Warrior Spirit and the Time Tax: A Letter From a SWO Captain

CIMSEC – …I am very concerned about how junior officers are looking at our profession. What I hear them saying on the Yokosuka waterfront is that most of their time and effort is not spent working on “naval things” – shiphandling, tactics, leadership – but on an ever-growing cancer of administrative requirements. Every inspection and assist visit seems to have a longer and longer “checklist” of micro-things (all equally important, of course) that must be just so, or else an area is unsat or “ineffective.” Reporting requirements and the care and feeding of staff databases grow inexorably…