MAIL CALL: Military Officers Respond to Stu Scheller

On April 30, former Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller asserted in a post on X that “the current [officer] promotion system leads to military leadership underperforming with a large contingent of “yes-men” for senior leaders." He then asked: "How can the United States military build a screening system (competition) for the performance of key leaders?” Scheller, who lost his military career when he spoke out against the Afghanistan withdrawal, is now serving as a senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense. What follows are reactions to Scheller’s post submitted by current and former military officers.

The unrestricted line communities do a pretty good job teaching new members how to be good at their particular warfare area/platform. But good (heck any) training on leadership skills is sorely lacking. Three decades ago, they tried to turn Deming’s TQM into TQL (leadership) but it was an abysmal failure. They pulled the plug and gave up. I did get a very good two-week command leadership course on my way to O-5 command but that was it. The Navy needs a leadership continuum that is required from O-3 to O-6. Some online is OK but classroom is still the best place.

As far as creating better operational and strategic leaders, the Navy’s problem is with their war college. The Navy only requires one (O-4/O-5 course or senior O-5/O-6 course) and they only do that grudgingly because Goldwater Nichols requires it. The Navy still believes that “Sailors belong on ships and ships belong at sea,” that everything else is a waste of time, unless you’re surface warfare.

The next issue is choosing who succeeds to O-6 command. The unrestricted line communities do a pretty good job of selecting the right O-5s to command. But to get O-6 Major Sea (operational) Command it is fairly political. Without a war, how do you determine the best commanders? Politics. In some communities (air specifically) it is community politics (8 squadrons in an air wing, four fighter and four “support” - E-2, electronic warfare and two helo). It’s VERY rare the number one (and two) aren’t fighter. Why? Because the guy/gal picking the winner (air wing commander) is almost always a fighter pilot. They would possibly cost themselves a shot at Flag if they don’t pick one of their own.

But like the CNO article said, the reason for aviation’s lack of CNOs and other senior four-star Flags is they shun DC until the Flag level because before that you have to always be in the cockpit to succeed to O-6 sea command. Aviation doesn’t grow those kinds of Flags. Neither does the submarine community. Nor the SEALs who would only care about a four-star position if it was SOCOM.

So how do you solve it? I don’t know. Promotion boards, especially at the Flag level, and three- and four-star nominations are done by those want people who are politically like them. The proverbial self-licking ice cream cone. You’d have to make a concerted effort to stack Flag selection boards (one/two-star level) with operationally oriented Flags (including the senior member) with top level guidance and cover from a like-minded SECNAV. Think a John Lehman clone. Same for three/four-star nominations. SECNAV would have to pick knuckle dragging, hard core operationally focused numbered Fleet and Fleet commanders. And like minded CNOs/VCNOs for a few cycles in hopes it becomes self-perpetuating. Think John Lehman picking Ace Lyons to be Pacific commander.

The next problem is our acquisition commands (NAVAIR and NAVSEA). Our requirements/acquisition system is HARD broken. Another decades-long constant effort is required to fix this. And ship building and ship maintenance is something we broke starting with the Cold War “Peace Dividend” in the mid-90s. We closed too many government shipyards (who do overhauls), let our commercial shipbuilding industry dwindle to something too small, and gutted Navy shore maintenance commands and tenders. They’ve started trying to fix the shore maintenance issue but shipyards/maintenance is a decade plus from getting better with good leadership and consistent funding. And there’s no guarantee of that.

I’ll get off my soapbox. Got to feed the dog and take him for a walk.

I think [Scheller] is spot on. The enterprise as a whole is not in a great spot. Leadership is more focused on boss-pleasing or being an individual getting kudos outside of any war fighting capability. I also believe the fitrep and eval system is broken. We discourage leaders from saying someone is below average in any facet. We allow sailors to be sub-par and not meet standards morally mentally or physically because we don’t want to throw off their careers or deal with the headaches. I am shocked at how reserve Sailors poorly cosplay Navy. They approach the idea of showing up on time and in the right uniform ready to perform as some Sisyphus-level task. But then again, the culture here has allowed that to be the standard. I’m assuming it’s relatively the same across the board. I had a YN2 once tell me “Sir, you got these chiefs shook.” I was perplexed by him saying that and I asked why. He said “cause you’re making them do their job.” It should not take a senior officer to show up to duty turnovers and point out that the dumpster you walked past is over-flowing. They are the pride of the Navy, right?

I applaud Scheller for tackling this issue. Look no further than the senior levels of the Marine Corps to appreciate the damaging impacts of the current system. We know for a fact that many generals disagreed with Force Design but feign support to curry favor and get promoted. Something is wrong when a Marine is punished for having an opinion that is different from the Commandant. This behavior has virtually destroyed the combat capabilities of the Marine Corps and seriously damaged the national defense. If we went to war tomorrow, the Marines would be sent as they are presently armed: no armor, no bridging, no in-stride breaching, insufficient cannon artillery and school-trained snipers, and no resiliency in infantry, aviation, or logistics. They would have no anti-ship missile capabilities for the SIFs, either. Institutional unwillingness to speak up to superior officers will result in needless casualties in the next war. 

Well, this should be interesting to see what they come up with. I heard a lot of senior leader conversations about changing the promotion system somehow. Nothing ever came of it.

I definitely agree with this. Personally, I found that a large part of the problem was that there was no effort to retain leaders with a different, less careerist mindset. The service retained people who were willing to tolerate the status quo out of a sense of duty – the frequent moves, inefficiencies, backward-looking policies, etc. – such that you were left with a type of person in leadership who was reluctant to speak up or take a risk. The system had filtered out all the people who felt there was a better way and left to pursue it elsewhere. 

Short tours at all career stages diminish opportunity to evaluate performance and enable poor performing officers to outrun their mistakes.  Poor leadership and bad operational choices may have a long tail before their consequences are felt.  By rotating officers from assignments, often with less than 24 months in billet, there are few objective data points to objectively evaluate an officer's performance.  Consequently, bad officers can rotate to their next assignments with favorable end-of-tour evaluations and tour awards. An example is weapons system development and procurement, which are frequently late and over budget. The officers responsible for managing the programs may only be in place for 12-18 months of a 15-year project.  Consequently, while specific programs may be deemed unsuccessful, individual officers can't be held accountable for the failure.  Conversely, longer tours would allow for easy evaluation of objective criteria.  Operational readiness, inspection results, operational performance, reenlistment rates, and many other readily available measures of warfighting capacity would be easy to measure for continuous improvement if officers were afforded the opportunity to remain in billet for a longer duration.  

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