I disagree. There have indeed been a number of incidents in which Navy men and women—as individuals—have failed to live by the core values of the Naval Service and have been identified and disciplined for their shortcomings. End of story—or at least that's the way it should have happened.
Instead, justified or not, the string of recent missteps has brought on a barrage of internal and external criticism of what is, without a doubt, the finest Navy in the world. The result is that the service and its Academy have entered a prolonged period of soul-searching, in an attempt to find the root cause of our collective difficulties.
Is the criticism of the Navy and Naval Academy overblown reporting of a few bad apples? Or, is there a larger, more pervasive problem yet to be uncovered? I suggest that the answer lies somewhere in between: something short of a systemic problem, but deeper than the failures of a few individuals. A logical place to begin a search for answers is at the font of leadership in Annapolis—the Naval Academy. Naturally, we want to place our best and brightest at the training grounds for tomorrow's leaders—especially when our premier officer-candidate program is under fire. To be sure, the Naval Academy is staffed by good, solid, dedicated naval professionals men and women whom you can find in any wardroom or ready room around the fleet.
But are we sending our best to teach ethics, character, and leadership to the young men and women who in short order will be charged with leading our Sailors and Marines? I do not have the data suggesting that the officers assigned to the Naval Academy staff are anything less than the Navy’s and Marine Corps’ best. Nevertheless, two less-quantifiable, career-progression questions may help illuminate the fleet’s view of Academy duty:
- How are teaching tours and leadership positions at the Naval Academy viewed by promotion boards?
- Where does an assignment at the Academy fit into a line officer’s career?
You won’t find answers to these questions written anywhere at the Bureau of Naval Personnel or in Officer Assignments at Headquarters Marine Corps. But conventional wisdom suggests the following:
- Promotion boards view Academy duty at best a neutral assignment, or worse—in a recent Navy 0-6 promotion board, five of six Academy O-5s under consideration failed to select.
- There is not room in the typical career path for a two- or three-year stint outside the community. It is a telling indicator of our career progression environment that any joint-credit assignment is preferable to being “back-watered” to Annapolis.
The result is that few senior officers recommend Academy duty to their best junior officers and department heads, and few detailers will try to sell an instructor or leadership job there to a topflight officer who must meet one or another of the promotion gates. If it’s not sea duty or joint duty, you're only on a fast track to the back burner.
Ensuring that the Navy and Marine Corps do, in fact, send their best leaders to the Naval Academy requires a two- step approach. The longer-term, true fix demands a shift in perspective and policy from the services' top leadership. Any move to realign assignment priorities and critical billets dramatically will require the full support of the Chief of Naval Operations, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and the respective personnel chiefs. The senior leaders not only would have to change policy; perhaps more important, they also would have to act decisively to change the widely held perception of Academy duty.
No matter how much leadership is exerted, perceptions won’t change overnight. In the interim, there are several options available to increase the flow of top officers to and through Annapolis immediately.
A common complaint from Academy supporters is that because Annapolis is so close to Washington, D.C., media critics can drive quickly from the nation’s capital to dig up whatever dirt they seek, then return in time for lunch. That may be true, but the corollary is that because Annapolis is so close to the Pentagon—the Academy shares turf with a significant number of Navy and Marine officers selected for important assignments and pegged as the services’ top performers. From this pool, the best and brightest could be culled by an advisory group formed by the Chief of Naval Operations, Commandant of the Marine Corps, and the Superintendent of the Naval Academy.
The question would then become one of how and for how long these men and women could affiliate with the Academy. I offer three options:
- Develop a temporary-duty program that draws officers in the Washington area to serve at the Academy for a single semester. Call it the “Naval Academy Fellowship Program,” and give preferential detailing treatment to those who are accepted.
- Introduce a topical lecture series. With the wide range of billets in Washington—from the Joint Staff to platform program offices to presidential and congressional staffs—there is an incredible diversity of professional experience. If delivered to small groups of midshipmen (by academic departments or companies depending on the topic), the subjects introduced by these experienced officers will complement existing training and should find a receptive audience among the midshipmen.
- Develop an informal “mingling” program. This could take a number of forms (perhaps lunch visits or tailgate outings), with the purpose of increasing social interaction between midshipmen and area officers.
The Navy and Marine Corps have officers with a remarkable depth of operational, staff, academic, and leadership experience available within reach. It is a valuable resource that has not been tapped, at a time when the Navy’s leadership center of excellence is showing some signs of distress. We must decide the worth of our highest-profile leadership training, then dedicate the right assets to make it work. The Navy and Marine Corps after next depend on building the right leaders with the right tools, right now.
Lieutenant Commander Recca is a Naval Academy graduate and Intelligence Officer with recent assignments on USS America (CV-66) and on the staff of Commander Naval Forces Europe. He is currently assigned to the Pentagon.