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By Commander J. Bruce Hamilton, U.S. Navy
The system that provides intermediate-level maintenance to our surface fleet needs improvement. The current system does not meet the needs of surface ships efficiently. A fundamental reason for this inadequacy is the absence of competitive market forces.
The problem. The type commander tells the Intermediate Maintenance Activity (IMA) to support the ship, but does not provide any additional funding for each job conducted by the IMA—there is no direct fiscal link between the customer (the ship) and the service provider (the IMA). The players operate in a dysfunctional economic system. Because there is no profit incentive, it is to the advantage of the IMA to reject as much work as it can possibly justify; and it is to the ship’s advantage to request as much IMA work as it possibly can without regard for cost to the IMA. Indeed, many of the cost-benefit calculations being made by the players may be contrary to what is best for the fleet overall.
The work-definition conference—a meeting attended by representatives of a ship headed into a maintenance period and the IMA designated to perform the maintenance—gets sporting as the representatives attempt to figure out who will do what.
In theory, the IMA will agree to perform all jobs that are not within the ship’s force capability and the ship will not ask the IMA to do anything the crew can do—that is, the ship will be “reasonable” in requests for IMA work. In practice, this is where the ship starts to suffer the death of a thousand cuts as the flaws in intermediate-level maintenance support begin to emerge.
Two agendas are in play at the conference. The ship’s representative is trying to figure out how to get the IMA to do as much work as possible while appearing “reasonable”—and the IMA’s representative is trying to figure out how to agree to do as few jobs as possible and
still make it appear to the type commander that the IMA is doing its job. This does not imply that either the ship’s or IMA’s representatives are unprofessional, however—since there is no cost or compensation in the calculations, both players will naturally try to minimize the work for their respective organizations.
The work-definition conference ends up rewarding gamesmanship. The ship inflates the seriousness, complexity, and quantity of the work to create a bargain
ing position from which it can fall back to what is really needed, while the IMA representative, trying to prove his worth to his boss—the type commander—says that he wants to do as much work as is “reasonable” (there’s that word again), but insists that the ship can do much of the work.
The IMA representative then proceeds, job request by job request, to whittle down the work package as much as possible using such reasons as “within ship’s force capability . . . shop overload . . . beyond IMA capability ... excessive lead
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The Death of a Thousand Cuts
This crewman is helping to maintain his ship during a maintenance availability. Intermediate maintenance activities can help him out—but only if we put some market forces into the equation.
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gether to accomplish the task). It’s like I i taking your car to the shop for repairs and i
letting the shop owner decide what work to do, when he already knows he is being paid a fixed fee regardless of what he does.
Anyone who has ever experienced an availability with an IMA knows that nothing happens automatically. From start to finish, the ship has to track and push every job. IMA workers will have many reasons for not working expeditiously: “couldn’t I find the work area . . . poorly written job order . . . under-es- t timated . . . work area not prepared by ship’s force ... awaiting materials.” It takes a huge effort by the ship’s force to drive the availability, and rarely does all the work requested actually get completed properly. The I IMA may have been given little or no incentive to do the work on time or properly, but it is the ship that suffers from late or sloppy work.
The current surface ship intermediate-level maintenance program does not meet requirements because it embodies none of the normal market place incentives.
A case study. The preceding is anecdotal; however, data are available to document an actual IMA availability. Last fall, while Executive Officer of a cruiser, I had the opportunity to measure IMA work accomplishment during a four-week availability. In this case there were actually two repair activities conducting maintenance on the ship; a shore-based IMA and a public shipyard. Although shipyard work is normally considered depot level, in this instance the shipyard work could have been done by an IMA if more time had been available. Thus the shipyard work was, for all intents and purposes, intermediate level maintenance.
The dividing line between maintenance
Proceedings/July 1994
levels—ship, intermediate, and depot— is not always clear. Intermediate-level facilities or depots can in fact do many industrial jobs—and most of the crew’s jobs; the decision on who should do what often depends more on manpower than capabilities. Indeed, there are very few individual jobs that the crew cannot do without the IMA; the ship needs the IMA because the ship’s manpower is limited and it simply cannot do everything required to maintain the ship.
For this case study, then, both the shore-based IMA and the public shipyard were intermediate activities, and comparing the two was valid. It was a superb opportunity to compare two types of organizations functioning simultaneously—and the results were staggeringly different.
► We asked the shipyard to do 20 jobs. The shipyard accepted 100% of those jobs, and at the end of the maintenance period, had, in fact, completed 99.9% of the work on time with essentially no assistance from the crew (other than isolating and danger-tagging the work areas and providing safety fire watches where welding or grinding took place).
