From: Employee@MilVeh.com
Date: Wed Jul 09 2003 - 08:47:47 PDT
Thought some of you former swabbies might enjoy this
letter, a lot of life's truism in here too, you can
sort of convert this over to situations in our
government system:
"I am on a guided-missile frigate. We are billeted for
18 officers. We currently are assigned 28, a 165%
manning in the wardroom. This does not include the six
air detachment personnel or the three ensigns
scheduled to arrive shortly (with none leaving). In
addition, another second-tour division officer (the
new damage control assistant, which is now a
second-tour job) will show up soon. This will put our
manning at 38 officers on a frigate.
The overmanning is exclusively at the first-tour
division officer level. We currently have only three
second-tour division officers (auxiliary officer,
training officer, navigator), along with our normal
four department heads (operations officer, chief
engineer, chief staff officer, supply officer).
The obvious question is, What do you do with all these
people? The answer: You make up jobs. You find
something for them to do. Our first-tour division
officers, for example, serve as:
First lieutenant
Communications officer
Combat information center officer
Ordnance officer
Electronics material officer (warrant officer billet)
Antisubmarine warfare officer
Electrical officer
Main propulsion assistant (limited-duty officer
billet)
Disbursing officer And in these "made up" billets:
Assistant chief engineer
R division officer
M division officer
Fire control officer
Force protection officer
Electronic warfare officer
Automatic data processing officer
Admin officer
Assistant safety officer Plus there are three more
coming. I honestly cannot think what other jobs we can
create.
This situation has serious ramifications. Division
officers are showing up to no jobs. On day one, they
lose faith in the system. They lose the incentive to
work hard because they know the system is going to ask
very little of them. "What is my job going to be?"
"You're going to be the assistant safety officer."
"What does that entail?" "I don't know; you're the
first one. Oh, we don't have a place for you to sleep
either." Welcome aboard.
Given the need to implement made-up billets, some
junior officers are not getting the opportunity to
lead a division. Thus, a more appropriate title might
be "first tour junior officers," as opposed to "first
tour division officers." One of the greatest
attributes of the surface community is the opportunity
for a young officer to lead and manage a division of
sailors. Leading a division lays the foundation for a
surface warfare officer's leadership for the rest of
his career. We are taking away this experience.
Manning first-tour division officers at 200% has
allowed commands to view them as dispensable and
interchangeable. This is a dangerous attitude. For the
legitimate first-tour jobs, commands look at whomever
gives the earliest indication of performance, and then
they give the other officers the "made up" billets. In
addition, if a person is given a legitimate job and
does not perform, he is quickly replaced (because we
have 17 other officers to choose from). This causes a
round robin where division officers are not allowed to
settle into their jobs and learn to be effective
managers and leaders.
First-tour division officers arrive with a variety of
experience and know-how. Some were prior enlisted and
so, initially, perform at a higher level (as should be
expected). Others—whether from Officers Candidate
School or ROTC, and depending on which commissioning
program they are from—arrive very green. This is
okay, because one of our jobs is to develop our junior
personnel. But because of overmanning, we have
shortened our tolerance for the division officer's
learning curve. Thus, we quit on a slow learner—even
if he is dedicated to developing himself
professionally—and swap him out with a different
officer. That young officer's tour is done. After
three months he has been written off. And,
accordingly, since less is demanded of him, he gives
less. The point, however, is that the command quit on
him first.
Overmanning has caused hands-on training to suffer.
All these officers must stand watch somewhere. On my
ship, currently only 1 of 18 first-tour division
officers is qualified as officer of the deck (OOD). We
still have only three qualified OODs on rotation. If
you keep the watch sections the same, but increase the
number of people, you have to put more people in each
watch section. Long gone are the days of the OOD and
his protégé, the conning officer. Now we have the
OOD, the conning officer, and the junior officer of
the deck (for which there is no qualification). But
that still does not account for all our personnel. At
times, we have had to stand up yet another watch
station on the bridge—the radar operator.
