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fruiting posters and popular movies Paint one image of naval aviation. Unfortu- Jiately, too many young aviators believe Pat’s an illusion. In their world, admin j^adiness outranks combat readiness. It’s •Hie to reorder the priorities.
Lieutenant Patterson (not his real name) is nearing the end of his first tour in an East Coast fighter ( squadron. He is the line division officer and has t^§ged nearly 1,000 hours in the F-14 Tomcat. He relishes ■ e challenge of flying from the deck of a carrier, is genu- te|y committed to the sailors who work for him, and nur- res a strong patriotic belief in the traditions and missions Ijj U. S. Navy. His commanding officer has identified ^ as having unmistakable potential for command and I ea flag rank. Yet Lieutenant Patterson has submitted his ter of resignation, and within a year will no longer be a officer.
ej( ^e Navy, already facing a shortage this year of 1,100 Pcrienced pilots, needs to know why. ar he official answers to that question include family sep- 3ti°n, depressecj pay scales, scarce flight hours, and ac- SlJerated hiring by the airlines. These issues are easy to triKlniar'ze on retent>on surveys, and they certainly con- IJl, ute materially to the dissatisfaction that is driving thany good officers out of the service. But are these issues r()r°ot causes or are they only irritants? Will more try nC^’ shorter cruises, and a collapse of the airline indus- pS°lve the crisis or only help manage it? ity °f °hficers who value a sense of mission, responsibil- r ’ professional fulfillment, the problems of Navy life ari(] ” far beyond tangible economic and family sacrifices I, 8° directly to the heart of the Navy’s business— SjQlng men into combat and succeeding there. Disillu- ^ ment may drive out some of our top junior officers jn *hey reach the reluctant, painful conclusion that fly- at1 LVy mrplanes is not a “profession” after all but just
Therj0b-
a,s problem of disillusionment has two parts: the illusion of responsibility and the illusion of excellence.
The Illusion of Responsibility: Too frequently, the fleet junior officer (JO) sees himself at the bitter end of complex chains of command wrapped with bewildering layers of bureaucracy. Decisions on everything from the disposition of drunks on liberty to mission tactics seem to be made at levels above his department, his squadron, and sometimes even above the type command or the air wing. Policies and procedures directly affecting the division he nominally leads are handed down in inflexible detail out of a firmament filled with anonymous staff officers. In driving responsibility up the chain of command the system protects itself from embarrassment by denying the JO the chance to make mistakes in judgment—if he is given no sword to wear he cannot possibly trip on it.
Neither, however, will he know how to use that sword when he needs it. Young branch and division officers fresh out of the replacement air group must learn the art of leadership and management by instinct and trial-and-error, especially in the absence of formal instruction. If denied that opportunity by a “zero-defect” climate, they will never be fully prepared to move up to the jobs of department head, executive officer, and, ultimately, command. i( This vicious cycle is fueled by the phenomenon of
leadership from the bottom up,” or the habit of making decisions according to what will best mollify or impress one s fitness report (FitRep)-writing superior. This is opposed to “leadership from the top down,” or a compelling dedication to the welfare, fighting mettle, and missionreadiness of one’s subordinates. Encouraged by the “up- or-out” imperative of the U. S. military, those officers in the military who are susceptible to the prevailing winds of civilian corporate ethics are tempted to make judgments according to a matrix of self-advancement rather than to the professional welfare of their subordinates.
JOs in their sway are bound to feel like interchangeable functionaries, responsible only for reams of documentation. Denied the responsibilities, and hence the rewards, of military leadership, they will feel they are being bled dry by endless tasking that often seems less related to operational commitment than to the nourishment of a self- aggrandizing, “look-good” bureaucracy. Looking ahead, they may see their own skippers chafing on a tight coin-
more than a million dollars teaching each pilot the skills
the other half of their job. The aviation community takes “nugget” fresh out of two years of concentrated fl1^ ) training and delivers him—nominally the head of
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impart these leadership and management skills to junior officers just load the tough jobs on the few JOs
mand leash and find little to look forward to. And they may be haunted by the bleak, post-command prospect of sleepless, disassociated years at sea.
