Few articles in recent years have precipitated so much discussion within the seagoing community as the celebrated "Get off my Back, Sir!" which appeared one year ago.* That the author's views caused some concern among a number of senior naval officers is, perhaps, putting it mildly. At least one fleet commander in chief was concerned enough to solicit comments on the article from his officers in command of ships and aircraft squadrons. Of those responding, 73% did not agree that, as commanding officers, they were harassed or overly directed by seniors in the chain of command. Only 10% reportedly agreed totally with the article, and the remaining 17% agreed in part.
These are reassuring statistics, perhaps, particularly in view of nagging complaints—which increased in frequency during the Zumwalt years— that command authority was being eroded. But were the proper questions asked in the first place, and were the responses valid and objective? Since it should be reasonable to expect that commanding officers are candid and forthright in their advice to seniors, let us assume that most of the responses were straight from the heart in this instance. "Harassment," however, is rather a strong term and few commanding officers are, in my opinion, likely to experience anything like harassment from their seniors. Even if some of them perceived it, the urge for career survival at least would tempt them to avoid putting their immediate seniors on report to a common senior. In short, many may have told the boss what they thought he wanted to hear.
It connotes a certain sense of insecurity for an officer in command to admit to feelings of personal harassment. He may, nevertheless, feel harassed by the system of checks, double checks, and triple checks which we have established to keep officers in command from fouling up. Perhaps we really did ask the wrong questions or phrased them poorly. "Stifled" and "over-directed" may have been more appropriate terms. Even so, fully one in four of those responding perceived a degree, at least, of harassment and over-direction and was gutty enough to say so. A figure of 25% is not insignificant, and the causative factors should be carefully explored. Further surveys of attitudes should, for the sake of validity, seek anonymous responses to carefully selected questions.
Having enjoyed my recently concluded second tour in command at sea just as thoroughly as my first, I considered Commander Mumford's observations initially with the greatest of skepticism. I have not felt "harassed" by my seniors. There is, however, little question that I and many of my colleagues in command today often feel stifled and frustrated by over-direction and inundated with overly detailed and massive written directives, programs, systems, inspections, workshops, and assist visits. In my view, these combine to downgrade our role from that of military leaders and managers to something approaching the status of local agents for higher authorities, charged with carrying out their programs and philosophies. Too frequently, little or no latitude is permitted with regard to methods employed in reaching the directed objectives.
Commanding officers of cruisers and destroyer tenders report directly to cruiser-destroyer group commanders. Since they do not have squadron commanders, their chain of command contains one less echelon than is normally the case. Owing to the over-extended span of control of their immediate superior in command, they enjoy a certain degree of autonomy. Skippers of destroyers, frigates, amphibious warfare ships, and auxiliary vessels, however, have a squadron commander between them and the group commander. Many of these more closely supervised commanding officers have privately conveyed to me views similar to Commander Mumford's. This problem has been acknowledged in the past by our fleet commanders in chief, and many welcome initiatives have been put forth to ease it. But the perception at the shipboard level, right or wrong, seems to be that "command attention" is still being invoked to an excessive degree, that too many individuals and shore activities still can directly manipulate a ship's tasking and fortunes, and that the combat zone" is right there in home waters under the watchful scrutiny of the big staffs. Officers and crewmen are heard speaking longingly of "escaping" to distant duty deployments to get away from the daily inspections and assist visits with their related crises. They would prefer to practice their profession free, at least temporarily, from flap-generating staffs.
I believe that most commanding officers (unfortunately for their crews, not all of them) are indeed enjoying their command tours, are challenged by their responsibilities, and believe that our Navy is doing a reasonably good job in most areas. But all this may be in spite of the over-management we are being subjected to by staff and headquarter echelons.
To be sure, there is nothing malicious intended in this over-direction. Senior commanders do not, as a rule, wish to harass officers in command nor do they, I believe, derive any pleasure from doing so. The burdensome directives and time-consuming inspections and checkoff lists are not engineered by people who want to punish the ships and squadrons. They are intended to help, but they reveal a depressing lack of confidence in the ability of a commanding officer to achieve objectives and standards without a detailed blueprint and list of instructions, spelled out in "Dick and Jane" detail. I have heard flag officers say in response to complaints regarding the number, complexity, and frequency of inspections, "Convince me that commanders will do what they are supposed to do and I'll cut down on the inspections!" That is a devastating indictment of our command selection process. If that kind of stick is necessary to get those in command to do their jobs properly, then either we are picking the wrong people for command or we are not producing enough of the right kind of people. Command selection being as stringent as it is, one might conclude that we are stuck with selecting officers for command who need to be kept in line by continued inspections and assist visits. It is a depressing thought.