This has several effects. First, it impairs the OOD's
ability to perform his job. Because you are isolating
specific duties on the bridge, each of those watch
standers must do his job competently and give you
effective input so you (as OOD) can make sound
decisions and recommendations. Unfortunately, this is
not the case. Most of the watch standers are new, and
they cannot perform their jobs effectively, even if it
is "only" as radar operator. This means you must train
three people while on watch (which, in turn, impairs
your ability to stand a proper watch).
Second, it limits junior officers' exposure. They
become isolated in their tasks and so do not learn to
see the bigger picture of ship driving and bridge
watch standing.
Third, it does not allow the junior officers to
conduct the special evolutions required to complete
the OOD qualification properly. There is no way
everyone can conn the ship during an anchoring
evolution or a sea and anchor detail when you have 18
unqualified ensigns. Even if you make your best effort
to cycle all of them through, they are going to get
only one shot each, at best. Thus, no one ever truly
develops the skills for these special evolutions. The
alternative is to pick out a couple of the "hot
running" junior officers and keep rotating them
through (to train at least a few of your officers
effectively). While this may provide a temporary sense
of security, you are leaving out 80% of your junior
officers.
Simply put, we have less effective bridge watch teams
in the short term, and in the long term, we are
producing officers with less experience and,
ultimately, less qualified OODs, the crux of a good
surface warfare officer. When these officers transfer
to their second-tour division officer jobs, that
ship's commanding officer will expect a certain amount
of experience and competency. It will not be present.
The lack of effective training also is having adverse
effects on junior officers' performance managing their
division officer responsibilities. As the operations
officer, I have five unqualified ensigns, all of whom
have been on board for less than nine months. I do not
have any second-tour division officers or limited-duty
officers working for me (i.e., no experienced backup).
As much as I would like, it is impossible for me to
mentor five unqualified junior officers effectively.
As a result, junior officers are having to figure out
their jobs on their own. They are having to learn
their jobs without proper guidance. This has shifted
nearly the entire training load (with regard to
division officers' professional development) to the
divisional chiefs, which is part of their job. But
only half of the division officers even have chiefs.
Bottom line: junior officers are not learning their
jobs properly and this causes the department heads to
shoulder even more of the load for a command.
To add to this burden, the surface community recently
canceled Surface Warfare Officers School. So now we
are getting more junior officers with even less
exposure, and the ship has to shoulder the entire
training and qualification process. On the most basic
level, there is now an enormous new responsibility
added to ships that was not there a year ago, but
nothing has changed in the system to help the ships
shoulder that workload. The likely result will be a
compromised qualification process with little
oversight or attention to detail.
How did we get here? In the surface Navy, a couple
year groups had shortfalls in department head
retention. The initial stopgap measure, the "Early
Rollers" program, was an unmitigated failure and was
gone within a year. It appears the new answer is to
work the problem in reverse: If we need X number of
department heads per year group and we are averaging
about Y% retention, how many junior officers do we
need to commission each year (factor Z)? Instead of
trying to increase Y (retention), we just increase Z
(the number of officers entering the surface warfare
community). The irony is that because of the increased
number of first-tour division officers in the surface
Navy we should expect even lower retention rates
because of low job satisfaction, poor work
environment, lack of challenge, and inadequate
mentoring.
If, on the other hand, we reach more than the desired
retention numbers, we will have to reconvene the
lieutenant board (which was not even held last year).
What will be the criteria to keep or not keep officers
for follow on as department heads? Most likely
qualifications, but it no longer is that simple.
Qualifications depend on opportunity. What about the
guy who was the admin officer; is he expected to get
his engineering officer of the watch (versus someone
actually in the engineering department)? What about
that officer who, after three months on board, was
swapped out to a different job and given up on by the
command? Qualifications depend on the command having a
process and plan that support those junior officers
getting their qualifications. At minimum, the 200%
manning of first-tour division officers makes this
more difficult.
Leaders of the surface warfare community must address
this serious issue. We need to reduce first-tour
division officer manning on surface ships. More people
does not equal better product.
I am failing my junior officers. This is not
acceptable.
Lieutenant O'Neal, a 1999 graduate of the U.S. Naval
Academy, formerly was training officer and operations
officer on the Ingraham (FFG-61)."
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