The Navy loses when even the most dedicated JOs conclude, however naively, that only outside the Navy will they find a place where ability and dedication are developed and rewarded, talent earns responsibility, and leaders can pursue goals unfettered by administrative minutiae and can actually see and take credit for the product of their work. These JOs are past listening to voices of experience that tell them it is no better “out there.”
The Illusion of Excellence: The naval aviation community has a tradition of extraordinary elan based on a sense of shared risks, uncommon skills, and high professional standards. The sense that what they do sets aviators apart is crucial to their mettle under conditions of more or less continuous stress, risk, and physical demand. It is also crucial to their sense of individual professional fulfillment.
Brown shoes and leather jackets are the external tokens of that elan, and their return to the fleet after the Zumwalt era of egalitarianism was an important boost to morale. But excellence—along with self-esteem—is much more than a matter of chic uniform accessories. It is not enough to fly perfect passes behind the boat or 90-knot flat scissors if we cannot, for example, get a missile on a high, fast, jamming target without a detailed review of switchol- ogy. It is not enough to raise a rooster tail of salt spray on an over-water low-level if we hesitate over radar-homing and warning gear interpretation.
Young aviators often conclude that, while their airmanship skills might become known by reputation in certain comers of the community, they will be judged formally not on whether they can understand tactical theory and threat capabilities, but rather on how conscientiously they apply themselves to administering their assigned work center. Consequently, the proper order of priorities— first, lethality in combat; second, the welfare of troops; and third, execution of paperwork—has become slowly and almost completely reversed. Yet, appallingly, success-oriented young aviators are surrendering to the heresy that “admat (administrative-material) readiness” rather than “combat readiness” best serves the progress of their careers.
One often hears that the study of naval air training and operating procedures standardization (NATOPS), tactical manuals, and threat capabilities is properly a matter of personal professional conscience. Aircrews should set their own standards of expertise in these areas and achieve them through study on their own time, supplemented with some in-house lectures and low-threat quizzes. The problems with this idea are twofold.
Number one, it does not work. It is hopelessly utopian to think that without some kind of competitive incentive any but the most conscientious aviators will carve enough hours out of a day already filled with the effluence of administrative tasking to study systems and tactics. This is especially true when their only immediate reward is likely to be a warm, self-congratulatory glow.
Number two, “standards” of professionalism become meaningless when there is no way to measure them. Carrier landing grades, bombing derby scores, and simulated air combat maneuvering kill ratios provide some important bases for the evaluation of tactical proficiency, but they examine only a narrow band of overall tactical compe' tence. In too many corners of the tactical air (TacAm community good, or even average, stick-and-rudder pilot* can “get by” with only a rudimentary understanding 0 tactical science.
Elitism, however, does not survive in an environment of getting by; little elan exists in an organization that is no1 held to the highest possible standards of competence. Av1' ators who were drawn to the Navy by its tradition of pr°' fessional excellence simply leave if that expectation is no1 met—leather jackets or no leather jackets.
Certainly, these fundamental causes for the rctenti°J’ problem are not universal; some commands enjoy a lug" level of morale, productivity, and professional excellence But leadership problems and professional apathy occuf often enough that too many pilots are finding business- academics, or even driving planeloads of passengers fr0111 city to city more attractive than flying tactical jets froma carrier.
How Do We Fix It?: Efforts to increase the retenti(-n bonus are an important and necessary step toward fa>fla compensating Navy pilots and their families for the risks- separations, and dislocations they endure. But eve11 though this bonus may buy a person’s obligation, it al°nC will not buy one’s enthusiasm or his loyalty. If we a* going to keep the officers we need, we are going to have meet their professional as well as their financial requ're ments.
Unfortunately, the problems of professional dissatisfy tion run deep. They will not be solved with just a wide message or a new directive from the Chief of Nav Operations. If we are going to create an attractive profeS sional environment, we have to consider some long-tefl commitments. Here are two possibilities: ,
Teach Young Officers to Lead: While the Navy spc*1 ^
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branch—into the care of a long-suffering chief petty cer. Without a basic theoretical knowledge of leaders and management techniques, that nugget has no foun°“. tion on which to build on-the-job experience. The lack that experience only encourages the system to insulate hi from responsibility. (0
Commands lacking the time, means, or inclination the instinct and conscience to get the job done, no mal how inefficiently or clumsily. To borrow words from Civ tain John Byron’s critique in the December 1987 Proc?eL ings, “The Surface Navy Is Not Ready,” of the sU. ce navy’s malaise, the system suffers “extreme over-relia11
First, it would save young aviators countless hours of inefficiency, frustration, managerial damage control, and even embarrassment when they are thrust into squadron leadership positions. They could then concentrate on their primary duty—to fight their aircraft in combat. Ground jobs will become a place for them to apply and refine leadership and management skills, not to learn the basics in a piecemeal fashion.
