To better paint the picture, the lack of URL officers in the SWCC community is causing them to lose ground and the SEAL officers who run the show have been working hard to create combined training pipelines and possibly even eliminate the SB rate entirely. Apparently, the dream from the top brass of SPECWAR is to staff everything with SEALs: some SEALs will drive boats, some will drive those cool underwater vehicles, some will shoot things, and some will blow stuff up. Advocating the elimination of SWOs in NECC will leave it all on the shoulders of the CEC and EOD officers whose training and interests are very limited in scope and do not necessarily encompass driving fast boats, orchestrating beach landings, providing harbor security, performing HVU protection in close quarters, and waging asymmetric warfare in coastal regions and up rivers.
Yeah, so one of the issues that popped up in OIF was you had a bunch of SBT guys sitting around not doing much with boats.
Because doing daylight patrols, doing waterborne guard post wasn't in their job description, and there also wasn't a whole lot of demand to do super sneaky shit with small boats. So you had a bunch of RIVRON guys going out daily while a bunch of SWCC dudes with the same gear weren't doing much.
In that situation, NSW would probably have been happy to retask the SBT guys to be door kickers.
It's the same reason the Marines passed RIVRON off to the Navy, their Small Craft Companies were manned by a bunch of grunts, and the demand was there to put more grunts back on land while the Navy was more than happy to absorb the mission and the free publicity and sweet, sweet OCO money that came with it.
I'm not an Amphib guy so I don't want to speak for that side of the house, but I think they might take umbrage with being typecast into another mission. To my limited knowledge, there aren't many SWOs assigned to ACUs. And those that are assigned to ACUs are sent to Skeds type jobs... we send many JOs to DESRONs to meet the same fate.
If I'm being totally honest, I think we need to soft split Amphib SWOs from CRUDES in order to maximize schoolhouse training and operational experience in each community.
I agree, and it's why I'd push Expeditionary jobs on the amphib community.
There's no reason Gator Navy SWOs shouldn't have room in their career path to run a large part of the Expeditionary community.
Pretty much every NECC element has capabilities for operating off/with the Gator Navy, and there was a big gap between the SWOs that drive "Mom" for those missions and the slap dash mix of RL communities plus CEC/EOD that makes up NECC.
To my earlier point, does driving an LSD/LPD for two years make you the heir apparent of Riverine/MSRON excellence? Or is an E-5 BM, EOD, or MA, much more qualified to lead a small boat team than you?
It does not...but the E-5 or above is also not more qualified to lead a small boat team than you (ie a properly trained URL officer).
Just like I would hope you're not pawning off CRUDES leadership on a STO or ADO.
Setting responsibilities of O's and E's aside, it's even more blatant when NECC does not do enlisted closed loop detailing, so your E-5 or above may also be on their first NECC tour.