It is further argued, in defense of the status quo, that junior skippers, because of their relative inexperience, need all the guidance they can get. This view is even more alarming since we are willing, in the meantime, to trust them with the lives of several hundred crewmen and a multimillion dollar ship. If valid, this view also suggests that we should reexamine our process for selecting officers for command.
Do we really need all the people, shore activities, and staffs which we still maintain to ride herd on our diminished fleet, or are these activities, consciously or unconsciously, expanding the workload in order to justify their existence? Has the Navy become so technical and complex that we really do need more supporting activities than ships? Even if the answer to the latter question is "yes," do we really need to spell everything out to the commanding officers— presumably the very best people our officer personnel distribution and selection system can come up with—and then monitor their adherence to direction constantly? If the answer is again "yes," then I believe we are in serious trouble, not just because of an inability to rely on our current commanding officers or to develop ones we can rely on, but because we can no longer afford the massive manpower costs of our vast network of staff echelons and shore establishments. We have been repeatedly criticized by Congress and the Department of Defense for an overly layered and complex staff system. In spite of the streamlining and consolidation of headquarters staffs in the early seventies which resulted, inter alia, in the combined surface warfare type commands, we are still top-heavy and vulnerable to further cuts as the manpower price tag keeps climbing. Many of our staffs are simply too big, and there is clearly too much deadwood residing in some of them. Entire activities and individual billets within activities which do not contribute directly and meaningfully to the support of ships and aircraft must go. We can't afford the overhead anymore.
The attitude seems to prevail among most staffers and many seniors that the commanding officer simply cannot be trusted to get the job done on his own volition. They appear to think that if his feet are not held to the fire, he will fail to achieve the desired objective. This is unquestionably perceived by many commanding officers, and it is highly distressing. This attitude also tends to diminish a commanding officer's self-confidence, aggressiveness, and, hence, his effectiveness.
Consider the magnificent privilege represented by the exercise of command. Right from the instant he says "I relieve you, sir," the captain, regardless of rank or seniority, receives the unquestioning loyalty of the great wealth of human talent constituting his crew. He inherits awesome and absolute responsibility for a multimillion or billion dollar warship and extensive equipment and weapon suites of immense power and complexity. He is treated with no small amount of respect and reverence within his command, but it often seems to end there. He is, occasionally, treated downright shabbily by staffers and by shore activities, particularly if his actions or requests cause them inconvenience or extra work or if, heaven forbid, he fails to follow prescribed methods and procedures.
Further, there appears to be no limit to the number of organizations and individuals who are somehow empowered to tell him how, when, and in what order to do things. Many of them appear to have liberal charters to caution him, direct his attention to, inspect him, "assist visit" him, and so on. Many of the "command attention" items which may engage him and a considerable number of his key people for hours or days are not even coordinated by a scheduling authority. Consequently, scheduling conflicts arise which may cause frantic efforts by the "can-do" captain and his crew to satisfy all of these uncoordinated demands.
He is preached to in countless directives, briefings, meetings, and newsletters, often repetitiously. Many of these have the force of directives (not to be construed, of course, as relieving him in any way of his responsibility). He is lectured by everyone from the force chaplain to the master chief petty officer of the world. He is advised to have special advisors, with direct and privileged access to him.
His constant reaction to excessive, often conflicting, and usually repetitious direction from outside his command and, not infrequently, from outside his chain of command, is in vivid contrast to his exalted and respected position within his ship or squadron. This is unquestionably perceived by junior officers, and it disturbs them mightily. They observe their captain accommodating to the policy interpretations of junior officer staffers who have their boss's ear and are in a prime position to make much mischief for the ship, notwithstanding the fact that some of these staffers might not prosper in any responsible shipboard billet themselves. The ship's officers witness their commanding officer fighting and scratching for supply support and repair work and too frequently being forced to accept a shoddy product or incomplete repair.
