And Where Are The Golden Boy Officers?
Update: Dave says in the comments there’s improvement in the detailing. Good, but is it too little too late?
John’s right. This is important. As I read it, Army’s stating that jobs doing the wartime leadership job count as significant career enhancers and backing it up with policy that sounds hard to escape.
I have directed HRC [Human Resources Command] to award Centralized Selection List (CSL) Credit for LTCs serving specifically in the TT Commander positions that have direct leadership responsibility for a training/transition team. [This means the guys are getting effective credit for battalion command - a Big Deal]
Therefore, we are creating a new CSL sub-category called “Combat Arms Operations”. It will be open to all eligible officers in the Maneuver, Fires and Effects (MFE) branches and to Foreign Area Officers (FAO). It will fall under the Operations category and will be effective on the FY 10 CSL board which meets this September.
As a bridging strategy, for FY09 we will activate officers for these command positions from the alternate lists of all four major MFE command categories – Operations, Strategic Support, Training, and Installation. Officers accepting and who serve will be awarded CSL credit in the Operations category for serving as a Transition Team Commander. Additionally, if selected by the FY 10 CSL board, the officer may opt to command in the category they are selected after completion of their TT Command. Those that do command will receive credit for a second CSL command. If chosen, and they opt not to command, they will still receive credit for their TT command. [This is a REALLY big deal - multiple commands!]
But look at what Navy’s doing. We’re sending who we think we can afford to lose, much of the time, instead of who’s good. I’ve seen guys think it’s a get-well tour–mainly because they were told that by someone they trusted–and that becomes a disappointment at promotion time because those guys weren’t getting promoted. We’re sending non-screened guys to DLI and to Baghdad and to the ‘stan because they will do an IA; we’re sending JOs to IAs as soon as they move to the apartment at the shore tour location and they get out. The Navy guys doing the hard job in the only shooting war we’re fighting are guys who aren’t on the fast track–one of the readers here did a job that Army thinks is significant command, but Navy doesn’t and said guy is done in uniform. I got refused volunteer slots in a previous community because it was more important to fill (insert meaningless ‘job we’ve always done’ here) instead.
I’ve railed in my earlier career against the dumb practice of putting only guys we think are not-fast-track (and who we then don’t select and dump) in forward deployed, sensitive jobs that have more real world use than many of the jobs that historically go to fast track “obvious star potential” officers. This is more of that problem, magnified a little because we’re, you know, being shot at.
You get the people you pick. The force is shaped by who you pick. We’re by and large not picking guys who are actually doing the wartime job, save a few tokens with high visibility. Does this bother anyone out there?
27 Responses to “And Where Are The Golden Boy Officers?”
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June 19th, 2008 at 3:13 am
It’s a terrible problem, not only for the guys who are out there on the line not getting the recognition they deserve, but because nobody seems to realize that the guys we send (spoken “the expendable”) are the only face of the Navy many of the Army and Air Force personnel out there are going to have. We should send our best and brightest to represent the Navy well and then reward them properly for the job they do.
June 19th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Counter argument: Iraq and Afghanistan are short term problems that have little to do with Navy’s core mission.
We IA to support an Army that is suffering TERRIBLE shortfalls that are masked by use of our IAs, stop-losses, reserve and ANG.
The best and brightest must be kept in “jobs we’ve always done” because we have to seed for any future NAVAL war, ensuring that we have both the
PERSONNEL and the EQUIPMENT to deter and fight in the future.
Bottom line: yes, IA’s are expendables. That’s the fact jack.
June 19th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
H&I Fires* 19 June 2008…
Open post for those with something to share, updated through the day. New, complete posts come in below this one. Note: If trackbacking, please acknowledge this post in your post. That’s only polite. You’re advertising here, we should get an……
June 19th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
The Navy leadership has morphed from a warfighting service to a bunch of quasi-politicians enamored of very expensive programs which we cannot afford, and badly executed at that.
Having failed to maintain a fleet in numbers or capabilities that we need, they are now wasting the opportunity to build future leaders with a warfighter focus.
Sad. Very sad. Potentially devastating to our continued national existence.
BZ to the youngsters out there actually fighting the war we have, with the tools we have available.
June 19th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Golden Boy Officers:
But who trains the new Ensigns and Div Officers
We can’t even keep the newest class of CG’s and DDG’g firing on all 4 cylinders (down sized)
See the story at:
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=3488407&c=AME&s=SEA
Oh Man, this has my guts in a knot and I’ve been out since 1980. Being able to only pull 80% out of the Engineering Plant is just wrong. The Gas Turbines are simple to operate and maintain relative to the old 1200 PSI steam propulsion plant I bled on back in the day.
