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By Colonel Denis J. Kiely, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
On dark winter mornings of plebe years long past, one of the more mindless but humorous breakfast rites was a seemingly endless series of earthy similes to describe just how cold it got in Maryland. While this was a departure from the sterner aspects of a plebe’s miserable life, it disciplined the memory for later, more important challenges. Failure to recall and recite rapidly committed one—just for starters—to a meal spent seated at full brace without reliance on the front two inches of chair that the plebe was normally allowed to occupy. Such nonsense has probably long since disappeared as an item of recitation, but nowadays the most likely question at much higher echelons is just how hot it can get in Annapolis. And the similes that could be generated under current circumstances are not likely to evoke much laughter.
Even though the Naval Academy has faced scandal and criticism from time to time throughout its long, illustrious history, its character has always been that of unfailing dedication to the finest standards of honor and discipline. With West Point, and later joined by the Air Force upstart from Colorado Springs, the Academy has long stood as a shining example to the nation—a guardian of cherished values and a source of exemplary leadership. But recent incidents in Annapolis have fed upon each other, abetted by a frenzied media search for institutional feet of clay. Subcommittees of both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees and other government agencies conducted investigations and reviews that produced sweeping recommendations—but the irony is that such corrective measures may only increase the Academy’s rate of drift away from its charter.
Unfortunately, the more nefarious deeds of the past year—among them alleged (and later discredited) rape, a conspiratorial break-in, and an alleged act of sexual harassment—convey the impression that lax discipline and lackluster leadership play—along with individual flaws— in all this. Both the Naval Academy and its superintendent have been maligned in the rush to judgment. In this day and age, U.S. institutions live and die under the watchful eye of a free press and its sometimes indistinct boundary between liberty and license. Even while the jury was still out with regard to the particulars of each of those unseemly incidents, the Naval Academy (and by implication, its sister academies) was tried and convicted repeatedly on television and in the nation’s dailies. Fairly or unfairly, the academies will remain under the microscope for a while, and additional unsavory incidents could threaten their futures.
Having said that, however, one cannot avoid the nag' ging suspicion that there really might be something wrong under all the hoopla. In each of the incidents, leadership or control failed somewhere—not necessarily on the part of an individual, but perhaps on the wider scale of policy and its implementation.
During the past 30 years, the service academies have undergone something of a metamorphosis, seeking survival in an environment of societal transformation, political posturing, and the all-too-real demand for high-technology competence. The implicit charge remains, nonetheless, that their graduates must continue to represent uncompromising professional excellence, and embody the hallmarks of honor and good character—all that, despite contemporary American society’s reluctance to impose such standards on itself, for fear of incurring egalitarian wrath. In an age of lowest-common-denominator applications, the academies find themselves, unhappily, the targets of those who see them as the last bastions of elitism.
Since the 1960s, we in the services have made the unfortunate choice not to choose—attempting to satisfy one element of the population with internal change while maintaining a facade of constancy to mollify the other. This does not work and it cannot succeed, especially when it is put to the acid test of cost-versus-benefit, by which almost everything else in this country is gauged.
One thing is clear: The academies must shape up if they are to retain their traditional role as providers of tomorrow’s military and naval leaders. They must return to the tougher standards of earlier years and project a strict, military image, stripped of the frills added during the last 20 years to make life more bearable for pampered youth. While this high-tech age imposes particularly rigorous demands, a naval officer cannot be just a technician. That officer must also be a strong, forceful, and dedicated leader and the standard bearer for honor, sacrifice, and soldierly virtue. A Trident submarine may be a sophisticated and potent system, but it is virtually useless if its officers are undisciplined, uncaring, or inept. The machinery and systems of the modem Navy seem to be working fairly well, but greater attention needs to be paid to the
most complicated and capricious element, the people.
Starting at the Academy and Navy boot camps, much ntust be done to put a “fleet” orientation back in the Navy. Discipline and standards must be toughened and tightened to rid the services of the last traces of Z-gram coddling from the Zumwalt days and the industrial mindSet of the nuclear-power technocracy. The business of the Navy is an aggressive defense of the nation and its commerce. Its efficiency derives not just from computers and Srnooth-working reactors, but from no-nonsense, principled leadership and disciplined crews.
