One of the Navy’s strengths is the way its processes can be tailored to fit the needs of a variety of communities. This can also be a weakness, however, in that best practices from one community often are not shared or spread well to others. One area that stands out in this context is maintenance—specifically the way it is managed and performed in the surface force versus in naval aviation. Much like the skills required for damage control and force protection, every sailor on a surface ship must learn to be a maintenance person.
The onboard maintenance program is managed by a senior enlisted 3-M coordinator who has attended a two-week school to obtain this Navy enlisted classification (NEC). In the aviation world, the skill of maintenance management resides in a unique rating—the aviation maintenance administration man (AZ). According to the Navy’s Rate Training Manual, the AZ “performs a variety of administrative and managerial duties necessary to keep aircraft maintenance activities running efficiently.” The aviation community treats this as a full-time job while the surface navy treats it like collateral duty. Although the trend in the past decade has been to combine or eliminate ratings, the surface navy could benefit from what naval aviation has learned in the management of maintenance.
Let’s implement a surface maintenance administration rating (SZ).
Not Every Sailor a Maintenance Manager
Certainly, it is part of every sailor’s skillset to operate and maintain his or her equipment. As sailors advance, their technical skills increase in the performance of both preventative and corrective maintenance. The programs needed to manage maintenance, however, are complex and require a unique set of skills. While these are developed in all surface sailors and officers through a combination of on-the-job training and schools, ships struggle to manage myriad requirements as they compete with watch standing and other tactical duties. The detailed scheduling, planning, and execution of maintenance generally is conducted by the ship’s materiel maintenance officer (SMMO), a collateral duty for a newly commissioned limited duty officer and the newly minted 3M coordinator. Normally, each department has a 3M assistant, typically a first-class petty officer qualified through the personnel qualification system (PQS) and on-the-job training (OJT). As a complement to the training changes incorporated in the forthcoming Sailor 2025, it is time to examine this model.
The Navy does not have the people to man an entire new rating at the junior level (as is the case in aviation), but that is probably not the best answer anyway. Under this new model, those who choose the maintenance path at the E-6 level could have the opportunity to apply for the new rating, SZ, that would replace the current 3-M system coordinator (3-MC) billet and allow the individual to nurture that skill set for the remainder of their career. Perhaps the current 3-M NEC could be applied to those in the maintenance assistant billet (3-MA), and from that group a select number of individuals would be entering the SZ rating each year as they make chief petty officer. These individuals would undergo more robust training.
Another challenge is that currently, although squadron commanders have extensive 3M responsibilities under the Joint Fleet Maintenance Manual (JFMM), they are not staffed to perform this duty and have no formal billet for a 3-MC. The SZ rating would create a natural upward progression to destroyer and amphibious squadrons (DesRons and PhiBrons) and carrier/expeditionary strike group staffs, giving them the expertise they need to evaluate, support, and train ships.
Finally, afloat training groups (ATGs) generally have billets for 3-M assessors, but these individuals often compete with their core ratings. Despite being detailed into a 3-M billet, they are often pulled into other ATG warfare team gaps based on their core skill elements. The creation of the SZ rating will cause the billeting to be tighter and allow these individuals to stay in the rating, codifying the “train the trainer” concept. Following the 3-MC tour, many chief petty officers return to their core rating because to stay in a 3-M pipeline may not help them in later promotion board competition. For this reason many of those in more senior 3-M assessment billets at the ATG have never held the ship 3-MC position that they are training and evaluating!
Career aviator and Proceedings author Lieutenant Commander Graham Scarbro, an aviation maintenance officer, shared that his AZs are: “truly maintenance professionals who keep the planes flying. There are plenty of opportunities for AZs in aviation, as the wings and type commanders have AZ billets all the way up the chain to commander, Naval Air Forces. They monitor the data from their subordinate units and ensure that the paperwork flows uphill.” Sounds like a great system!
Zero-Sum Gain
This idea could be implemented with almost no change in resources because the individuals already exist in their own billets. In addition, it would free promotion space in the core ratings as a small group of chief petty officers into the SZ rating and allow increased upward mobility across the board. This would serve to create a natural “promotion pyramid” (see Figure 1) with each ship having five or so departmental 3-M assistants (E-6) and one 3-MC “SZ” (E-7). E-8 as a sequential path to 3-MC at the immediate superior in command staff, and on some of the more challenging ships, such as cruisers, large-deck amphibs, and possibly CVNs. E-9s would fill the Force/TyCom, and ATG billets, as well.
Those currently in 3-MC positions and other qualifying billets could be automatically “re-badged” to SZ today. A set of precepts could be established for the promotion boards, and the surface navy could leverage one of the primary strengths of the aviation community, a core group of professional maintenance managers.