Bridging the gap between enlisted and officers in the military

 I've long held the idea, well supported by actually being enlisted, that the divide between officer and enlisted was archaic and not the best structure possible. However I also learned in the military that nobody likes to hear criticism, they do like to hear solutions to problems, even if they had previously pretended those problems didn't exist. So I have an idea for a solution to the enlisted-officer disparity. I am writing specifically about the US Navy, because I am intimately familiar with it. However I believe a similar (likely an even easier) method could be developed for other branches/militaries. 

Ultimate Objectives

- Eliminate the detrimental aspects of the officer-enlisted disparity.

-Provide an established, institutional path for direct promotion from enlisted to officer.

-Enhance and utilize the great resources of professional Sailors by vastly expanding the role of Warrant Officers in the Navy as go-to experts, enticing enlisted to stay in the Navy and still be able to focus on their technical skills that can benefit every command while phasing out E-8 and E-9.

-Create several in-roads at higher pay grades to entice professionals whose talent can increase the effectiveness of the Navy. This can help refresh the pool of talent by introducing a variety of skills normally only available by hiring outside contractors as well as enabling more people in society the opportunity to serve from other walks of life than straight out of high school or college. 

-Overall improve the quality of enlisted and officers throughout the Navy, achieving higher standards from Seaman to Admiral, while simultaneously treating people better and providing more opportunities for successful and motivated individuals. 

[Disclaimer]

 I apologize in advance if you think there's too much or too little jargon. There's no lay person way of referencing ranks and pay grades. I tried to be a little redundant so it doesn't become too meaningless if you're not familiar with particular ranks or abbreviations. Also, having been out of the Navy for 5 years and never really preferring 'swab' or 'scuttlebutt' to mop or fountain in the first place (I paid for that with pushups) I might use some lazy or slightly inaccurate descriptions. 

 I admit this is rather long. An average reader can read this entirely in around 40 minutes. I was trying to address reasoning, predicted outcome, theoretical benefits and drawbacks. Feel free to skip over parts that don't interest you. If you only have a minute or two, look at the graphs and read the final few paragraphs. 

 I served in the US Navy for 6 years, aboard 3 ships of 3 classes in Japan and San Diego. 4 1/2 years total at sea, 1 1/2 years in schooling, etc. I have a very broad range of experience in the Navy. But I don't claim to be a professor on the topic. 

[/Disclaimer]

 The prospect of bridging the gap between enlisted and officer isn’t just an enlisted dream. A quick Google search reveals numerous personal testaments to the benefits of enlisted personnel becoming officers. Even more supportive are all the studies and subsequent programs by the military itself to try to get progressively more enlisted into commissions. Studies have shown prior enlisted Sailors advance quicker and accomplish tasks faster as officers. This would mean…they’re an asset, outperforming their youthful peers.

 There are both subtle and obvious problems with the current system. Obvious being the idea of someone as experienced as a high ranking enlisted person taking orders from a 22 year old kid who just graduated college and didn't have the chops for grad school and wanted to play Navy.  Another obvious factor is the truly archaic way officers are treated versus enlisted, basically enlisted people aren't human, reference 7th fleet, one sailor gets drunk and commits vandalism, thousands punished with their freedom of movement removed, several captains and admirals get caught stealing millions from the government, you think the other 7th fleet captains have to sleep on their ships now?

  The more subtle problems include attrition of good enlisted sailors who would have made fine leaders, in their place green horn officers who have never and will never work a day in their life making command or higher level decisions about the operations of war and mechanics of sustainability. The fact is, this is almost by design. Anyone who worked a number of years other than entry level part-time work, and also completed college is usually too old to be an officer to begin with, someone like myself. So all you get is squirts.

 So I would ask, would it seem unreasonable for Sailors to be able to work their way up to the top? The pipeline is clogged E-7 and up, this is the Doppler effect, you have a system where you send out sailors rushing to make rank as fast as possible, and learn as fast as possible, and they do it, so they go E-1 to E-5 in no time. It's often more than double time to E-6, and then it can be an entire career to E-7 or above. All those highly qualified personnel now jammed together at the end, a chief making officer is like breaking the sound barrier.

 There are obvious reasons why college educated personnel start out higher ranked, and their training isn't quite the same. Enlisted focus more on technical proficiency than leadership, and officers focus more on leadership than technical proficiency. But there's nothing particularly logical about deducing college grads are better leaders, college itself promotes nothing of the sort. It seems more to me that technical professionals who are also college grads are the ones that make the most sense in officer positions, such as doctors, lawyers, and engineers.

 A military needs both leadership skills and technical proficiency. But I believe the Navy in particular has gotten away from this. It has fallen into a trap of circumstance. In many ways the highly technical design of the Navy is more like a corporation than a military. And unfortunately the Navy has seemed to embrace this and forgotten why they exist.

  An IT worker in a company is never going to become the CEO. Nothing in their job teaches them how to lead a company. They are technically invaluable, but a CEO has to be more well-rounded. So for an IT to become a leader, they must leave behind their technical skills and choose a different path. The Navy is like this too. Compare this to the Marines, who continue to be on the ground warriors. An infantry soldier is going to learn more about leadership in one tour than any academy or college could teach in 10 years. The technical proficiency is the job of everyone. The Marine Colonel has to be even better at combat than the Sergeant. Yet like all other militaries, the professional Sergeant is most likely never going to be a Colonel, and most Colonels were never Sergeants. But they at least recognize the issue I'm driving at, and have adapted somewhat.

  In the Marines E-7s have to make a career choice, more technically or more leadership oriented. The Marines have recognized that the body of enlisted personnel has enabled people's talents to be revealed or developed. Some people are much better leaders and some are much better technicians. So the Marines came up with 2 rank structures after Gunnery Sergeant. If the Marine chooses technical (and makes the grade) they become a Master Sergeant, if they choose leadership, they become a First Sergeant. Both are E-8. However one is more command oriented leadership, and the other is more hands on technical leader. Both utilize skills they’ve developed but one is bigger picture, and the other more hands on.

 Obviously there are always going to be people who want neither, and would prefer a more subordinate position, or to get out. That will always be true. What is desired is a system that simultaneously eliminates green horns and losers from powerful positions but doesn’t replace them with nothing but old worn-out fogies. There is also an economic-market aspect of this. Companies hire people to the position they are qualified for, regardless of whether they worked their way up, or started high up right out of college. There’s no sentimentality or loyalty involved. This is as the market designs it, and it is morally understandable. Someone shouldn’t be forced to work their way up if they are already clearly qualified, but unlike companies, there is a bias against hiring from within in the military. An enlisted person applying for a commission has a stench on them. Only a very select few are chosen. They must go out of their way to overcome the handicap of being enlisted to become an officer, while any dumbass 22 year old out of college who can make the PRT standards is virtually as guaranteed acceptance to OCS as the same person would have been accepted for enlistment out of high school. It’s as if the military believes being enlisted is detrimental to one’s skills as a leader.