I suspect that this is related to the time when they were hot crewing (sea swap) and no one owned the boat.
An other item is the misnomer “Full Funding for maintenance”. Such a thing never existed and never will. Engineers all over the world had to be very creative with the aquisition of supplies and funding maintenance (you might be suprised how much work could be done in Subic Bay in1975 for 2 cartons of Pall Malls and a 20 pound tin of coffee)
Lastly, the reduced manning. Just who does the work when everyone is on port and starboard?
What surprises me is that this has only been found on 2 ships.
It looks as if I’m wrong on the SeaSwap issue; However, the other items are still in play. Reduced manning and maintenance funding (and needed “search and acquire missions”) are always in play. And, in any situation where combat is likely you will want a lot of spare bodies, if only to work at keeping water out of the people tank.
Last and perhaps most important is what about the Chiefs.
Has the Search for the innocent and punishment for un involved continued. It is long past the time when I could no longer embrace the suck and left the Navy. Has this happened to the point that all the quality people have been driven out and the new people since then left to fend for them selves? I don’t know.
This is a big enough pile of p**p to cover a lot of blue jacket’s and khaki’s.
No one gets out alive.
Haze Grey and Underway
June 19th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
“…because we have to seed for any future NAVAL war…”
Plan for this future. The seeds that will sprout the flag ranks for that war will have learned that interservice cooperation is a career-ender, because they *didn’t* do an IA tour and they got the stars, and the officers who *did* IA tours got the boot — and they’ll act accordingly.
Then they’ll wonder why the future NAVAL war was fought entirely with missiles launched from USAF manned bombers and US Army UAVs while the USN was relegated to augmenting the Coast Guard for offshore drug interdiction…
June 19th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Gotta go with FastNav on this one. Putting a bunch of relative dullards with the other services will come back to haunt you in 10-15 years. If the Navy was doing a good job on “the jobs we’ve always done” in terms of shipbuilding etc., then that would be a valid argument. But let’s face it-the “comers” are spending time in the shore establishment in jobs that aren’t winning this war or the next. SecNav/CNO should give similar guidance for IAs that the CSA has given.
Yes, IA is a burden on the Navy, and the Army really does appreciate it, but the Navy has a real chance here to build a core of experienced warfighters that will benefit them for many years.
June 19th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
I can see where the thought of “expendables” comes from, however, I don’t concur that it is global.
As an LDO, we are never “fast track”. Hell, a Mustang does in 22yrs what a URL does in 6…and our “wickets” are fewer as well…timing? Not so much.
I can say I saw a percentage of “less than 5.0 folks” serving. But mostly I saw Patriots, majority were Volunteers (Enl & O’s)…some of the O’s were Voluntolds…which is a new norm.
I saw the SELBRDs change their wording in the precepts.
My IAs (back to back 2X6 mos) were 05-06. SELBRD in 07 must’ve been asleep, cause they actually found an earlier LCDR slot for me…not later in the year in the herd. (Thanks for that whoever sat last year!)
Does that apply to all? Doubtful. Do some miss “critical wickets”? Sure. However, the CNO has published tons of guidance to the effect that “we ARE at war and WILL support the on the ground effort”.
Now if we could just match that effort with some logical shipbuilding…life would be a damn sight better!!
Your mileage may vary!
June 19th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Not a new problem. One of the best officers I ever knew was a LCDR running the McNamara’s Wall program along the Parrot’s Beak in RVN back in ’68. I tried everyway legal to get onto his team. Unfortunately, he was passed over and the Navy lost a great talent.
June 20th, 2008 at 2:09 am
While I’ve not been an IA, I can tell that, for all the lip service it gives, the Navy does not take its Expeditionary Command as seriously as it should. While logistics is a main mission in the MidEast, supporting the Army, the Command is a combat command being overseen by a supply Flag.
And if the ships are short handed, its because there are more sailors in the sand than at sea. I’ve been in Cargo Handling as a Reservist since 1993. While we have always been a “priority ” command, the Cargo Handling Force has always been undermanned. And the funny part is that we are called Combat Stevedores…… We barely got rifle familiarization. And while the M-60 was supposedly in our allowance, we got to see one about every other year. Not shoot one, but, see one. The Navy is missing the boat, because, unless China gets stupid, most of our combat will be littoral and riverine and that means joint ops.
I do hope that y’all are wrong, though. My nephew, a LCDR at the Pentagon, is going on a 6 month IA tour to Djoubouti.