As the work proceeded, five new jobs were identified; the shipyard completed all of them on time. The work was done properly, in accordance with specifications, and without asking for assistance. Where work was occasionally noted as unsatisfactory, it was quickly and properly corrected when brought to the attention of the appropriate shipyard supervisors. The shipyard’s senior manager for the project—the ship supervisor— faithfully met with me every day to review the progress of the work, ask for clarification, and otherwise ferret out problems as they occurred.
► In contrast, the shore-based IMA, at the work definition conference, rejected 20 of the 80 jobs we asked for, citing various reasons ranging from lack of capabilities to the IMA representative’s opinion that the job was “within ship’s force capability.” The IMA accepted 16 jobs conditionally pending the procurement of materials (a problem, incidentally, that the shipyard never seemed to have). The IMA accepted 12 jobs as ship’s force assist (i.e., the ship would perform the bulk of the work and the IMA would do only a specific part of the job), and 20 jobs as “ship-to-shop,” i.e., the ship was required to transport the item requiring work to the IMA and pick it up when the job was complete.
As the availability proceeded, the quality of the IMA’s work was frequently poor to marginal and each job required close scrutiny by my supervisors and me. Although the ship proposed new work, the IMA itself did not propose a single new job, even though many pos
sible areas of work expansion were apparent. Also, unlike the shipyard’s ship supervisor, the IMA’s supervisor never once came to see me unless I requested his presence. Indeed, he left the impression that he was avoiding us.
Although only 20 jobs were requested of the shipyard and 80 of the IMA, most of the shipyard jobs were significantly larger than the IMA jobs. When measured in manhours, the shipyard had more than three times as much work to perform as was assigned to the shore-based IMA.
Summing up, the shipyard accepted 100% of the requested work with no strings attached, while the IMA accepted only 75% of the requested work—and only 20% of it with no strings attached. The work-definition conference with the IMA can only be described as the “death of a thousand cuts” for the ship’s work package.
Why the vast dissimilarity in performance between two repair organizations that on the surface had the same mission; to repair the ship? The answer lies in the opposing economic forces within the two organizations. The shipyard, even though public, was operating in a market economy, being paid by the job, and by the estimated man-hour. The more work it could do, the more money it would make. It was in the shipyard’s interest to do as much work as it could, do all of the work itself, and get new work authorized along the way.
The shore-based IMA, on the other hand, operating in a socialistic economic regime, had everything to gain by doing less work. While more work for the shipyard meant more money, more work for the IMA meant longer hours for its people—with no more pay. I think that this explained the markedly different behaviors between the shipyard supervisor and the IMA’s supervisor, since they were equally professional men in my opinion.
Okay, they’re different—what’s the problem? In a nutshell, there are no market forces. The current system takes very professional and competent sailors who are assigned to our IMAs and gives them every incentive to perform marginally. It is to their credit that they do as well as they do, given the negative economic incentives under which they are operating.
The IMA’s advantage is that—from the type commander’s point of view— its work is inexpensive when compared to work done by depots or commercial shipyards. The type commander perceives these savings because the IMA labor does not come out of his repair budget; IMA labor is paid directly from the Navy’s manpower budget. If the type commander had to pay the wages of the IMA’s sailors, the perceptions of savings would disappear.
Ultimately, the current system of surface ship intermediate level maintenance results in:
► Poor economic decisions by the ship’s force on what should be done by the ship and what should be done by outside repair organizations
>• Marginal IMA workmanship >• Disincentives for the ship’s force to save maintenance dollars by doing some of the work itself >• Inefficient use of IMA resources
► Significant frustration and effort by the ship’s force at having to monitor and drive every IMA job, instead of using that energy to do their own work and spend time training for combat operations
Most important, the current system suffers from the severe drawback that the ship’s commanding officer and crew, who will have to live with the decisions made at the work-definition conference, do not make the decisions on whether or not jobs will be done by the IMA; the IMA representatives make those decisions.
Some proposals. There is no quick fix and a radical redesign would probably be too expensive, but the Navy could make some incremental improvements:
► Give each ship a maintenance budget (in dollars), then let the ship’s commanding officer decide how best to spend it. The supporting IMA would charge (in dollars) for work, but the ship would have the choice of what IMA work it would purchase, and what work it would do with ship’s force.
