Change the SWO Training Pipeline
present surface-combatant warfighting, not division-officer functionality. Well before they report to their first operational squadron and are given a division to supervise, naval aviators must complete a rugged training curriculum to earn their wings. Nobody would argue that an aviator in training should run a division while in flight school, but this is what the surface community does with junior surface-warfare officers (SWOs) in training. Just because it has been this way for years—it is traditional—does not mean it is the best way.The amount and type of training that a junior SWO receives is constantly shifting. Six months at the Surface Warfare Officer’s School in Newport, Rhode Island, where newly minted ensigns were taught the principles of running a division and navigating a surface ship, have been replaced by reporting directly to an operational ship and on-the-job training. Certain minute changes have been implemented, including a couple of weeks’ instruction followed by the proposed initiation of a new two-month foundational school. It is still not enough. SWO skills are just as critical as those of the submarine, aviation, and special-warfare communities. While we protect aircraft carriers and avoid running ships aground, the Marine Corps has refocused on amphibious operations and deployments that will need SWOs to be ready for amphibious warfare. This mandates a change in junior SWOs’ training and pipeline.
Inadequate training can result in unnecessarily large costs, both monetary and in personnel. Also potentially very expensive are ships running aground and collisions at sea. Are SWOs truly trained for a fight with Iran or China, for example? Are they prepared for a Suez Canal closure, or ready to defend against small-boat attacks? Qualified SWOs need to know tactics; they cannot rely solely on commanding and tactical-action officers to do all the thinking in a fight. That would be a bad plan.
Currently, new surface-warfare check-ins must simply figure it all out because that’s the way it has been for some time. But such an approach will prove detrimental to both the junior officer and the surface community. We no longer have a proper training pipeline in place, which undoubtedly leads to a minimal average buy-in from new junior SWOs. That in turn causes attrition, which under these conditions will likely remain fairly high.
The surface community needs to invest more in human capital and not continue to forge a sink-or-swim mentality, thus avoiding unnecessary dangers to our nation’s military assets. The cost to the surface community for training and then losing its future and core leadership cadre is terrifying. Massive expenditures are made on officers’ education and potential, and the Navy cannot afford to keep throwing new ensigns at the problem to create enough department heads. A cultural shift in training must be implemented.
Focus on Warfighter Quality
We need a systematic training pipeline for future SWOs. Initially, they should receive orders to a Fleet Concentration Area (FCA) for nine months, meaning no specific ship would be selected on ship-selection night. For initial orders, the options would be Norfolk, Virginia; San Diego, California; or Yokosuka, Japan. In the same way, aviators, submariners, and even future Marine Corps officers choose class-up dates instead of their first duty station.
After checking into their FCA, the SWO-in-training would be assigned to a team of ensigns who rotate to ships getting under way from there. FCA managers would coordinate with attached ships in the concentration area, to conduct underway training. For example, a few junior SWOs would be assigned to a vessel that was heading out to sea for three weeks as part of its workup cycle. A junior SWO would rotate as much as operationally feasible to each surface-combatant capability—cruisers, destroyers, amphibious ships, and minesweepers.
Rotations Build Expertise
Instead of reporting to a specific division on board a ship and becoming that division’s officer, a junior SWO would report to the training officer. The only duties and responsibilities for which he or she would be responsible would be for completing the required training, based on personnel-qualification standards for that type of vessel, with particular emphasis on shiphandling, engineering, and the operational capability of the specific ship. The junior SWO would be given a detailed list of objectives to learn and understand before rotating to the next surface-community competency. For instance, before rotating to a cruiser or destroyer, the fundamentals of well-deck operations would have to be learned, along with amphibious landings on an amphibious platform.
Rotating junior SWOs would stand longer bridge watches than usually required as the conning officer and junior officer of the deck, which are respectively straightforward and administrative in nature. This would ease the burden of qualified SWOs stationed on those ships, while giving junior officers more time to specifically hone their shiphandling skills. Also, rotating to different types of ships teaches the different ways in which they react and the physics that come into play, while enhancing the junior SWOs’ understanding of the science of shiphandling.
It is often said that we learn best by teaching others. As junior SWOs rotated from ship to ship participating in various exercises, subject-matter experts on board could interact with and train them about their activities. This would foster a much better understanding of the ship as a whole, while helping junior officers to become well rounded.
