Break and Remake the U.S. Navy Surface Fleet

Not a bad idea... My personal feeling is that we need to get away from minimum manning, and get back to the levels that the ships were designed to manned at to be effective. For example, on my ships when we did this, we lost almost 1/3 of the sailors and told to get the job done. That leads to overwork, less sleep, and no time to actually learn the skills, rather than getting the sign off. My only concern in turning DIVO duties over to others, is that the biggest and longest lasting leadership lessons I ever learned were as a DIVO. We are supposed to be making CO's and leaders, if we take away the biggest opportunities to learn, there will be repercussions down the line...

PO1 Tony Holland Super concept, and one thing in particular caught my attention it was the discussion of the Junior officers taking a three year stint as division officers. He went on to say these officers basically know nothing about the very divisions or disciplines to which they find them selves leading and in charge. They are actually the thorn in the side of many a leading Chief Petty Officer in a division. The Navy has a group of officers that are specialists in their fields. They are Chief Warrant Officers and Limited duty Officers. I suggest the Navy increase the numbers of CWO's and LDO's, and make them Division officers in divisions of their field of expertise, the very personal that had to excel in leadership and in their field of expertise to even be chosen as mustang officers. Thus freeing up the junior officers from duties they know nothing about! The Junior Officers that were thrust into the position of Division officers are in many cases such poor leader's, the Leading Chief Petty Officers E-7's ,E-8's and E-9's tend to really run the division, as well they should! This would free up the JO's to be assistants to the various Department heads, rotating through all the departments thus better to be prepared and trained to be fully Qualified department heads when they reach the O-4 level (LCDR). They could witness good leadership at all levels, and during that time they can also develop all the skills they need to be Surface Warfare Officers by having been introduced to all the disciplines of running war ship. Perhaps the Navy can make it mandatory to accomplished the rotation through each Department within 2 years and has attained the rank of LT (O-3). Once a LT. they can choose a Discipline they excelled in and finish the 3rd year as the Assistant Department head in that Department and during that third year be required to be SWO qualified.

There used to be rigorous SWO training before shipboard duty. But they did away with it in favor of some self paced computer modules. Additionally we have to consider who are the JOs of today, compared to who they were in my time. Very different people.