Recent efforts by one fleet commander in chief to reduce the frequency and redundancy of inspections, certifications, and assist visits have been encouraging. A substantive payoff from these efforts, however, is still eagerly awaited at the shipboard level. The number of scheduled and impromptu inspections still constitutes an unrealistic burden. My ship had no fewer than five different aviation certification inspections in a period of four months, each by a different organization with a differing interpretation of standards which themselves were inconsistent. An all-too-familiar staff response to this common complaint is that without numerous inspections, ships will simply not maintain the requisite standards. Staffs, however, cannot even agree on the standards. In one case, engineering guidance received from a fleet training group differed markedly from guidance received shortly afterward from the 1,200 psi mobile training team during my ship's preparation for one of its operational propulsion plant examinations (OPPE). In several instances, guidance received from one mobile training team in phase I training was inconsistent with guidance received from another team in phase II. In numerous areas, neither team appeared certain regarding what the propulsion examining boards would actually accept as standards, suggesting it was largely dependent upon the personal whim of the persons constituting that particular board.
Some inspections lose meaning as "gamesmanship" is applied. Having been through refresher training at least a dozen times, it has become difficult for me to take parts of it completely seriously. You hold your feelings in check as you are told by some young officer what a basket case your ship is. Then, through some miracle of advanced training technology and patient skill on the part of the training group staff, your progress shoots upward until, happily, you pass the battle problem with flying colors, thanks to the unselfish efforts of the instructors and staff and the enthusiasm of your crew. ("They're green, Captain, but they have the right attitude!" Of course they have the "right attitude." You threatened to hammer the first one of them who disagreed with an instructor, right or wrong!) Your young officers and junior petty officers perceive this lack of candor, and many find it offensive. (The more experienced ones, having been through it before, are already resigned to the routine.) The only redeeming part of it all is the abundance of otherwise scarce training services which help improve the ship's readiness in spite of instructors who may not understand much about your particular equipment configurations and capabilities.
I have never received an unsatisfactory grade in a major inspection, but I am almost convinced that such accomplishments involve as much luck and gamesmanship as skill. I believe that many commanding officers live in mortal fear of failing inspections or examinations, notably OPPEs, because of the possible career consequences. What has become of the lofty purpose of the 1,200 psi propulsion improvement program? Never intended to be a hammer over the commanding officer's head, it was designed to further the worthy objective of operating our ship propulsion plants with greater safety, reliability, and efficiency. Many staff and shipboard personnel now seem to view a mobile training team visit as a crash course in how to pass an OPPE, complete with detailed instructions on how to impress the examiners, e.g., clean, starched dungarees, shiny shoes, polished brightwork, highly stylized repeat-back rituals, etc. Many of our young people view this part as pure and simple "Mickey Mouse" when they know that much of this showmanship is abandoned as soon as the examiners depart and that it contributes marginally, if at all, to efficient, safe propulsion plant operation.
A ship which is soon to deploy or about to undergo an OPPE or INSURV (material inspection and survey) enjoys the greatest of support from staffs and maintenance facilities at the 11th hour for correcting conditions which may have existed for months. Correcting these deficiencies was no less important months ago than it is now for safe, reliable, and efficient propulsion. Ah, but the stakes are different now and the staffs, having a vested interest in the outcome, feel the heat. Consequently, carte blanche authority is granted to turn on the repair facilities in a frantic attempt to fix everything when it may be too late. Yet, ships are told that they create their own crises by starting preparations too late!
The primary thrust of inspections should be to identify problems, not culprits. If we could temper the all-too-prevalent staff view that inspections are failed and casualties incurred primarily because of command mismanagement or inattention, we will go far toward restoring confidence in and among commanding officers and improving performance. All ships of a class are not created equal. Some have built-in problems which good management alone cannot correct. In this regard, it is clear to me that junior officers and petty officers feel rather overwhelmingly that we seniors have failed miserably to provide adequate resources for the support of our ships and equipment.