 But everyone knows this isn’t true. The real reason is far more stupid. There continues a superiority concept in the military that officers are truly better people. This is a basic component of psychology manifested in the hierarchy. It’s become cliché to refer to the Stanford Prison Experiment, but it’s valid. When told you're better, and put in a position of power, and people are separated by some kind of authority barrier, and the subordinates are clearly treated worse, humans psychologically begin to accept the separation. This is how slavery continued, even when people knew it was wrong. This is how Nazism got good people to sell out their neighbors. This is how a teacher in California turned his own students into little Nazis as an experiment that went out of hand almost immediately and inspired a book and a film on it, as well as one of my teachers who performed a similar experiment on his students with the same results.

  This is why when an enlisted person screws up, it feels good and fitting that all the other peasants must suffer, and all are punished. But if an officer screws up, it becomes hushed and the officer is rushed out of the area and no shame is laid upon fellow officers. To the extreme that I personally have had my freedom of movement as an American limited and often even eliminated, held by orders in captivity because people I vaguely knew had done something stupid while drunk. Simultaneously I have seen officers do far worse and there be zero consequences for their fellow ranking officers even in the same command. It’s one thing to give officers better food, better housing, more money, and more privileges, but it’s another when the system of justice itself is disparate.

  This is where companies and the military diverge. Most companies don’t have anything similar to the officer-enlisted disparity. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. If an internal employee gains enough skills or training to move up to an “officer level” position, and is competing with someone equally skilled from outside the company, the insider is almost always going to get preference. This is because the company knows the value of loyalty from its own. Even if they would gladly pass over a dozen internal applicants for an external one who had a slightly better resume, on equal ground, the internal candidate has proven their chops, and can simultaneously set an example of leadership and opportunity for others.

  These are economic values. The company understands it is effectively creating better employees by providing an access path to advancement. For every 1 that makes it, 9 others know they at least have a fair or even better chance than an outsider. The military is entirely different. The package an enlisted person must submit has to argue why their current service is less valuable than if they were promoted, and what particularly qualifies them to be a better officer than the kid right out of college who knows dick about leadership. The enlisted person has to effectively renounce their enlistment to become an officer. They have to wash the stench off by selling out their peers.

  What I propose is to entirely eliminate the instant gold bar. No one goes in as an officer, regardless of their skills or training. The khaki colored cluster fuck of leaders is done away with and streamlined. Currently E-9 is needed because E-8 doesn’t go to O-1. E-8 is needed because E-7 doesn’t go to O-1, and E-7 is often ridiculously hard to get into because there’s so many E-7-9s all plugged up at the top. So a job that can and is done well by a 27 year old, is also done by 39 year olds who have never gone anywhere, not because they weren’t talented, but because E never lead to O. The E must be renounced to get to the O. Although there is the W, and I’ll get into all of this.

 Not everyone wants to be a generic leader. Being an IT or an EW is an awesome gig in the Navy. An officer has to stop being an IT or an EW because their focus must now continually shift to bigger pictures. One needs a microscope, and the other needs a telescope. Similarly, it is in the best interest of a military to have both technical experts with years of experience still doing their job, and to have officers who focus more on leading and commanding. So like the Marine pipeline from E-7 to two diverging E-8s. I think there should be a similar thing but without the enlisted/officer barrier. One leads to Warrant officer, the other to Ensign.

The doctor or the lawyer could start out as E-7 who would then be in their own pipeline for a commissioning. If there’s a significant pay disparity that not enough good doctors or lawyers are interested, give them special pay. They do it already for many specialties. This would mean by E-7 you have a diverse group of professionals from all paths converging, the best among them chosen for promotion.  

The most logical method of suggesting how this could work would be to break down the duties of each rank, and try to eliminate redundancy. 

The Pay Grades

The E-7 Chief Petty officer in the Navy is a professional within their specific job, but also one who has had years of leadership. The duties of a Chief are almost identical to those of an Ensign. In fact in most commands aboard ship the Ensign learns their job from the Chief and they do basically the same thing. The only difference is the Chief occasionally helps out with particularly troublesome issues by using their years of experience and connections within the community, and the Ensign spends a period of time working with higher ranking officers focusing on promotion to higher duties and reporting up, rather than chiefly being reported to. The Ensign typically handles the highest levels of administrative tasks for a Division. So there is some difference between the two jobs. But not a great deal, and while I was enlisted, there was at least one ship experimenting with having Chiefs act as Division officers. This experiment was cancelled after at least a year not because it wasn’t working, but because the new Commanding officer did not like the usurpation of the Ensign’s role.

 The E-8 Senior Chief Petty officer serves a virtually identical position on most ships. In the largest commands, such as carriers (with around 3,000 personnel), a Senior Chief can enjoy a little more positional distinction, but it is only an expansion of what is also seen on “small boys” (Navy ships with around 300 personnel). In both situations the Senior Chief usually serves as the highest enlisted person in a Division, but they also take on larger roles of leadership among the chiefs. A Department is the next highest order within a command structure. Chiefs are generally in charge of Divisions, and have no other authority within a Department. However Senior Chiefs often take on the role of being the leader among the chiefs within a Department.

 This is similar to the distinction between an O-1 Ensign, and an O-2 Lieutenant Junior Grade.  The first assignment of an Ensign is often the position as Division officer. A LTJG is also usually still a Division officer, but their higher rank also puts them in a position of acting as the leader among the Division officers, while learning to take on the role of Department Head.

 The E-9 Master Chief Petty officer is the highest enlisted pay grade. Their position often begins where the E-8 ended, as the senior enlisted leader among a Department. The next level above Department is a Command. Most Master Chiefs are assigned as the senior enlisted personnel for a command (Command Master Chief). This position is unique because it separates the Master Chief from the general chain of command and positions them as a liaison between the Captain and the crew. Unlike the Chief or Senior Chief the Master Chief has no Division or Department to lead directly. The Master Chief instead solely fills the role of leading all the Chiefs of a Command, and taking on the simultaneous job equal to that of the Executive officer of taking orders and conversing directly with the Commanding officer. However this is somewhat misleading. As the subject matter the Master Chief and CO focus on is almost entirely crew related, while an XO is going to be expected to discuss both internal matters, and general military issues, command, operations, etc.

 To complicate matters there are much higher positions for Master Chiefs, all directly reporting to Commanding officers. Fleet/Force Master Chief, and Master Chief Petty officer of the Navy. These positions report to Admirals, the MCPON reporting directly to the absolute highest ranking officer in the Navy, the Chief of Naval Operations. All these positions exist somewhere between a squire and true lieutenant. That is to say, in a medieval context the commanding officer had both a squire or other equivalent effectively non-ranking personnel who reported directly to him and executed his orders, then there is the lieutenant, (tenant = to have, lieu = in place of, i.e. a lieutenant is someone who can take the place of a commander in his stead).