During junior unqualified SWOs’ off time, they would be urged to roam the ship while under way to learn the basics of the engineering plant and weapon systems, and how operations are conducted. Interaction with numerous surface-warfare platforms early in their careers would pay huge dividends as they became qualified and then increasingly part of the shipboard and Fleet decision-making processes over their careers.
Advanced Study and Training
The first nine months attached to the FCA should involve a great deal of at-sea time to condition neophyte SWOs. After this, trainees should attend the Surface Warfare Officers School in Newport, Rhode Island, for rigorous advanced study involving the myriad naval shipboard systems and platforms. By this time equipped with a background of many (not just one) naval platforms, junior SWOs would have a deeper understanding of and appreciation for their choice of platform and the sea service as a whole. Only at this point, based on Navy needs and their performance at SWO School, would students select ships from their initial FCAs for their first division-officer tour.
After successful completion of the curriculum through advanced training in operations, engineering, and shiphandling tactics, the surface-warfare insignia badge would be awarded while SWOs were still at Newport. This would ensure that the badge indicated consistent standards. Each qualified SWO would have the same background and foundational knowledge, as opposed to the vast differences in training and qualification that today’s SWOs receive for a cruiser/destroyer versus a minesweeper The surface-warfare pins could be presented with family and friends in attendance, instead of after an arduous bridge watch at an operations/intelligence brief in the middle of the ocean. Pride is more fully felt and appreciated in front of those closest to us.
Newly Qualified SWOs
It would now be time for the SWOs to head to their first ships as division officers, just as do newly winged aviators when they report to their first operational commands. Having completed the basics of shipboard qualifications, and with solid foundational knowledge, the new division officers can spend more time with their tasking instead of having to qualify for their rating at the same time. First division-officer tours would then be 18 months, somewhere in the initial FCA. This would be followed by the normal second 18-month tour slating process currently in place. The proposed time line would be, after graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy, Officer Candidate School, Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps, or Officer Training School:
• FCA: 9 months
• SWOS, Newport, RI: 3 months (qualify as a SWO)
• First division-officer tour: 18 months (initial FCA)
• Second division-officer tour: 18 months (the current slating process)
Such an overall plan would also help captains to lead, manage, and mentor newly reporting first-tour SWOs, because everyone’s background would be similar. And in training, consistency is key.
Use Social Media for Crises
The unimaginable happens—a magnitude 7.0 earthquake strikes a major U.S. city. People, many needing medical attention, are trapped in collapsed buildings and on impassible bridges and roads. Cell-phone networks immediately become saturated, and those in need of help cannot communicate by voice transmission with response personnel. However, because of their low bandwidth requirements, text messages and postings on social-media sites such as Twitter and Facebook make it through.
A joint task force is stood up under the authority of U.S. Northern Command, and a unified area command is established under the federal Incident Command System. Inside these organizations, a group of subject-matter experts specialize in social-media tools and technology, along with the attendant cultural aspects such as jargon. Known as the Social Media Monitoring and Response Team, this group team quickly goes into action. Its watch monitors open-source feeds of live short-message service (SMS) text messages, such as Twitter tweets, that are geo-located on a map of the area of interest. The watch filters the steady flow of SMS messages to render only those inclusive of key words such as trapped, help, injured, and other words indicating distress. It aggregates this information into time- and location-based knowledge that provides a picture of the situation on the ground. A plea for help from an elderly woman who appears to be trapped in rubble that was once her apartment is monitored. This data, along with GPS coordinates, is relayed to the joint task force and Incident Command System response teams. Personnel are immediately dispatched to search for the woman.
This scenario is in the realm of the possible. On 12 January 2010, just 16 miles west of Haiti’s capital, Port au Prince, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastated the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Many parts of the city were turned to ruins. In many ways Haiti was the most vulnerable to this type of disaster, and the toll tells the story. Some 3 million people were affected, with more than 300,000 estimated dead; fully one-third of Haiti’s population was displaced. Many buildings collapsed or were severely damaged, and much of the country’s infrastructure was damaged or destroyed. An uncounted number of citizens were trapped, awaiting rescue in a country gripped in sheer turmoil.