► Permit open purchase. If the Naval Supply System does not carry a widget that the ship needs, then the system should allow the ship to buy it from a commercial vendor. Similarly, ships should be allowed to purchase maintenance from approved commercial maintenance vendors. It is important to let the person closest to the problem and who will have to live with the results—the ship’s commanding officer—-make the decision on how best to spend the maintenance dollars. (If this were incorporated, it would be important that IMA fees include the cost, to the Navy, of the IMA’s labor force; otherwise a valid comparison between IMA costs and commercial maintenance vendors costs could not be made.)
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► Establish a list of approved jobs that IMAs would be allowed to perform and that they would be required to maintain the capability to perform when requested. This would be similar to the master job catalog concept that has been used by the surface fleet in the past. Each approved job would include detailed specifications as to exactly what would be done by the IMA. This would avoid the death-of-a- thousand-cuts problem that results when ships and IMAs negotiate and compro-
mise on work packages. For each job, type commanders would specify the price charged, the work specifications, and the planning and lead time requirements. IMAs might even be limited to performing only those standard jobs, leaving nonstandard work to commercial maintenance vendors.
> Link more clearly each IMA’s fiscal and manpower budgets to the jobs it completes. Make the IMA work to justify its existence.
Parts of the IMA process may not lend themselves to market solutions. Where national security technology is involved— nuclear propulsion plant maintenance, for example—security considerations may not allow for a market system where many diverse commercial maintenance vendors are competing for jobs. Similarly, it may not be desirable for ships deployed overseas to deal with foreign commercial maintenance vendors (although there certainly is precedence for it).
Putting most of our surface ship intermediate maintenance support into a market economy, however, is likely to bring the kinds of increased efficiencies that would save precious dollars in these fiscally constrained times.
Commander Hamilton, a surface warfare officer, recently graduated from the Armed Forces Staff College, and is serving on the staff of the United States European Command in Stuttgart, Germany.
Welcoming Aboard Female Aviators
By Commander Clifford A. Skelton, U.S. Navy
If true integration is to take place in the Navy, it must happen across the board, including submarines and SEAL units. The issue is a matter of standards and qualifications, not gender. To assign women only to certain squadrons or ships attaches a stigma and will lead many to say that gender integration was responsible if the unit performs poorly. Conversely, gender integration will rarely be considered the key item when a unit excels.
This puts women at a distinct disadvantage because they are further marginalized. Across-the-board integration is an important step in the right direction.
Leadership and education can change a culture but it will be a long-term process—especially in the seagoing Navy with its long heritage. There will be pain, and innocent individuals will suffer through the agony of growth—but it is time. There is no requirement to banish all tradition, however, to make progress. We should apply the lessons learned from military tradition as well as from successfully diversified civilian organizations, then move on.
The following list uses R. Roosevelt Thomas’s “Ten Guidelines for Learning to Manage Diversity,” published in the March-April 1990 Harvard Business Review, as a template for a commanding officer of male-female integrated squadron.
Clarify your motivation. It does not matter what you think; as Thomas says, “Legal compliance seems like a good reason.” If a CO does not have the skills to lead a group of recalcitrant men and hard- charging women, then he belongs in another line of work. The issue is not whether the Navy ought to integrate: it has.
Clarify your vision. Picture in your mind the perspective for each participant in the game. Female participants may see themselves as either attempting to prove that they are competitive—equal or bet
ter in airmanship and leadership than their male counterparts—or they may be less sure of themselves. (Men are affected by the same considerations when gender mindset is not at play.) Male participants may perceive that women are given an undue advantage. The perspective is one of unequal status.
Expand your focus. The goals, guidelines, and performance standards vis-a- vis hard, dirty, strength-related, greasy work cannot and will not change. Your challenge is to place all the round and square pegs in the right spots—without force. Train your squadron to use talent for the good of the whole not by assimilating women into the male-dominated culture, but by making a heterogeneous culture dominant.
Audit your corporate culture. Do not use outside help unless you sense problems. Any outside help will come with its own baggage—probably more than you are carrying. Instead, try to step outside yourself from time to time and become a barometer. Listen to the undercurrents. Ask questions. Judge female airmanship by the same standards as male airmanship and execute the same awards- discipline program. Give everyone the same opportunity to be mentored. At first, this may require male mentors for females. Once again, Thomas: “In most companies, what passes for cream rising to the lop is actually cream being pushed or pulled to the top by an informal system of mentoring and sponsorship.” Modify your assumptions. You have no control over the Navy system for promotions or placement. You do have control over squadron job opportunities and evaluations—which must be made regardless of gender. You must understand that. Initially, many will not see it this way. You can only dictate and persuade; change of perspective is an individual phenomenon. The CO’s influence is powerful, professionally speaking; if you assume a genderless (while in uniform)
squadron, many of your subordinates will too.