 Military leadership is not particularly weighed by one’s position to the Commanding officer, rather by the number of subordinates, and the number of tiers of subordinates. For example I have sat in as Information Warfare Commander for a Carrier Strike Group. The title of Information Warfare Commander was held by the Commanding officer of the carrier I served on, and as an Electronic Warfare Technician I was a professional in the Information Warfare field. The Captain delegated the hourly operation of fleet management regarding Information Warfare to the IWC watch station, while still managing the larger decisions in tactical meetings and day to day orders. This watch station was normally held by Chief Petty officers or well qualified Petty officer First Classes, but they knew I was very good so on a few occasions I sat in as the head of a strike group, an E-5 holding the title of an O-6, 10 pay grades up. While this was a great responsibility, it wasn’t a great level of leadership. Even with so much potential power, I was only disseminating information to a handful of personnel, one per ship, and they in turn would only disseminate it within their Division to whoever was on watch. This again is somewhere between a squire and a lieutenant. Having some of the powers of the Commanding officer with no intermediary, but those powers being quite limited.

 The Master Chief is perpetually limited in this way. Even while under the Chief of Naval Operations, a full 4 star Admiral, standing abreast with 3 star Admirals taking orders and disseminating information. The difference is, those 3 star Admirals have 2 star Admirals taking orders from them, and the Master Chief is going to turn to a Petty officer to give his orders. Sure the MCPON will get a few choice opportunities to lecture rooms full of Captains, or to go directly to fleets and talk as near equal with a Rear Admiral or a Captain, he’s not going to give them an order. The MCPON can’t even order an Ensign around, even as a Chief does an Ensign’s job.

The Warrant officer ranks are rather obscure in all branches. The utilization of Warrant officers in the Navy is primarily to give an avenue for technically skilled enlisted personnel to move up in the ranks while still acting in the role of technician. However I’ve seen Warrant officers also act as Division officers. But this is probably more along the general bleed through of various ranks and duties that occurs in the military, as I’ve also seen Coast Guard Lieutenant Junior Grades in the position of Navy Division officer. Which means E-7s, E-8s, Warrant officers, Ensigns, and Lieutenant JGs all occasionally take on the exact same position within the command structure (and just for good measure, my Division officer on an aircraft carrier was a Lieutenant who made Lt. Commander while still my DIVO, his next assignment being an XO).

  Warrant officers in my experience have best been utilized as support group personnel. While a Command is only superseded by a Fleet, there is an intermediary of support groups that supply both parts and technical expertise to ship commands when necessary. This often includes hiring civilians to come aboard and provide technical services from experts that wouldn’t be logistically sound in manning every command. For example an IT chief should know enough about IT work to do 99% of what is needed. However for the 1% of really obscure or highly advanced issues, civilian experts, or Warrant officers can be brought in from support commands to give that little bit of extra help. This makes the Warrant officer both highly valued, and a rare commodity. Since every ship needs lots of Chiefs, a handful of Senior Chiefs, and a Master Chief, a handful of Warrant officers can manage a fleet of ships.

 I won’t get into so much detail with the regular officer ranks since this is about addressing transitional positions not altering the final positions (the same reason I’m not going into E-6 and below duties).

I’ve already covered Ensigns and LTJGs who generally work as Division officers. The next level is O-3 Lieutenants. They generally hold the position of Department Head. Their job is not comparable to any enlisted job, although they would be well-advised to work closely with any Senior Chiefs they may have in their Department, they primarily act as the full command representation for an entire branch of the command. Divisions separate specific jobs, but Departments cover entire areas, with generic titles, Supply, Operations, Combat, etc. The Lieutenant must become part expert in all the fields in which they are responsible. This is very different from the Ensign and LTJG who can lean on Chiefs as the experts.

 What is the outcome of this necessity?

  You have an officer who has gone through all of college and OCS/Academy, Ensign, and Lieutenant Junior Grade knowing perhaps nothing at all about the majority of the work going on within a Department. Then all of a sudden they have no one to lean on, they are directly and solely accountable for the Department’s proficiency to the Commanding officer.

 Ideally as soon as they got on board they started paying attention to how things worked. They utilize their position as Ensign to become highly knowledgeable about their specific Division, but also learn the positions within their Department. As O-2s they know their promotion to Lieutenant is the first significant command and authority advancement, so here is where they will really focus on how to operate as a Department Head. But O-1 to O-3 rarely occurs within an officer’s first duty station assignment, in fact promotion to Lieutenant often spells time to vacate and be assigned where a new Department Head is needed in the Navy. This is where all that training doesn’t come into use. The Department Head doesn’t necessarily come from within the same Department.

  So an officer can spend all their time for example learning all the ins and outs of Operations, only to be assigned as a Combat Systems Department Head. No one, except perhaps the most brilliant of humans can become sufficiently expert in all the duties of all the Divisions within a command in such a time, so the answer to the question; Department Heads who have very little knowledge of how things actually operate within a Department. They know the paperwork, but not the physical or intellectual work. They know the product, but not the process. And this is how in the past I’ve ended up arguing with my Department Head on what I was doing during electrical maintenance because he didn’t understand an electricity flow chart, or on other occasions arguing about the exact procedures taken during an operation where he didn’t know the basics of how my equipment functioned.

  What can be observed here is both the overlap and parallel operation of senior enlisted and officers, as well as the detrimental attribute of starting back at zero for experience in the shift from enlisted to officer. There is also a problem of scope. As I started this discussion I argued that this is about the necessity for both leadership and technical skill utilized effectively. As it is, an officer starts out with no technical skills or even a need for them, this increases as they move up in rank to Lieutenant, then dramatically drops away for the rest of their career. This is the analogous microscope versus the telescope. The Ensign and LTJG have neither; the Lieutenant is expected to have both, only to cast one aside immediately after moving up one more rank.

The dynamics of technical knowledge and leadership within the pay grades

 I have created a couple graphs to highlight the issues I have discussed. The scale is not important except as their relative relation to each other. These also aren’t even remotely specific but represent to my best knowledge the most appropriate assessment of the typical requirements of the positions.

                                                       The Current System

The first is technical knowledge required of enlisted and officers as they advance. I color coded them for ease of viewing. For the Chiefs I used RGB khaki.

 Chiefs have attained their position by being technically superior in their job, which would reflect in their advancement exams. Their leadership abilities would have been compared against comparable personnel as they advanced.  Because of this, chiefs begin as near masters in their field. However promotion to Senior Chief only further removes them from their technical job. A Senior Chief is less likely to be bothered with technical issues as they expand their role within a command to being a leader among chiefs. None of these are universal edicts. I knew a Senior Chief on one of my ships who loved micro-managing and even though he wasn’t even a part of my Division, he would give orders and provide oversight even when hadn’t nearly the knowledge to do so. He spread his managing around across the command and tried to be everyone’s day-to-day boss. Most Senior Chiefs on the other hand want to keep as many Chiefs and Firsts between them and the common rabble as they can. Not in a bad way, the Senior can always be a cool person, able to swoop in with their star to save some junior enlisted from an unruly Chief.

 Master Chiefs have virtually no connection to their jobs. Even in their lowers positions as Division or Departmental Chiefs in very large commands, their subordinates are going to be other Chiefs. The Master Chief rank is of Chiefs, by Chiefs, and for Chiefs, and thus no technical skills are required.

Chief Warrant Officers are rather obvious. The best among chiefs are chosen as technical experts, and thus must be masters within their field. Advancement includes continued technical expertise and even greater involvement in Navy-wide technical issues.