The Information Is There
Operation Unified Response, the humanitarian-assistance/disaster-response (HA/DR) effort executed by U.S. Southern Command, was significant and effective. Joint Task Force Haiti was established, and the U.S. military, federal agencies, partner nations’ militaries, and nongovernmental organizations responded in the initial search-and-rescue phase and subsequent recovery-and-rebuilding effort. During Unified Response, we followed the development of SMS messages sent in the aftermath of the earthquake. But, because this was a new approach to gaining situational awareness, the effort was not used to its full capability.
Later, when the tsunami struck Japan on 11 March 2011, we also searched and viewed live tweets originating from the devastated area to follow in real time the pleas for assistance. This monitoring was easily performed using a low-bandwidth, high-latency Internet connection while we were on an unrelated U.S. Southern Command exercise in Antigua and Barbuda.
With mobile handheld devices now ubiquitous, the capability of the cellular phones has increased at an astonishing rate. Powerful smart-phone technology coupled with immediate access allows civilians to communicate in an emergency as never before. During comparatively minor events such as the magnitude 5.8 earthquake around Washington, D.C., on 23 August 2011, users saturated land and mobile telephone voice circuits, which blocked some in need from connecting. However, the cellular data circuits remained operable. Because of the low bandwidth of an SMS text message—1/6,000th of that needed to establish a voice call—many users can successfully send information from a handheld device during an emergency, given an intact infrastructure.
If you are trapped and cannot make a voice call because of saturation, yet your data connection is operational, you can communicate by your available social-media methodology. Messaging persists in the public domain where a monitoring cell can perform real-time scrutiny and assessment to better coordinate rescue efforts.
Learn and Integrate It
Social-media tools have capabilities that can be maximized in a rescue scenario if they are properly understood. For example, in hashtagging, users create keywords by “tagging” their posts with words after a “hash” symbol (pound, #). Twitter users developed this technique to categorize their messages. The practice was surprisingly helpful in recent catastrophes including the Haiti earthquake and Japanese tsunami responses. #HelpMeHaiti became a hashtag that formed organically to identify messages pertaining to someone needing specific help or assistance in Haiti. Hashtags can also be used in an emergency to restrict and filter out non-distress messages from a geo-located dataset. For example, when pulling a geographically limited set of Twitter messages from Japan after the tsunami, filtering out hashtags such as #PrayForJapan removed more general, non-distress messages from what responders were monitoring.
Hashtags allow responders to rely on the crowd-sourced work of the public to help watch for distress messages from social connections. Numerous people in the Haitian diaspora found or received messages from those on the island; in turn, they tagged and reposted the messages to the public. Understanding how to take advantage of hashtags and other social-media jargon is just as important to responders as understanding the technology.
These tools should be fully exploited during HA/DR operations. We recommend the establishment of social-media “cells” that could be mobilized and deployed to the crisis action center. Our organizational views must be modernized to adopt and embrace a social-media watch embedded in the command-center structure. Such an enhancement requires open minds to evaluate and validate the concept in an operational setting, a concerted effort to develop it for the operational command, and finally a change to the current concept to institutionalize the watch into the organizational structure. The cell concept is appropriate for both Department of Defense and Coast Guard environments. The joint-task-force organization primarily supports DOD operations, whereas the Coast Guard and other federal, state, and local agencies organize around the Incident Command System during response operations. In each paradigm the cell could fall under operations, in either J-3 or the operations section respectively.
Test It
The social-media cell should be used in formal exercises as a test case. This rigor would allow for eliminating minor impediments to an operational improvement. The watch members would be trained on the tools, methodology, and technology. They would also become familiar with the cultural aspects of social media, such as the unique jargon and use of hashtags. This cell would be imbedded in the crisis action center and require minimal resources—computers, telephones, and access to the broader operational watch.
One requirement for the watch would be unfettered access to all social-media sites. Some computing environments may have policy filters or blocks to prevent users from accessing the range of personal-communications options from government computing resources. However, complete access to these sites is essential to reap the full benefit of information available on the Internet.
We envision cell responsibilities as a collateral duty of, possibly, information-technology or communications specialists. Calling on those in the reserve or Coast Guard auxiliary could also prove effective for this type of mission. With these basics established and working, ample practice will be available for the cell, in an exercise environment ready for a contingency response. Then, when the need does eventually once again arise for the DOD and Coast Guard to ably execute an HA/DR mission, the social-media watch will support the fight and save lives with publicly available information.
