Waterfront training planned for new SWOs

quote:

The new SWO course will be modeled after one given to students coming in from Officer Candidate School, Curtis wrote, and will include basic instruction in leadership, preventive maintenance, division officer fundamentals, damage control and other core SWO disciplines.

I cannot express how glad I am that the Navy finally realized what a rotten idea it was to send SWO Ensigns to their ships without even basic DC training. Given that many Ensigns go straight to ships deployed in a war zone, it actually seemed down right criminal to me. I guess several years of scathing end of course feedbacks and some recent problems in the surface fleet have finally led the Admirals to see the light of day.

It didn't mention whether or not the current 3-week post-OOD qualification SWOS course would be cut or not. Personally, I hope it is not because it really wasn't completely useless. It was just kind of too little too late to getting training 3 weeks of training 12-15 months (not 6-10 months as the article claims) into a tour. The new course is scheduled to start in August so the current crop of Spring Ensigns can expect to receive TAD orders to it after reporting to their ships. I sincerely hope that in 20 years if I tell younger SWO that "back in my day we didn't go to SWOS" he'll look at me with confused and troubled eyes.

The 6-month SWOSDOC program in Newport was actually effective and worked well compared to what we have today IMO. Most JOs reported to their ships with the basic knowledge they needed to be successful and obtain their qual.

Give it time and they'll come full circle back to what they had when they created SWOS in 1975.

It's a step in the right direction but a slightly bigger step is needed - I think they'll eventually find that they need to make it a 90 day course.

Having never been to full blown SWOS, I can hardly speak from experience, but most of what I've heard about it is that whatever learning may have occurred, it wasn't nearly as rigorous a course of instruction as it could have been. I heard a lot about late night parties, half days, and clicking through powerpoints faster than the speed of light. It sounded like a lot of fun but not very efficient. Honestly, when I was a MID in NRTOC and I heard they were cancelling SWOS, I thought that was awesome. The lack of additional schooling actually appealed to me and was a major reason I chose nuke SWO over subs... Of course then I hit the fleet (shows what mids know). Just the same, I can't imagine SWOS would have held my attention very well if I still had several months to go before hitting the fleet for real. I really do think the current program of an abbreviated indoc course has an excellent chance of succeeding providing that things like DC trainers and, dare I say it, ship simulators for tactical watchstanding are adequately used.

What I like about a short 3 to 6 week course immedeately prior to reporting to a ship is that it's plenty of time to teach the important things like DC and the basics of PMS and watchstanding while being short enough to maintain a quick pace and the sense of urgency that comes with being only weeks away from reporting to a ship.

But hey, I was obviously way off when I celebrated the death of SWOS, so I could be way off here too. Either way, it looks like the practice of shipping off baby-SWO's with significantly less training than your average unrated seaman recruit fresh out of boot is at an end, and that's a good thing. For a while I was getting worried that the Navy would have to change its unnofficial motto from "Every sailor a fireman" to "Every sailor a fireman, Ensigns excluded of course."

I went through full-blown "baby SWOS" - no only that, but I did it in Coronado instead of Newport which was definitely more fun.

Yeah, there was a lot of wasted time - driving YP's around was totally worthless, and a number of classes could have been easily trimmed. But we did some truly worthwhile things as well, such as two days of intense training on how to inspect a space followed by a 'field trip' to a ship in San Diego where we zone-inspected that mother to within an inch of its life.

I still think 2-3 months will end up being the right number. Of course, I'm talking about adding Buttercup and firefighting school...

2-3 months is probably the right answer. In fact when the Surface Navy was contemplating shortening the old course the original plan was to send new ensigns to their ships for 6-8 months so the chain of command could evaluate them then they would go to SWOS for 8 weeks, 4 of which was the same for all and 4 of which was tailored to the student based on the CO's evaluation of what they needed. THis of course got shortened to the current 3 week by COMNAVSURFOR who never listened to anyone but himself but told us all to "keep smiling".
Good to see the current leadership is recognising they cut it back too far.
THe other value to SWOS is the bonding that goes on between SWOs. THe value of working with someone you know is often underestimated and SWOS helps new SWOs build thier SWO network.

quote:

Originally posted by BDaugherty:
2-3 months is probably the right answer. In fact when the Surface Navy was contemplating shortening the old course the original plan was to send new ensigns to their ships for 6-8 months so the chain of command could evaluate them then they would go to SWOS for 8 weeks, 4 of which was the same for all and 4 of which was tailored to the student based on the CO's evaluation of what they needed. THis of course got shortened to the current 3 week by COMNAVSURFOR who never listened to anyone but himself but told us all to "keep smiling".
Good to see the current leadership is recognising they cut it back too far.
THe other value to SWOS is the bonding that goes on between SWOs. THe value of working with someone you know is often underestimated and SWOS helps new SWOs build thier SWO network.

I was a SWO - that's not 'bonding' - that's plotting.

quote:

Originally posted by BDaugherty:
THis of course got shortened to the current 3 week by COMNAVSURFOR who never listened to anyone but himself but told us all to "keep smiling".

That wouldn't be T.L. "Metrics" Lafluer would it?

[QUOTE]Originally posted by SurfaceDog:
I went through full-blown "baby SWOS" - no only that, but I did it in Coronado instead of Newport which was definitely more fun.

Yeah, there was a lot of wasted time - driving YP's around was totally worthless, and a number of classes could have been easily trimmed./QUOTE]

You SWOSPAC guys were at the beach by 1330 every day. Is that really "wasted time" Mike?

Respectfully,
Surface Force

I can't believe this wasn't implimented until now, seems like a common sense idea to me.....and there's your answere!

quote:

Originally posted by 1110:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by SurfaceDog:
I went through full-blown "baby SWOS" - no only that, but I did it in Coronado instead of Newport which was definitely more fun.

Yeah, there was a lot of wasted time - driving YP's around was totally worthless, and a number of classes could have been easily trimmed./QUOTE]

You SWOSPAC guys were at the beach by 1330 every day. Is that really "wasted time" Mike?

Respectfully,
Surface Force

Nope - we used to sit at the bar on the second floor of the BOQ and watch all the BUDS candidates going through Hell Week.

Let's hear it for increasing the length of training for surface officers. Way overdue.

But let's look at this a little bit more. Four weeks of training for surface officers but 18-20 months of training for submarine officers. What is wrong with this picture? Granted, most of that training is nuclear power school and prototype but it is required for all but supply and the occassional medical officers.

Former YN1(SS)

quote:

Originally posted by SurfaceDog:

Nope - we used to sit at the bar on the second floor of the BOQ and watch all the BUDS candidates going through Hell Week.

There are certainly worse places to be hang your hat while TAD and/or going to school than the BOQ at either NAS North Island or Coranado.

I went through this new 3 weeker in March I want to say it was. I had been onboard my ship since August 2008. The worthwhile part of the course was all of about a week. One full week was a quote unquote leadership class that was completely worthless, and a whole other week was "hey this is a powerpoint-we're not going to bother showing you the subject, since our only object here is to click through every slide." Yes, it is better than nothing, but there is a WHOLE lot of improvement needed. Most of what was "taught" was honestly EASY to pick up in the first few weeks of being onboard, so giving a class about it was pointless. The important stuff (DC, Engineering, Supply) was barely covered. The practical zone inspection that we did was probably useful to some, but since I had been doing a zoner every week since reporting aboard-it was a waste of time for me. The worst part was, I was already well rooted in my command, so after a whole 8 hours of classroom BS, I still had to go back to my ship to get work done that could have gotten done with no loss of learning had I just skipped the class.

That's my two cents.