June 20th, 2008 at 2:20 am
Thanks, everyone, for dropping by.
@74: You’re right, and this is as old as groups of people. I want to change it at the margins at least.
@XBradTC: I don’t think we’re sending dullards, exactly, and they’re certainly putting themselves in the arena. But we are sending people Big Navy thinks aren’t the top people. I argue this is not smart.
@Desert Sailor: I do know of a fast track for some LDOs; it’s rate specific. Also, the LDO board is different from the rest of the URL board; the LDOs sitting in the front row know from sea duty and I think they ‘get’ the operational nature of the IA job as part and parcel of what an LDO does. Just a guess but I think it’s pretty good. The precept has no teeth; it says ‘consider’ but there are no hard numbers forcing it like joint or OSD and OBTW the fitness reports from IAs tend to be either from the command that had the guy stolen (is the CO going to use his EP on the guy he’s never seen?) or the Army command (who knows how to write a Navy FITREP? White space is bad!), so there’s that to add to the trouble.
@Anon: I shouldn’t go directly to high snark on you, but I disagree with your ‘counterargument’ in many ways. I’ll enumerate some here so you get the flavor of it.
–The waste of assets. We take guys, not just IAs but forward deployed liaisons, detachments, et cetera, and train them to be the world experts at their area of skill. Then we throw them away, don’t leverage their skills to learn anything organizationally, and have to replace them with new guys thinking the operational job–which no lie is of more immediate, long term value to national security than a good chunk of ‘golden’ jobs–will help their career.
–The waste of networks. People are a network. The contacts and lessons learned in joint/combined/interagency work build useful networks. Or at least they do until you throw the node you own away. At the same time you lose because the other services and agencies see that Navy doesn’t really care and adapts accordingly.
My previous community did this after the Greeneville collision; all the post-command guys went to the submarine waterfront, and when I showed up in the Puzzle Palace there was only one 1120 in the E ring and the only admirals with dolphins on I saw in there were the ones trying to buy more submarines, or the guys who realized that getting out of Navy and into the joint world was the way to go for them. Who do you think made the arguments in the other shops with any understanding of what subs are and how they’re needed? Who do you think picked up mentors and contacts outside the hermetic submarine community and learned how the other guys work to bring it back to the community? (Out in the fleet it certainly isn’t the sub ops guys or N6s on the strike groups, as only rarely do they advance.) The result? Who are the next admirals in line for CNO? How many EROs got refueled? Who understands what the 1120s do for a living?
–The moral argument: Doesn’t it make you ashamed that the sailors actually fighting in the war, a real war vital to the nation, get trashcanned in favor of guys who punch the fancy shore ticket? Is it what we are supposed to do? Is ‘assistant flunky to expensive guy’ really that much more valuable and there’s no value to fighting the war?
June 20th, 2008 at 10:25 am
A “few tokens” with high visibility. This assessment is dated and needs more balance because there has been quite an effort to send track guys and gals with a future to the war.
Just from what I know … the following are serving or have just finished tours leading in Iraq or Afghanistan:
Five special assistants to CNO (all selected for command/major command including the DEA.)
Two future CAGs (both straight out of successful squadron command)
One Future MP Wing Commander
Five CO selected submariners including former EA to future CSP and the former DH Detailer.
Five CO selected SWOs including the DEAs to VCNO and NR.
All the JOs I knew in theater were track guys selected for XO or their next step on the ladder.
So it looks to me as if we are doing a little better than you suggest.
June 20th, 2008 at 11:53 am
One of the best officers I ever knew was a LCDR running the McNamara’s Wall program along the Parrot’s Beak in RVN back in ‘68.
He did a great job, 74. I worked “AO Keepout” in 69-70 and the ground team he set in place, the hardware grid he laid out and the fireworks that covered the sensor net all worked together like a symphony.
June 20th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
@Dave: Good to hear. People I’ve seen going in the last six months have not fit that description, so if they’re finally changing that, then good–but it must be recent and I still know of non-select type guys going because that’s who their communities wanted to send. Not that they can’t do the job–but they’re not going to influence their service from the inside if you know what I mean.
The Marines took one look at the IA idea and ripped who they thought were their best people and sent them. We shoulda.
June 20th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
“[N]obody seems to realize that the guys we send (spoken “the expendable”) are the only face of the Navy many of the Army and Air Force personnel out there are going to have.”
“Putting a bunch of relative dullards with the other services will come back to haunt you in 10-15 years.”