This is an exciting time for using social intelligence and data to help with crisis response. New technologies and techniques continue to emerge rapidly. Programs are being developed that use contextual and semantic analyses to determine the mood of social messages. Such technology can help to classify a message sender’s intent, in the absence of clarity. Other promising developments include geo-fencing social data, creating 3D environments from public imagery, and using public data feeds to create increased situational awareness. The potential is unlimited and, if used effectively, it could save many lives.
Commander Hill is Senior Reserve Officer U.S. Coast Guard Sector Mobile, Alabama. He formerly served as executive officer, U.S. Southern Command Coast Guard Reserve Unit.
Mr. Bank is a subject-matter expert in the area of social-media technology and usage.
Professional Military Education Available to All
By Captain Michael F. Van Vleck, U.S. Navy Reserve (Retired)
The professional demands placed on sailors are daunting. They frequently find themselves working in hostile environs for months on end. Their tasks are challenging and the hours long, and the separation from family and friends compounds the stress. If that is not enough, sailors struggle to find time to improve and hone their warfare skills and, through academic rigor, to mature as well-rounded professionals and enthusiastic maritime advocates expected to embody the high standards of moral correctness, courage, and honor that their shipmates and the public demand.
How they accomplish all this and still find time to study the vast body of knowledge that the profession of arms demands is partly due to the Navy’s innovative approach to enlisted professional military education (EPME).
Individual Skills Benefit the Group
In his 1957 book The Soldier and the State, Samuel P. Huntington cites expertise, social responsibility, and “corporateness” as the three characteristics of a profession. He defines the professional as “an expert with specialized knowledge and skill in a significant field of human endeavor.” This level of proficiency “is acquired only by prolonged education and experience” and can be measured by “objective standards of professional competence.”
Every member enjoys the benefits of the entire organization’s reputation, and, conversely, is negatively impacted by inappropriate behavior. Specific standards of professional competence are established and enforced as a result of shared social responsibility. The ability, right, and responsibility of self-regulation are part of what transforms an association into a profession. The U.S. Naval War College adapted Huntington’s thought to the profession of arms as a guiding star, as it charted the way ahead for the Navy’s EPME curriculum.
Getting Educated Online
In 2005, the Naval War College began to develop EPME, the focus and depth of which was framed by not only Huntington’s central ideas, but additionally the inputs of the Joint Chiefs’ Enlisted Professional Military Education Policy and Fleet. The set of courses is designed to provide a professional baseline across a body of knowledge at enlisted career milestones.
The Naval War College developed and maintains three enlisted online PME courses. They are deployed on Navy Knowledge Online as a 24/7, self-paced, worldwide (afloat and ashore) PME resource. Dynamic and engaging, these courses have embedded video, interactive self-evaluations, and end-of-course tests that automatically randomize questions.
Online PME addresses the history and heritage of the naval service, ethical perspectives, professional knowledge, and an overview of the art of naval science and the technologies used in the maritime domain. In addition, the curriculum addresses joint operations and provides perspective on regional and cultural issues and U.S. interests in each region.
The Naval War College EPME program offers the primary enlisted PME course for senior enlisted (E-7 to E-9). This provides about 70 contact hours and addresses Fleet and joint learning objectives appropriate to the target audience. The college also offers the basic enlisted PME (E-5 to E-6) and introductory enlisted PME (E-1 to E-4) courses, with approximately 40 and 20 contact hours respectively. They address the service member’s PME needs at career milestones.
Finally, the Naval War College has created an online reference library. Available to the total force, it provides easy access to selected lessons on enlisted-professionalism and regional- and cultural-awareness topics. “Enlisted Heroes and Famous Ships,” “Honors and Ceremonies,” and “An Overview of the Greater Middle East” are among the more than 65 lessons currently available through this library. PME is available on Navy Knowledge Online e-learning. Current online EPME enrollment is about 105,000, with a growth rate of approximately 3,000 per month.
With few exceptions, these courses are not mandatory. But the freedom and flexibility of the delivery system meet today’s sailor’s needs by providing an on-demand product that is available anytime, anywhere with access to Navy Knowledge Online. The educational experience is a cost-effective, widely accessible, purpose-built system that is ready for students who want to improve their understanding of the Navy and its culture, history, capabilities, and relevance to national security. These courses may be just what your command or organization is looking for as you seek innovative and productive ways to develop and challenge your sailors.