The four branches of the Information Dominance Corps (IDC)—intelligence, information professionals, information warfare, and meteorology and oceanography—are now consolidated into the Information Dominance type commander, which will man, train, and equip all information-dominance warriors across the Fleet. With this change, the Navy has made a commitment to its newest warfare community. Now the IDC needs to prove its value to the Navy at sea. Thus, we need to change the way the corps accesses officers and allow them to serve at sea.
Currently most IDC officers enter through the surface-warfare officer (SWO) option or lateral transfers from unrestricted-line training in aviation, special warfare, or nuclear-power school. This model is currently working well for the IDC, as it values Fleet warfare experience. However, it is a zero-sum game. Among unrestricted-line communities, surface in particular is negatively affected by the IDC SWO option, because for every officer who joins the IDC, one less is available to fill an unrestricted-line billet.
Pre-commissioned officers who select surface warfare may also be provided the IDC SWO option, which allows them to transfer into the IDC after they earn their SWO qualification. Typically, most of the new officers exercise this option during their first SWO tour. About 90 percent of intelligence professionals, 70 percent of meteorology and oceanography, and 50 percent of information-warfare officers are prior surface-warfare-qualified officers.
Inside the IDC, the intelligence community is an accession outlier. New officers are primarily obtained from Officer Candidate School and begin their careers with no Fleet experience or warfare qualification.
On average, 350 officers per year move into a restricted line or staff. Approximately 90 percent of these reassignments are from surface and aviation, which make up about 82 percent of all unrestricted-line officers. As a recognized warfare community, the IDC requires junior-officer sourcing on par with its counterparts. The proposal offered here reduces the number of unrestricted-line officers, meaning that group would have to either access additional officers or allow the IDC to fill those billets.
Under this proposal, once officers joined the IDC, they would attend basic training similar to that in surface warfare or flight school, and then be sent to their first IDC job, where they would learn their trade. For their second tour, they could be detailed to sea to support surface, aviation, or special warfare. They could serve in IDC-centric billets and gain valuable warfighting experience.
In the surface Navy, the community most impacted by both the IDC SWO option and the solution proposed here, IDC officers could serve as the antisubmarine warfare (meteorology and oceanography), electronic-warfare (information warfare, meteorology and oceanography), communication (intelligence professionals), or combat information center officer (any IDC officer). Intelligence officers already support and would continue to serve in aviation and special warfare. This model is working very well in the latter, where IDC officers have taken a much larger role in mission planning, freeing special-warfare officers to focus on direct action.
The proposed plan would reduce cost to the unrestricted-line communities and offer several benefits for the surface community. It would reduce the number of new officers who must be accessed and trained, as well as those lost through the surface-warfare option and lateral transfers. Better management of unrestricted-line communities would be made possible through the reduction of unplanned losses. IDC management would also improve, as that group would have a steady supply of accessions. This would result in a better balance and a pyramid of officers for detailing and career progression.
Drawbacks would include less or limited ability of unrestricted-line officers to transfer laterally into the IDC, thus reducing options for those who wish to remain in the Navy but no longer want to stay in their initial commissioning community. Additionally, the surface Navy would have to give up traditional junior-officer SWO billets.
Nevertheless, the two service-wide changes proposed here—allowing officers to be directly commissioned into the IDC and to serve at sea in IDC-centric billets—would break the paradigm and provide a positive lasting beneficial effect on the Fleet. As the Navy creates the new information-dominance type commander, now is the time to send the IDC to sea.