Chap already said it, but I have to reiterate that not being a fast-track golden boy does not equal being a dullard. Just as there are large numbers of hogh-quality officers never screened for command simply due to the dwindling fleet, the vast majority of people we’re sending to the sand box are capable and are doing a bang-up job. Chap’s point, and it is valid, is that the Navy seems to not recognize the preofessional development value of doing an IA. Simply put, leadership under stress is a crucible in which character and ability are either tempered to steel or melt. Regardless if we are preparing for the next naval war or any other currently unanticipated conflict, that value of that tempering should not be ignored. I agree that this is exactly the sort of development the Navy should be seeking for its self-identified future leaders.
The one are that is somewhat out in front on this is, somewhat ironically, the Reserves. Fast-trackers and fast-track wannabes know that the best way to get visibility and traction is to volunteer to go to the sand box and to do well. The rumor is that during the FY08 Apply board (the process by which the Navy Reserve assigns O-5 and O-6 billets) the President of the Board specifically instructed the members to select qualified officers who have been mobilized over those who have not.
June 20th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
we’re sending JOs to IAs as soon as they move to the apartment at the shore tour location and they get out.
That’s because an IA for JOs is punishment for either incompetence, discipline problems, or just getting out. What can you do?
June 21st, 2008 at 12:05 am
Yeah, just today learned about two guys who are going to IZ: one is doing it because that’s the option given before he retires, the other because he put his letter in and is a LT with a year left.
Sounds consistent with what I’ve been seeing.
June 21st, 2008 at 1:22 am
“I have to reiterate that not being a fast-track golden boy does not equal being a dullard.”
I completely agree on this point. That being said, the guys we were sending when was on shore tour last were the guys who’s loss wouldn’t affect the command, hence my designation as “the expendable.” I didn’t mean that we were sending crap over there, just that we weren’t sending the best we had.
June 21st, 2008 at 7:37 am
@XBradTC: I don’t think we’re sending dullards, exactly, and they’re certainly putting themselves in the arena. But we are sending people Big Navy thinks aren’t the top people. I argue this is not smart.
Forgive me. I typed in haste. I certainly meant no offense to the folks who are being sent. I recognize that the vast majority of Navy folks getting IA’d are good, solid, conscientious, hardworking people, and the Army is lucky to have them.
However, when you send the LT with his letter in with a year left, and he’s working with Jedi Knights, he’s not going to compare favorably. Plus, he’s probably pissed at getting IA’d as thanks for his service.
I think our host would agree, however, that even though it is not primarly a Naval war, the Navy would benefit from placing a premium on service in an active theatre in identifying tomorrows leaders.
If I offended anyone, please accept my apologies.
June 21st, 2008 at 2:24 pm
[expletive deleted] about it is, providing “IA”s, has been a core USN contribution from the get-go…
On another note, there may well be more opportunities here in the not too distant future…
June 22nd, 2008 at 12:17 pm
A report from the Provincial Reconstruction Team Front….
What’s important about this picture?
Joe’s caption says what’s important: “Route Michigan traffic jam. Last year it was empty except for US soldiers trading shots with Al Qaeda.” Emphasis mine.
Let’s turn it over to Joe….
June 23rd, 2008 at 5:14 am
This is indeed troublesome. It indicates an institution that is headed for some big rocks and shoals in its pursuit of increasing irrelevance to the current fights.
I’ve quoted you and linked to you here: http://consul-at-arms.blogspot.com/2008/06/re-and-where-are-golden-boy-officers.html
June 25th, 2008 at 4:48 am
[Redacted: Folks, blog's being kept PG-13.]
Chap,
I’m sorry, you guys are all full of [expletive deleted]. None of you knows what the hell you’re talking about.
IA= Involuntary Augmentee to the [expletive deleted] Army. WHY IS THE [expletive deleted] ARMY NOT STAFFING THESE BILLETS?
In the navy we are usually ONE deep in the oddball IA bs the army needs experienced help at and EVERY single one of them comes out of our core hide which means that the navy eats their IAness. Is it really the navy’s 100% mission focus to gut itself in support of the Army’s failure after 5 years of war to fill its personnel gaps? If so, why?
I lost 100% of my Intel department in a 15 month IA to Afghanistan. If I don’t have an N2 for 15 months how do I do my job? He tells me he spends his days serially revising an OPS/INTEL brief at 7 different levels of clearance. What a waste of an Intel officers time and effort. In the meantime I’ve got real world ongoing missions in West Pac, Southcom, and the Middle East and I’ve got nothing in the intel department.