 As I detailed above, the technical knowledge of officers increases from O-1 to O-3 as is required to perform their basic leadership roles. It is common for officers up to Lieutenant to commonly interact directly with junior enlisted personnel in review and inspection of performance of duties. As the Lieutenant’s scope of knowledge isn’t buoyed by Chiefs and simultaneously must be actively proficient in all the Divisions within his Department, the Lieutenant ends up the most technically knowledgeable among all officers outside of the Warrant. As rank increases, scope focuses more on the bigger picture of command and combat. An Executive Officer/LT Commander is responsible for sub command level inspections and operations. Because of this most LT Commanders must continue to retain some technical knowledge and use. Commanders/Commanding Officers on the other hand are effectively removed from this, while knowledge of technical operations may assist them in being better officers, it isn’t a requirement. From here it’s a steady decline to Admirals who couldn’t be bothered to know what the inside of a ship looks like in this decade.

 What is the takeaway from this? It should be understood that “require” a skill and “possess” a skill are two different things. And this is quite important. We don’t need doctors to give out flu shots. The technical skill required to give a shot is minimal, while the technical skill possessed by a doctor is at the top. The gap in between where a doctor is doing an intern's job probably has an economic term, but it boils down to waste. All that technical skill that is precious lifeblood to a Chief Warrant Officer and Chief alike means little to the 2 pay grades in between. And it should be noted that the reason Ensigns and LTJGs don’t require a lot of skill, is because Chiefs exist. The Chiefs are effectively doing the officer’s job, ultimately to the detriment of the Navy, because all that skill doesn’t carry on to Lieutenant where it’s needed.

 The ideal graph should be a build-up to Chief, and then a split, a path of technical following Warrant officers, and a path of leadership following line officers, so that an ideal Lieutenant isn’t desperately trying to learn all the jobs within a Department, rather is enjoying the reduced amount of technical knowledge needed as having come down from being a Chief, an Ensign, and a LTJG, decreasing steadily as leadership skills become the greater priority.

Of course if the body of officers all the way up to Admiral all began with personnel from at least as low as Chief, then the subtle details of warfare, ship design, planning, investment would be far more enriched. The officers would not rely on reports, studies, or liaisons but first-hand experience. The totality of officers coming from different fields providing a far more rich and experienced body. Rather than simply being more logistically sound, and economical with resources and systems in place, this method would actually raise the bar, producing better officers overall, raising the standards by which an officer is measured. Using the doctor again, a doctor from 1850 wouldn’t be fit to be called a Nurse today. This idea should hopefully provide such a distinctive bar, that a modified Captain of a unified enlisted-officer system would be as different to a Captain of today as a Captain of today to a Lieutenant.

 The second graph compares the leadership requirements of enlisted and officers.

 A Chief and an Ensign have exactly as much leadership. Each could be argued to have more, the Chief due to his spread wings across a command, entrenched involvement in extra-Divisional operations, etc. the Ensign for being on track to higher power, attending officer briefings, getting the salute. As I explained above Senior Chiefs are almost identical to LTJGs in their raised level of authority and leadership as leaders among their own, while simultaneously still running a Division. It goes wild with Master Chiefs. There are various tiers of Master Chiefs from Division heads to the MCPON. As I detailed previously their position in leadership is somewhat nebulous. They are held in high positions, but they can never have their own command (The military is composed of all kinds of exceptions, one of them being command authority. Generally only officers, particularly high ranking ones, have command authority. But just to screw with people, Boatswain’s Mates First Class and Chiefs can gain Command positions of harbor patrol boats used for training officer candidates. This is probably more due to the Navy’s twisted humor of making officer candidates take orders from enlisted personnel every chance they can find, just to further hammer in how much better they are as humans once they get their butter sticks and the enlisted must now bow down to them.).

 Warrant officers can serve as DIVOs and as chiefs they basically were DIVOs, so their leadership requirements begin there. Internally obvious each pay grade of Chief Warrant Officer involves a higher level of responsibility. Chief Warrant Officers are collected together in their own commands and internally hold subordinate positions to each other. Externally Chief Warrant Officers  need their authority and leadership to inspect operations or enact changes within the Navy. Their kind of leadership is often more like a substitute teacher, they have the same skills and authority, but they aren’t staying for very long.

 All of this shows there’s a great amount of redundancy in the chain of command. The rare person who transitions from any Chief to Ensign sees immediately how in many ways they have stepped down in authority and leadership. As Chiefs they had deep roots within the enlisted that made their positions powerful as leaders. As Ensigns they are the bottom rung of a new chain of command with no true juniors, only distant subordinates who they aren’t to associate with. When Chiefs transition to Chief Warrant Officers, the effect can be even greater, while a Chief Warrant Officer commands much of the respect from their presumed experience by their juniors, they are often removed from the traditional chain of command structure. The world of Chief Warrant Officers is much smaller and the Chief Warrant Officer position is an about face on technical skills, where the line of Chiefs is generally escaping any involvement in day to day works, the Chief Warrant Officers are those more dedicated to the job not the rank, so here it at least makes sense to lift some of the burden of leadership requirements, as a focus on technical proficiency can continue.

                                                      The Link Between

 If the barrier between enlisted and officer were to be removed and a new system put in place, the next logical question is where would this link be placed? As I have demonstrated the primary overlap in leadership occurs with Chiefs, and junior officers. There is also a monumental disparity in technical knowledge required. I believe the best way to smooth this out would be to eliminate at least the E-8 and E-9 pay grades.

 Their primary duties can be taken over by junior officers and Warrant officers. The only aspect that isn’t replicated is the so called “liaison”. From my personal experience, Force/Fleet Master Chiefs were as untouchable as Admirals, and the Master Chief Petty officer of the Navy seemed to be entirely a figurehead sycophant that made appearances about as often as the President. I had a much better rapport with my Division officers than I ever did with Command Master Chiefs. It was my experience, however nice they were, they were aloof, and at best they would serve the interests of the Chief’s Mess.

  I have never been one particularly comfortable around officers. I fell into that psychological effect of their superiority (and usually they were quite brilliant), and I often resented seeing enlisted personnel chit-chatting or getting a little too close to officers. But my position with the command structure as the “go to” expert on several fronts necessitated interaction with officers, as well as the cramped working spaces, and the eventuality of standing watch with officers for 6 years.

 A LTJG hooked me up with a woman once. I hugged my own DIVO in excitement after long negotiations with her resulted in a position I was requesting. Another officer with a photographic memory and insane reading skills would read things I wrote almost with the flick of the wrist and have intellectual discussions with me. My first Commanding officer was a Captain; I was an E-2 Seaman Apprentice. We had a 20 minute conversation when I picked him up from the airport. My second CO liked talking with me and the successes I was having to the point after being on board less than 6 months he wrote me a letter of commendation. My next CO had several discussions with me, as well as his XO and from them I received a Navy Achievement Medal.  I have never said anything more than “Yes Master Chief”, “No Master Chief”,  “Aye aye Master Chief” to the supposed liaison to the “unapproachable” officers.

