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college would be a splendid way to prepare naval officers for higher command. Yet their ideas aroused furious opposition among the naval hierarchy, whose members argued that officers should concentrate upon practical matters learned in the school of the ship. For them, abstract thinking ashore had no place in the naval profession.
To this day, the naval service has always regarded the Naval War College with mixed feelings. Its heyday came between the two World Wars; aspiring naval officers went there then because they had the time and because they believed it provided the best way to prepare themselves intellectually for high command. Then World War II came, the college was restricted to training reservists for staff duty, and after the war it never again regained the status it had briefly enjoyed.
Its first postwar president, Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, had been closely associated with the earlier college. As an advocate of its value to the naval profession, Spruance urged that all newly promoted wartime flag officers be required to attend the college if they had never been there. Furthermore, Spruance argued, college attendance should become a prerequisite for selection to flag rank in the future. Nothing came of his recommendation. The Navy Department declared it was impractical; flag officers and frontrunning captains could not be spared for a year’s absence at Newport, because they were needed elsewhere. This policy created a body of noncollege-graduate flag officers who could justifiably say, in effect, "I made admiral without going to Newport, so who needs it?” As we shall see, that way of thinking has persisted ever since.
The problems of the Naval War College reflect a much more profound issue: how does the Navy prepare its officers to become professionals in the art of war? That is a question that has engaged thoughts and minds and pens since the Navy was first established. “The knowledge that is necessary to a naval line officer,” wrote Mahan in his essay, “is simply and solely that
Most of the instructors at the Naval Academy are young, junior in rank, have had little or no previous teaching experience, find Annapolis a stimulating place to live and work, and are probably right in assuming that the experience will not help them in their careers.
which enables him to discharge his many duties, intelligently and thoroughly.” True enough. And one would expect that senior naval officers would include, among their many qualfications, an expertise in the employment of fleets, for example, and in protecting the sea lines of communication, and in selecting bases. In other words, the very things that Mahan termed the “universal questions.”
In today’s world, senior naval officers rarely exercise much influence in such matters. When the going gets tough, commanders at sea apparently are neither expected nor even allowed to use their initiative. Command and control from ashore are almost absolute. And those who issue the distant orders often are not wearing blue uniforms. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, for example, civilians in Washington prescribed the very tactics of the Sixth Fleet, bypassing flag officers at every level of command. The admirals became either passive spectators or the executors of rudder orders from afar. Perhaps such extraordinary measures are necessary, but doubts persist. Are senior naval officers expected solely to carry out orders? So it would seem, whether they are in the Navy Department or at sea. Surely we have reason to believe that those in uniform do want to have some control over their destiny. Surely naval officers do want to have some say in determining the Navy’s size, mission, and employment. How, then, does the Navy prepare its captains and flag officers for these kinds of responsibilities? How can they make the civilians listen to them?
The answer, apparently, is no longer in Newport, Rhode Island. The Naval War College has given way to a new center of learning, a place so essential that every officer aspiring to higher command at sea must attend it. It is known as the Senior Officer Ship Material Readiness Course (SOSMRC), located in Idaho Falls, Idaho. The purpose of the course is to improve the material readiness of the fleet (particularly the engineering plants) by providing 16 weeks (the length may vary) of technical instruction to flag officers and captains before they go to sea.1 The first SOSMRC convened in May 1976, and within three years it had graduated 22 flag officers, 149 captains, ‘For footnotes, please turn to page 45.
NAVAL ACADEMY
and 18 commanders, a total of 189 officers. Of these, 176 went to command at sea. In April 1978, the Chief of Naval Personnel expanded the course to include prospective commanding officers in the grade of commander.
Surely, Luce and Mahan must be rolling over in their graves as history repeats itself. At a time when the Navy needs enlightened officers who are experts in the art of war, its senior leaders instead are learning skills once reserved for the engineering enlisted ratings. While it is essential to get ships to steam reliably, is the teaching of admirals to punch tubes a good way to do it? Can we expect a future corps of jg officers who can light off a boiler but won’t know' what to do with the ships once they are under way?
