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Personnel Priority for OP&T Equals Investment in the Navy’s Future
Several articles dealing with the various aspects of the Naval Reserve Officer’s Training Corps (NROTC) program have appeared in the Proceedings during the last three years, but less attention has been granted to the overall problem of officer procurement and training (OP&T) program management.
This is distressing, and most especially so in view of the Navy’s continuing troubles with officer retention. It is trite, but nonetheless true, to observe that without a properly trained, motivated, and dedicated officer corps the remainder of the Navy will wither; it is less common to observe that the management of the various officer procurement and training programs is the critical element in the long-term viability of the officer corps. There is a direct link between the Navy’s OP&T program management and the future of the Navy itself, a relationship that is similar to the choice of options facing a would- be investor.
The individual who considers investing funds in the stock market does so with the intention of investing current resources in the hope of obtaining a significant, though future, growth in his total resource base. Since the investor has a finite resource base, he must establish some sort of priority system. If he devotes the major portion of his resources to investment, his current life-style will suffer; if he devotes the majority of his resources to current expenditures, his future will suffer. He must find a happy medium; he must invest the greatest possible amount without seriously degrading his current way of life. The wise investor allocates resources first to meet all necessary expenditures, second to make investments, and finally, if anything remains, to buy luxuries.
In terms of military management, the construction, support, and deployment of operational forces represent the necessities of life. Procurement and training of personnel represent an investment in the future. Almost everything else that we do falls into the luxury category. One must grant that the assignment of talented officers (one of our resources, and a limited one) to OP&T programs may well have an adverse impact upon other areas of the Navy, just as the decision to purchase stock may preclude the purchase of a new car. However, just as we expect the stock to appreciate while the new car depreciates, so too would we expect that the investment of talent in the OP&T programs would pay off in the future through an increased number of qualified and talented officers inclined toward making the service a career. The problem is one of priorities, of weighing the immediate adverse impact upon the Navy against the long-term benefits.
The Navy’s OP&T programs can be divided into two broad categories: commissioning sources and postcommissioning specialty training. The first category contains four basic program areas: the U. S. Naval Academy (USNA), the NROTC units, Officer Candidate School (Newport), and Aviation Officer Candidate School (AOCS), Pensacola. Virtually every unrestricted line officer (URL) receives his commission through one of these sources, and most restricted line staff corps officers pass through one as well. The immediate follow-on to the commissioning source, for most URL officers, will be duty under instruction in Surface Warfare Officers School, nuclear power training, sub school, or flight training; similar professional training schools exist for many of the several staff corps. It follows that the initial impressions the prospective and newly commissioned officers pick up at the commissioning source and during immediate follow-on training are of critical importance because they
tend to mold an individual’s perception of the Navy before he reaches the fleet. All too often, these first impressions are negative because the students are exposed to poorly selected instructors, confused policies, or some combination of the two.
Personal experiences, whether limited or of questionable value, provide the basis upon which each individual constructs his view of the world. In my case, the first six months in the Navy were hardly a constructive period. While in AOCS and the early portion of flight training, I was exposed to a number of junior officer instructors, not one 0-2/0-3 of whom identified himself as career-oriented. On the other hand, I clearly recall the lieutenant who wore his engraved belt buckle upside-down because, in his words, ‘‘that’s the way the Navy sees the world.” I can also recall the naval orientation instructor, who repeatedly announced in class that the Navy was an abomination and that he was bailing out as soon as possible, and my AOCS class officer, who had been passed over for lieutenant commander and made no bones about his bitterness. Not until I reached Basic Jet Navigation at Glynco, nine months after reporting to AOCS, did I meet a junior officer (Lieutenant Mike QuinO' later lost in Vietnam) who enjoyed the Navy and advertised the fact that active service could be personally rewarding.
In 1970, my request to be assign^ to the Air Training Command was approved. As a staff instructor with the Instructor Training School, I wa* dismayed by the proportion of newly assigned instructors who made knoss'n their immediate career objectives: three years of “fun” duty at Pensacob before leaving the Navy. A new but equally dismaying wrinkle was the ever-shifting nature of policy as it dribbled down from Chief of Naval Air Training/Chief of Naval Air BaS^; Training, and later from the new
Chief of Naval Training Staff.
