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Like Ambassador Jeanne Kirpatrick,
I am bothered by those who “blame America first.” So I am also bothered by the pundits who rebuke the Department of Defense or the Army, Navy, or Air Force (whichever is the target of convenience) because of overpayment for defense equipment.
I, too, deplore the fact that some contractors are paid $91 for sheet metal screws, $180 for rechargeable flashlights, $7,600 for coffee makers, and $436 for claw hammers. But I also recognize who sets those prices and who profits from them. The Department of Defense, Army, Navy, and Air Force do not set the prices and most certainly do not profit from them. The culprits, in most cases, are unscrupulous defense contractors. But apparently it is easier to point a finger at the Department of Defense or the armed services rather than at the corporate profit-makers who
benefit from blatantly overpriced defense equipment.
This shows inconsistency and is a case of double standards. As an analogy, let’s consider social services. When there are abuses of social services, the culprit often is characterized as a “welfare cheat.” Yes, I understand and agree that the term “welfare cheat” is pejorative, demeaning, and an oversimplification of a complex issue. But, nevertheless, note that the culprit is the unscrupulous recipient of the subject social services. The malefactor is the party who profits from the “rip-off.”
So, why is the culprit in the case of $436 hammers portrayed to be the Department of Defense and not the recipient of the $436? Yes, I understand that those in government are stewards of the public fisc and must be held accountable. But the Department of Defense is not trying to shirk its responsibility. Indeed, the $436 hammers, and most of the other similar examples, were discovered by the pu lie’s stewards in the Department of Defense or the armed services. To the best of my knowledge, none of the overpricing problems have been disc ered and reported by the contractors.
Upon discovering examples of over pricing, the Department of Defense ah the armed services have acted swiftly to take corrective action like, for exanl pie, increasing the number of government defense contract auditors. However, the Department of Defense and the armed services will never be able to hire enough contract auditors to re ^ view the many millions of line items defense contracts to eliminate the over payment problem. We will not contro the problem until the public directs its disapprobation toward those who pro from defense rip-offs, defense contrac tors. Only when the real culprits are recognized and held properly account able in the public eye will the proble111 be controlled.
Nobody asked me either
By Lieutenant Commander Francis D. DeMasi, U. S. Navy
, but
Another Halfway Measure
Professional specialization within the U. S. Navy officer corps has surfaced again among those specialists who man the Washington offices.
A recently instituted sea-duty plan calls for routine assignment of surface warfare officers to the traditional first division officer tour, which is split between two departments or another ship- type. This sea-duty tour is followed by selection and assignment to the department head course with a predesignated departmental assignment. Thus, the young officer gets experience in two different areas and then fine tunes his experience and education in a specialization tour as department head. Routine assignment to an executive officer (XO) tour then follows. The executive officer level is where the inexperience will begin to show, and it will clearly surface at the commanding officer (CO) level.
This halfway measure recently adopted for the surface warfare community cannot achieve the desired level of fleet readiness envisioned by those who developed it. The weak link will be the engineer officer, who will be pulled without adequate training or preparation from the fire rooms of the propulsion plant and deposited at the firing controls of the combat system.
The operations and weapons specialists are going to be better prepared to perform as XO and CO than will the engineer. While the ops officer and the weps officer have been topside busy
with schedules, radars, combat systems, tactics, ship wide administrative matters, and dealing with staffs and t shore-based combat systems environment, the engineer has been in the “hole”—working with machinery; managing men, material, and money- conserving fuel; and dealing with the shore-based maintenance world. Wm the ops boss and weps officer have been involved in tactical trainers and threat simulators, the engineer has be banging on the support group’s door looking for maintenance assistance. While the topsiders have been memorizing the threat matrix, the snipe has been studying operating parameters. Thus, the operations and weapons ot cers have trained to be a commanding officer while the engineer officer has
142
Proceedings / July
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trained to be an engineer officer.
To believe that the shore-based training establishment will be able to impart the tactical and operational knowledge and expertise to the engineer that he will need as a CO is folly. The expertise needed by commanding officers is not acquired in a classroom but rather on warships’ bridges and in their combat information centers over years at sea. Classroom training supplements this experience but is not a substitute for it. Under this plan, however, shore- based training is substituted for experience. The inadvertent result is that the XO billet becomes a tactical training assignment for the engineer specialist. When the shooting starts, however, the Navy needs XOs with practical experience in tactics and warfare, not XOs under instruction.
One solution is to develop completely specialized engineers. These officers would start out in propulsion- related billets and grow up in the engineering plants as professional seagoing engineers.
Being the “captain” is not the dream or goal of every seagoing officer; there are many officers who have no desire to be ultimately responsible or accountable for a warship. These fine officers are often lost to other naval communities or to civilian life. The professional engineer specialty would give these officers another option, which if exercised would strengthen fleet readiness.
A career pattern could be easily developed that would allow for increasing responsibility as the professional engineer was promoted. At sea, these officers might start as division officers in frigates or amphibious transport docks and progress to be engineer officers in aircraft carriers, battleships, or amphibious assault ships. Ashore, engineer officers would be well qualified to fill billets at all ranks in maintenance facilities and engineering commands, and in Washington. While this may conflict with the present career path set for the engineering duty community, expanding the engineering duty officer group may be part of the answer.
Partial specialization is not the answer to the surface warfare officer community’s career development problems. Now is the time to develop the commanding officers who can take their ships into battle and win and to develop the specialized engineers who will keep those ships and their COs on the front line.
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Proceedings / Jnb
1985