First Shore Tour to NPS

[Spekkio]

You've misunderstood my point. I'm saying that a guy that spends 2 years at NPS studying financial management isn't the best person to do that. Just because someone spends time out of the cockpit in a non-traditional tour doesn't mean they're going to have a monopoly on great out of the box ideas.

There are degree programs more relevant to URL officers outside of financial management at NPS... But this goes back to Naval communities not actively managing the guys they send to NPS and what they want out of them professionally as BigRed has also alluded to. The problem compounds when a community is sending its non-competitive officers that it has no plans on screening/retaining.

I think you and Pickle are coming down on extreme ends. A wardroom with 1-2 guys who have a broader non-traditional experience can be useful, and if you send an otherwise bright/talented guy he can probably catch up fairly quickly when he returns to sea duty. It's kinda like having police officers to fight crime - none is bad, some is good, more is not always better.

 

[Brett327]

You, Flash and Pickle are all making the same argument. I respect your position, but I don't agree with it. When Pickle is the CNO, he can shake things up more to his liking, but I'm done going around in circles on this topic.

 

[picklesuit]

You, Flash and Pickle are all making the same argument. I respect your position, but I don't agree with it. When Pickle is the CNO, he can shake things up more to his liking, but I'm done going around in circles on this topic.

I'd have to make O-4 first...

 

[Ralph]

What about an exchange tour?

 

[Brett327]

What about an exchange tour?

It's still NOB, though you might find one where you can fly.

 

[red_ryder]

I would venture to say that pre-JO is probably too soon to get something out of military graduate education, simply because you lacked a baseline level of knowledge in tactics and 'doing business.' But I can counter your anecdote with one of my own: One of our DHs did a spreadsheet optimization of SSN positioning in a CSG. Used that knowledge in his tour not only for tactically positioning the ship but also to automate generating the mission report and save hundreds of wardroom man-hours.

I'm becoming more convinced that, more than anything else, it will be this day-to-day quality of life improvements where people like this will make the most impact. But for the most part we'll never know, because I haven't met many aviators that survive NPS to come back to the fleet. Not in TACAIR anyway.

 

[red_stang65]

Came across two quotes today that I think are very fitting for this topic:

Mahan in describing his frustration with British sailors not being "learned":
"To meet difficulties as they arise, instead of by foresight, to learn by hard experience rather than by reflection or premeditation, are national traits."

And Winston Churchill: "The seafaring and scientific technique of the naval profession makes such severe demands upon the training of naval men, that they have very rarely the time or opportunity to study military history and the art of war in general."

This idea about higher education and where it lies in a Naval officer's career seems to definitely be a perennial topic of discussion.

 

[Brett327]

What you folks may not yet understand is that the Navy won't start placing value on an officer's "graduate" education until the post-DH timeframe. We just aren't resourced to give every LT a strategic level education. Those who are due course post-DH will have that opportunity.

 

[red_stang65]

Brett, certainly you only mean Naval Aviation, right? The population at NPS is mostly LTJGs and LT SWOs/Subs/Metro folks focusing on either technical training or broader/strategic education. Not to mention the SWOs head off to DH school (or get stashed while waiting for it) following NPS.

Clearly many of the Navy's other communities have found value in graduate education pre-DH. I definitely concede that the technical training at NPS translates much better to SWO/Subs than aviation, though. That said, I still agree with the idea that the grad school stuff probably fits best with aviation post-DH; different strokes for different rates, etc.

 

[Brett327]

Of course, if you want the SWO perspective you can turn in your wings and log on to Sailor Bob. I'm not commenting on how Naval Avaition should value/resource graduate level education, only how it currently does.

 

[red_stang65]

Brett, I think we're in violent agreement on your conclusion. Your earlier statement seemed a lot broader, though:

...the Navy won't start placing value on an officer's "graduate" education until the post-DH timeframe...

. Just wanted to share some details from the ground to clear up the debate.

 

[Spekkio]

Brett, certainly you only mean Naval Aviation, right? The population at NPS is mostly LTJGs and LT SWOs/Subs/Metro folks focusing on either technical training or broader/strategic education. Not to mention the SWOs head off to DH school (or get stashed while waiting for it) following NPS.

Clearly many of the Navy's other communities have found value in graduate education pre-DH. I definitely concede that the technical training at NPS translates much better to SWO/Subs than aviation, though. That said, I still agree with the idea that the grad school stuff probably fits best with aviation post-DH; different strokes for different rates, etc.

Brett is correct that regardless of line community, the opportunity to 'pay back' the Navy for specialized grad ed won't appear until post DH at the earliest.

SWO and Sub send post JO to NPS because that's the only opportunity to get two years of NOB fitreps that won't destroy a due course officer's career. You could make a solid argument that the investment at this point is not worth the Navy's money since only a small fraction end up using it directly for the program sponsor office, but the only alternative would be 'hookups for f***ups' by sending O4s who didn't screen for XO at sea and immediately to a job to use the degree, followed by a virtual guaranteed civilian job while collecting O4 retirement.

 

[red_stang65]

Spekkio, I think your argument is sort of chicken-or-the-egg; NPS and the Navy have a very long history of filling the technical degree rosters with JOs (going back to 1909-ish). Were their FITREP cycles and performance review restrictions the same then as now? Or was the current system built around the institutionalized desire to edumacate SWO/sub JOs before making them hinges? Maybe a little bit of both?

 

[Pags]

The other part of why the 11xx crowd can go post sea tours is because they have the time in their career and there aren't a lot of other due course shore jobs for those guys to do. In the 13xx world your skills are needed to pay the community back by going and producing the future of naval aviation.

 

[SynixMan]

^^ What Pags said. We brown shoe types sometimes forget we spent 2+ years getting NOBs in flight school while our black shoe friends were haze gray and underway. Until the rules of the game change significantly, we are all playing out the clock to the O-4 board with (probably, timing dependent) one highwater FITREP in a sea duty billet.