Modify your system. Advocates and sponsors are unspoken entities in the system, but they exist nonetheless. Examine whether the same opportunities for such help exist for women as well as men. This should take care of itself but may require a little push. One thing is certain: mentoring or sponsorship cannot come from you—it has to come from within the structure. You have to make sure it does.
Modify your models. Stay out of the trenches, but ensure that supervisors employ your focus and mindset. You must get involved in some areas. You all fly the same aircraft and everyone should meet the same performance standards. Work harder than ever to improve your own skills to ensure that you are always competitive. Only then can you judge airborne skills with credibility. In the case of pilots, this judgmental process will be your greatest challenge because stick-and- throttle skills are great equalizers—there is no rank in the cockpit, and there should be no gender, either.
Help your people pioneer. Some will identify every stumble as gendered and every success as a token. Again, no amount of influence can correct everyone. Thomas’s point here is that your leaders and troops are truly pioneers and that they should be judged not by their resistance to change but by their performance. Not all stories will be successful even with the best of intentions. Mistakes at the cutting edge are different—and potentially more valuable—than mistakes elsewhere. “Maybe they needed some kind of pioneer training. But at the very least they needed to be told that they were pioneers, that conflicts and failures came with the territory, and that they would be judged accordingly.”
Apply the special consideration case (hut amend it). This is a Thomas-generated concept: ask yourself whether a certain program or policy produces undue
Proceedings / July 1994
advantage for a specific group. If it helps one group over another, you are not yet on the road to managing diversity. This question will not be clear-cut in some cases because you cannot ignore group- specific issues. You may have three junior officers, for example—two men and one woman—available to attend the five week Navy Fighter Weapons School (TopGun). The woman is neither the best nor the worst aviator among them. But perhaps you want to make a statement to your squadron regarding opportunities for women. Choosing the woman does not pass the special consideration test because it gives undue advantage to the woman— but it does pass the common sense test. Until our program is in full swing, subjective decisions may benefit the minority group. If you’re going to lean that way, it is okay as long as the Navy is better for your decision.
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Continue affirmative action. All decisions should be amended in view of the organization. Your mantra must be: “Diversity can be a positive contribution to the organization.” You will not have the luxury of diversity at every level because the numbers are not there. A piecemeal approach to integration may be a step backward for your unit, but it may be the best beginning for the Navy as a whole.
Few individuals will face a more difficult task than a female jet aviator who attempts to join the macho male field of camaraderie;
COs must provide a support system. A mentor system for males is currently alive and well, though not quite as obvious as some of those in civilian organizations. To make a mentor system obvious for new female pilots would be a mistake, but there are subtle ways to initiate a plan within the system. The social problems associated with closeness of a squadron cannot be ignored when developing a mentoring program. Many males—officers and enlisted—will continue to believe in their dominance regardless of what they display on the surface. The CO should strive to create an environment that maximizes everyone’s potential by focusing on individual abilities, not individual differences. Here are some ideas.
Barriers for women will be sufficiently higher than for men, but female-only organizations outside the unit are definitely not the answer, nor are female-only organizations within the unit. To foster networks of women in or out of the squadron
is a sure way to create animosity. There should be no “us” and “them” within the squadron; the squadron is “us” and the competition is “them.”
As CO, encourage Department Heads to become informal mentors to women. These programs have worked for centuries in the military—there is no reason that such programs cannot work on a crosssex basis as well, even without being formalized Men receive junior officer peer guidance; women may or may not have the same luxury. Encourage assertiveness in women pilots, not in a male sense, but in an officer sense. If a woman has the initiative to enter this competitive male world, she does not fit the
stereotype—make sure your male officers know that.
Cross-gender role modeling is inevitable and should be encouraged, but the ground rules should be unquestioned: male-female intimate relationships in a squadron are not acceptable, especially in a junior-senior situation. Relationships should be discouraged even among members of the same rank. The female is bound to suffer the most significant consequences; once again, she will be marginalized by the dominant male group.
To quote a senior naval officer—a SEAL—speaking before the 1992 Presidential Commission on Women in Combat: “ . . . my experience in life tells me that men, being what we are, will in fact complicate this issue. Sex in males is the most powerful drive at a young age, and
whether ... a man or a woman initiates the relationship is irrelevant. All that is relevant is that it will happen, and when it does, it will create within a SEAL platoon a distraction, at best, and a romantic or fraternizing situation, at worst, but ultimately male and female personal relationships will reduce our combat effectiveness.”