The divide between officers and enlisted is about as stark as the divide between Chiefs and the rest of the enlisted. Chiefs have their own Mess, they are waited on like officers. They have their own berthing. They wear the same uniform as officers (or did I have no idea what colorful zebra-Marine crap they’re wearing now, trying to camouflage themselves against a grey ship with blue BDUs). In many ways the relationship between Petty officer First Class and Chief is similar to that of Chief and Ensign. The PO1 is the hands on technical expert getting the Division in line, while the Chief looks at paperwork and work schedules and sips coffee. Sound familiar? When you introduce the Ensign, it’s just another tier of scheduling and paperwork and the Chief becomes the supposed expert and the Ensign the paper pusher.

 My first Chief said his job was to keep the DIVO off our ass. Similarly I’ve had DIVO’s who believed their job was to keep the Department Head or the XO off our ass. I imagine with the increase in automated scheduling the paperwork should die off eventually. This supposed need for a dedicated mediator should dissipate. Who is the official mediator between Chiefs and Seaman Recruits? There isn’t one, it’s understood that the PO1s, 2s, and 3s will handle it, they don’t need special uniforms, titles, or ceremonies to do it.

 Eliminating the E-8 and E-9 (or more diplomatically, merging them into officer positions) seems fairly simple from what I’ve discussed so far. However the position of Chief doesn’t seem so easy. The Chief is the first pivot point in complete leadership, and technical expertise. Arguably, particularly on larger ships the PO1 has similar high responsibilities in leadership and is the quintessential expert, but the Chief is the first on the other side of the line. The PO1 leads while still doing. In a tiered command structure someone has to be trusted to be the one who can stand back, the one who no longer goes directly to the task but trusts the leadership of the subordinate. In ground combat this is the role of higher level Sergeants. They will still experience combat, but are the first ones in the chain of command who are no longer expected to be getting their hands dirty on a daily basis. They are the first ones making higher tiered leadership decisions that involve coordinating more than one task.

  All of this considered, as well as the interest in ensuring there is some probationary level to give prospective officers a chance to cut their teeth, is why I would suggest keeping the Chief, and making it the pay grade where a Sailor would have to make a choice, whether to stick with their field of expertise, and go the way of the Warrant officer, or to expand their leadership role and take on higher challenges. This way as there is a similar transitional cooperative effect between PO1 and Chief, there would be one between Chief and officer.

                                                    The Effects of Proposed Changes

I have graphed how this alteration to the system would affect the technical skills of enlisted and officers.

 The first technical graph revealed a massive amount of waste of talent. Chiefs who knew a lot about their jobs would advance out of it into E-8 and E-9 effectively ceasing their tech skills to be wedged into specialty leadership roles. If they wanted to go Warrant officer (most likely course) they would then have to get back to technical work they may have abandoned years before. In this system there is a smooth transition between Chief and Warrant officer for those who continue working as technical experts.

In the old system if a Chief wanted to go for Ensign, even though the technical requirement decreased similarly to that of an E-8 or E-9, these Chiefs in reality are passed over due to age. By the time a Sailor makes Master Chief, though they may be as close as they can get to O-1, they are about as far as they can get in age disparity, which is why when the Navy does accept a few enlisted leaders into a commission, they tend to pick E-6 and E-7s. The proposed system rectifies this, making the entry point to O-1 directly from E-7. Just as a Chief is taking on a greater leadership role and moving away from their specific job, rather than years down the road.

 For the officers this presents a greatly beneficial situation. It completely changes the dynamic of Junior officers having to learn a lot of on the job information about a job they’ll never do then quickly expanding to learning how to be the leader of a multitude of job groups, only for all that gained specific knowledge to be far less necessary in subsequent promotions. This alternative course provides a new kind of JO that is no longer a complete rookie needing to entirely lean on the Chief. This JO (even if just coming in from Chief) has had at least a few years to learn the ropes before being put in charge of it all. This gives the JO a greater body of knowledge of the how the ship is interconnected. Most officers never bother learning many of the specifics of maintenance for example, and the Navy is almost entirely composed of maintenance. Not that they are lazy, but they don’t have time for it. It would be like trying to learn basic multiplication in college. You’re too late. Use a calculator.

 Without having to lean on Chiefs, this frees Ensigns up to work on being better leaders. The first 3 officer pay grades spend a lot of time working on learning the basics that could be spent becoming masters of Naval warfare.  This alone would mean you would have better JOs, Ensigns that would have the attitude, knowledge and skills of Lieutenants. This would also have the added benefit of much higher level officers, the ones making all the 20 years into the future decisions having more personal knowledge of the minute mechanics of Naval operations. I believe one drawback to high level officers is their complete detachment from what their decisions actually do to Sailors.

  There’s no Master Chief that can set them straight, because the Master Chief has been as long removed from real work as any officer and has also gone through the filtration system, whether beneficial or not, the one that imbued the Master Chief with khakis, waiters, and separate living spaces years back. The Master Chief that has every reason to kiss the Admiral’s ass, and really no pay off for sticking up for the junior enlisted who he hasn’t been a part of in a decade or more. If instead every Admiral had spent his or her first years as an enlisted Sailor they would at least have a better foundation.

Those who entered as E-7 will have a much more curtailed enlistment experience, but they will be serving along with those who had much more immersed enlistment careers. This will hopefully smooth out weaknesses, promote strengths, and reduce intellectual redundancy.

 For Warrant officers which were already composed entirely of prior enlisted, this direct route creates a more sound and reliable pathway. The role of Warrant officers could be expanded in the Navy. A ship of 300 rather than having a few Senior Chiefs and a Master Chief who provide redundant leadership roles may be replaced with several Warrant officers. Imagine instead of a Senior Chief in a Department whose specialty is talking to Chiefs, a Warrant officer in Engineering who can take an objective stand back position, providing training, assistance and support when needed. Imagine a completely qualified electrician Chief Warrant Officer who can work with all the various Divisions that perform electrical work to ensure they have the safety procedures, equipment, training, etc. I can tell you I wish I had a couple Warrant officers around.

 A Warrant officer isn’t looking to seem like a great manager in front of the officers, but is more worried about the actual work being done. One who isn’t bound to a specific Division but a Department or Command. Perhaps a Command Chief Warrant Officer, rather than a Command Master Chief, one who might have gone up the chain as a Boatswains Mate and is now a master of the ship. The Marines and Army have a Warrant officer position called Master Gunner, the Master Gunner is a highly trained battle tested bad ass expert in ground warfare. He is the one any officer wants to go to when running through plans and seeking input or solutions. The Master Gunner is not tasked with leading a specific squad, or a taking on the burdens of administration, but fills a role of pure expertise and authoritative presence.

 Say the Navy had a Master Boatswain, someone who can pilot the ship into port (rather than the current shameful practice of hiring a civilian to come on board just to pull a ship into port). Someone who could always be on hand for the CO or any particular Division Chief, not worried about directly overseeing operations, but able to take bigger picture, perhaps thinking in advance that the mooring buoys might not be big enough and preventing one ship from crashing into another while being pushed into place. Someone who could as easily consult with Navigation or Supply as Second Lieutenant or any other Division on the ship that needs to do deck work (as they all must, I had to, and I had no idea what I was doing and the Boatswain’s Mates were always too busy or unwilling to help).

