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Back in 1919, these aviators had completed a surface ship tour before being considered for flight school. The same was true of aspiring submariners. Today, most surface officers can’t remember the last time a naval aviator or submariner even visited their ship. Why, then, should we be surprised when officers botch up exercises because of virtual ignorance outside their own warfare specialities?
JL hroughout history, the question, “What knowledge, skills, and character must the naval officer possess?” remains timeless even while the correct answer continuously changes. The question is, therefore, modern, urgent, and radical as well as old, persistent, and familiar. This essay will trace the background and our present approach to professional development. It will seem focused on promotion and selection, for they are the benchmarks by which we measure an officer’s progress. However, it will also address several principles currently in low esteem or severe neglect.
In the post-Civil War Navy, promotion was by simple seniority. Naval Academy class rank gave each officer his “number.” So long as the officer remained alive, in the Navy, and clear of disciplinary action, he moved up the line to the very highest positions. On the other hand, advancement awaited the death, retirement, resignation, or court-martial of one’s seniors. In the late 1800s, most officers languished in the lower ranks for decades.
Eventually this system was replaced by a selection procedure in which the bases for promotion were the officer’s personal, physical, and professional qualifications. Personal aptitude was reported primarily on fitness reports but also by service reputation; physical condition was determined by a medical board; and the last qualification was evaluated by professional boards. After an officer was judged personally fitted for promotion, he took a physical examination. Then he stood before the professional boards to demonstrate, both orally and practically, competence in each field of his profession. Captain Thomas W. Kinkaid wrote in the 1914 Proceedings that some engineering boards alone tested officers for 30, 40, or even 50 days! (And you thought the Propulsion Examining Boards were thorough.) Even if personally and physically qualified for promotion, officers who did not pass all aspects of their professional boards were not promoted.
Following World War I, professional development was built into the officer career pattern. Line officers rotated through departments on board ship and usually served in a variety of vessels. Upon commissioning, prospective aviators and submariners completed a surface ship tour before being considered for flight or submarine school. Promotion depended on receiving fitness reports which attested personal readiness for higher rank, passing a medical examination, and scoring well on the promotion examinations. These, like the professional boards they replaced, were taken after selection for promotion. They were week-long
For footnotes, please turn to page 39- tests, requiring dozens of essay-style answers, with each rank through captain having its own examination. Junior line officers wrote in six fields (without, incidentally, any choice among questions): executive (naval law, international relations, administration), operations (tactics, communications, intelligence); navigation (with at least one celestial and one terrestrial practical problem); weapons (gunnery, seamanship); engineering (naval engineering, electricity, electronics, damage control); and aviation (tactics, operations, maintenance). Thus, all line officers selected for promotion to lieutenant typically had to answer three executive, five operations, three navigation, four weapons, eight engineering (invariably rhe most numerous and dreaded), and four aviation questions. Line officers selected for promotion to commander and captain wrote their essays in three fields (again with no choice among questions): executive, operations, and aviation. Limited duty and staff offi' cers took promotion examinations in the standard executive field and in their own specialty. Blessedly, a list of possible questions for each examination was announced several months ahead of time. Officers who had been selected for promotion normally en" gaged in furious study to prepare for as many of the questions as possible; failure in even one field meant no promotion.
Looking back, one can see that the professional development system of that era rested on four basic assumptions. These were: first, that an officer could fully learn the jobs of his men during assignments m various divisions; second, that by the time he reached command, the officer would have rotated through all departments and hence should have a thorough knowledge of his profession; third, that at this point in the officer’s career the knowledge he had acquired many years earlier still would be pertinent; and fourth, that all unrestricted line officers should aspite to, and be uniformly judged on their preparation for, command at sea.
The advent of World War II resulted in the suspension of officer examinations, the use of block promotions, Naval Reserve commissionings, u*1' mediate assignment to flight and submarine schools, and burgeoning ranks of officers trained in perhaps only one department or type of ship. After the war (though interrupted again by the Korean conflict), the career rotation policy was resumed, the goal °* command at sea was reasserted, and the officer pr°' motion examinations were reinstituted.
