers with such education need be employed primarily in billets requiring their education, wherever those billets may be. They should not be bound by any specific sea duty requirements. These officers should be considered separately for promotion, competing only with others of their same specialized area, with development and performance in their specialized field as the primary' factor in determining eligibility for advancement.
Finally, some terminal career goal should be established for officers in each subspecialty group which goal could motivate a continued high level of performance and be commensurate with their ability and value to the Navy. It is suggested, for example, that the billets as directors of all systems commands in the Navy which are in technical fields be designated to be filled by officers with professional education and specialty in the associated field. For instance, the Commander, Naval Communications Command would be a communications specialist, and so on.
Command at sea certainly must remain the main objective of most line officers, since officers in that category are the ones who specialize in the function which constitutes the core of the operational mission of the Navy. Yet, we must abandon the myth that the success or failure of every line officer in his career is determined solely by whether or not he gets command of a ship. It should be clearly recognized that in a ship at sea, as well as in any other organization, what is needed is a well-rounded team, with each member well-qualified to do his job, rather than total homogeneity of the group. Some officers aspire to and are best suited for command of ships; others excel in technical specialties; still others do best in administration and other specialties. Men who excel in all endeavors are very rare, and even the finest officers can only be assigned to one place or one job at a time; the best use of officers, then, is to put each one in the function he does best.
The recent decision to recognize command of certain designated major shore facilities as equivalent to command at sea in order to qualify surface line captains for promotion to flag rank could certainly be a step toward accomplishing this goal. To be effective, however, it must not be used primarily to solve the problem of what to do with excess command-groomed surface line officers during a time when there are too few ships to go around. A senior officer should not command a communications station, for instance, primarily because he is a fine shipboard tactical line officer, but rather because he is the best qualified to manage a communications/electronics facility and has the experience and background to do just that.
Recognizing that two distinct major categories of surface officers do, in fact, already exist, that each must be cultivated from a relatively scarce resource of specialized talent, and that a significant amount of time and effort will have to be devoted to honing the desired level of skill, early action need be taken to earmark each officer to be channeled into one or the other of these categories. This certainly should not be done later than the third year of commissioned service. Determination of which route should be taken by which officers would be in accordance with projected numbers of officers required in each category and consideration of applicable qualities (performance, command potential, shiphandling ability, and technical education potential) and desires of the individual.
When we retain officers in one specialized field long enough to develop and maintain a high level of skill; when we have a long-range, in-depth training and use program for each major category of officers; when we set and adhere to standards of qualification in shiphandling; when we have reasonable, logical and feasibly attainable goals for each category of officer; and when we provide recognition of each major group identity and recognition of significant individual functional accomplishment; then we will be able to achieve optimum use of our surface line officers.
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Commander Larson received his commission through the regular NROTC program, graduating from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, in 1957 (B.S. Aeronautics/Mathematics). He has served as Communications Officer in the USS John S. McCain (then DL-3), as Operations Officer in the USS Colonial (LSD-18), has had two tours of duty with the Naval Security Group and served as CO, NMCRTC, Pasadena. He took one year of graduate study in International Relations (Far East area) at American University, Washington, D.C. (1961), completed the course of study in Chinese Mandarin at the Defense Language Institute, Monterey, in 1964, and graduated from the Naval Postgraduate School in March 1971 with an M.S. in Communications Management. He is currently Assistant Chief of Staff (Communications) for ComPhibOpSupPac/ComPhibFor Seventh Fleet.
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First Things First
Security is necessary, but the literal adherence to regulations can sometimes cause problems. While on my third class cruise, I was attached to a guided missile frigate. One day the alarm sounded and the loudspeaker blasted out, “General Quarters! All hands to battle stations! This is no drill!”
Later, the captain explained that there had been a fire in the missile house, but that it had been put out through the heroic efforts of the missile gang. When I asked one of the missilemen how it felt to be a hero, he looked at me rather strangely and said, “Hero, nuts! We had to put out the fire. The DC party couldn’t get in.”
“Why not?”
“Because they weren’t cleared to work in a security area like the missile house.”
—Contributed by Mark A. Kemenovich, Pfc, USMC
(The Naval Institute will pay $10.00 for each anecdote published in the Proceedings.)
[*] See C. R. Bowling, “Naval Warfare Specialists,” U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, August 1970, pp. 52-59.