The temptation to look for shipboard culprits at any sign of failure is common to most staffs and, having served many years on staffs, I can understand the reasons why. It is, of course, a self-defense mechanism. Its guidance is certainly lucid enough, the staff reasons, and, heaven knows, all agree that it is ample enough. The staffer reflects upon how well he performed when he himself had command of or served in a ship of similar class, and it becomes very tempting to generalize about poor shipboard planning, weak leadership, and other similar conditions best solved by firing someone. Many highly placed seniors now tend to judge skippers of today by their own prior experiences in command. It is not a valid comparison. Many flag officers of today can look back with justifiable satisfaction on four or five tours in command. In stark comparison, today's "successful" surface line officer is fortunate to have two. The commanding officer of a guided-missile destroyer, for example, is more than likely serving in his first shipboard command. Moreover, he is likelier than not to have fewer than six years of experience at sea.
When many of today's flag officers commanded that same guided-missile destroyer, it was a new ship and, not infrequently, their second or third command—a "bonus" for previously demonstrated excellence. We had no operational propulsion plant examination in those days. No propulsion examining boards. No mobile training teams. The salient objective was meeting commitments, never mind that the propulsion plants were operated under conditions which today would be considered manifestly unsafe.
It should come as little shock, then, that one in four commanding officers today feels harassed. What disturbs me most, however, is that other officers are vaguely uncomfortable in command. I firmly believe that some of them wouldn't be there at all if there were some surer, less risky route to promotion. I am convinced that many think of their command tours primarily as stepping-stones to greater things. They probably speak in public of the joy of command because that is what they are expected to say. Down deep, they may wish to get out from under before the whole thing falls apart.
The average number of years of prior sea experience among first-tour commanding officers is decreasing alarmingly. Bonus commands for super performers are few and far between. Rather than using and reusing our best and most proven officers in command in "follow-on" tours, we are whisking them through command tours at a dizzying pace and moving them on to bigger and better things ashore in spite of the fact that our ships, sensors, and weapon systems are becoming more and more complex. We assign aviators—hard-charging and intelligent to be sure, but relatively inexperienced in ships at sea—to command sophisticated amphibious warfare and mobile logistics force ships. We do so in order that they may get their tickets punched for aircraft carrier commands, all because of the quaint notion that only aviators can successfully command the latter and also because of the need to provide command opportunity for aviation captains.
We appear to be attempting to train everyone to be flag officers. We are building careers, not seagoing professionalism, in our Navy today, and it is, in the view of many, beginning to show. Like most others who are concerned with the eroding image of command, I have a prescription for curing this condition.
First, we must take whatever measures are necessary to increase experience levels in officers being ordered to command. Multiple command tours should be increased and we should re-tour proven captains in command billets. Moreover, command and executive officer tours should be lengthened to three years. Two years simply is not enough time to influence the incumbent in command regarding the long-range impact of his policies and decisions. We must, of course, accept a concomitant decrease in command opportunity, but the taxpayers, who pay the whole bill, deserve nothing less than ready, reliable ships, commanded by the best of the proven professionals who are comfortable, confident, experienced, and capable in command. Accepting a reduction in command opportunity will, to be sure, generate monumental morale problems unless we make other routes to senior rank more promising and credible. It will make the screening and detailing process more difficult, but the good of the Navy and the nation must be the paramount consideration—not morale and not some notion of what constitutes an ideal and balanced career.
Second, we should seek to restore confidence and authority in those serving in command by minimizing over-direction. We should put stringent new controls on the issuance of directives. It would help to limit the number of commanders empowered to issue directives to ships. Directives should be signed by flag officers or other senior commanders only. They should avoid detailed directives on how to achieve the desired goals unless standardization is dictated by safety, security considerations, or by federal law. The term "command attention" should be restricted to unusual, nonrecurring situations of grave importance. Its overuse has seriously diluted its effectiveness. Every inspection, exercise, or task need not be preceded by a form letter from someone telling the commanding officer to get ready and to get personally involved. Staffs should rarely or never require ships to submit programs of action and milestones (POA&Ms) unless they are absolutely needed for the staff's own effective planning. The POA&M is properly the command's internal management tool, designed to facilitate its own planning effort. It should be used as a device for the ship to monitor its own progress in moving from square A to square Z—not as an excuse for staffs to try to force ships to plan properly.