Important changes had occurred in naval affairs* however, and beginning in the 1950s, officers u1' creasingly questioned the traditional four premises o professional development. For one thing, in a grow-
“ You cannot conceive how few men are qualified to command ships of the line as they ought to bed
Lord St. Vincent, 1800
ing number of enlisted ratings the first assumption of rhe old system no longer was valid. Few officers could dream of knowing the job of each man in technical fields as well as that man did. The Naval Officer’s Guide still preached the idea to junior officers: 'Know the jobs of the men under you ... so well that, if a man asks you, ‘What am I supposed to do with this machine, or that missile, under these conditions,’ you can show him.” In a burst of realism it added: “But if you don’t know, tell him honestly, ‘I don’t know,’ and then add, ‘But I’ll find out. 1 (For correctness, that last phrase should have been, But I’ll help you find out,” for most questions about what to do with this machine or that missile under these conditions require two or more heads poking into a technical manual.)
Many officers also thought the third assumption of the old promotion system was invalid. The awesome pace of naval technology rendered the technical knowledge gained as a junior officer irrelevant if not downright pernicious—to professional competence as commanding officer a decade later. Lessons learned in electronic warfare or antisubmarine tactics 'n 1958 were mostly bad habits to be overcome in 1968. This was tacitly conceded, but it was ignored ■n polite professional circles, by the practice of giving fighter pilots command of deep-draft ships, or giving an officer whose entire career had been in diesel-powered, torpedo-launching submarines command of a steam-propelled, cannon-toting destroyer. So much for “professional background.”
Finally, the number and importance of technical, scientific, and managerial officer assignments had grown to such a point that the fourth assumption (shaping all line career patterns toward command at sea) was at least problematic. Certainly it was both unfair and counterproductive to insist that every officer’s promotion depend upon his passing a significantly difficult examination of shipboard skills. Thus, in 1959, the officer promotion examinations—suspended during World War II and Korea and increasingly disregarded afterwards — were abolished. By the late 1950s, the traditional concept of the “well-rounded unrestricted line officer” seemed anachronistically implausible, impractical, unfair, and counterproductive.
Simultaneously, the U.S. Navy began to face its first real challenge at sea since World War II. The Soviet Union commissioned destroyers and patrol boats armed with surface-to-surface missiles, as well as that navy’s first nuclear attack (SSN), ballistic missile (SSB), and cruise missile (SSG) submarines. By the early 1960s, scores of modern Soviet warships were in commission or under construction as that navy moved from coast defense and commerce interdiction roles to overseas power projection.
Around this time, many U.S. Navy officers decided that the combined impact of technological complexity, rapid obsolescence of technical knowledge, and increased managerial responsibilities—all compounded by the impressively growing Soviet naval threat—required specialization to improve officer professional competence. Nuclear engineering officers, amphibious force experts, career specialists in destroyer antisubmarine warfare (ASW), airborne tactical coordinators, graduates of Monterey’s new operations analysis course, senior officer program managers, and pilots divided into fixed- or rotary-wing, carrier or shore, attack or support communities typify two decades of career pattern specialization. In large measure, the central assumption of our professional development program has been that specialization will enable us to outstrip (or at least keep pace with) both the technological revolution and the Soviet naval challenge.
“There is always,” H.L. Mencken once observed, “an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” In professional development, officer specialization is, I believe, one such “easy solution.” It readily may be seen to be neat and plausible, but why is it wrong?