A good start might be to purge the Brigade of Midshipmen of some of the country-club atmosphere and to slam tile liberty gate shut a bit more often. Returning to a tough Plebe year has a play, too; it rids the system early of those "'ho are found wanting. In that connection, it is also time 1° separate the boys from the girls. A system that attempts to indoctrinate both males and females under some common standard is a farce that can only brutalize one and shortchange the other. Quality will not suffer if the female mids are indoctrinated under a program that recognizes irrefutable differences. As for the males, a return to old standards will improve the caliber of the combat leaders of the future. This proposal will go a long way to buffing the Academy’s tarnished image. If political heat is a consideration, then it is time to sit back and question seriously the efficacy of not only the Naval Academy, but the other academies as well.
All this brings into question the relevance of the service academies to the effectiveness of the modern military in particular, and the nation’s values in general. Whether or not one cares to quibble with the Government Accounting Office (GAO), which claims a $250,000 and $55,000 price tag per academy and Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) student respectively, the difference in the figures is sufficient to establish that the ROTC seems, on the surface, much more cost-effective in turning out officers than the academies. The Navy claims a much lower cost per midshipman, attributing the GAO’s higher average to additional faculty support expenses that West Point and the Air Force Academy factor into the cost per cadet. No mat-
If the academies cannot meet their charters any longer, maybe it is time to close the gates on that chapter of their history and reopen them as postgraduate schools that provide entry-level training for all officers.
ter. Even to the casual observer, the reason for the disparity is self-evident; only tuition, books, a stipend for drill time, and a bucket issue of hand-me-down uniforms combine with an austere support structure to form the total investment in the ROTC, while the academy consists of an almost independently functioning satellite with its own facilities, faculty, and a support. system that provides everything from haircuts to hop cards during a four-year incubation, in which time the students are carried as part of the regular military establishment.
The Old Guard is probably more inclined to justify the difference by the quality argument; you get what you pay for, and the academy officer is better groomed for the long climb than his ROTC counterpart. The assumption is that one has chosen a career, while the other is ... , well, he’s a reservist. Those who think this way are sadly behind the times, and a glance at current flag and general officer lists provides mute testimony to a diminishing academy presence at the top. The trend lies in the growing sophistication and institutionalization of the ROTC as a provider of regular officers over the last 30 years.
Having raked the academies, I should turn for a moment to the ROTC. Once termed the Student Army Training Corps, the ROTC was just that; it provided basically indoctrinated officers on demand and in a hurry. While most of the participants were virtual “throw-away” officers, released quickly following a demobilization, some stayed. Others became the core of reserve organizations. While the ROTC was never meant to compete with the academies as a source of commissions in the regulars, the Cold War created standing requirements that neither the Naval Academy nor West Point could meet alone. The Holloway Plan and equivalents became the seeds for an officer procurement program that has developed a life of its own during the past 30-odd years. It is now so institutionalized
. . It is time to separate the boys from the girls. A system that attempts to indoctrinate both males and females under some common standard is a farce that can only brutalize one and shortchange the other."
that it no longer can absorb readily the total ebb and flow of demand. This shows up most in the scholarship program, which incorporates the same four-year cycle and regular commission as the academies.
While admittedly a less expensive program, the ROTCs of all the services constitute a sprawling administrative system where uniformity of training tends to suffer. Moreover, current force reductions have already resulted in wasted money, and even more will be wasted as the projected demand of 1988 becomes the surplus of 1991. Last May, the Army patted many young 1990 graduates on the head, wished them good luck in the job market, and ate the costs of four-year scholarships. The basic—but minimal—skill levels of those graduates are perishable; within a year or two, most will remember little, if anything military. Given the cost of the modem college education, Uncle Sam lost a good deal of money in the process. As a final note, ROTC unit effectiveness is vulnerable to the vagaries of the contemporary campus. During the Vietnam experience, ROTC presence at any college was at best tenuous; at worst, it provided a catalyst for disruption, rendering the steady supply of new officers a shaky proposition. During calmer times, the ROTC contingent remains as a periodic lightning rod for activists, eager to promote radical agenda by involving the military in thorny social issues. For such a simply accomplished end, the ROTC is a terribly inefficient application of means.
The time has come to consider seriously whether the academies can still meet their charters. Since contemporary quality comparisons between the academies and ROTC seem essentially the same—and the services are satisfied with that level—common sense says to eliminate the more expensive and consolidate the more diverse.