Second, an adequately trained new branch officer will have an immediately beneficial impact on the sailors who currently suffer from the ineptitude and sheer ignorance, no matter how well intentioned, of the officers who rotate in and out of their work centers.
Finally, it would create, albeit gradually, a far more productive and professionally rewarding leadership environment. A generation of Navy leaders will have a profoundly positive influence on the officers who come after them if these leaders understand several important ideas. They need to recognize the importance of streamlining the chain of command, driving responsibility to the lowest practicable level, planning and consistency, communicat-
*be mining of talent rather than the creation of it.” tj We need a formal leadership and management educa- s^n Program, which has to be more intensive, comprehen- e< and creative than the current leadership and manage- 0f~nt Gaining (LMET). It must be the centerpiece of every t i*?er s professional development and should include: j Se of professional consulting firms that make their liv- ^ by teaching—in dynamic, relevant, and motivating tjo^s~^the elementary principles of small group organiza- tjQn’ time management, leadership psychology, delega- \ p’ ancl planning
(j ,TlPhasis on military ethics, moral dilemmas in com> and the importance of unit cohesion, personal honor, ^ ‘^t, and integrity
^tailed and standardized instruction in enlisted ad- lirn'Cernent requirements, squadron manning documents, elts and procedures of nonjudicial punishment (NJP), 'sted service records, and all the other administrative eve3l*S Cbat currently have to be retaught in the squadron l -rp bme a new JO checks aboard C| involvement of top Navy leaders in an informal Ssroom setting to provide both credibility and personal
► Thience . .
ers,. creative use of pertinent literature in teaching lead-
|t> P situations (e.g., Herman Melville’s Billy Budd
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A sense of mission, responsibility, and professional fulfillment can keep aviators in the Navy, despite the many sacrifices they and their families must make.
t^uium Press], Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny
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°l|bleday, 1954], Nicholas Monsarrat’s The Cruel Sea
f>r °Pf> 1951], Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim [Pendulum i $1^’ or James Webb’s Fields of Fire [Bantam, 1979]) t0 , rt seminars spread over a period of several months, pr.reinf°rce theoretical instruction by integrating real-life 5tlcal application
i„ ,,ny Program billed ‘‘leadership and management train- (jel is bound to be greeted like cod-liver oil; but if it is <tnd^ned anc* implemented with creativity, enthusiasm, din a ruthless commitment to carve out bureaucratic te- tT1, it has the potential to reap enormous benefits.
ing, emphasizing results instead of rote procedure, recognizing and rewarding talent, and insisting on individual accountability.
Get Tactical Theory Out of the Closet: Many voices in the aviation community have, rightly, called for greater emphasis on such programs as Fleet Fighter ACM (air combat maneuvering) Readiness Program (FFARP), Red Flag, Top Gun, and Strike U. These programs realistically test the combat readiness of operational squadrons under conditions of closely simulated combat. These excellent and essential programs have clearly enhanced our ability to wage the kind of warfare we are likely to see in the foreseeable future. Squadrons anticipate them eagerly,
Conclusion: At first blush, the ideas of an expanse LMET and a major tactics examination seem like moral busters, two more straws on the retention camel’s bac • They will be exactly that if they are haphazardly irnp[1]e mented, if staffs shunt the work of designing and admin1* tering them off on already over-tasked operational un<IS’ and if the chain of command treats them as just two m°
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sible to put motivated, highly trained aircrews full-mission-capable airplanes into the air.
Finally, these programs face a variety of obstacles eluding cost, problems of coordination, long develop^"
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times, and the requirement for high-level enthusiastic port. None of these obstacles is insurmountable, howe
in terms of the retention problem for one, two, or pen even three years. But the potential benefits of irnpro
prepare for them carefully, relish the competition, and enjoy flying some of the highest quality sorties available anywhere.
