Navy Officer Accessions, SARBs, and the Nuke Draft

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USNA Service Assignment Review Boards

I will preface this by noting that my knowledge is dated. As of posting, it has been nearly ten years since I left my job in USNA’s Career Information and Officer Accessions Department (I guess they’re calling it Officer Accessions & Talent Optimization now). It was a small department, consisting of at most three people during my time: Department Head, Career Information Officer (CIO), and Service Assignment Officer (SAO). However, one or the other of those latter two billets was often gapped, with either the SAO or the CIO (whichever was assigned) pulling double duty under the Department Head. Even so, while nominally billeted to USNA as CIO from October 2011 (just after a year in Iraq) to February 2013 (en route Department Head school), and pulling double duty for some months while the SAO billet was itself gapped, there was plenty of time to knock out a Masters program and teach a couple semesters of NS 101 Basic Seamanship and Navigation between working on service assignment for the classes of 2012 and 2013.

Being a mere Lieutenant, working for a Commander who himself reported to a Captain in the same building, I was really only a functionary, not a decisionmaker. Still, I was close enough to the service assignment process during my time to see some of the inner workings of USNA officer accessions and the Service Assignment Review Board (SARB).

To help keep me honest, I have referred to USNA Instruction 1301.5, Midshipmen Service Assignment, while drafting this post. At this moment, September of 2022, the current version appears to be USNAINST 1301.5L, but it looks like it gets revised every couple of years, give or take, and the most current version for the uncommonly interested future reader should be available through USNA Administrative Department’s online database. I would encourage any midshipman reading this blog to also refer to that, as it is the source document for service assignment at USNA. However, it is not the only relevant document, particularly where the SARB is concerned. There’s also COMDTMIDNNOTE 1301 (Service Assignment Review Board Precepts) and COMDTMIDNNOTE 1302 (Designation of Senior Community Service Representatives and Responsibilities for Midshipmen Service Assignment and Career Information). Unfortunately, those documents appear to be available only through USNA’s internal server, to which I do not have access. I don’t recall if midshipmen have access, but if you’re currently at USNA and interested in knowing more, you might consider searching this database or this database for “SARB” and see what shows up.

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DISCLAIMER: Please do not send any of the aforementioned documents to me (COMDTMIDNNOTE 1301/1302). Copy’s of USNA’s internal documents, even unclassified, are neither requested nor desired. If it turns out I am wrong about something, I would be glad to know, but I do not run this blog to dig up dirt on USNA or to take cheap shots at the Navy (which isn’t to say I don’t take shots at the Navy on this blog, only that they are not “cheap”: I am not Commander Salamander).

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Anyway…

I also had the opportunity to peak behind the curtain–just a little–and see how the Navy balances its accessions from the various commissioning sources beyond USNA. I had, for example, the opportunity to sit in on video teleconferences hosted by the Bureau of Naval Personnel, along with representatives from Naval Service Training Command (which overseas Navy ROTC) and Navy Recruiting Command (or whoever it was representing OCS accessions). Of course my boss did most (okay, all) of the talking, but the information helped me understand some of the… peculiarities of the service assignment process at USNA (and also some eyebrow-raisers I’d previously encountered in the fleet). This gave me insight into how the Navy manages officer accessions not only at USNA, but also how the various accession sources (NROTC, OCS, and even the Merchant Marine Academy) for Unrestricted Line (URL) officers are throttled to achieve the required number of ensigns each year. So while most of this post is about the SARB, I’ll devote some space to the broader world of US Navy officer accessions.

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NOTE: If you’re a USNA midshipman and just want a sense of how to act in front of the SARB (maybe some things not to say, and how to massage things a little), consider scrolling past to sections 5 and 6–maybe at least skim sections 2 and 4.