First, most arguments for specialization are specious. After hauling out that terrifying accusation against the unrestricted line officer—“jack of all trades, master of none”—one author wrote, “No longer does it seem reasonable or possible to expect the well-rounded, general-purpose line officer to be capable of meeting the demands of modern antisubmarine warfare. . . . the destroyer captain should be an ASW specialist.”2 The fallacy was more blatant the next year (1973) when an officer asserted, “The sole mission of the Knox-class destroyer escorts is ASW.”3 It is, of course, true that if one knows precisely what task or crisis a unit will face, one can argue convincingly for the necessity of assigning certain kinds of specialists to that command. But this is to beg the crucial question. No one today can know, with any precision, which of many professional skills naval officers will be required to exercise. The officers of the Knox-c\zss Harold E. Holt (DE-1074) would have been amused to read that their ship’s sole mission was ASW—as she came portside to the Mayaguez and Marines poured over her rails. Was this the moment when an ASW specialist captain was essential—or, given your druthers, would you have selected a skipper fresh from command of a fleet tug? And what about the Marines ashore? They couldn’t have given a damn about how much the captain of the destroyer Henry B. Wilson (DDG-7) knew about ASW. Undoubtedly, they wanted the best shore bombardment ship in the fleet, preferably with a former gunfire liaison officer in command. So arguments for specialists look good only by making assumptions which are simplistic, if not utterly mistaken.
That does alert us, however, to another very important point: the naval profession demands officers who are more than specialists. This is an age-old requirement, inherent in the very nature of taking a warship to sea. On board an ancient trireme or a modern frigate, an officer is a mariner, a warrior, a leader, a diplomat, and more. John Paul Jones—a superb illustration of the point—wrote to the Continental Congress:
“None other than a Gentleman, as well as a Seaman, both in Theory and in practice is qualified to support the Character of a Commission Officer in the Navy, nor is any Man fit to Command a Ship of War, who is not also capable of communicating his Ideas on Paper in Language that becomes his Rank.”4
Did Jones want a corps of “dandies”? Of course not. He warned against specialists, officers who were merely competent seafarers. Any argument or program which ignores so central a requirement of our profession ought to be viewed with suspicion.
Naturally, some historical intervals and circumstances are more forgiving of professional gaps and weaknesses than are others. For example, with overwhelming numerical superiority, individual limitations are less apparent. Or if luck has it that a certain skill is not demanded, its absence will not be noticed, and no harm will result. Ours does not seem to be such an age. The U.S. Navy today faces parity at sea. The demands on its officers are extensive m scope and intensive in application. Individuals must be professionally competent in an operational spectrum from humanitarian aid and diplomatic visits to limited conflict and full-scale nuclear war. Today s naval officer cannot rely on luck to protect him <n quarters of neglect. His peacetime operations routinely require a significant range in professional competence, while actual warfare most likely would demand that he operate his ship or aircraft in a very sophisticated multi-threat environment.
Appreciating these things, the Chief of Naval Operations in 1971 approved the tactical action officer course to teach ship’s officers:
“. . . those portions of tactical naval warfare needed to adequately ‘fight the ship.’ These included, among others, knowledge of the threat, U.S. ship and force capabilities, U.S. aircraft capabilities, electronic warfare, anti-air warfare, anti-submarine warfare, communications, ait intercept control, tactical data systems and command and control.”5
Is it not obvious that to be able to “adequately fight the ship,” an officer must in fact be a jack of all trades? But the commanding officer of the First tactical action school also wrote:
“Using a base of 100 as the minimum level of knowledge required [italics added] by a commander in order to adequately fight his ship, it was determined that the typical line officer, ensign through rear admiral, scores about 33% overall of what’ he should know for his rank. Although an officer may score well, perhaps even 100%, >n some areas of subspecialization or experience, almost without exception, he was extremely weak in one or more of the other areas of naval warfare.’ There you see the fruits—and danger—of specialization. Today, the line officer’s only alternative to being a jack of all trades is to risk being a dinosaur: extinct through overspecialization.