But once the aviator has finished the program, he knows the most insistent demands on his time and energy will once again come from his non-flying job. The tactical publications, flurried over before the exercise, will return to the safe, and a stack of accumulated evaluations, training reports, NJP investigations, inventories, and instruction reviews will take their place. In the absence of a competing incentive to maintain a professional edge on tactical expertise, simple human entropy dictates that mastery of NATOPS and tactics take a backseat.
To be sure, many squadrons have an aggressive inhouse operations training program; but how does the community acknowledge and evaluate those programs? More importantly, how does it identify unit training programs that are not as aggressive? Annual unit NATOPS and weapon systems evaluations are administered, often halfheartedly, from outside the squadron; but their usefulness suffers when, as so often happens, the questions are known in advance and “division integrity” rules apply. Not only does this render exam results meaningless, but the tacit message is clear—knowing the material is just not as important as looking good on paper.
We need an effective, continuous, community-wide system of tactical evaluation that follows a few principles:
► The entire evaluation process must have the weight and emphasis currently reserved for admat and corrosion inspections. Only then will combat aircrews find it worth their while to get out of their administrative in-boxes and into tactical publications. It must set the standards for excellence in tactical theory, and it must clearly identify who meets those standards and who does not.
► It has to be realistic and include a range of topics from weapon systems to threat capabilities to tactical employment to reconnaissance. Questions have to be well written, significant, and based on a set of clearly defined standards that are laid out well in advance of the evaluation. We do not need to find out, for example, how many aircrews have memorized speed gate frequency bands in the Sparrow missile, but we do need to find out if the aircrew knows how to employ the Sparrow against a jamming target in a multithreat environment.
► Its integrity must be protected. An exam is pointless if the “gouge” is on the streets. Then it is no longer a competition of tactical readiness but of the training officer’s ability to ferret out a copy that he can pass out at an allofficers meeting the week before the test.
► Results of the evaluation must be important to the squadron and the individual. At the unit level, they should become a key factor in calculating Battle “E” ranking and an important indicator of the effectiveness of the squadron’s training program. At the individual level, they should be used as one (though obviously not the only) important criterion for selection to career-enhancing schools, tactical qualifications, and operations department jobs. They should also be reflected in FitReps; and repeated unsatisfactory performance must be grounds for some form of remedial action.
► It should be administered at least semiannually, perhaps
even quarterly, to maintain a continuous emphasis on tactical proficiency. .
► It should not interfere with the ability of individua
commanding officers or operations officers to create an implement their own training programs. The evaluating staff should be in the business of setting standards, suggesting programs, providing support, and measuring re' suits—not dictating detailed procedures. ,
Once this type of major tactics evaluation is assimilate into the fleet, it would provide an honest and comprehe11 sive measure of how well we understand tactical scienC^ and provide a means for setting all-important profession' standards, goals, and competitive criterion. Furtherm01’*-’ it would drive command emphasis back onto combat acu men, the only valid raison d’etre for a TacAir aviat°r' bureaucratic chores rather than as a means of helping cers do their job and of measuring their combat s These ideas also may seem to contradict each other ^ pushing leadership and management on the one hand nn tactics on the other. In fact, they complement each othe ’ We are burdened with the necessity of administering 0 selves and our troops. If we do not efficiently and effet’ tively manage our people and equipment, it will be imp'
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If we want to solve the retention crisis, we have to 5 beyond the limited potentials of offering a few dollars n and shaving a few days off at-sea time there. We have go beyond tinkering (counterproductively) with the ru of obligated service, resignation procedures, and Per,V nent change of station orders. We have to improve fun mentally the way we do business. .
These are long-term programs. They may not bear
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management and leadership and putting a priority on tac cal competence will reach well beyond simply attract - pilots to stay. They hold out the promise of a fulfilled a competent officer corps that can better lead people, 111 age resources, and win in combat.
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Lieutenant Golightly was selected as an Olmsted Scholar and is cun ^ ^ attending the University of Konstanz in West Germany. He has serve a flight instructor in Training Squadron 25, and as landing signal ot ^ line division officer, NATOPS officer, and assistant operations Fighter Squadron 14. Lieutenant Golightly was the winner of the 1? Institute’s 1986 Vincent Astor Memorial Leadership Essay Conte* ■