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1. USNA represents only a fraction of the Navy’s overall officer accessions–but it’s a big and expensive fraction, and there’s a strong bias against waste

This first section is a bit of a dissertation on officer accessions in general–not just at USNA, but the Navy writ-large. This section won’t say a lot about the SARB, but it might help explain some oddities–even absurdities–of the Navy’s officer accessions program and be of general interest to those unattached to USNA. For instance, why does it sometimes seem like no matter how qualified the applicant, it’s virtually impossible to get an OCS slot for SWO some years? Or why in the world would the Navy tell a US Merchant Marine Academy graduate (someone who will have way more shiphandling knowledge than a typical USNA graduate) that they can’t commission into the Navy as a SWO, but they can maybe get a spot as a… Naval Flight Officer?

A. For starters, each commissioning source is allotted minimum and maximum quotas each year, not just overall, but for each community. USNA and NROTC (and for our purposes, let’s lump STA-21 in with NROTC) account for roughly equal number officers each year (I don’t remember the exact percentages, but I think it was something like 35-40% each, for 70-80% combined), with OCS filling out the bulk of the remainder, and a handful of slots for US Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) graduates makes ups the remainder.

B. However, the quotas assigned to USNA and NROTC for a given year don’t always match the number of actual graduates. That is, USNA and NROTC between them may be mathematically incapable of producing the minimum number of qualified graduates for URL, or more likely for a particular community, than is required. And it can’t just conjure those up out of nothing. Alternatively, USNA and NROTC between them might end up producing more graduates than anticipated some years. While quotas are adjusted to meet community needs year-to-year, USNA and NROTC midshipmen are selected up to 5 years before they might actually commission.

C. Absent direct intervention by the Secretary of the Navy or higher (which seems to mostly come up with athletes wanting a chance to go pro) to commission all medically qualified graduates into active duty and, if further medically qualified, as URL officers (barring a very limited number of exceptions). I know historically there have been periods of rapid draw-down where the Navy has been prepared to relieve some number of NROTC and/or USNA graduates, willingly or not, of their active duty commitment and there was (and might still be) a policy to put newly commissioned Ensigns into the reserves as a temporary cost-saving measure (such as when there are long delays in a training pipeline, like flight school, and the Navy doesn’t want to pay a bunch of Ensigns to sit around murdering birds), but the point is, barring caveats beyond the midshipman’s control, a medically qualified graduate of USNA or the NROTC scholarship program will be commissioned onto active duty, and almost certain into the URL.

D. USNA is both the most expensive and the least flexible of the URL commissioning sources. Consider:

  • OCS can actually respond to variations in demand within a given year simply by selecting more or less applicants to attend OCS. These are people who, at the start of a given year weren’t even selected for a commissioning program (applications in, but the Navy’s decisions still pending, so the Navy had assumed almost not costs on them yet, beyond just recruiter engagement and processing the applications), and yet by the end of the year could theoretically be selected and commissioned through the Navy’s 13-week OCS.
  • Although NROTC midshipmen, like USNA midshipmen, may be selected for a commissioning path prior to starting college, NROTC also has the ability to offer two-year scholarships and even non-scholarship “advanced standing” to contract additional midshipmen midway through their degrees. This can makeup for unplanned attrition, or even be “built in” to the process, such as by intentionally under-assessing the number of 4-year scholarships offered, and then making up for it later–closer to the year of actual commissioning–with 2-year scholarships and advanced standing.
  • USNA, on the other hand, is locked into a four-year plan for each midshipman the moment they are selected for admission, and it can’t do anything to make up additional numbers for a given class once it arrives at USNA. Midshipmen can, however, attrite (at will or otherwise) at any point, and “payback” through either enlisted service or recoupment of funds, even if sought, does nothing to fill the gap they left in that class year.

E. The Navy is allowed to commission only so many ensigns each year, and for that matter communities will only need (or have room for) so many new ensigns each year. While the Navy can (and often does) try to cram a few more ensigns onto each ship, creating some surge capacity, even this practice has its limits (both in terms of shipboard space and training capacity for the surface fleet), and it’s a LOT harder to cram more ensigns into a limited number of cockpits and increase the number of flight instructors.