  In fact a great number of civilian contractor positions could be filled by Warrant officers (though there will always be a role for civilians). The Navy should realize how much talent it throws away, and how much money it wastes with the current system. I have observed a number of my shipmates who would be perfect for the position Warrant officer instead getting out of the Navy and coming back as civilian contractors, but even more simply just leaving the field altogether (as I have).

 One of the biggest reasons is that a Chief is viewed more as a political position (particularly by Firsts trying to make Chief). It is viewed (not always, and not by everyone) as a kiss-ass job, where the best of the Chiefs makes do with the drawback of having to play politics and kiss ass. Being the foot maidens to junior officers with no real promise of becoming a Warrant officer (if one could figure out what a Warrant officer actually did or considered it a likely career choice).  

 But I do know how great it was on the occasions when a genuine electrician would come on board and help me out a little, or when a technician who’d been doing my job for 10 years and got out and became a civilian contractor would come on board and do things with my equipment I didn’t know was possible. The military needs more of that, it needs to reward and open a space for people that smart who don’t necessarily fit the established chain of command.

 The expert who can swoop in and tell the Lieutenant he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and smooth things out so the PO2 doesn’t have to walk on egg shells in telling someone who could crush him why basic electrical circuitry isn’t as he imagines it. The true liaison, not the ass kisser who shrugs his shoulders when I tell him what has transpired (again of course there are great Chiefs, one great story best told by others involves an event when an officer chewed out a shipmate of mine for supposedly using inappropriate terminology over comms. My shipmate told our chief about this, and the Chief promptly humiliated the officer and got him to apologize to my shipmate. This kind of thing could be more common if the Chief, were a Chief Warrant Officer, and he wasn’t directly subordinate to his fellow officer.

This next graph is the requirements for leadership among enlisted and officers in the proposed system.

In the previous leadership graph there was a trifecta of redundancy with Chiefs taking a desperate wild turn to remain relevant in higher pay grades. This redundancy is a form of waste of resources and talent. Those who chose to stay on the leadership path within the Chief’s ranks experience a career dead end. Making Master Chief makes you too old to continue on, but for the few that do, they reset back to square one, as an Ensign and by the time they reach the level they were at before, they are too old to go any further. Traditionally prior enlisted, even with fully open line officer commissions, cap off around O-4. Seaman to Admiral is far more a nifty sounding term than a reality.

 This path smooths out the leadership roles and removes the redundancy that sends so much talent into a dead end and wears out others in extra years redoing everything. It hopefully also necessarily changes the dynamic of the E-7 position as being an acceptable place to slow down and retire from. One should still be able to retire E-7 if their talents remain limited and they choose to never cross over to an officer position but prefer the smaller scaled world of the Chief, but Chief wouldn’t be the back-up point it is now plugging people of clogged ratings from entering. It would instead be the springboard, the pivot point where Sailors can vie for either a commission as a Warrant officer or an Ensign. Without there being the old institution of Chiefs, much of the gate-keeping surrounding the promotion from E-6 to E-7 should be removed. 

 Currently the promotion to Chief in the Navy involves a higher level of scrutiny than promotion to E-1 through E-6 (E-1 through E-3 is automatic, E-4 through E-6 requires both a review of one’s evaluations and an advancement exam and the top personal are chosen among the qualified to fill the available positions). This is the Chief’s board. I don’t think it would be necessarily an impediment for there to be some higher level of scrutiny for promotion to Chief, but the current system is often more difficult to pass than obtaining a direct commissioning to officer. Part of this is because Chief is currently a dead end, and so the positions are all plugged up with people going for their 20 or 30 years. This has encouraged the second part of this which has enabled the Navy to set up extremely high standards (or at least a lot of things that look good in review) for prospective Chiefs. It’s a supply and demand issue. Extremely high demand to the limited supply and they can charge an exorbitant price to enter.

 With Chief being a springboard and all the most aspirational personnel vying for Warrant or Ensign, the plug should be cleared to some extent. Of course being that the standards for officer would be about as hard as it currently is to become a Chief, there’s bound to be plug up to some degree. This would lend credence to maintaining a Senior Chief rank to shuffle all the plugged up Chiefs who seem to not be getting a commission, but this could also be bypassed by allowing both commissions from either E-6 or E-7. This also lends to there being some higher level of review for promotion to E-7, such as a review board that assesses that one has a desire to become an officer, and is on track to being qualified for a commission (weeding out those with records that would leave them dead in the water on an officer review board). But I would have to triple this already long proposal if I were to get into the minutiae. This is more a broad suggestion not meant to be an exact blueprint.

 In order for E-7 to be a viable springboard, it must not take a career to get to that point. However neither should it be plugged up with kids. 6 or 7 years from E-1 to E-7 should be reasonable. There is strange curve within current Naval officers. While O-1 to O-3 are usually quite young, O-4 and above seem to grow exponentially older. The plug seen among the Chiefs is far greater among officers, as there simply aren’t that many positions available.

 US law limits there to be no more than 216 Admirals, this is further limited to only 35 Vice Admirals and full Admirals and among those no more than 9 can actually be full Admirals. So about 181 Rear Admirals, 26 Vice Admirals, and 9 Admirals. Beneath Admirals, from Ensign the Captain there are about 52,000 officers. So less than half of a percent of officers are Admirals.

 Since most officers can never become Admirals, those that are Admirals tend to be quite old and long staying. And once you make 1 star, you’ve outperformed 99.95% of the officers, that was the hard part, moving up the Admiral ranks becomes the priority and so you’re looking at 30+ years. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Wise old Admirals can be quite useful.

Because Admirals tend to be old, Captains and Commanders also tend to be old. As a Commander can be a ship’s captain, or captain several ships in their career, this is seen as a very respectable position to retire from. Making O-5 and above effectively old man central. So really the only place where it’s not OK to be old is O-1 to O-4. I am not personally familiar enough with officer rank structure to give a nuanced opinion about why the Navy so desperately wants very young O-1s if they all quickly end up wedged into place by O-4. The Navy.mil website (http://www.public.navy.mil/bupers-npc/officer/communitymanagers/ldo_cwo/Pages/Promotions.aspx) explains that O-4 and above are all limited by law to the number of officers that can hold the positions.

This is clearly the reason the roadblock starts here. However it shows that the average Navy officer makes O-3, Lieutenant within 4 years, in about the same time an enlisted Sailor is usually an E-5. But making O-4 takes 9-11 years, O-5 in 15-17 years, and O-6 in 21-23 years. This seems to be where the problem lies. The average officer doesn’t make full Captain until after the minimum time for a potential full retirement with lifetime pay and benefits. Not to mention 21 years is a long ass time to go from O-1 to O-6, but this is by design. Everything above O-4 is highly political.