Such concerns are not facetious. There is a pervasive mood in the Navy today that marine engineering skills are the key to combat readiness—that if only the Navy’s propulsion plants can be made more reliable, other problems will somehow become more manageable. This kind of thought reflects the phi- . losophy of the nuclear Navy, whose officers were in : authority when the decision was made to establish the SOSMRC. Nuclear officers are by nature technically oriented and have had precedence over those in weapons, operations, and navigation since nuclear- powered ships first joined the fleet. Their careers have been mostly afloat, with shore duty normally limited to nuclear power schools or staffs. Few nuclear officers have had the opportunity to experience the Naval War College or postgraduate education.
This dogma that engineers should dominate the officer corps is felt in many ways. Naval Academy midshipmen are 80% engineers as a matter of policy,
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ar>d the same criterion has been imposed upon the NROTc program, as well. What has become alarming IS r*lat emphasis on engineering training has be- C()rne so intense that naval education itself has begun to suffer. The “school of the ship-hands on” way of ■nking is now in vogue and is growing in strength. The evidence is everywhere. In the winter of 78-1979, the Secretary of the Navy’s Advisory °ard on Education and Training (whose members arc arr>ong our nation’s most distinguished educators) ■ssued a position paper on the professional education naval officers. Their report was distressing. It said, among other things, that:
The advanced level educational qualifications of naval officers are decreasing with respect to the general population, and decreasing drastically with re- Ttt-'t to the engineering population in particular.
All officers need an intensive educational experi- nce to introduce them to new and changing con- ^ePts and methodologies.
There is considerable evidence of opposition to, ^ack of support for, graduate study within the avy itself and within some Congressional and OSD it did agree to eliminate $330,000 Irom the Navy’s graduate education budget.]
► “There is evidence that the education effort within the Navy is fragmented and unfocused. . . . This fragmentation, together with the lesser rank assigned CNET [the Chief of Naval Education and Training once a vice admiral, now a rear admiral], can be perceived as a reduced commitment, and may result in reduced effectiveness of the Navy’s education programs.”2
at time, the Superintendent of the Naval Post- biduate School had to convince those in Washing- ^>n that his school should even be allowed to exist.] There does not appear to be a firm commitment lt:hin the Navy or DOD for funds and manpower for th UCat*°n ^apy Times reported in October 1979 at the House Appropriations Committee wanted to uce funding for graduate education of military of- ICers for fiscal year 1980. While the Senate Approbations Committee opposed a wholesale reduction,
Who, indeed, are our naval educators in uniform? Certainly there are too few of them. The practice of formal academic instruction is unfamiliar to most career naval officers; consequently they know very little about teaching. Commanders and captains rarely enter a classroom as instructors. Of those more junior officers who have taught at Annapolis or in an NROTC unit, few seek a repeat tour in education because it is perceived as a dead end. NROTC unit command is often a twilight cruise, and duty on the staff of the Chief of Naval Education and Training is unattractive to ambitious officers. Consequently, the Navy’s comprehension of the theory and principles of scholarship and higher education is wholly
inadequate; this deficiency is everywhere evident.
The advisory board also addressed the need for advanced professional education:
“Senior officers, some time before being advanced to flag grade, need to have an intensive refresher and reorientation to the latest thoughts on naval warfare applicable to their forthcoming high level responsibilities. . . . The Naval War College has played a key role in the past in teaching officers the science of war and in developing new and advanced thought.”
The board concluded that the college ”... should be strengthened as one of the important resources for the improvement of naval warfare now and in the years ahead.” The board was a voice crying in the wilderness, for the influence and prestige of the college have been steadily eroded. When Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale retired in 1979, he was replaced as President of the Naval War College by a rear admiral. Inasmuch as the post had been a three- or four-star billet (except for brief interludes) for more than 35 years, it might have been expected that such a change would have merited some discussion, some debate. Instead, the reduction of the stature of the
college president’s position was announced by the Department of Defense as simply a “readjustment” of the post to a lesser rank. Regardless of the individual competence of the present and future incumbents, they still will have less clout than their more senior predecessors had in Congress and the Pentagon, whid1 are arenas where the Naval War College has needed all the help it could get.