One of a CO’s biggest headaches will be the frustration felt by spouses when a squadron deploys for a six-month cruise.
Women are on their way to seagoing fighter squadrons, marking a major change in the culture. Commanding officers need some guidelines to make the transition.
U.S. NAVY (O. SOSA) / INSET SYGMA (J ANDERSON)
A CO should meet with spouses and coordinate meetings through the squadron ombudsman. Separations are difficult enough without thoughts of your spouse spending every waking moment with members of the opposite sex. Brief all spouses on your policy.
69
Proceedings/ July 1994
Fratemalism throughout naval history has been an important component of cohesion, safety, and job satisfaction. A CO must create an environment in which women feel comfortable. Fratemalism need not be gendered, and womanizing (although you will have little control over this) outside the squadron need not influence the equation one way or another. What men and women do outside the squadron should remain their own business, provided it does not affect life at work—and intra-squadron male-female
relationships affect it). Camaraderie and esprit de corps must involve your female pilots. Trust and confidence help make this inherently dangerous business safer— we cannot afford to give them up.
A squadron’s sexual harassment policy should discuss consensual activity. Most important, the CO should discuss the policy with squadron officers in no uncertain terms. The Navy as a whole has not been able to get beyond a “birds and the bees” high school sex-education mentality in educating its members. The CO should define it, explain it, describe the procedures and punishment and then continue with the day-to-day professional atmosphere we’ve come to enjoy. Some things must change; pin-ups, crude language, pornographic magazines and films, and off-color jokes must go.
Overreaction. Lifelong relationships are formed in squadrons and peer pressure is the most effective form of persuasion. Do not inhibit your male pilots from associating with female colleagues socially or professionally. Do not overemphasize the sexual harassment issue in such a way that it might stifle essential bonding.
Document all discussions and informal alleged problems even if that documentation is maintained for your eyes alone. Make sure the Executive Officer becomes an expert on all Navy policies in the area and is well versed on formal procedures. Make sure you know how to proceed in the case of a formal complaint.
Maintain an open-door policy. If each
female officer feels obliged to work through the chain of command, as is expected in most issues, you will never stay ahead of a potential problem. Make use of a confidentiality pledge. Hold leaders responsible for the climate within their departments or divisions. Encourage discourse and frank discussion. If women are willing to talk publicly about problems, you are making progress. The safety of 250 human beings is your responsibility. If airborne skill problems exist for a female, treat the problem as you would for a male.
You must understand Navy policy:
>• Pregnancy—Fetal damage in the early stages of pregnancy (before the diagnosis of pregnancy) appears to be the single biggest medical concern in allowing women access to all aviation careers, according to the Presidential Commission. If a pilot in your squadron becomes pregnant, she can no longer fly. This may not be a major concern because female military pilots thus far have a negligible pregnancy rate.
► Fitness—Wellness standards are not prerequisites for performing job-specific tasks such as pulling Gs (studies, by the way, have revealed no appreciable difference between men and women with respect to G tolerance). A gender-neutral fitness standard will unfairly subject most women to standards that arc unrealistic for general fitness and will not be challenging for the majority of men.
COs must ensure that the squadron understands that gender—like age—affects
requirements. “Women have upper torso I strength that is 50-60% that of men while their aerobic capacity is 70-75% that of men,” the Presidential Commission j found. As a result, fitness standards take gender into account but men and women, will continue to maintain identical physical performance standards as they applj to flying or fixing airplanes.
► Cohesion—Studies have shown that, a' least initially, unit cohesion and morale deteriorated with a rapid-minority-ina- mersion program. But attitudes change On Navy ships, “post-integration studies found that men enjoyed working with women on average, and women tended to feel more performance pressure, and. thus, worked harder to gain approval- . . . Acceptance was based on ability, I which is one of the key ingredients it, building cohesion within the unit or squadron.”
The Chief of Naval Operations has said that the time has come for qualified women to be completely integrated into the armed forces. Across the board integration is inevitable—sooner would be better. Successful integration depends on three attributes: leadership, leadership- and leadership.
Commander Skelton, an F/A-18 pilot, spent the past year earning a Masters Degree in Public Administration at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He has served as a pilot with the Blue Angels, as aide to the Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, and is en route for duty as executive officer of a fleet Hornet squadron—where he may get a chance to put these suggestions into practice.