F. Not all midshipmen qualified for a URL commission will be qualified for every URL community (the most common URL communities being Pilot, NFO, Submarines, and SWO). Specifically, Pilots and NFOs must pass flight physicals and submariners–in addition to having slightly more stringent medical requirements than SWO–must have good grades and complete a series of interviews to show that they have a good chance of completing the nuclear training pipeline after commissioning (surface nukes, who among other things are in charge of the reactor plants on aircraft carriers must complete the same interview process, but they represent a minority of both SWOs and nuclear-trained officers). This has a few ramifications:

  • USNA and NROTC midshipmen who aren’t qualified for anything else, but who are otherwise qualified for URL, basically have to be commissioned as SWOs (with very, very, very few exceptions), whether they want to be or not (and as far as USNA is concerned, since they will have no other option but to be SWOs, it will be like giving these midshipmen their “top choice” for service assignment every time–isn’t that nice?).
  • Once this happens, there are very often more NROTC and USNA midshipmen who actually want to be SWOs (I was one of those–I actually wanted to be a SWO) than can be accommodated based on the quotas USNA has.
  • Paradoxically, even though the SWO community is infamous for being overpopulated with people who don’t want to be SWOs, some midshipmen who actually want to be SWOs… will not become SWOs (okay, this actually is relevant to the SARB, but I’ll get to that in another section).
  • It used to be–and I looked this up while I was at USNA–that if you wanted to fly and had good eye sight, you could be a pilot. If you wanted to fly and had bad eye sight, you could be an NFO. Of course both had to pass the Aviation Selection Test Battery (ASTB) and complete a flight physical, but NFO could accommodate those whose vision was only “correctable” to 20/20. But… then ~2000, and increasingly thereafter to the point that just about any USNA midshipman who wanted it could get the surgery for free, the Navy started allowing waivers (pretty much rubber stamped) for corrective eye surgery. Suddenly everyone who wanted to fly could get the surgery. The dividing line, then, between pilot and NFO was no longer eye sight but test scores and other performance metrics like GPA or Order of Merit. The number of midshipmen who actually wanted to be NFOs dropped off precipitously, as there was a rising perception (by no means warranted–and I’ll have more on this as well) that NFOs were second-tier. NFOs became, in a sense, the “SWOs of the Sky,” with the caveat that where as some people (like me) actually wanted to be SWOs first and foremost… well, who the hell wants to be the back-seater if they can be a pilot? (again, more on that later).
  • Because USNA and NROTC really do try to avoid forcing midshipmen into jobs that they absolutely do not want (provided they are actually qualified for what they do want–and, again, everyone is qualified to be a SWO, and you do actually have to pass a test to be an NFO, in addition to the flight physical), there might be some fudging of the numbers permitted. And much of this fudging was done through those video teleconferences I had the opportunity to sit in on.

What this may all add up to is that while OCS, in theory, gets its own allotment of quotas each year and it is was indeed possible for graduates of the US Merchant Marine Academy to commission into the Navy as well, any over/under in USNA/NROTC numbers (i.e. too many SWOs, not enough NFOs) would have to be made up by (or come out of) OCS and USMMA numbers. Which is why some years it might seem like it’s easier to ship to OCS as a SEAL-trainee than a SWO, or to graduate from USMMA into flight training than onto the deck of a US Navy warship.

By way of illustration, here is a screen capture from a brief on USNA service assignment provided to the Parent’s Club in 2020:

What you will see, if you squint, is a comparison of the lower/upper bands (likely the minimum and maximum quotas approved for USNA by OPNAV) with USNA’s “goal” for each community somewhere in between.

