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

[taxi1]

we've talked about Harvey Milk in this forum before

I had to google, since before my time. LOL at the Nostradamus’ on this forum…

Post in thread 'Good idea or not?'
https://www.airwarriors.com/community/threads/good-idea-or-not.39119/post-699311

Post in thread 'Good idea or not?'
https://www.airwarriors.com/community/threads/good-idea-or-not.39119/post-699333

 

[Griz882]

I had to google, since before my time. LOL at the Nostradamus’ on this forum…

Post in thread 'Good idea or not?'
https://www.airwarriors.com/community/threads/good-idea-or-not.39119/post-699311

Post in thread 'Good idea or not?'
https://www.airwarriors.com/community/threads/good-idea-or-not.39119/post-699333

Well, the future isn’t static so for the next three years at least they were ultimately correct. After that, who knows?

 

[number9]

Not really a fan of this. There are a lot of charlatans in tech sector C-Suites, for starters. If they can already join today at O1-O3, what’s stopping them from joining? It’s not the pay. If we really need their skills and they truly refuse to spend any time as a JO, make a civilian auxiliary or bring them in as a part-time contractor.

We just tried an experiment where a tech genius was plucked from industry and placed into a senior govt role straight from the tech sector - he thought it was a good idea to put a rogue Starlink dish on a certain roof and transmit USG data without permission. It wasn’t great.

And if some senior officer is telling me that these private sector execs can’t do what they need to do with “only” two bars instead of a silver oak leaf, then maybe they’re the problem and they should listen to their JOs more often. Heck, there are already a bunch of JOs in the reserves who are executives at tech companies who should automatically jump up to O4 or O5 instantly based on this criteria (I know a few), but once you’re in the system you’re stuck in the wickets with everyone else. And that isn’t a bad thing - it gives you time to learn and grow within the correct system.

Notable exceptions:
- Doctors, dentists, nurses
- William S Knudson
- Joseph Francis Carroll

They’re the exceptions that prove the rule, though. A top cardiologist at a US hospital is going to follow the same medical training and adhere to the same ethical process as a military cardiologist. The same cannot be said for an executive at Instagram understanding DoD information systems, classification levels, ethical constraints, or cyberspace operations.

I think this was a well-intentioned good idea that gets worse and worse when you start putting it on paper.

Do we need a F500 CTO to tell us that the the military is bad at building software? No. Are any of them going to propose radical change that is counter to their shareholders' best interest? Also no.

That being said, it will be wild to see an O-5 without a ribbon. Not even the NDSM...

 

[Lawman]

Why do they need to be in uniform? They could easily do this sort of job as a civilian or in advisory capacity. As a matter of fact there are several entities that already exist to do just what they are supposed to be doing. And them being in mid-grade officers would even put them at a disadvantage, if they were going to be in the real Army.

Total authorizations of SES positions and the way money and contracting works. The current technology director to the Chief of Staff is an SWS-2. He was an Intel contractor for the military in his earlier life and then went to Palantir. Dude has a 1 star that works for him. He could just as easily been a 2 star and just stayed in the acquisitions sector but the Army holds that position for one of its SES slots specifically.

This has precedent back to events like WWII. We made people Col’s and Generals but gave them none of the commander roles, they were project leaders. William Knudson probably being one of the best examples of going from the stratified position in industry direct to a stratified position within the War Department at the time. Dude was a 3 star but nobody was expecting him to command troops. He was directing the infrastructure necessary to feed the war.

 

[Hair Warrior]

Total authorizations of SES positions and the way money and contracting works.

Nah, this isn’t the reason. There are plenty of noncareer SES vacancies right now. It’s the fact that these execs don’t want to quit their day jobs where they make plenty of money to do a stint as an SES (where you have to file financial disclosures, and other strings attached).

I wonder how long it will take before these new Lt Cols are given involuntary mob orders activating them to the Pentagon for a year. If they want to lend their skills, and we need their skills immediately, well, use that mechanism and put their skills to use.

 

[BigRed389]

Total authorizations of SES positions and the way money and contracting works. The current technology director to the Chief of Staff is an SWS-2. He was an Intel contractor for the military in his earlier life and then went to Palantir. Dude has a 1 star that works for him. He could just as easily been a 2 star and just stayed in the acquisitions sector but the Army holds that position for one of its SES slots specifically.