  I can understand now, though still don’t enjoy the fact that the Navy cuts off anyone prior enlisted from becoming officers if they are 31 or older. If a 31 year old entered as an Ensign, they would on average be 52 by the time they made Captain. Which is pretty old by military standards. Though personally I think they’re shooting themselves in the foot with this one. Because I would imagine a 31 year old college grad with prior enlistment (that’s me!) would be just fine even making it to O-4, which could be accomplished in 9 years, making the person 40, let’s say it was me, I’d be 40 with 15 years of service. I could easily then make O-5 by the time I was 46 with 21 years of total service. 46 is not very old, but it’s getting up there, reasonably I could do a tour of 2 years as a  captain then retire at 48, 23 years of service, and having gone from E-1 to captain of a ship.

What about college?

Having recently graduated from the University of California, Berkeley I can now say in a more qualified tone what I was saying 10 years ago. There’s nothing intrinsically exclusive about a college education that makes for a better officer. There are advantages that are particularly useful. The broad education versus the technical education enables one to think bigger. This is the same reason I argued officers are better suited having some enlistment experience. I think you should teach small and then work your way out. If I could design elementary schools I’d start by teaching about atoms, molecules, and cells, long before getting into animals and plants. I’d start with moral concepts of right and wrong, duty, power, the nature of rationality, long before getting into civics or history. The only one they get right is math. But they could start with Geometry and Algebra if they wanted to complete the circle of teaching big to small.

 Some jobs necessitate a college education. Although I agree with the Patch Adams argument about what truly makes a doctor, when it comes down it, our society has set a standard for this title, and the military has no reason to circumvent it (more than it already does). So 6 years as a Corpsman will not a doctor or nurse make. The Navy might be wise to pay for a Hospital Corpsman 1^st Class to go to medical school (or at least a nursing school), perhaps even an abbreviated medical school for those who already have years of medical experience, but not so abbreviated that one graduating the school wouldn’t rightly be called a doctor or nurse by the time they’re out. Perhaps it could be a ‘meet me halfway’ kind of thing where the Corpsman begins preliminary studies during the duration of their enlistment, and then applies for the final schooling. Obviously an alternative path could be for Corpsman to leave after an enlistment, use tuition assistance and make their way through a medical program of their choice and then apply for re-enlistment in the Navy as an E-7 eligible for commission to a Warrant officer or Ensign. A similar situation could be set up with lawyers vs. paralegals.

 Outside of this however, much of the important information and skills that can be learned in college, can also be learned on the job. A Sailor working 8 or 9 years in the Navy and who shows aptitude for leadership is going to have massive advantages over someone right out of college. College doesn’t teach leadership. Even the Naval Academy spends most of its time teaching followership. A common claim I heard in the Navy is you have to learn to be a good follower to become a good leader. If this is true, enlisted personnel can be far more qualified than Naval Academy grads to become officers. There is a place for both college and non-college grads.

 I believe the recent push by the Navy in the past decade to make everyone a college grad is ultimately a waste of time and money for the Navy. It might benefit the individual Sailors, but not the Navy itself. When it comes down to it, the Navy is a military force. It has a primary job, war. You learn war far better in person than in a classroom. A simple example of where being a college grad has no correlation to the officer requirements is being a pilot. Children become pilots. Having a college degree isn’t even remotely related to the skill. It helps pre-emptively weed out untrustworthy and undedicated people, and that’s really what the Navy has enjoyed in requiring officers to be college grads. Graduating from college is not the task of someone simply intelligent, because it requires dedication, and it’s not simply for people who are dedicated, because it’s intellectually challenging. It’s enough of a hurdle that a college grad can be expected on average to be more adept, dedicated, and able to complete a task than the average non-college grad. But this isn't a true comparison of the choices. Getting past the archaic disdain for enlisted personal, making it through an enlistment or two and making it up the ranks also proves a level of dedication and talent. I don’t see why any college grads would be inherently more tustworthy and adpet as Naval flight officers, than the best pulled from the pool of E-7s without degrees.

 This isn’t a completely radical idea historically. The US Army has been more willing to pull from enlisted talent to get pilots than any other branch. They actually had enlisted pilots during the Vietnam War. They also (last I heard) still accept enlisted into their Warrant officer flight program to fly combat helos. I remember finding out during my schooling as a Seaman in the Navy, simply based on my testing getting into the Navy and my ability to handle such a technical school that I was qualified to apply for commissioning to Warrant officer in the Army to be a pilot. Others had done it, left the Navy and went right into Army Warrant officer training. I’ve always had some reservations about this program, mostly because of the very young age, which goes to show how arbitrary the whole system is if my idea sounds radical while the Army is doing something more radical already and it’s working.

Who ever said it should be a career?

Why should military service be intrinsically a career? Wouldn’t it be healthier for the military if instead of front loading a bunch of people who fail up the chain of command due to the attrition of coworkers, there was instead lateral competition where alternative entrance points were created among the pay grades where equally qualified civilians could enter?

 Not that no one could make a career of it. But while considering this proposal I remembered that many people enjoyed having full 20 year careers as enlisted service members. I don’t know if there’s room for a 20 year stint finishing as a Chief in this proposed system. I have nothing against it. I think as long as someone’s doing a job and meeting the standards then it really doesn’t make a difference. But there is a logic to having fewer careers and more enlistees. Particularly in a democratic society. Case in point, the media and the populace virtually ignoring the ongoing war in Afghanistan that began 12 years ago. Some people have suggested a draft would make them care. I think more people serving can’t be bad for people making informed decisions.

 The military is not a charity. We have welfare if you just want to get paid. It’s not a jobs program either. Or at least it shouldn’t be. I think if you’re going to do 20-30+ years, you should be good at your job, and not settled into a military version of tenure. Officers face it much more harshly than enlisted. If they don’t meet a series of minimum requirements in a given time and make the next rank, they will get shuffled out the door.

 I think the alternative to the old 20-30+ enlisted career is the new move to retiring at 20-30+ years as an officer, or getting out before. I know many people who’ve used the logic after 3 enlistments, “well I’ve done 12, might as well do the 8 more to get retirement”. Not the most brilliantly motivated people. I think if you’ve done 12 and you want to stay in at 30 or so years old,  it’s time one considers where they want to be. You make Chief in 12, you can still have a long satisfying 8 years as a Warrant Officer. Or make the max cut off for an Ensign and settle at O-3, or shoot for O-4. But it is my genuine belief, the 38 year old ending his career as a Lieutenant is still a far better officer than the green 26 year old Lieutenant, or at least brings a dynamic to the position that is useful for the command.

Of course if there’s so much worry about age, then I should at least consider how much older I’m making the officers by having them enter as E-7 or even E-6.

How it could work

Begin with the Naval Academy trained Sailor, rather than being handed the rank Ensign with their diploma, they get orders to an A-school. It’s understood that Chiefs are not as hands on with their jobs, and thus don’t have to be completely technically proficient. In fact that’s precisely where a Sailor’s need to be technically proficient begins to wane (if they entered at a lower pay grade) but as I demonstrated in the model, junior officers need about as much technical skill as Chiefs do, so it would be a boon for Naval Academy graduates to have a chance at first hand training.