  • Note how the USNA Goal for NFOs was set to just barely meet the Lower Band, and even then USNA didn’t quite reach it, even as it had a few more SWOs to spare.
  • Note, too, how the Goal for submarines was set to just barely meet the Lower Band
  • I wouldn’t be shocked to learn they didn’t need to have a draft for subs that year–although maybe they did need a handful–but by the end of the year you can see that while USNA did make its Lower Band for SWOs, it didn’t quite reach its goal.
  • By the end of the year, USNA didn’t even meet the Lower Band for NFO
  • This to me suggests that, whether there was a “draft” or not, USNA likely had a few Pilot/NFO midshipmen fail their flight physicals, and it needed to make those up by shuffling Pilot/NFO with SWOs. Perhaps some who wanted to be SWOs were “invited” to take the ASTB and complete flight physicals, while those who had failed flight physicals would have either been made SWOs if they were still medically qualified for URL, or commissioned RL/Restricted Line if they were medically qualified to commission but not for URL (and see how few, less than 1% of the class, went RL), or…
  • There were also 12 midshipmen who, by the end of the year, qualified for graduation (they put in the work and earned their degrees) but did not commission (the GNC category at the very bottom of the table). You can expect these 12 were found medically not qualified to commission (at all, even as RL).

Now, with that out of the way, I can go on about the SARB. Starting with how some mids ended up in front of the SARB independent of any sort of “draft.”

2. The “Nuke Draft” isn’t the only reason for the SARB

The Service Assignment Review Board (SARB) is a board made up of senior officers who review pending/proposed service assignments for individual midshipmen. It will be composed of O6s (Captains and a Colonel) standing in as the “senior representative” (not counting the Superintendent, Commandant, or–I think–Deputy Commandant) for their respective community or communities (Navy Pilots and NFOs might, for example, be represented by a single “aviation” rep). For example, during my time at USNA the SARB was composed of the following members:

  • A USMC Colonel, representing all the marine communities (Ground, Pilot, and NFO at the time–even though he was, if I remember right, a USMC Pilot himself)
  • A USN SWO Captain
  • A USN Submarine Captain (representing “nukes” to the extent SWO(N)s needed to go through the same battery of interviews and training pipeline as submariners)
  • A USN Pilot Captain (representing Navy Pilots and NFOs)

Part of the SARB’s role is, or at least was in my day, to help massage the numbers and match preferences to quotas to the maximum extent possible. So, if it was short for a particular community that had certain requirements, it might have called in a whole slew of Midshipman with certain characteristics suggesting they could both meet those requirements. Other times, the SARB might call a midshipman in for a more individualized purpose, perhaps even irrespective of quota concerns, such as to to clarify the particular Midshipman’s true preferences and, even where there was no evidence of “gaming the system,” to get a sense of how strongly they felt (and why) about any particular community. For example:

A. Once, the SARB brought in a ranker just to expose him to the process. At the end of it, they basically told him to go back and “tell your friends” so as to remove some of the mystery around the proceedings. The SARB did not, as I recall, make any changes to his assignment (I don’t even think that was on the table–unless of course he had expressed a change of interest, in which case I am sure the SARB would have heard him out). I have a similar motivation for this blog post: to shed some light on the mystery, and allow for more informed encounters with the SARB and service assignment in general.

B. More than once the SARB called in a midshipman who put SWO down as their top preference, but got shit grades in their Navigation and Seamanship courses and had consistently put SWO near the bottom of their Career Interest Surveys. The question was why. Did they just have a really good summer cruise experience that warmed them up to SWO? Did they seek out mentors and, after much discussion, arrive at an informed decision that the SWO community was actually best for them? Did they start studying for the ASTB, but decide it wasn’t worth it and give up? Did they just want to be a SWO because it had the shortest service commitment after graduation, and they were already so soured on the Navy they just wanted to do their time and get out? And so on. Because, depending on the answer, it might just turn out that (a) we really should avoid making that Midshipman a SWO if we can help it, (b) the Midshipman might at least be willing, without too much prompting, to help meet the quota for another community (like NFO), or (c) this Midshipman would be a great fit for SWO and we really ought to find a place for them in that community, even if we’ve exceeded the *maximum allowed quota for the year.