In 1975, my “dream sheet” again bore fruit; I received orders to the University of South Carolina’s NROTC Unit. While attending the NROTC instructor seminar, I discovered that a Urge percentage of prospective NROTC staff officers openly intended to use rhat tour of duty to obtain a graduate degree prior to resigning their commissions, and that many of these individuals had little or nothing to say in rhe Navy’s favor. Since then, the continuous and confusing shifts of policy that have emanated from Commander Naval Education and Training Command (CNET) have reinforced my earlier judgment that management of 0p&T programs is frequently based upon expediency.
There are many competent, career- °riented officers currently assigned to 0p&T commands, but one wonders who has the greater impact: those who "'’ear their buckles upside-down, or the Mike Quinns? Since the unhappy People are usually the most vocal, one Suspects that the discontented instructors might easily out-shout the contented ones, leaving a negative impression of the personal satisfactions of active naval service. Second, an incoherent, shifting, and/or confusing set of policies, arising from management echelons staffed by officers without extensive field experience in OP&T, results in demoralization and confusion at the field level. The combination of these two factors instills in the prospective or newly commissioned officer serious doubts regarding his future in the Navy. Now these junior officers may not actually decide while in an OP&T program to leave the Navy in the shortest possible time, but they develop doubts at the very time when reassurance and a positive outlook are most critical. Little wonder many of them tend to look for the faults inherent in the naval service; they have been sensitized to the disadvantages, rather than the rewards of a Navy career.
It is a cliche to say that the operational demands placed on the Navy are given first priority. However, as all too many accident reports demonstrate, the “can-do” spirit all too often blinds us to the hazards inherent in emphasizing expediency. This sort of blindness is evident in the Navy’s attitude toward its future, as demonstrated by an unwillingness to give OP&T programs priority for personnel.
It is unthinkable that an aviator should be given the responsibility as project manager for a new class of surface warships. Nothing in his experience has prepared him for such an assignment, yet we are perfectly willing to assign this individual to an OP&T management billet. BuPers would not deliberately staff a destroyer with officers who had made known their intention to leave the Navy at the first opportunity, but those same officers frequently end up as instructors at an OCS/NROTC command.
In short, we are willing to expend considerable monetary and manpower resources to recruit prospective officers, but we are less willing to ensure that those prospective officers, once recruited, are exposed to talented,
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career-oriented, competitive instructors who are positively inclined toward the service. We are willing to create a recruiting subspecialty, but we ignore the very real and pressing need for a subspecialty in the management of OP&T programs.
Most recent Proceedings articles discussing training have tended to focus attention on the NROTC program, which does in fact provide the largest single input of URL officers, but this concentration tends to blank out the important similarities common to all OP&T programs. Regardless of commissioning source, we wish newly commissioned officers to be prepared for duty, intelligent, motivated, and at least open to the idea of a service career. This objective can best be attained by exposing the prospective officer to a reasonably firm instructional program staffed by our best career- oriented officers.
Prospective OP&T staff personnel must be thoroughly screened before receiving orders to commissioning source commands or the immediate post-commissioning training commands. This screening, which will require inputs from the prospect’s current commanding officer regarding the prospect’s attitude toward the Navy, should be devoted to eliminating those prospects who are not competitive among their peers and career- oriented. The OP&T commands should be second only to deployable operational commands in terms of priority for talented officer personnel. "Plum” tours, such as NROTC tours which offer the opportunity for postgraduate degree work, should entail an additional service obligation as a deterrent to those who would exploit the opportunity for personal gain.
OP&T policies must reflect both the Navy’s perceived needs and the realities of the field; such policies can best be generated by management staff officers who have both fleet and OP&T field experience. A subspecialty code should be granted to officers who acquire two or more tours of field duty within the OP&T programs, and pertinent program management billets within BuPers, CNET, and elsewhere should require an incumbent with an OP&T subspecialty. Officers who wish to develop an OP&T subspecialty should, during their first two shore duty tours, be exposed to at least two different aspects of OP&T rather than two tours in the same OP&T program. These officers would follow a normal sea duty warfare specialty pattern, but the development of an OP&T program management subspecialty would permit the assignment of an increasing number of senior officers to key policy-level billets throughout the OP&T management structure, as is done in other specialty areas.
As the financial costs of recruiting and training officers increase, and as the operational costs of inexperience within the commissioned officer corps increase, the Navy becomes less able to afford low officer retention. A partial solution is available, but the front-end costs are high. These costs are within our budget, if we are willing to make the investment.
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