The current career path for nuclear-trained surface warfare officers—or SWO(N)s—provides insufficient experience to produce the highest level of technical competency for reactor officers and for surface combatant commanding officers. The careers for reactor officers and SWOs must be independent of each other and tailored toward relevant experience. Officers already are more generalists than the enlisted sailors we lead, and mixing these two largely disassociated careers unnecessarily introduces more generalization when specialization and superior technical competency is required.
When I served as a nuclear reactor safety inspector on the Nuclear Propulsion Examining Board (NPEB), I was able to see firsthand the differences between the submarine and nuclear surface communities. Both operate at the highest levels of regulatory adherence, integrity, and safe nuclear reactor operation. The major difference is rooted in the inherent cultural differences between the two communities, which is attributable to two factors. The first is largely unalterable, as a submarine’s smaller crew size allows leaders to impact more effectively the ship’s culture and introduce change. The second is that submariners—like naval aviators—spend their entire professional warfighting career focused on a smaller set of technical skills. This is where the SWO(N) community has room to improve.
Malcolm Gladwell’s popular book Outliers famously embraced the principle that one must have “10,000 hours of deliberate practice” to become world-class in any field. Subsequent studies, including a 2014 Princeton study led by Brooke MacNamara, show that this principle holds true primarily for rule-based systems. For instance, there is a much greater variance in performance for sports, games, and music, than trades where one can have an “a-ha” moment and make tremendous gains in performance. Naval nuclear power and the warfighting and ship handling of surface combatants are rule-based systems where “reps and sets” matter.
My own career is a good example. When I begin the command training pipeline, I will have spent fewer than three years on a surface combatant outside of a reactor department despite having been assigned to a grey hull for all four of my sea tours. My timing and experiences are common for SWO(N)s. This progression allowed three years in which to master seamanship, navigation, combat systems, and everything else required of a commanding officer (CO) outside of engineering. I supplemented my experience and preparation by teaching seamanship and navigation at the Naval Academy while serving as a company officer and by spending as much time on the bridge of my aircraft carriers as I did in the propulsion plant, but that was a choice I made and not a programmatic requirement. Likewise, prior to serving as a reactor officer, I will have served only four years as part of an aircraft carrier’s crew in their reactor departments, with an additional two on the NPEB. In neither case have I approached Gladwell’s prescribed 10,000 hours. In high school, my track coach once told me, “You can be an astronaut, or a concert pianist, or an Olympic athlete. But, you can’t be all three at the same time.”
We must create career progressions to produce the best ship captains and the best nuclear engineers to maintain our competitive edge – and to do so, we must divorce the opinion they are linked. A more rational model would place SWO(N)s solely on nuclear-powered ships for sea tours, with shore tours focused on nuclear power or aircraft carrier operations, maintenance, or training. Under this model, SWO(N)s would still qualify as officers of the deck on aircraft carriers, because understanding ship handling is crucial to effective propulsion plant management; however, understanding AEGIS system operations and the tenants of amphibious warfare are not. SWO(N)s would still aspire to command—as a reactor officer in charge of more than 400 Sailors, two nuclear reactors, the power generation and distribution equivalent to that of a small city, and the propulsion of a 100,000-ton warship. To say this position is not command because there is a commanding officer of the ship is as disingenuous as saying an aircraft squadron commander is less responsible and less “in command” when embarked on that same aircraft carrier.
Furthermore, to make the SWO(N) career path more tenable and attractive to talented young officers, the aviation community needs to help. The Navy’s pilot shortage has been highlighted in several recent Proceedings articles. Because of innovation in technology and warfare, the Navy likely will not need as many pilots in the future. Instead of constraining future end strength with past manning models, the Navy has an opportunity to use a better model with the potential to facilitate a smooth separation of SWO(N)s from the conventional SWO community. The Navy’s command model for large-deck amphibious ships staggers back and forth from SWO to aviator and back. (A SWO executive officer (XO) serving under an aviator CO moves up to be SWO commanding officer with an aviator XO.) The Navy could adopt a similar model on nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, alternating between nuclear-trained SWOs and nuclear-trained aviators.
If this model were adopted, SWO(N)s selected to command aircraft carriers should be eligible for Nuclear Officer Incentive Continuation Pay (the “nuke bonus” of $35k/year) and the package of aviation bonuses offered to carrier XOs and COs. Annual bonuses of $50-70K should allow the community to retain the talented individuals required to safely and effectively operate the nuclear reactors of all the Navy’s aircraft carriers and to share in the command of them.
The SWO(N) career progression was designed when the Navy had nuclear-powered cruisers and there was a need for officers with both skill sets to command them. That need no longer exists, and the surface navy’s collisions and groundings in 2017 demonstrated that SWO competence matters. That competence is born from rigorous training, lots of “reps and sets,” muscle memory, and devotion to excellence. It is time for the Navy to separate the career tracks of officers who drive surface combatants and those who manage the nuclear power plants of its aircraft carriers.
Commander Phillips is now assigned to the Office of the Secretary of Defense as the policy lead for officer force management. Prior to this assignment, he served as a White House Fellow to the Vice President, and despite the concerns he raises in this article, he believes he is prepared for and will succeed in both command at sea and as a reactor officer of an aircraft carrier.