We should avoid stifling commands with ever increasing requirements for standardized programs to implement and cycle through and permit those in command more leeway in achieving the desired goals. It is time now to ask ourselves if all commands really need such time-consumers as human resources availabilities. Is the substantial amount of time and manpower now being devoted to them really making a commensurate contribution to the Navy's mission? Beyond the highly practical and concrete personnel qualification system (PQS) and preventive maintenance system (PMS), how many standardized systems/programs are really necessary? How much does some of the current effort spent by commands in generating inspection-proof records contribute to sea control? I recall being taken to task once during an inspection for an admittedly tedious and cumbersome internal instruction on training. Never mind that there was ample evidence of effective training being accomplished. Never mind that 88 of 95 crewmen who had taken the most recent advancement in rating examinations were advanced and that our qualification board process was producing excellent results. The issue appeared to be that we were not following our own internal directive! Gotcha!
We should take visible steps to improve the prestige of commanding officers. I have heard some rather silly methods for doing this proposed over the years. One involved a scheme for paying "responsibility" pay. Money for this purpose would be a sheer waste of defense dollars. There is no shortage of officers seeking command, so why waste the money? What is needed is greater faith in their judgment and resourcefulness by those serving in staff echelons. Let the commanding officer share in policy formulation at the staff level. Invite his presence and comments at staff meetings and make those meetings something more than mere recitations of the latest no-nos. Unit commanders should consider their commanding officers as ex officio members of their staffs rather than relying so heavily upon the less experienced junior members of their personal staffs. Many commanding officers, I am sure, would view this as an added burden, but I am frankly disappointed by the lack of access to flag officers that ship captains normally have and the infrequency with which flag officers consult commanding officers.
Finally, we should set the record straight that ships and aircraft are more important than staffs and shore activities and that most of the latter exist to support the former. Staffs should do less direct monitoring and more supporting. A staff is something to be leaned upon, not beaten with. To avoid the abuse of delegated authority, we should put strict limitations on the power of staffers. Too many sins are committed in the name of the admiral or commodore. Ships have had their reputations impugned or their proficiency in certain areas questioned because of vindictive staffers who had disagreements with ship's personnel. The ship commanding officer may not even be aware of the bug put into the boss's ear by his staff expert, much less be given the opportunity to rebut it. I have witnessed this more than once while serving on staffs and in flagships, and I am convinced that it is still happening.
The perception of officers currently in command toward these problems is probably of only passing importance. Officers in command of ships and aircraft squadrons have always chafed under the management of staffs. What is important, however, is the perception of junior officers and the effect of those perceptions on career decisions and upon their own command aspirations. Also important, of course, are the views of our senior staff commanders. If they honestly feel that the current degree of direction, guidance, and supervision is appropriate, then I believe that a serious lack of trust and confidence in the ability of officers selected to command—the very best the system can produce—is indicated. If this is the case, and it may be, then we had better undertake an earnest effort to improve professionalism in command by increasing tour lengths and re-touring proven commanding officers.
Perhaps we truly do need a wet/dry Navy.
Captain Kelly graduated from Southern Connecticut State College and was commissioned an ensign in 1953. He served in the destroyer Hawkins (DD-873), the antisubmarine support aircraft carrier Tarawa (CVS-40), and was executive officer of the tank landing ship Westchester County (LST-1167) and the guided-missile frigate Gridley (DLG-21). During the period 1960-1963, he served on the staff of the Commander in Chief, U. S. Pacific Fleet, followed by a tour of duty as operations, weapons, and chief staff officer for Commander Destroyer Squadron Nineteen. Captain Kelly received the Master of Science degree in management from the U. S. Naval Postgraduate School and also attended the Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration. He is a graduate of the U. S. Army War College. During the period 1972-1973, while serving in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Captain Kelly proposed and developed the plan to consolidate the several surface warfare type commands into the present-day ComNavSurfLant and ComNavSurfPac. He was awarded the Legion of Merit in recognition of his contributions in this area and service on the study groups which implemented this staff reorganization. He has commanded the guided-missile destroyer Parsons. (DDG-33) and the guided-missile cruiser Fox (CG-33). Earlier this year, he became assistant chief of staff (personnel and administration) for ComNavSurfPac. This article was written during Captain Kelly's command of the Fox.
*Commander Robert E. Mumford, Jr., USN, "Get off my Back, Sir!" United States Naval Institute Proceedings, August 1977, pp. 18-23.