While technically trained officers may or may not be better qualified to foster rapid and effective transformation, they will affect the process only if they are assigned to billets that afford them the opportunity.
I recently completed a tour at the Navy Personnel Command (PERS-41). I fielded many queries from senior and flag officers who wished to secure surface commanders with particular qualifications for their staffs. I did not keep a record of these transactions, but my tally would have looked like this:
- Requests for Officers Screened for Command at Sea: Hundreds
Required Skills: usually unspecified and generally irrelevant
- Requests for Financial Managers: Scores
Required Skills: addition and subtraction; high pain tolerance
- Requests for Political-Military and Strategy-Policy Specialists: Dozens
Required Skills: reading and writing; high alcohol tolerance
- Requests for Manpower & Personnel Managers: Tens
Required Skills: addition and subtraction; multiplication and division (during Board season); plane geometry (to account for the detailing triangle); talking and listening
- Requests for Logisticians: Perhaps Seven
Required Skills: addition and subtraction; multiplication and division; ability to read and understand shipping documents
- Requests for Computer/Network/C4I Experts: About Five
Required Skills: computer/network/C4I experience
- Requests for Operations Analysts: Maybe Four
Required Skills: multiplying and dividing; some algebra
- Requests for Surface Nuclear Officers: Around Three
Required Skills: nuclear engineering
These data suggest that surface line officers with technical backgrounds are not in terribly high demand. Nor are they necessarily assigned to jobs that capitalize on their specialized talents. Current distribution priorities actively discourage detailers from assigning surface line officers to billets based on the officers' education. The exceptions tend to be joint specialty officer billets and instructor assignments, where the gaining command prizes education and training over other factors. Furthermore, our corporate perception of an officer's potential remains linked to that officer's promotion and screening status. Many staffs would rather train an upwardly mobile officer who knows little about the work at hand than accept a highly motivated subject matter expert whose record did not compete favorably at the last promotion or screening board.
Commander Harris is the commanding officer of the USS Arleigh Burke (DDG-51). He did not major in philosophy, a decision he regrets to this day.