The third weakness of arguments for officer specialization is that they suffer from “tem- porocentrism”—the belief that only our age has experienced this problem of complexity and rapid change. Yet in nearly every culture and every era, individuals have felt that change is so rapid that real knowledge in worldly matters is impossible. (Indeed, two generations before Socrates, Heraclitus posited exactly that principle at the center of early Western philosophy; and Plato’s Republic is the most eloquent argument for specialization ever written.) In the
Naval Institute Proceedings, an officer observed:
“I suppose we have all admitted to ourselves by this time that we can no longer hope to be abreast of the advance in all matters of professional interest. The complex development of the present day has reconciled us to specialties, and to being ourselves non-specialists in some, perhaps in many, of the necessary factors that make up a modern warship.”7
Mahan wrote that in 1888, nine years after Edison invented the light bulb, a few months after the Navy commissioned its first steel ship, and seven years before Marconi developed the radio. But unlike recent Proceedings contributors who are so awed by nuclear physics, inertial navigation systems, and home-on-
jam weapons that they plead for specialists, Mahan simply acknowledged the facts of life and continued: “If there be, however, any one branch in which we should have clear views, a wide and deep knowledge, not only of the truths, but of the reasons and arguments by which those truths are established, it is the conduct of war.”8 The basic problem in professional development, then, is not whether officers should be specialists; of necessity, they are specialists. Rather, it is that being a capable specialist is only one requirement of the naval officer. At least equally important are that he (or she) be an effective leader, and that he have a comprehensive understanding of what Mahan called “the art of war”—his profession. These three dimensions of a naval officer—specialist, leader, and professional—must be equally developed in an individual. The concern of this article is that our emphasis today is seriously misplaced. We are enormously concerned about specialist matters, while we give little more than lip service to leadership, and do virtually nothing to promote professional development outside one’s warfare field.
An aside on leadership: people too often conceive leadership skill as some charisma showered by Neptune on a few individuals at birth. Oh yes, we all have at least a little bit, and it can be nurtured; but basically it is an individual thing impervious to the organizational environment. This is wrong. Leadership can be enhanced just as other proficiencies are improved—by adequate support, study, accountability, command interest, and practice, practice, practice. One does not really learn leadership in seminars on Theory X and Theory Y; one learns it on broiling flight lines, rainy fleet landings, and bone-cold beaches. One learns it when one has meaningful authority, genuine responsibility, and undeniable accountability. Commonly, however, these requisites are being sacrificed for some other end, as in policies of brief command tours, high crew turnover rates, and official bypassing of the chain of command. Likewise, as officers are impelled to concentrate on technical expertise—and by default to ignore leadership and professional development—they usurp the authority, intrude into the responsibility, and nullify the accountability (as well as injure the rightful pride) of chief petty officers.
The combat information center officer who feels he should conduct watch team training (after all, the Navy has sent him through weeks of intensive training to make him “the ship’s CIC expert,” hasn’t it?) consigns his chief to a coffee cup in CPO quarters. And though we have leadership and management training, do you notice that whenever there’s a real- world problem (as in race relations or engineering maintenance) the Navy leans toward increasing specialist knowledge rather than demanding better leadership? While knowledge is instrumental in solving many problems, the definition of better leadership is “greater subordinate accomplishment of organizational goals.” So is the best way to ensure proper maintenance of 1200-pound steam systems to send admirals and captains through crash courses (i.e., t° give them specialist knowledge), or is it simply t0 institute stricter accountability at these levels, in* eluding relief for cause (thereby spurring leadership performance all the way down to the fireroom)? Sending admirals and captains to school is at least an odd response to inadequate division-level ship maintenance. “The Old Navy” would have recognized this problem instantly as one of leadership, not specialist expertise, and heads would have rolled. “The New Navy” thinks leadership is something you talk about, while the way to solve problems is to increase technical knowledge, so heads are filled.
If leadership regularly loses to specialist skills, professional development isn’t even in the race. 1° 1974, the Chief of Naval Operations commissioned a Naval Officer Professional Development Board (directed by Vice Admiral Marmaduke G. Bayne) r° examine:
“. . . all requirements for officer professional development in the Navy, except those of the healing arts community. . . . Throughout its deliberations, the board maintained that the political, technological, economic, and sociological complexities of today’s society—and most assuredly tomorrow’s as well—demand a person who can do more than carry out the function of a warfare specialist.”9
Sounds good, doesn’t it? Now consider this description of a recent coordinated task force exercise:
“Once contacts were generated, the OTC [attack carrier background?] and CIC were indecisive m reacting to them, due primarily to a combination of three factors. First, there was marginal comprehension of the aggressor’s [submarine s] capabilities, modes of operation, and probable courses of action. Second, there was a general lack of knowledge of the capabilities of the ASW units in the task force. Especially apparent were deficiencies in appreciating applications of the P-3C and passive sonobuoy detection capabilities and tactics. Third . . . the OTC and CIC consistently failed to integrate the proximity and speed of an aggressor to obtain a realistic datum for a selected tactic or ASW platform. P-3C crews in general overlooked surface and airborne threats to the task
force, failed to comprehend the nature of the submarine threat to the task force, did not employ appropriate follow-on tactics once contact was generated, and did not aggressively pursue enemy contacts.”10
Among other things, that typifies the disastrous consequences of officers having very little professional competence outside their own warfare area. Regardless of the Bayne Board report, today’s officers are, overwhelmingly, warfare specialists. And the new officer Personnel Qualification Standards (needed though they are) may aggravate rather than remedy the problem because they do not transcend the horizons of any one specialty.