This has precedent back to events like WWII. We made people Col’s and Generals but gave them none of the commander roles, they were project leaders. William Knudson probably being one of the best examples of going from the stratified position in industry direct to a stratified position within the War Department at the time. Dude was a 3 star but nobody was expecting him to command troops. He was directing the infrastructure necessary to feed the war.

In war, or a real serious face prep for war, we could crank up SES or other billet authorizations with the stroke of a pen.

I mean sure, we do this for doctors and other specialties where we have very specific functions for them but nobody is expecting a doctor to ever do anything but doctor things.

If the idea is to bring them in to do industry things though, it’s not quite the same, because the point of having folks with operational experience in procurement and R&D commands is that they at least have some clue what the hell the field conditions of the things will be like. That’s about the only real (but very key) difference between a civilian and uniformed person in acquisition…and we dont always even do that. See the USAF full time acquisition types that have never deployed or done any time with an operational command.

Which is what annoys me about this - throwing this as a solution while the DOD is simultaneously cutting FOGO and SES billets, and chopped the civilian workforce (also support contractors to an extent,)…then saying do more (Golden Dome), followed by this idea just comes across as incoherent workforce management strategy.

 

[Swanee]

Not bad, civilian to LtCol.
Wonder how they will get brough up to speed on actually being part of the military.

It's just a pay grade for them. IMHO we're going to see this continue in the cyber squadrons. You can't attract the talent needed in the traditional military recruitment model.

It's a great place for the restricted line officer corps.

 

[Lawman]

It's just a pay grade for them. IMHO we're going to see this continue in the cyber squadrons. You can't attract the talent needed in the traditional military recruitment model.

It's a great place for the restricted line officer corps.

More particularly we can’t apply military standards to those people and expect it to take. The metrics for making rank don’t work in specialty support fields.

I don’t care what dudes PT score or last rifle range was. I want him to take the IADS down for 6 hours with a computer. Let him have whatever hair and uniform standards he wants, his grade is just a paycheck.

 

[BigRed389]

More particularly we can’t apply military standards to those people and expect it to take. The metrics for making rank don’t work in specialty support fields.

I don’t care what dudes PT score or last rifle range was. I want him to take the IADS down for 6 hours with a computer. Let him have whatever hair and uniform standards he wants, his grade is just a paycheck.

Well…apparently Army already did it. 4 guys from the Silicon Valley C-suite commissioned as O5s. One of them is Shyam Shankar, CTO of Palantir. I don’t think anybody will say they don’t have the street cred, though I still don’t get the point.

Those guys could do as much, if not more, as a SES or Special Government Employee.

Also…I probably don’t want to be the O5 that ever has to compete with those guys on a promotion board

 

[PhrogPhlyer]

More particularly we can’t apply military standards to those people and expect it to take. The metrics for making rank don’t work in specialty support fields.

Those guys could do as much, if not more, as a SES or Special Government Employee.

Why not do as we did for the Manhattan Project?
Brought together the greatest minds in Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, etc. and changed the world.
And they did it without direct commissions.
Why do Teckies need to be given a military rank?
Is this similar to a participation prize, you're on the team so you get the O-5 trophy?

 

[CommodoreMid]

As long as they stay in past the current administration I could potentially get behind this. Otherwise it smacks of an Eric Greitens or Hunter Biden situation.

 

[Lawman]

Why not do as we did for the Manhattan Project?
Brought together the greatest minds in Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, etc. and changed the world.
And they did it without direct commissions.
Why do Teckies need to be given a military rank?
Is this similar to a participation prize, you're on the team so you get the O-5 trophy?

For one UCMJ applies to them now in ways it wouldn’t before…

Look these guys are as likely to compete with other O5s on the board as they are to take full advantage of the great opportunity in TriCare. And they can commission anywhere from O1 to O6 under the skills initiative the Army has been running.

Air Force has a similar program.

 

[Hair Warrior]

I don’t care what dudes PT score or last rifle range was. I want him to take the IADS down for 6 hours with a computer.

There are people who know how to do this. They don’t work as execs at Meta. Not even remotely the same skill set.

 

[Lawman]

There are people who know how to do this. They don’t work as execs at Meta. Not even remotely the same skill set.

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.

 

[BigRed389]

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.

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.