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What makes Navy Intel so highly regarded?

rotorhead1871

UH-1N.....NAS Agana, Guam....circa 1975
pilot
This is a good post. I mostly agree with you. The problem with Intel (and RL in general) is they seem much less able to police themselves, mostly because they live in 1 of 1 jobs most of their career; also because they generally lack a community identity and try to meld into whatever career field they are assigned to at the time.

Would IntelOs be better off if they served their first 6 years in commands with loads of other IntelOs? Of course. But they are support...and it wouldn't make sense to structure the Navy around them.


working solo or in small dets, that makes them good out of the box thinkers..!!....and if you are 1 of 1, well...it helps the career too!.
 

FormerRecruitingGuru

Making Recruiting Great Again
working solo or in small dets, that makes them good out of the box thinkers..!!....and if you are 1 of 1, well...it helps the career too!.

1 of 1 is not a good thing at all...

I was reading an article how an officer converted back to enlisted because he was passed up for O-4 but very close to 20. The reason for the pass up? Taking assignments where you're the only INTELO which in return makes you 1 of 1. Hard to break out amongst peers if you're not ranked against anyone.
 

rotorhead1871

UH-1N.....NAS Agana, Guam....circa 1975
pilot
Depends when you can go solo in your career, Active duty?? reserve or regular?? Hope he makes it, if he waited this long to get serious about 20 good years, he maybe can go IRR and finish on classes. you are correct as I think back on it plus you need to get promoted in zone. making O4 out of zone is pretty impossible.
 

subreservist

Well-Known Member
Depends when you can go solo in your career, Active duty?? reserve or regular?? Hope he makes it, if he waited this long to get serious about 20 good years, he maybe can go IRR and finish on classes. you are correct as I think back on it plus you need to get promoted in zone. making O4 out of zone is pretty impossible.

Not really. I plan on confirming this when I sit as a recorder for a reserve promotion board, but my thoughts is that the board has no quick way to distinguish at the time the record is viewed if a member is IZ or AZ. You would have to be actively searching for each person's date of rank and comparing to the boards zoning range, which I don't see anyone caring enough to do that.

The reason why so few promote AZ is either because they are not actively participating and their record reflects that (they are just still on the books) or they are participating, but their record is not complete enough to promote and they have made no change from board to board (i.e. going to the board with the exact same record will most likely yield the same non-promote).

Practically everyone is making O4 in the reserves right now; you have a unique situation if you have not.
 

rotorhead1871

UH-1N.....NAS Agana, Guam....circa 1975
pilot
excellent!!....it works real good. been retired 10 years now. stay with it . along with ss & my Boeing retirement....I am nicely into 6 figures on monthlys only...you will be glad you did.

enjoy and good luck!
 

FormerRecruitingGuru

Making Recruiting Great Again
Not really. I plan on confirming this when I sit as a recorder for a reserve promotion board, but my thoughts is that the board has no quick way to distinguish at the time the record is viewed if a member is IZ or AZ. You would have to be actively searching for each person's date of rank and comparing to the boards zoning range, which I don't see anyone caring enough to do that.

The reason why so few promote AZ is either because they are not actively participating and their record reflects that (they are just still on the books) or they are participating, but their record is not complete enough to promote and they have made no change from board to board (i.e. going to the board with the exact same record will most likely yield the same non-promote).

Practically everyone is making O4 in the reserves right now; you have a unique situation if you have not.

I should have clarified, I meant to say for active duty. Not reserve.
 

nittany03

Recovering NFO. Herder of Programmers.
pilot
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
Not really. I plan on confirming this when I sit as a recorder for a reserve promotion board, but my thoughts is that the board has no quick way to distinguish at the time the record is viewed if a member is IZ or AZ. You would have to be actively searching for each person's date of rank and comparing to the boards zoning range, which I don't see anyone caring enough to do that.

The reason why so few promote AZ is either because they are not actively participating and their record reflects that (they are just still on the books) or they are participating, but their record is not complete enough to promote and they have made no change from board to board (i.e. going to the board with the exact same record will most likely yield the same non-promote).

Practically everyone is making O4 in the reserves right now; you have a unique situation if you have not.
I was under the impression that that was one of the "quick fixes" after the recent AC O-4 board debacles, right? Remove the flag on the record so no one can tell an AZ record from an IZ record?
 

LFCFan

*Insert nerd wings here*
Now that I've crawled out of CVIC and am no longer pale from months of no sunlight (read: sunburned) I can chime in a bit...