The fundamental cause of the current professional development problem is simple. When you do not identify those who have a certain attribute, you cannot reward them for having it. If there is no reward for having an attribute, people are indifferent to having it or not. And when great rewards are given for developing other attributes, indifference rapidly becomes neglect as people concentrate on the rewarded qualities. Despite the expressed need for officers "who can do more than carry out the function of a Warfare specialist,” the Navy has no way of measuring how much its officers know about the full scope of their profession. Warfare specialty skills draw great attention, recognition, even four-digit codes; but there is no institutional incentive for an officer to be more than a warfare specialist—to be a professional naval officer.
Consider the sorry state of professional study. Why do only a third of U.S. Navy officers belong to their own professional society? (Is the Naval Institute somehow less relevant or reputable than the American Medical and Bar Associations? If so, why?) If it even exists, how much is your ship/squadron/unit professional library used? How many wardrooms genuinely encourage officers to read and discuss naval and military journals? When did a naval aviator or submariner (not to mention an officer from another service or nation) last visit your ship to present a professional subject? Have you ever done much more than wonder what your colleagues are doing up, down, or under there? Do we in fact even know enough to communicate with one another? Why, then, are we surprised when officers botch up exercises because of virtual ignorance outside their own warfare specialties?
The solution to this problem must involve three elements: a way to measure professional knowledge, a program to foster its improvement, and a commitment to reward those who possess it.
For the first, each officer (including special warfare, supply, limited duty officers, civil engineers, lawyers, Medical Service Corps, ready reservists, medical, dental, nurse, yea even unto thy chaplains— everybody) should take an annual four-hour, multiple-choice, computer-graded professional examination. These should be comprehensive tests for the various ranks (exempting ensigns, who already are busy enough, and admirals, who . . . well, we have to leave some incentive to make flag rank, don’t we?).
While details of the content, administration, and use of such examinations would have to be worked out, certain features deserve emphasis. Grades would be known by all selection and promotion boards, officer detailers, and (sanitized for anonymity) Bureau of Personnel study groups. Scores would not be released to one’s command. So important is this isolation of examination scores from fitness reports that,
Take this typical lieutenant off the bridge of the Virginia and put him in a ballistic missile submarine. Assign him exclusive duties as learner and teacher who would neither train for, nor stand duty as, a submarine officer. While there are drawbacks and costs to doing this, they may he much less dangerous than a continued obsession with narrowly qualified specialists.
to lessen the likelihood of either voluntary or subtly pressured disclosure, the officer would be individually informed only of weak areas. After a year, he could request his full grade and comparative data.
The Navy itself would be the chief beneficiary of a properly designed examination system. For the first time, we could objectively evaluate the distribution of professional knowledge in the service. With such an instrument, we could scientifically answer a myriad of important questions. For instance: In terms of professional development, what is the optimum length of officer tours? What measurable results accrue from war college attendance? Are there professional advantages to assigning officers to the Naval Postgraduate School rather than to civilian institutions? How does duty on a joint or international staff affect an individual’s development? When in a career pattern does an officer gain the most from instructor assignment at the Naval Academy, duty in the Pentagon, foreign exchange programs, and so on? What is the retention value of inactive Naval Reserve officers? In which fields are the members of certain warfare specialties deficient, and in which areas is the officer corps as a whole disturbingly ignorant?