Currently some Navy Chief ratings recognize the broader scope a Chief must possess. For example with Gas Turbine Systems Technicians, there are 2 separate rates, Mechanical, and Electrical. These merge with the Senior Chief (if memory serves) so a Senior Chief regardless of whether they were previously an Electrical or Mechanical, become 1, simply a Gas Turbine Systems Senior Chief. It would make sense then for Academy trained Chiefs, rather than going to specific A-Schools, instead attend more broad schools based on their choice of rating. For example a Cryptologic Technician school, rather than any of the subsets. These could either be offered at the Academy as a graduation requirement, using the final semester for an A-School, or have them at the respective training facilities around America and be trained by the instructors that teach the regular A-schools.

 So you have an individual entering let’s say as a CT Chief (CTC) 23 years old, hot shit on the fast track since elementary school. I have no idea if a minimum time in rate would be appropriate or how this system would go down, but I’ll go with 2 years, since that’s been my example every time so far. It seems reasonable. 2 years is enough time to wash out any of those who can’t handle the pressure. It’s enough time for the Chief to learn the ropes, in a role reversal is going to be trained as much by the DIVO as the PO1 is going to be training. You still have that straight out of school, trained-by-subordinate dynamic that exists between Chiefs and Ensigns now, the difference is, as a Chief the new Sailor isn’t the head of the entire division and has time to ease into the role forming closer ties with subordinates, getting a taste of enlisted life.

It would seem reasonable that the Naval Academy grads would be on the fast track for promotion to O-1, and not really in contention for a position as a Warrant Officer (unless they specialized in the academy and really wanted it, they could stay as a Chief for a few more years and then move up), the Navy would effectively be able to control how many Academy grads were officers (as it does now) by regulating how many students they accept. This ability to fluctuate inputs would enable the Navy to find the most effective balance of younger Academy officers versus other officers.

 O-1 in 2 years, would make the Ensign 25, this is only 2 years older than the current system. All the problems with older officers carrying-on, it would be 23 years on average to O-6, so the Captain would be 48 rather than the current average of 46. Really, ultimately insignificant difference for the added benefit of greater experience and training. The real problem is the time it takes to make Captain from Ensign, not the added two years. If only a few years of the decades long sludge to Captain could be cut back, the added 2 years of experience as an enlisted Sailor would be negated. Of course if the age cap was set at 50 years old and the max time in service at 30 years, you’d instantly see a young body of Captains and Admirals. It’s really the federal laws that create this situation. If you’re going to overhaul the design of a military, shouldn’t get bogged down in the minutiae of modern limitations.

 Honestly though I don’t see the problem in having wiser older officers if it means a few Seaman make it to Admiral. My grandfather didn’t stop doing manual labor moving hardwood, operating a forklift and running his own business, he’s 83, he still hasn’t stopped. Not the norm to be sure, but I don’t need my Admirals to be pole vaulters. The current age limit is 62 without getting an extension. If a kid got out of high school at 18, Chief by 27, Ensign by 30, Captain by 50, he’s still got 12 years to make Admiral.

This is my simple suggestion

 I’m not trying to cure all that ails the Navy, though I may have begun trying halfway through. I imagine there are several options to all of my suggestions without really changing the overall goal.

 I recognize there are some potential downfalls. This would be eliminating the vaunted institution of Chiefs and replacing them with a single Chief pay grade that would ultimately be a strange cluster fuck of long term enlisted Sailors, as well as recent Academy grads, and several infusions in between. I imagine this would invariably diminish the view of the Chief somewhat, but that pedestal is rather high. And the Chief would still be above the First Class, even if the First Class is doing some of the on-the-job training. I believe much of the leadership issues that are institutionalized with the 2 military system that exists where enlisted and officers are considered entirely separate entities would be resolved through this pipeline. Every officer will have been a Chief, and enlisted. The Academy grads would be the least among the officers for a true enlisted experience. 

 What I was trying to build up to besides linking enlisted-officers was that there should be an expansion of room for more enlistments. Like college grads outside of the Naval Academy being accepted in at E-6 going through a more leadership oriented boot camp and then going to a prospective A School in a field that fits with their degree, like an engineering grad becoming an EN, GS, or NUC and working towards either going Warrant or Ensign in Engineering. In this more leader oriented boot camp could also include Associate Degree grads and trade school professionals like electricians, plumbers, and craftsman that should have a pathway into ratings like EM, HT, and the Construction Battalion at a higher introductory pay grade like E-4 this would either be a short A-school, or no A-School. All these Sailors would be infusing the military with fresh blood besides those who came in right after high school with no skills. It would save the Navy money in training, give the Navy better trained Sailors, and keep things competitive without having everyone start at the front and fail up as others wash out. A single 4 year enlistment might be E-4 to E-6, or E-6 to E-7 complementing the traditional E-1 to E-4/5; as well as enlisted to officer paths that would include E-1 to O/W, E-4 to O/W, or E-7 to O allowing people to enter and leave at different times, making a more diverse and skilled Navy.

 The biggest "nightmare scenario" I can imagine by allowing multiple entry points into the chain of command is that it could be possible (with bad planning, and thus likely) to end up with a division composed of a Seaman right out of school, a PO3 right out of school, a PO1 right out of school, and a Chief right out of the Academy with a DIVO that has only been in a couple years. I've actually had worse. Thanks to a cross decking, and a merger, I ended up in a situation where I had Seaman, PO3s, a PO1, a Chief, and DIVO  ALL of them brand spanking new to being on a ship, and the job itself. The only ones who'd even been in the Navy a while, the PO1 and the Chief had never been on a ship and didn't know how to do the job. I literally had to train my entire division as a PO2. It was doable. Smart people can pick things up quickly. It really doesn't take long to adjust. 

 I have criticized the way officers are treated versus enlisted. I'm not a Marxist, I recognize RHIP, I expect that officers should have better quarters, nicer food, etc. I just want them to earn it. I want them to at least know what it's like to be enlisted, so when the disparity goes from good treatment vs. better treatment to inhumane to great treatment, there's more of an advocacy built in to the system. This archaic disgust and mistrust of enlisted is simply unacceptable for many personnel. The communal punishment for individual transgressions of enlisted while secretly punishing officers and holding no others accountable is unacceptable. 

 When E-6s make Chief, they go to special training for leadership and higher expectations. A catch-all officer training school could be offered to all E-7s when they've been accepted for a commission. The Navy loves leadership schools. I don't see this as a potential problem. 

 Of course knowing the love of tradition in the Navy I could easily see most people immediately scoffing at there being no direct path to officer. “Pshaw!” They would say, A Navy Academy grad must get them butter sticks and slap around Chiefs at age 22. This wouldn't derail the concept. There could still be the open pipeline to officers. Or any combination thereof like merely adopting my idea about expanding the role of Chief Warrant Officers.

This final graph represents the basic premise I have proposed here.

 If you want to Swift Rand Paul Manuscript Boat me, go right ahead, I acknowledge everything I didn't know off the top of my head I stole from somewhere. Good luck finding anything word for word though. No one's paying me or grading me for this so I tend to be lazy in attributing info sources. However all opinions and assessments are 100% original.