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Engineers As Tacticians?
Several recent Proceedings articles have addressed the current lack of time and thought naval officers are devoting to tactics. "Fighting the ship” as a training objective has suffered at the hands of an administrative onslaught which, while not an unusual phenomenon in a postwar navy, is particularly acute today. An especially disturbing facet of recent training has been the developing model of the ideal junior officer as one who, if not qualified or selected for nuclear power training, attempted to so qualify. This trend in officer training will lead to a corps of junior officers technically adept and deeply knowledgeable as engineers but one which lacks the management and leadership attributes so vital on board ship, especially in rhis age of scarce human resources.
Officer education took a decided turn toward hardcore engineering in the mid-1970s. The percentage of NROTC scholarship students required to major in engineering or hard sciences was raised to 80%. Furthermore, the students making up the remaining 20% were required by the Navy to take—in addition to the course work required by their university—a significant overload of courses in mathematics and engineering. At the same time, engineering and science majors were given permission not to take certain theretofore required courses, such as national security affairs. Another result in the NROTC program with the increased emphasis on engineering has been a trend to turn away from the universities which are not primarily oriented toward engineering: increasing numbers of students are assigned by the
Navy to engineering schools, and the reduced numbers assigned to liberal arts universities place them in a position where their NROTC units can become undermanned and hence liable to elimination. (Each unit must have a certain number of midshipmen at certain flowpoints: as of 1978, a unit with fewer than 16 midshipmen in the junior class faced probation. Louisville University’s unit fell victim to this requirement.)
There are no “trends” toward engineering emphasis at the Naval Academy: by fiat, the number of required mathematics and engineering courses has been increased—as has the percentage of midshipmen required to major in such subjects—while “soft” courses have been deemphasized. And non-volunteer midshipmen are now ordered to nuclear power training.
Here is the crux of the matter: the nuclear power program needs officers. Repeated shortfalls in officer accession in recent years apparently have resulted in the determination to increase the pool of nuke applicants by requiring almost all candidates for regular commissions ro take those courses necessary for them ro join the pool. It is probably no coincidence that in the mid-1970s the Chief of Naval Operations, Chief of Naval Education and Training, Chief of Naval Personnel, and Superintendent of the Naval Academy were all nuclear power- trained officers.
The engineering emphasis in officer training has been marched in the fleet by establishment (in 1972-73) of the Propulsion Examining Board (PEB), an inherently worthwhile program taken from the nuclear power community. Unfortunately, during its first several years of existence, the PEB has played such a large role in the life of a surface combatant—absorbing such a high percentage of available material and human resources—thar “success" as a fleet unit frequently seems judged on the basis of performance for the PEB during light-off examinations (I.OEs) and operational propulsion plant examinations (OPPEs).
Thus, we have a junior officer, more likely than not trained as an engineer, serving an initial sea tour under conditions which suggest strongly to him that the criterion of success is engineering performance. “Tactics” lie somewhere between an occasional JO training session and “don’t get too close to the carrier.
“Older” officers who served in Vietnam may realize and regret the lack of attention to "fighting the ship,” recognizing that engineering readiness alone does not equate to combat readiness. But younger officers, and we may include here year group 72-73 lieutenant commanders, react to the stimuli they face: LOE, OPPE, PMS, PQS, ASI, NWTI, ORb WSAT, SQT, AVCERT, HRAV . . ■ • These officers, who have not undergone the sobering experience of wartime priorities, are bound to consider engineering and inspections their raisons d'etre.
We are training surface warfare offi cers to pass inspections but not to fight the ship.
90
Proceedings / July
198°
The emphasis on engineering >n training “non-nuke” junior officers |S misplaced. The division officer in a surface ship does not have the materia and human resources thar his nuke contemporary can draw upon. The su face division officer has to be able to manage a group of personnel of widely varied socio-economic and educati°n‘1 backgrounds. He does not require a deep theoretical knowledge of his ma chinery, but he does need to know how to get maximum productive wor
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from his limited personnel and material. A course in general psychology is Probably far more valuable than one in 'frotmodynamics.
The recent, increased emphasis by rfre CNO on leadership-management Gaining is a significant step in the nght direction, as is the more realistic V|ew currently being taken of PEB standards. These steps should be fol- °Wed by a reduction in the numbers
Nrotc and USNA midshipmen re- tjuited to major in engineering and ard sciences. Relatively small num- ers of officers operate in the artificial Personnel world of nuclear power.
If today’s—and tomorrow’s—
°fficer is to become a proficient tacti- Clan> he must be educated while a tf'dshipman to be a manager-leader ari(f. after commissioning, be trained t0 fight the ship, not to just pass inactions. Only by realizing that sucCess lies not in steaming the ship, but ln ^hat you can do with her while she ls beaming, will a proper emphasis in tact'cs be possible.
The Naval Institute Book Selection for July offers something unique for our members. It’s a dual selection consisting of two novels, each outstanding in its own right as a tale of men and the sea during the Second World War.
Final Harbor, by journalist and exsubmariner, Harry Homewood, is the story of a submarine, the U.S.S. Mako, and the men who took her to war in the far reaches of the Pacific Ocean against the forces of the Japanese Empire. It follows the fortunes of this fighting submarine and her crew at home and at war, from her construction and launching, through the heat of fierce battle and the frustration of faulty weapons 19801372 pages.
"One of the best books I've read."
—Bill Mauldin.
Based on the historical facts of author Sloan Wilson’s World War II Coast Guard experience, Ice Brothers uses a Coast Guard ice trawler on the Greenland Patrol in 1942 as the setting for an intensely human drama of men against a deadly enemy in the harshest of environments. This is a moving and exciting book, one that all who have served at sea will recognize as authentic and that those who have not will recognize for its essential humanness.
19801517 pages
"Spine chilling ... he knows the hero and his ice brothers well enough to make them living breathing realities."
—New York Times Final Harbor
by Harry Homewood
Ice Brothers
by Sloan Wilson
Either book List price: $11.95 Member’s price: $9.56 Both books List price: $23.90 Special Member’s Package price: $17.93
(Please use order form in Books of Interest section.)
91
T^Oceedings / July 1980