Annual examinations would accentuate the importance of formal officer training, encourage informal inter- and intra-unit professional education arrangements, and revivify officer correspondence courses. The reduction in “specialist mentality” would help leadership by forcing officers to rely more on the Navy’s proper technical specialists, the chief petty officers, to do their jobs correctly. But undoubtedly the greatest benefit to the Navy would come from altering each officer’s perspective of himself. No longer would a submarine officer be unconcerned about task force antiair warfare doctrine, nor would weapons officers so readily flip past an article on satellite communications. In short, individuals would begin to think of themselves less as warfare specialists and more as naval officers.
How would the individual officer benefit from these annual ordeals? Perhaps the most important observation to make is: if you’re good, you can show it. Properly designed examinations should not worry— indeed, should be welcomed by—self-respecting officers. “Hard-chargers” in demanding, careerenhancing but time-consuming assignments would not be at a disadvantage; their daily environment and fields of constant work would be the core interest of the examination. On the other hand, there no longer would be backwater billets; a motivated individual in a less demanding assignment could apply himself to acquire and demonstrate knowledge usually gained in a “fleet seat.” Moreover, both the officer and his de- tailer would have an objective display of the individual’s strengths and weaknesses, so career decisions could be more rationally based. “Look, you’ve been consistently low in aviation areas. How about an East Coast carrier?”
The cardinal value to the individual officer would appear at promotion and selection points. An officer is now judged in only two important (and not entirely independent) dimensions: career pattern (how has his ticket been punched?) and fitness reports (what have his superiors thought of him?). Both have infamous drawbacks. For example, despite rosy assurances that “there are no bad billets,” we all know better. The identities of the dead-ends vary from time to time as policies or needs change, but undeniably there are plums and lemons. And one cannot always choose one’s diet. Similarly, in addition to the chronic “grade creep” problem, fitness reports are not always responsive to sincere individual effort. They are inescapably subjective despite strenuous contortions to “standardize” and “objectify” them- Most experienced officers can recount a career or two that was dimmed or damned by a personality clash, an unavoidable accident, an alcoholic senior, or a harshly applied standard. More ominously for the Navy, they can cite several careers that appeared to prosper from don’t-rock-the-gig attitudes, hypocrisy and dissembling, or currying favor.
Although it is now nearly a ritual to say, “The selection process is as sound and as fair as human ingenuity has yet devised,” we must not be blind to its deficiencies.[1] The system penalizes individuals who were ordered to certain assignments for “the needs of the service,” and it rests heavily on subjective reports which insidiously promote submissiveness if not favoritism. But “human ingenuity allows—and simple justice demands—that individuals’ careers be judged from a third perspective. All officers are morally entitled to a measurement which is separate from the vagaries of hard-pressed detailerS and unavoidably subjective superiors, which is indisputably objective and fair, and for which the individual is solely responsible. Annual professional examinations would be such a measurement. They would give each officer direct control of at least one- third of his official record.
The Navy must also develop a program to achieve the Bayne Board’s professional development goals- While officer examinations will enable measurement of overall knowledge—and thereby motivate most officers to self-improvement in this dimension—the Navy has to give professionalism the same visible commitment it accords to specialties. This means a full reassessment of current officer assignment pat' terns and policies, and a long-term dedication of resources (both fiscal and personnel) to improve officer professionalism.
Minimally, the Navy should institute a two-tiered system of professional development tours. At the lower level, each year a select group of junior officers would be chosen for six-month assignments out of their own warfare specialties, accommodating individual preferences wherever feasible. Between first sea/squadron tours and their next assignments, a submarine officer might go to a patrol squadron, an attack pilot could choose an amphibious ship, and a destroyer officer might make a ballistic missile submarine patrol. Care would be taken that the command to which the officer is assigned not be in the yard, in post-deployment stand-down, and so on. And the officer himself would be assisted in riding other ships, working with staffs, flying a variety of missions—making, in sum, the best use of his time. The officer’s sole duties would be learning and teaching; he would neither train for, nor stand duty as, an officer of the command. But he should be able to complete section 6 (warfare) of the surface warfare PQS or its equivalent in other warfare areas, and he should present a fairly comprehensive officer education program in the organization, equipment, operations, capabilities, and problems of his own specialty. Hospitality and assistance would be required of the host command, but its officers would be more than repaid by their improved professional examination scores.
