[USNInews] Surface Warfare Tackles Persistent Problems as More than Half of JOs Say They Don’t Want Command.
| At least they’ve noticed there is a problem. |
Over the last year, the Navy surveyed 2,500 officers on the highs and lows of a surface warfare career. The results surprised no one.
“SWOs of every rank take great pride in working with junior sailors. Our wardroom enjoys positive peer relationships, broadly has a strong bond with their commanding officers and appreciates the level of responsibility in their work,” reads the introduction to the survey.
“We also learned that fewer than half of our junior officers desire command. Most officers believe we are not retaining top talent. There is much frustration about our administrative requirements and the number of unqualified junior officers on each ship.”
Anyone familiar with surface warfare knows that frustrations about time away from home, too many JOs and a punishing amount of administrative paperwork are as common as mustard on a hotdog.
In 2021, the Government Accountability Office studied Navy career trends and found since 2004 SWOs had the shortest average careers of the major warfare communities in the Navy and surface warfare had a harder time generating department heads for ships.
“U.S. Navy officials stated that SWO retention to the department head milestone is low and requires them to commission nearly double the number of SWOs every year than needed, to ensure they have enough department heads eight years later,” reads the report.
The surface navy has polled its force every two years since 1999 and reached similar conclusions. Now, SWO leadership is trying to make better use of its data to make the community more appealing.
“There’s inherently a lot of friction on the ship,” Capt. Andy Koy, director of SURFOR commander’s action group at Naval Surface Warfare and former destroyer commander, told USNI News in an interview. “How can we reduce some of that?”
For example, having a ship full of ensigns competing for time on the bridge discourages SWOs from staying for the long haul, the community has found.
| In the old days, if the Horatio Hornblower tales are anything to go by, the number of ensigns was thinned by cannonballs careening across ship decks. An effective method, though perhaps far from ideal... |
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