Tell the Selection Board What Counts
By Lieutenant Commander Claire V. Bloom, U.S. Navy
As a recent voting member of the Se- nior/Master Chief Petty Officer (E-8/E-9) Active Duty Selection Board, I saw a lot of evaluations: well-written ones, poorly written ones—and meaningless ones. If you write, sign, or receive evaluations, read on.
Content. Evaluations have been standardized to include a listing of the responsibilities in block 54, special qualifications, awards and other accomplishments in block 55, and narrative comments in block 56. This is an excellent arrangement when used properly; board members zero in on these important comments easily—unless a commanding officer neglects to enter the information in the block designed for it and instead buries it in the middle of the narrative. Writers often waste valuable space in block 56 by repeating what has already been stated in blocks 54 and 55. Block 56 is for important information generally
not contained elsewhere, and for the commanding officer’s recommendation—a key item.
In the evaluations I saw, writers typically began Block 56 with a summary of the individual’s character and abilities, and concluded with a rewording of the same information—only the recommendation differentiated the first and last paragraphs. The meat of block 56, however, should be in the bullets, a list of specific accomplishments that mark the individual as a professional.
Standards. Regardless of the individual’s performance, the Navy cannot maintain in leadership positions, or promote to higher leadership positions, those who do not comply with existing regulations. Violations of those standards should be documented in block 31 (military bearing), block 32 (personal behavior) and/or block 29 (initiative) as well as at the top of the evaluation.
Bullets. Evaluations I read often contained only one or two bullets that related to job performance—followed by several that described appearance, linguistic ability, responsibilities (duplicated from block 54), awards (duplicated from block 55). collateral duties (duplicated from block 54), and other extraneous information. Don’t misunderstand, outside education, command involvement, and community involvement are very important and should be documented, but in no more than one bullet each—for a total of three bullets. The remainder of block 56 should be used to identify the individual’s professional, on-the-job accomplishments and other strengths.
Boards are looking for superior sustained performance—not just a single evaluation—that has been documented by five to ten evaluations covering the last five to seven years that discuss leadership positions and performance: how
Proceedings/July 1994
I many people have been supervised and how well? The board is looking for indications of the individual’s ability to manage dollars, parts, and facilities: how many and with what outcome? The board is looking for administrative ability and skill. The individual obviously can speak, read and write effective English if you gave him or her a 4.0 in block 34 and block 35. This does not to be repeated in block 56. What the board needs to know is whether their reports are well formatted, timely, complete, and useful. Here are three more bullets— leadership skill, managerial skill, and administrative ability—for a total of six.
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That is the minimum requirement. The rest of the space can be used to document other important aspects of the individual’s performance.
Make the bullets meaningful. Here are some examples of some that do not say very much:
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► “Maintained command assessment team demographics.” This sailor could have maintained them in a wastebasket, could have maintained them badly, or could have maintained them in an unusable format in an irretrievable location.
► “Supports command policies.” Big deal. If the individual did not support command policies, how did the record get to the board?
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► “Security minded, conscientious in the use and handling of classified material.” This is expected— and does not rate a bullet.
^ “Chairs three EEO [Equal Employment Opportunity] committees.” Fine—but what do they do? How well do they do it? What does the individual do to lead those committees and improve the command’s EEO environment?
► “Excellent command of the English Language” Again, if this were not so, I Would expect to see a 3.8 or below in block 34 and 35.
► “He constantly presents a neat and well groomed military appearance.” If he does not, it should be reflected in a lower marking, counseling, and leadership action.
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Chief petty officers are the backbone of the Navy and only the best can assume the highest responsibilities. Commanding officers must document their performance accurately if selection boards are to have any chance of recognizing excellence.
Evaluation after evaluation contained these statements, and others, that contributed little to the board’s understanding of the individual’s performance and potential.
Format. Using the microfiche readers
is difficult at best. The more contrast between the typed material and the sheet sent to the bureau, the better. The more underlining and bold-facing of significant bullets the better—but do not underline or bold-face the entire evaluation.
Our 80-member board, which sat for about six weeks, considered approximately 26,500 records, each of which had to be reviewed by at least two members. Those records thought to be at all competitive were reviewed again by a panel. A glance at the numbers reveals that there
is little time to devote to in-depth evaluation of individual records. The more that the important information stands out, the more likely that it is to be noted and have an impact.
Margin to margin, top to bottom single-spaced typing is the most difficult to read. Nothing stands out and by mid-afternoon, when reviewers’ eyes are most tired, it requires intense concentration to read through even the best evaluation to find the golden nuggets that separate the individual from the pack.