The upper tier would involve similar three-month assignments for a proportion of the officers who have passed screenings for their first ship or squadron commands. As part of prospective commanding officer training, these officers would tailor a professional development program to fill their own individual gaps. Again, the focus would be on learning and teaching, but with particular flexibility to meet the officer’s self-assessed professional growth needs.
Let us forthrightly acknowledge that officer examinations and worthwhile professional development programs will have drawbacks and costs. Examinations will require time and talent to develop; no one will enjoy taking them; and when they are introduced, they undoubtedly will bruise some comfortable egos. Professional development tours will affect the officer assignment pipeline and have a noticeable, though not severe, budgetary impact. More extensive changes to career patterns and practices will have correspondingly expensive adjustment requirements. But we should not ignore the fact that our current exclusive concern with warfare specialization, to the extreme detriment of leadership and professionalism, has a cost too—one which may be ir- remissible when it matters most. War is a cruel accountant.
Finally, no amount of well-phrased Bayne Board reports, or high examination scores, or even exciting professional development tours can mean more than what selection boards say they mean. The Navy promotes in its officers whatever it promotes its officers for. If selection boards signify that the Navy values warfare specialists but not leaders and not professionals, then the Navy will get only specialists. Yet many centuries of history have shown—and the future promises to emphasize—that “It is, by no means, enough that an officer of the navy should be a capable mariner. He must be that, of course, but also a great deal more.”12 He must be a genuine leader, and an informed professional.
The author wishes gratefully to thank the following officers for generously contributing their time, ideas, and criticisms to this essay (which, of course, may not reflect their own views): LCDR Philip B. Arms, ADM Worth H. Bagley, LCDR Michael Bixler, CAPT Charles H. Davidson, CDR Duane L. Feuerhelm, LT Carl R. King, LT Merek E. Lipson, LT Harry E. McCoy, CDR Ronald T. Mears, YNCM Henry C. Mueller, LCDR Walter P. Rudolph, VADM Harry Sanders, LCDR Allan K. Sipe, and CDR John A. Vanderslice.
t Lieutenant Commander Grassey is a 1967 graduate of Villanova University. He was an NROTC contract student, served two years on board the USS Massey (DD- 778), and was for one year officer in charge of the Naval Weapons Orientation Group, Camp Pendleton. He received a master of arts in 1971 from the University of Chicago, where he now is completing a doctoral dissertation in philosophy. Mr. Grassey is a Naval Reserve intelligence officer. [2] 11
[1] Captain Worth Scanland, USN, "Standby . . . Vote,” Proceedings June 1963, p- 47.
12 Attributed to John Paul Jones. Quoted in John D. Wallace (editor). To Get the Job Done (Annapolis: U.S. Naval Institute, 1976), p. 165.
[2] Rear Admiral Arthur A. Ageton, USN (Ret.), and Captain William P. Mack, USN, The Naval Officer's Guide, Fifth Edition, (Annapolis: U. S. Naval Institute, I960), p. 170.
2 Robert R. Mackie "The ASW Officer: ‘Jack of All Trades, Master of None, U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings. February 1972, p. 34.
3 Lieutenant Sherman E. Wright, Jr., USN, "ASW and the Modern Submarine,” Proceedings. April 1973, p. 67.
4 Quoted in Ageton and Mack, op. cit.. p. 152.
5 Captain Robert B. Pettitt, USN (Ret.), "TAOs: To Fight the Ship,” Proceedings, February 1974, p. 57.
6 Ibid.
7 Quoted in "Comment and Discussion,” Proceedings. October 1973, p. 141.
8 Ibid.
9 Dr. William L. Maloy, “The Education and Training of Naval Officers: An Investment in the Future,” Proceedings. May 1975 (Naval Review Issue), pp. 146-147.
10 Lieutenant William G. Marshall, USNR, "The Airborne Destroyer,” Proceedings. March 1974, p. 27.