This demotion was the culmination of a trend tha1 de-emphasized the importance of the college in a wa)' that was obvious to everyone: selection opportunity to flag rank. In 1969, 25 of 30 line officers selected for rear admiral had attended a war college, and al' most half of them had attended both a junior and & senior college. For the next seven years, approxi' mately 60% of the flag selectees were graduates of a1 least one war college, except in 1976 when only 36$ were war college graduates. But the last three yeah selectees have included only a small minority of wat college graduates: 8 of 3 1 in 1978, 7 of 35 in 1979’ and 9 of 37 in 1980.[1] Thus, the flag selection board* have established a precedent that a war college diploma is no longer useful for promotion. On the contrary, the message is clear to ambitious captains and commanders not to waste their time (or perhaps even hazard their chances for promotion) by attending } war college.
This message has even more far-reaching effects The status of naval education has so diminished thn1 instructor vacancies go unfilled at the Navsd Academy either for want of volunteers or for want $ officers who are even qualified to teach. (CongreS* will not permit the Navy to send officers to gradual1' school solely to qualify them as academy instructors! Many who do join the academy faculty are jitter) that their careers have been jeopardized. Despite thf efforts of their superb superintendent, they tend [fl perceive Annapolis as a questionable assignment tha1 leads nowhere. Even though the Naval Academy is;! stimulating place to work and to live, resignation' within the staff and faculty are abnormally higl' Faculty positions at the Naval Postgraduate Scho^ and the Naval War College are similarly troubled.
The unease within the faculties at the Navy’s thrd principal institutions of higher learning was self" evident at the annual meeting of the Naval Institute held at the Naval War College in April 1979- happened that the heads of all three institutions wef‘ present when the Chief of Naval Operations delivered his annual address as president of the Naval Institute. For whatever reasons, the CNO included 1 statement that he would make it a matter of polM that duty on the faculties of Annapolis, Monterey'' and Newport would be officially considered as cared
planting. The unsaid implication was that those I aces were in trouble if the CNO had found it necessary to say what he did.
S° there remains SOSMRC, the one nonnuclear quasi-education program for officers that has the full support of the Department of the Navy. How well is °'n8> n°w that its graduates have had the oppor- u*ty to improve the material readiness of the fleet? rna uutnber of flag officers, many of them in com- e,an at sea> have shared their thoughts on naval ucation and training and especially SOSMRC.[2][3] * [4] Most J f tllat SOSMRC had at least a limited usefulness,
was Hhey a^[5]° 'C WaS t0° ^on8’ ‘ts effectiveness j aS 'ffieult to evaluate, and it was in many ways
S^C tVant t0 preparing senior officers for command at ' ^ personal opinion,” wrote a cruiser-destroyer )up commander, “is that this course has been of tialT t0 fhe students but has not in itself substan- re /. contributed to the improvement of material trai lneSS <^>Ur bunc*amental problems remain the v , nin8 and qualification of personnel directly in- ed, day to day, in engineering. ...”
Another flag officer wrote:
At its initiation, it may-have been necessary to 8Ive this course to the 0-6/7/8 level as part of the si°ck treatment which was used to upgrade engineering readiness. As the years go by, it be- C()rnes more and more ridiculous to have senior c°nimanders devote the amount of time they do to che subject. ...”
strat^'S °®cer tben commented upon a lack of egic and tactical expertise among senior com- ‘uanders:
of ” t*lert 'S a coberent body °f thought, or unity ° thought, amongst the various individuals com- anding the battle groups, it has escaped my attrition. In many cases, I doubt there is even indi- Vl ual thought. . . . Even at the expense of shift- to some variation of the British scheme which ‘aves engineering readiness to the engineers, we musc f'nd the time to get the senior commanders much better prepared to fight the Navy rather an to keep it steaming.”
tlltlle flag officers consulted by the author agreed intactical proficiency has suffered as a result of the ePienS- ^ emphasis on material readiness, as by SOSMRC> the Propulsion Examining en an<^ s'milar programs. Fortunately, most were ^ o^raged that Admiral Hayward, both as Com- 0; er m Chief Pacific Fleet and as Chief of Naval the natl0ns’ has supported a renewed effort to train an jeet t0 b8ht- The hope now is for a more bal- Pe u aPProach to combat readiness. “I believe the u Um has swung in the proper direction,” a fleet
commander wrote.