Ranking. Ranking, more than any other factor, signifies the commanding officer’s true assessment of the individual— whether it is on the front of the evaluation or in the narrative. What creates the most confusion for a board member is when the ranking and the recommenda
tion at the end of block 56 don’t match. Often, I saw the following words in block 56: “He (she) has my highest personal recommendation for immediate promotion,” when the individual was ranked in the lower half of a large group. This kind of disconnect is difficult for board members to resolve.
Any decline in ranking from one evaluation to the next should be explained. Board members often notice a decline and must guess whether it reflects a change in performance, an incident, arrival of a new and better performer, or some other unknown rationale. Any explanation in the narrative for a slip of more than 10% in ranking can mean the difference between a positive or negative interpretation of the event.
Recommendations. These are important and their wording can make a difference in a highly competitive group with a low percentage of quotas. Not all commanding officers use the rules from English 101 (“This person has my strong (high) recommendation; is strongly (highly) recommended; has my highest (strongest) recommendation. In addition, other recommendations can be significant, in particular recommendations for Chief of the Boat, Command Master Chief, and commissioning programs. Let the board know more about your impression of the individual’s potential.
Do not expect the board to read your mind and understand that what you were really trying to do was to give the sailor an evaluation that he or she would feel proud of, while also signalling the board that you really don’t want the individual selected for advancement. We have all been victims of a commanding officer’s unwillingness to be honest and withhold recommendations from those who are just not ready. The board should not be required to do your hard work for you. If you don’t believe that an individual is ready, say so.
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Lieutenant Commander Bloom, a general unrestricted line officer, is the Base Support Officer for Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She recently completed studies for a Master of Science degree in Strategic Intelligence from the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Joint Military Intelligence College, and is a past president of the Women Officers Professional Association, Washington, D.C.
Buy KC-Xs . . . not C-17s
By Captain Donald Eckstein, U.S. Air Force
Continuing design and production-cost problems with the McDonnell Douglas C-17 program have caused the U. S. Air Force and the Department of Defense to consider alternatives to the planned procurement of 120 C-17s.
Studies acquired a new urgency when wing cracks severely restricted the Air Force’s workhorse C-141 fleet. On 14 April 1993, General Ronald Fogelman, Commander-in-Chief U.S. Transportation Command, restricted all 240+ C-14Is to payloads of 55,000 pounds—approximately 74% of the 69,000-pound design payload. He further restricted the aircraft from low-level flying or aerial refueling except on training flights with no cargo on board until repairs could be made. About 80% of the fleet has since been returned to full service but 43 aircraft re-
sion of commercial airliners like the Boeing 767, 777, and 747, or the McDonnell Douglas MD-11. While these aircraft are relatively inexpensive—the most expensive airframe (a Boeing 747-400F) costs about $150 million as opposed to about $280 million for a C-17—and available for near-term delivery (12-18 months), they all share some serious drawbacks compared to specialized military airlifters:
► No roll-on, roll-off capability
► No outsized cargo capability
► Height of cargo decks above ground level (20+ feet) requires special ground equipment for loading/unloading
► Limited capability to air-drop equipment, supplies, or personnel
>• Cannot operate from austere forward bases
not one dime was spent on additional probe-drogue refueling stations to facilitate joint refueling operations with Navy, Marine Corps, NATO, and other aircraft—most of which use such systems-
In an amazing case of deja vu, the Department of Defense is facing the same problem it did in the 1980s—a significant short-term lack of strategic airlift and has arrived at a similar long-term, high- cost military airlifter solution. The best solution would be the same as it was back in 1982: buy 60 commercial freighters with military avionics, a refueling receptacle, a centerline boom/drogue station, and plumbing for two wing- mounted probe/drogue pods.
By an interesting coincidence, the 1982 Air Force KC-10 procurement also coincided with a major recession in the air-
This C-17, undergoing tests at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, flew a successful 8.7-hour mission over the North Pole—but the Air Force may not get as many C-17s as it wants.
quire new wing panels; these should be back in full service by the end of 1994, General Fogleman told an Air Force Association symposium in Orlando, Florida, in February.
Since the average C-141 is 27 years old and rapidly approaching its designed fatigue life of 45,000 hours, similar problems may limit the availability and performance of the C-141 fleet until its retirement. The airframe restrictions coincided with the many well publicized design deficiencies, cost escalations, and production problems affecting the C-17, its replacement, and have created a severe shortfall in the Defense Department’s long-term strategic airlift plan.
One of the alternatives to a 120-air- craft C-17 fleet being studied by Pentagon officials is a military freighter ver-
Despite these disadvantages, civilian freighters have an indisputable strategic mobility advantage that has not yet been publicly recognized—the ability to function as both a freighter and tanker during the same military airlift mission.
