Books

The day after the USS John S. McCain collided with a cargo ship off the coast of Singapore in August of 2017, I began a course at the Navy’s Surface Warfare Officers School in Newport, Rhode Island. The school’s commanding officer gathered all students and staff into the auditorium to address the elephant in the room: just two months after the USS Fitzgerald tragedy claimed the lives of seven sailors, ten more from the McCain were dead in a similar incident.

During my tour as navigator of the USS Coronado, an Independence-class littoral combat ship in San Diego, I became all too familiar with the many challenges facing the LCS program. Yet for all the controversy, LCS has demonstrated a surprisingly better model for officer training and watch standing in the Surface Navy. The focus on specialized mariner courses combined with a more efficient watch configuration on the bridge have resulted in a reliable, more independent corps of junior officers. As the Navy continues to rethink its SWO training pipeline, the LCS model serves as an example for positive change.

While attending basic training at the Navy’s Officer Candidate School, I received a valuable piece of leadership advice that I carried with me throughout my five years of active duty service. My roommate during this time, Stuart, had been a prior enlisted sailor who had seen multiple deployments in Afghanistan, while I was entirely unaccustomed to military life. Stuart was an unassuming but effective leader who had established a quiet authority among a group of mostly civilians barely in their twenties.