Road to 350: What Does the US Navy Do Anyway?

[Lawman]

So agree with most of your points, but this isn’t what Det 201 is about. Quite frankly, the CTO of Palantir is punching way down commissioning as an O5….in his private sector job, his actual counterparts in professional interactions would typically be Flag/General Officers.

For the Det 201 mission, jury’s still out on what the hell the point is. I think they have a lot to offer, but they can do the whole “part time” advisor or consultant thing just fine without the uniform. That’s not really a role where Title X, UCMJ, Geneva Conventions or whatever matters much at all

And btw, I think they should feel all the pain of military bureaucracy and IT in their onboarding, Tricare included. Permission granted to start tackling all the dumb shit where we lag the private sector in processing basic admin services that keep us running. Should be an easy win for the Kings of Silicon Valley.

On the other side, I’m fine with doing whatever to develop and retain Cyber talent too…but that should be based on an actually strategy of understanding what we need in terms of talent, and parallels to what the private sector actually does.

It’s not like we don’t already do it, every nurse is an officer. So is every pilot. So…if we really feel doing Cyber things actually takes that level of education and STEM academic aptitude, fine, give them all commissions or make them Warrants.

To you last point we’re having a very similar problem with paramedics.

The Army is arguing that a medic and a paramedic are not the same thing. We’ve ackowledged that the skill set and the 18month school make them more like PAs but just shy of a full commission and we want to retain that investment. In recent years the phrase Medical Warrant Officer has started coming into light. Wanna know who is fighting that the hardest? Special Operations. The reason isn’t that guys like oir 18Ds or Nightstalker Medics don’t deserve the pay and benefits of their talents, it’s because we can’t make them warrants without eating into the total pool of authorizations under Congress. You only get one per ODA, so if we make a medical warrant they have to lose the team warrant. Peter to pay Paul.

Cyber isnt going to be in any better a position if we start trying to warrant them, though itll be hysterical to see a C suite guy from Palentir washing cars at Rucker for their social.

 

[BigRed389]

To you last point we’re having a very similar problem with paramedics.

The Army is arguing that a medic and a paramedic are not the same thing. We’ve ackowledged that the skill set and the 18month school make them more like PAs but just shy of a full commission and we want to retain that investment. In recent years the phrase Medical Warrant Officer has started coming into light. Wanna know who is fighting that the hardest? Special Operations. The reason isn’t that guys like oir 18Ds or Nightstalker Medics don’t deserve the pay and benefits of their talents, it’s because we can’t make them warrants without eating into the total pool of authorizations under Congress. You only get one per ODA, so if we make a medical warrant they have to lose the team warrant. Peter to pay Paul.

Cyber isnt going to be in any better a position if we start trying to warrant them, though itll be hysterical to see a C suite guy from Palentir washing cars at Rucker for their social.

Well we just fired a shit load of civilians, so there should be plenty of money to spread to making extra Warrants. Problem solved, thanks DOGE.

Ok more seriously, at the end of the day sure, this shit is all a manpower numbers game for the BUPERS/N1 type nerds. And some of that involves hard choices of not having infinite billets.

So I’m all for giving Cyber what it needs…but it should also be realized that without a lift on whatever those caps are, that might mean some other priorities will take a backseat. Is a Cyber Warrant more of an effect than existing warrants in DOD? I dunno…maybe in the next war. Personally I always thought Space Force was where Cyber was going to end up. I do think it’s an odd fit as it currently is spread across the services.

 

[Hair Warrior]

Rank and File, and these guys are two separate categories of the same problem. Nobody said they were being hired to do the same the same job sets or from the same talent pools.

Look the first thing the Army cyber community needs to do, is not be Army. The metrics to make E5 don’t make sense to the skill set attempting to be created and more importantly kept. The amount of not the job “dumb Army crap” that comes to them defeats what we are trying to cultivate as technology matures. The nature of being another population for the Division/Corps task list means you’ve got a kid who should be a weapon for the next war being passed up for rank, walking around “Iron Horse Ready” or whatever, and pulling gate duty now and again because the installation assigns those by brigades and doesn’t care what your job is. Why would anybody do that vs go get a job in the civilian sector, the retention NCO wonders.

I am full for Cyber being its own branch at this point with its own ladders and metrics because applying what we’re doing right now to skillsets like this will kill us.

No dude, you aren’t getting it. Meta doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing. Just because a company relies on the internet does not mean it has any expertise with OCO or DCO.

Asking Meta employees (execs or front line) to do Army OCO or DCO is like asking your local Jaguar dealership (owner or mechanics) how to do an amphibious landing. There might be a mechanic who knows how…but he learned that skill back when he was in the Marines, not at the Jaguar dealer.

 

[Hair Warrior]

To you last point we’re having a very similar problem with paramedics.

The Army is arguing that a medic and a paramedic are not the same thing. We’ve ackowledged that the skill set and the 18month school make them more like PAs but just shy of a full commission and we want to retain that investment. In recent years the phrase Medical Warrant Officer has started coming into light. Wanna know who is fighting that the hardest? Special Operations. The reason isn’t that guys like oir 18Ds or Nightstalker Medics don’t deserve the pay and benefits of their talents, it’s because we can’t make them warrants without eating into the total pool of authorizations under Congress. You only get one per ODA, so if we make a medical warrant they have to lose the team warrant. Peter to pay Paul.

This is an easy fix: Give Army medics incentive pay and retention bonuses to retain them. Enough money to make it worthwhile. They don’t need a more shiny collar device or a whole different slew of responsibilities, promotion boards, and now-self-paid uniform items.

 

[PhrogPhlyer]

now-self-paid uniform items

Just a question. When did officers get paid uniform items?
At least for my time, late '70s to early '90s, I paid 100% of all my uniform items, including a $700 sword while taking home $225 a month in TBS.