The current backbone of the USAF tanker fleet is the KC-135; approximately 600 are in operational service and most of these have been fitted with higher- thrust engines that improve their performance and fuel-offload capabilities. Approximately 400 have been fitted with CFM 56 engines and redesignated KC-135Rs; 163 aircraft—fitted with JT3D engines and redesignated KC-135Es—are assigned to Air National Guard and Reserve squadrons. In the case of the KC-135Rs, this retrofit, along with the installation of an auxiliary power unit and minor structural modifications that increased the aircraft’s gross takeoff weight, have greatly improved its ability to operate from austere forward bases, and increased fuel offload by approximately 50%. Unfortunately, despite the $6.5 billion spent reengining KC-135s,
liner market; this allowed the Air Force ^ to negotiate a tremendous deal on the purchase of 60 KC-lOs strategic tanker/air- r£ lifters. The KC-10 proved invaluable dur- ; j ing Desert Shield/Storm, dragging fighters j. (of all services), their support equipment (j and personnel into theater and, in some ^ cases, remaining in theater to refuel Air t| Force, Navy, Marine, and Coalition air- s craft during the same sortie from their ^ centerline drogue refueling station (which cannot be done with the boom- or drogue- a only USAF KC-135 fleet).
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Proceedings/July 1994
Despite its outstanding service in Op- j eration Desert Shield-Desert Storm, the ^ KC-lO’s effectiveness as a joint-service tanker was significantly compromised by j the 1982 Air force refusal to fund a Navy > requirement for wingtip probe-drogue refueling stations. U.S. Central Command t planners partially overcame this limitation by assigning Navy KA-6 tankers to KC-lOs as ‘buddies’ to double the number of refueling drogues available to Navy-Marine-Coalition strike aircraft. But the Navy plans to retire all its A-6s by the end of the decade and has not an-
nounced plans for a replacement carrier- rcC based tanker.
,ur The Air Force response to the drogue iif' refueling station shortage identified dur- ur 'ng Desert Storm is a program to retro- efS fit provisions for wingtip refueling start11 *ions on the 59 remaining KC-lOs during nf Programmed long-term maintenance, al- ^,r though the service is buying only 20 ,r' . sets of refueling pods to save money. r|f These budget games formerly could be c compensated for in defense budgets that e' allowed each service to maintain its own separate tanker fleet; in today’s austere P' fiscal environment, such penny-wise Pound foolishness will jeopardize the 'e successful deployment and execution of 9 joint air campaigns—such as a “Korean y i Storm.”
y Procurement of a KC-X will solve sev- a era] problems at the same time: r * ft will alleviate the short-term strate- 0 8ic airlift shortfall caused by C-141 fa- hgue life issues while buying additional 7 time to choose between continuing the C- program or producing additional Lock- ’ heed C-5Bs.
► Each of the possible candidates in the KC-X program costs at least 50% less than a C-17 (or new C-5B)
► Candidate aircraft have—or will have—production runs measured in the hundreds. This will drive down support costs and ensure maintenance facilities worldwide should the need arise.
Tanker-specific systems on a KC-X should add only about 10% to the initial airframe acquisition cost. Not only are these systems low technology and low cost compared to any other type of aircraft development program, but McDonnell Douglas and Boeing both have systems on the shelf from their experience building KC-X type tankers: McDonnell with the KC-10 and Boeing with the KC- 747 (bought by Iran in the 1970s) and KC-135/KC-707 programs.
Best of all, acquisition costs associated with a KC-X procurement program can be paid for by the short- and long-term operations and maintenance savings realized when the Air Force retires an equivalent number of KC-135E/A airframes. Depending on the specific air-
What a difference a couple of pods can make. Contrast the F-14s stacked up waiting for fuel from a KC-10 with a single-point refueling station with the artist’s concept of a three-point KC-10 refueling F/A-18s.
frame and strategic airlift/refueling scenario chosen, one new KC-X could replace four to ten KC-I35/C-I41 equivalent missions with a corresponding reduction in support personnel. Once in theater, a KC-X could offload two to five times as much fuel—depending on the specific aircraft and mission radius—to up to three drogue receivers simultaneously. The C-17’s problems might just be a joint operations enhancement opportunity in disguise—one too good to pass up.
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Captain Eckstein is an intelligence analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency. He served as Chief of Intelligence with the 22nd Air Refueling Wing at March Air Force Base, California, which operates KC-lOs.