What my bosses tell me is that Navy intel is more well rounded than the other branches. You can start out as a squadron intel O, go to some submarine analysis cell once you've qualified as a maritime watch officer for your second tour, do some NSW stuff, dip a toe in cyber, etc etc. Personally I think this is kind of a weakness since we have very few masters of anything. It has been frustrating at times seeing bosses in our community not understand stuff that the JOs and ISes get. It's also frustrating when none of your bosses had your job as a JO and don't understand what it entails or what the responsibilities actually are. I like to tell the guys in my squadron "imagine if none of our DHs were F-18 pilots before and didn't really understand the jet, your ground jobs, the culture, and so on." I can see how at the senior level you might be the only guy in the room who knows anything about X if you're around folks from other services/agencies who have been a bit more specialized. It's also possible that certain branches may view working with three letter agencies differently career-wise, and thus you might get good navy guys at the XYZ and not so great army guys.

One bad thing that might make us seem "better" than other branches is that we don't have a good emphasis on solid leadership. We have 2x enlisted sailors for every officer. I have three ISes in my squadron, so being principal of a home school here is actually batting above average for the number of folks under me. Unfortunately over our careers we spend more time on staffs taking care of "the boss" than taking care of sailors - because we don't have that many. Or you end up in situations where you do have a team, but they technically don't belong to you. Being a CAG AI (airwing intel O), you are in charge of all the squadron intel teams when underway, but they are TAD to you. The squadron still has them do their collateral duties, and still writes their fitreps/evals. So that army O-4 sitting next to a former CAG AI at a joint/three letter agency environment may not be as a good an analyst in the eyes of his civilian bosses, but he may have been an intel company commander as a JO/CGO. Obviously he's had a different set of responsibilities and expectations thrust upon him than his navy counterpart.

Also, when it comes to maritime intel, we're pretty much the only game in town, so there's that.

A lot of the "accomplishments" of naval intelligence are actually more in the cryppie lane. They are a different designator for officers and rates for enlisted.

1 of 1 is not a good thing at all...

I was reading an article how an officer converted back to enlisted because he was passed up for O-4 but very close to 20. The reason for the pass up? Taking assignments where you're the only INTELO which in return makes you 1 of 1. Hard to break out amongst peers if you're not ranked against anyone.

For the future 1830s reading...

You're a 1 0f 1 most of your career, and almost always 1 of 1 on sea/operational tours. I don't know his full story, but I can sat that he didn't get passed over for being a 1 of 1 at his RIVRON, he was probably passed over because when he did his O-3 competitive tour (at a COCOM J2, numbered fleet N2, or some warfare development center) he didn't walk away with the requisite X of Y EP. And then he didn't/couldn't do another competitive tour after that to try and break out again.

We don't have a standard career pipeline or golden path quite like aviation does, but here's how it goes:
-Go to school for ~6 months
-Of your first two tours, at least one will be some kind of sea duty
-At some point as an O-3, you will have to do a competitive tour.** If it doesn't go well, you had better hope your timing gives you a chance to do another one
-To make O-5, you have to go to sea duty again ('mid career milestone'). This can be as an LT (airwing tgt'eer, DESRON N2, and so on), or as a hinge (CAG AI, CSG N21, some senior ARG/ESG jobs too). Of course, you need a competitive O-4 FITREP too.
-Once O-5, you'll screen (or not) for an O-5 milestone, which are usually CVN intel department head (ship's company), Strike Group N2, or some attache gigs.
-I can't speak intelligently to what goes on at the O-6 and above level with regards to promotions and competition. I know that CAPTs hold numbered fleet N2 billets.

**we now compete with all the information warfare jobs, including cryppies, IP, and metoc. This increases what tours are competitive and gives us a larger pool.

The above leaves a lot of white space. Some people go to NPS, take a second sea tour after their first (say, a SEAL team after being a squadron intel O), etc. If you and your detailer aren't careful you can paint yourself in a corner, and that can kill careers. Speaking of detailers and placement officers, they aren't as engaged with front offices as as they are in aviation, so there is sometimes a talent mismatch when detailing comes around. For my next tour, my future boss emailed our CAG AI and to make sure I didn't suck. Some people don't even do that.

All of these milestone tour jobs also include expeditionary, HUMINT and NSW options too. I just don't know what their actual titles are in most cases. But again, it's more Janes than James Bond.

That was longer than I had thought it would be, hopefully it's helpful.
 

RHINOWSO

"Yeah, we are going to need to see that one again"
None
Because they are the best at eating their boogers (Naval Aviation joke) ;)
 
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