Although it is not necessarily desirable, converting the three academies to military, naval, and air colleges would provide a mechanism to integrate scholarship ROTC and academy programs. For aesthetic effect, the schools would retain their identities and names but would be classified as professional schools at the bottom of the current chain of service staff schools and colleges. In that respect, the naval college could either incorporate The Basic School, or the Marine Corps could maintain its facility at Quantico, elevating it to the level of the other military colleges.
Training programs would offer one year to 18 months of intensive professional development. An internal system (a plebe system, in effect) to identify marginals, develop leadership, and promote cohesion, comradeship, and pride in accomplishment among survivors would be an integral part of the first few months of training. Existing facilities at West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs would be more than adequate to accommodate expanded enrollment in anticipation of emergency. Conversely, portions of those facilities could be shut down during low-demand periods without the usual wasteful expenditures involved
Alternative to the Academies
Who's Eligible?
To be eligible for appointment to a military, naval, or air college, an applicant would:
^ Be between the ages of 21 to 24, with waiver available to 26. For an active-duty enlisted applicant, compensatory waivers could be granted on the basis of one year for every year served— up to eight years.
- Be a graduate of an accredited college or university, or be selected for special appointment under a meritorious noncommissioned officer/petty officer program. For the latter, current officer-training program qualifying standards would apply.
- Be required to meet current height, weight, and other physical standards, and further be required to complete service physical fitness test successfully.
- Agree to serve for a minimum of six years, or as modified by requirements for MOSs/designa- tors requiring additional formal training, e.g., aviation (rated crewmember), submarine (nuclear power), etc.
- Complete the application process during the senior year of college, and receive orders upon graduation to report to the next class convening.
What Good Is It?
A new military officer training system offers many advantages.
- Centralized training resulting in higher quality instruction at reduced cost
- A thoroughly standardized program of officer training, producing a homogeneous, cohesive, proud officer corps
- Elimination of the sprawling network of ROTC detachments
- Early identification of candi-
dates with special disciplines, trained at colleges or universities prominent in those studies
- Total concentration on professional studies
- Higher retention rates
- A better system of assignment of graduates to career tracks
- A one- rather than four-year response capability
- Higher student motivation that is a consequence of a shorter and more focused program
- Built-in continuity with intermediate, senior and top-level service schools. An officer’s
career would consist of operational assignment at one level, screening and selection for schooling in preparation for advancement to the next. Officer standards would be common from the outset, i.e., no need for running-mate adjustments, etc.
► Inter-service cooperation would be enhanced through standardization of basic procedures among the three colleges, improving from the outset an officer’s familiarity with and functioning in the joint process.
in shutdown, caretaker, or subsequent start-up costs. Each of those schools would have the capacity to provide 4,000 officers per year.
While this is a departure from tradition, the proposal offers many pluses, not the least of which is the comparative ease in transition. A three-year period would be adequate for resolving phase-in problems, during which time the academies would not admit undergraduates. The recruiting process would be undisturbed, since youngsters desiring military careers would continue to prepare by applying to and entering civilian colleges rather than applying for appointment to one of the academies. In that regard, the current system of granting appointments, often accused of having political taint, probably could be abandoned without much political pain; the new system would not offer free college. The absence of a paid education Would carry the additional benefit of attracting only those whose ambitions focus squarely on military service.
This proposal is nothing more than a long-overdue revision. For too long the services have been content to watch each academy’s role diminish and the quality of the product slide. The academies are expensive propositions, with much of the cost devoted to cosmetics. Considering that the ROTC program provides a very significant percentage of officers, it may be time to pool assets in order to provide quality training to all candidates for regular commissions. Attempting to provide that training in company with the undergraduate experience is complicated and distracting. Where the academies are concerned, especially the Naval Academy, the emphasis on the academic has crowded professional development. We should tackle only one task at a time. Military colleges geared to a total emphasis on teaching the profession of arms to college graduates can accomplish the same mission as the academies and ROTC, but with less cost and greater effect. What is more, they can do so while preserving cherished tradition.
Is this a bad idea? In some respects, it may be. “Steaming as before’’ where the academies are concerned is more appealing. But unless someone grabs the helm, the military profession will continue to flounder, drifting into mediocrity.
Colonel Kiely is currently a writer living in northern Virginia. He is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War and has served with the U.S. State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Stall. He is a 1959 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.