But where should the pendulum finally settle? Another fleet commander wrote about “the incredible tug of war’ between the “tacticians” and the ‘engineers.” “In the last analysis,” he continued, “fleet readiness cannot be a matter of either material or operations; it is a fine balance of both, and that can only be done by an individual with professional competence in both areas. . . . The end result must be a guy who can do it all. That should be one of the principal prerequisites for selection to flag rank.”
But how do we prepare someone who can “do it all ’ when he arrives at the higher ranks? Interestingly enough, among this distinguished group of fltig officers—for whom the author has the most profound admiration and respect—not one addressed the role of formal education (as opposed to training) in a naval officer’s career development. Perhaps the omission was unintentional, but it does imply that foremost among their expectations for future flag officers were operational experience through sea duty, and technical knowledge achieved through training afloat and ashore.
Such qualifications are indeed important and necessary. But this question remains unanswered: when will we get our future strategists? Strategy is not taught in the engine room or on the bridge. Intellectual thought and the benefits of scholarly learning will never be achieved in the wardroom, or at Idaho Falls, or at fleet training centers. Our officer corps could well become a group of highly skilled technicians who by default arc forfeiting the destiny of the Navy to others who will do their thinking for them.
A 1958 graduate of the Naval Academy, Commander Buell had extensive experience in destroyers, including command of the USS Joseph Hewes (DE-1078). A graduate of both the Naval Postgraduate School and the Naval War College, he has been a frequent contributor to the Proceedings and was a member of the Naval Institute board of control from 1977 to 1979. He is the author of biographies of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance and Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King. Commander Buell retired from active duty in 1979 and is now manager of weapons systems integration in the Honeywell advanced lightweight torpedo program. He lives in Wayzata, Minnesota.
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^cognizing and dazzled by the .. . wonderful things ac- ‘pphshed by the labors of science, those who have had the Section of our naval education . . . seem to run away <!t the idea that every naval officer, having to use these ngines of offence or defence . . . should therefore be able to ,JUt the long train of laborious thought, be familiar Ult the practical processes, by which each of these
l,g ty engines has been conceived and produced.
Alfred Thayer Mahan, 1878 \° wrote Mahan more than a century ago in his C-J Naval Institute prize essay on naval education. It g as precursor of a philosophy that he shared with tepu-n B. Luce, and it led to the creation of the ^‘>val War College in 1884. Naval officers, argued ce and Mahan, were too much involved with tech- "!Cal an^ tactical matters, so much so that they ne- ttced the larger issues associated with the profes- sal'H °^arrns- These issues, said Mahan, were univer- t)uestions dealing with timeless principles that aval officers of any era had to deal with: What was purpose of a Navy? What kinds of ships were ti^cded? How many should be built? Where should lev ^ett concentrated? Where should its bases be t'ated? And how shall its lines of communication be
Protected?
0 help prepare naval officers to answer such ques- ns, Luce and Mahan envisioned a war college , ere students would study the art of naval warfare, s .ere fheir intellects would be challenged and mu ated, and where they would exercise their rea- lng power to solve complex strategic problems. A
Re t^>e'r training at the Senior Officer Ship A
5kilt 'neSS bourse, one Navy captain climbs into a hoi once reserved for engineering enlisted ratings—a Al * l^er Cat>ta*n an‘L their instructor watch. Alfred Ti an would not have approved.
"Data from various issues of Navy Times.
'See Commander David G. Clark, USN, “SOSMRC: Steaming Along in the Desert," Proceedings. February 1980, pp. 97-99.
[3]Quoted in “SABET Winter Meeting: Emphasis: Professionalism,” Campus, April 1979, pp. 8-9.
[4]The author solicited their views and has chosen not to identify these officers by name, although none of those quoted had any objection to
their names being used in print.