IA likes to steal Supply Officers. I’d volunteer the loser we have locked up in the brig but even I wouldn’t do that. In the meantime the requests come in and my subordinate squadrons only have one/each. Contemplate meeting real world commitments without a supply officer and not going to jail.
IA ate our WEPS and he was good. He came back with a bronze star but it also ate our Boats guy which left us hurting with 20% of our officers on IA.
When I visited 3rd Fleet they had a billboard listing the 10 or 12 people they had on IA. Oddly enough, they never listed the LNOs they had on staff from 3rd Army that were filling our gaps.
When it comes to believability, who would believe the Army in personnel decisions. I went IA to Korea a long time ago and found myself riding the bus next to an Army aviation XO in my paygrade and he had 5 MSMs to my zero MSM. If navy promotion boards tend to denigrate the BS written by good Army raters we also denigrate good bs written by navy raters.
The whole IA thing looks like the airboss disassociated tour nonsense for air bosses on amphibs in the 80s.
In so far as filling Army billets goes, if it really mattes, let the Army fill them and if they can’t let them do what everybody else in government is doing these days and pay contractors to fill them. At least that way they get to vet the resumes. Oh yeah, they do that already for the ones that really matter.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
(Commenter followed from Consul at Arms’ link.)
First off, I’m not arguing contra your main point. IAs are a strain on the Navy and we don’t do some important missions we should be doing, or do it with more difficulty, because our guys are being sent to sandboxes. I would agree that there is and will be waste in the system of assigning billets. I would agree that if Army had the people they needed then the demand signal wouldn’t be what it is.
My point is different. Given that we are sending people, specifically midcareer officers, to a war of a different type than planned circa 2000 and likely to be seen again, then the ones we should send should indicate that we care institutionally about keeping those skills. If we care about fighting the war well we should send the people we institutionally think are best rather than who think we can spare.
The navy filling Army billets: I remember my own oath says “support and defend the naval part of the constitution blah blah and only when I feel like it”. Oh, wait–it doesn’t. Or Navy could look at the actual war we’ve got going on and say “gosh, we’re special and aren’t going to play”, and go the way of Air Force did last year losing forty thousand billets. Ask the AF guy I left a joint command with; he packed his house up en route to the new command and got a phone call en route that his career was done and he was going home. Or you could ask their chief of staff why SecDef was unhappy. (Joint commands are also a strain on service resources and Navy can’t reassign a guy they sent to the joint world, joint is also intermittently wasteful, and this has been ongoing since Goldwater-Nichols.) You’d lose more than the intel shop on a single command that way. Yes, Navy’s getting a raw deal of a sort–but to compare a “maintain a #.# presence in EUCOM because that’s what we always did” deployment, not to denigrate that effort but to prioritize, with an actual shooting war means that the war wins. It should win.
Finally, you’re conflating where you sit with where Big Navy is. If you’re hurting, then remember that as an indicator of how important you are to NPC–and the CNO doesn’t get an order saying “fill me an intel billet from UIC xxxx”, he gets one saying “I need bodies so excrete me some”. Sometimes those bodies aren’t available: you know how many Arabic linguists are requested from CENTCOM every month? It rhymes with “many”.
I don’t argue there’s a problem Navywise with manning, and don’t argue that Army needs to be able to fulfill its needs. What I am arguing is that if we send people to war we should send people who aren’t being sent because they’re who are left over. We’ve done badly enough treating our enlisted and junior officers as we failed to make the personnel decisions needed circa 2003-2005; this issue is more existential to our service. (15 month IAs? We’re an expeditionary service; we know from deployment lengths. Dumb all around, and we knew what the right answer was all along.)
But what do I know; some guy on the Internet said I don’t know what I’m talking about.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:56 am
[expletive deleted]
Apologies Mr. Chap.
Just curious, what are these called nowadays?
link
;-)
June 26th, 2008 at 2:32 am
What, a garrison cap?
It’s called a “hat”.
Heh. My natural seaborne language tends to incur sodium poisoning, but with little ones around both at work (boot camp grads needing to choose language wisely around grandmas) and at home (toddler types right at the age to record and replay) I figure best to bowdlerize here. That and the guy two comments after you who went on a tear; I figured it was time to clean the ‘recent comments’ box…
June 28th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Ah, yes, the only headgear we were allowed in AFROTC. Innocent as we borderline-autistic nerds were (Hey, it was an engineering school; we thought we were normal!) I betcha most of us, like me, never heard the words “c*** cap” and only found out about that later, by reading historical stuff.