In the early 1970s, in the wake of lessons learned in Vietnam, the Navy created the Chief of Naval Education and Training. Thirty years later, that command morphed into the Naval Education and Training Command.
Though charged with supervising the training and education of Navy personnel, its charter does not cover the full range of activities involved in training, educating, and developing nearly one-third of all new ensigns.
A full 70 percent of ensigns are commissioned from a combination of Navy ROTC and Officer Candidate School. NROTC units report to a civilian GS-15 who reports to an admiral, who reports to another admiral, who reports to a third admiral, who then reports to the Chief of Naval Operations. The Navy OCS-accession process operates under a different supervisor, a Navy captain, who reports independently to this admiral-to-admiral-to-admiral-to-CNO chain.
Separate from all of this are the 30 percent of new ensigns commissioned out of the U.S. Naval Academy. While the GS-15 and captain responsible for 70 percent of new officers are separated from the CNO by three levels of command, the three-star admiral charged with running the Naval Academy reports directly to him! While this is rather odd in and of itself, escalating budget pressures should cause the Navy to seriously consider significant changes to this arrangement.
With significant DOD budget cuts certain in the near term, the naval services will be called on to reduce personnel costs while maintaining (or growing) the capability of the individual Marine and sailor. Though our current entry-level officer-training regimen is detailed and well-conceived, the changing fiscal environment coupled with the likely need for increased individual capabilities implies we must continuously improve the process to produce junior officers with a standardized baseline competency in naval leadership and warfighting skills. Now is the time to better synchronize the training, education, and development of a critical part of our leadership continuum, the brand-new ensign.
All three sources of entry-level Navy ensigns use the same professional core competencies as a basis to mold new officers to a single standard of competence. However, since the chains of command are separate and distinct, different priorities tend to intrude as a natural consequence of these varied chains of command. The lowest common headquarters between OCS in Rhode Island and the 60 NROTC units nationwide is Commander Naval Service Training Command (CNSTC) in Great Lakes. Though NSTC may choose to coordinate with the Naval Academy, there is no formal command relationship. While it seems clear that to build an ensign to a single professional standard, a single flag officer below the CNO needs to exercise command and control of this process, this is not the case in current practice.
If the CNO desires to find out about entry-level officer training, or make a slight course correction, he should be able to make a single telephone call to a single flag officer. Under the current organizational design, however, he must make at least two and perhaps many more, depending on the nature of the question and the information needed to answer it.
Having had some experience in both recruiting and entry-level training, I submit having a single flag officer responsible and clearly focused on entry-level officer training and education is critical to every endeavor in the Navy’s Manpower Personnel Training & Education (MPT&E) continuum. In the MPT&E Strategic Vision, the Navy states that it will align its organizations to create “a single, integrated business process and structure to identify, recruit, develop, manage, and deploy an appropriate, high-performance workforce to the Fleet.” But as noted previously, the current process is neither single nor integrated. If we expect our newly commissioned ensigns to be as ready as possible to assume their first watch, we should follow our own MPT&E plan by adhering to the proven principle of unity of command.
A transformative change to improve the officer entry-level training pipeline requires neither much study nor additional bureaucracy to implement. Simplifying our organizational structure to reflect basic unity-of-command principles would go a long way toward improving visibility of all factors affecting the process. Whether it is decided to realign NROTC and OCS under the Superintendent of the Naval Academy, or restore the commander of the Naval Education and Training Command to a three-star billet and subordinate the Academy to it, either reconfiguration would generate an immediate benefit in the production of the new ensign singularly prepared to effectively and proudly serve both the naval service and our republic.