C. Once the SARB brought in a midshipman who indicated a (sincere) preference for SWO, but he was so convinced that SARB = “nuke draft” that just as soon as he found out he was scheduled for a SARB he started looking seriously into what life on a submarine is like, talking with mids who had done sub cruises, with submarine officers, etc., and it’s like he got religion or something. He showed up to the SARB and almost immediately volunteered for submarines. In point of fact, the SARB was looking for potential NFO candidates (NFOs were short that year, SWOs were doing just fine, and if memory serves this particular midshipman had something in his background–I can’t remember if he was an aerospace engineering major, had participated in some aviation-related clubs/cruises, or what, only that something in his background suggested he might at least have an interest in aviation). The SARB really just wanted to see how he’d feel about taking the ASTB so he could qualify for an NFO spot if needed to meet quota. But here he was, volunteering to interview with Naval Reactors for submarines, and, well… after some initial confusion and a callback, I think that’s what he got (because, hey, if he says he’s a willing volunteer…).

D. I remember another instance where a midshipman was called in for NFO, and he had a whiff of aviation about him, but he had neither taken the ASTB nor indicated a strong preference for Pilot/NFO. This midshipman, unlike Midshipman C above, did not surreptitiously volunteer for a nuke interview, but did agree to take the ASTB. However, he explained to the SARB that if the Navy needed him to fill an aviation quota (which he would do if ordered), he would rather be a pilot than an NFO for… reasons. As fate would have it, he took the ASTB and did well enough that, when he was thrown into the mix with all the other Pilot/NFO candidates, he came out high enough to get a pilot slot. So one of the midshipmen who might otherwise have gotten a pilot slot… got NFO instead.

E. And yes, I’m sure at least once (or several times) the SARB ordered someone in to “strongly encourage” them to prepare for a nuke interview and volunteer for submarines. But I’m not even sure such cases comprised a plurality, let alone a majority, of those called in by the SARB. And just because the SARB called them in, doesn’t mean they ended up being assigned to submarines.

Just as an aside, in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve spent a fair amount of time going on about NFOs. While things might have changed in the last ten years, in my day the SARB was as much an “NFO draft” as anything else. Not that nukes didn’t struggle to make their numbers, but NFOs seemed to struggle harder. That was the case when I was commissioning through NROTC back in 2005, and it was the case when I was at USNA from 2011 to 2013.

Out of curiosity, as part of my “choose your own adventure” experience at USNA (and also because it really was relevant to my job), I looked at trends in service assignment and career interest survey preferences over the preceding 20 years (that is, from 1992 to 2012), confirming that interest in NFO dropped markedly around the year 2000, which coincided with a series of changes in policy that (a) allowed NAMI to waive certain corrective eye surgeries for pilot flight physicals, and (b) gradually allowed increasing numbers of USNA midshipmen to get corrective eye surgery at no cost through the Navy. It used to be that people with less than 20/20 vision who wanted to fly went willingly to NFO because NFO at least allowed for corrective lenses. But nowadays, with 20/20 vision just an outpatient procedure away and midshipmen getting it by the busload (literally, like, they would take a busload of midshipmen over to Bethesda every few weeks to get the surgery), everyone has the eyes to be a pilot, and NFO is suddenly something (wrongly, to my mind) to be avoided rather than aspired to.

That shift, from a vision-based to a merit-based distinction between pilot and NFO might explain why some mids would try to game the system with an eye towards locking in a pilot spot. Except…

3. Gaming the system could get mids in front of the SARB

Do you have any idea what it was like, going from being in Iraq, to teaching NS 101: Basic Seamanship and Navigation to a bunch of MIDN 4/C? Plebes can be so mean!

When I was assisting with service assignment for the classes of 2012 and 2013, we looked for people trying to manipulate their preferences to try and “force” the system to give them their top preference (as opposed to their actual number two preference). For, example, I might generate a spreadsheet listing the ranked preferences with all one thousand MIDN 1/C, sorted according to second and first preference, to look for midshipmen listing, say, “Navy Pilot” as their first preference, but anything other than “Naval Flight Officer” (NFO) as their second. Barring some obvious explanation (such as they just barely qualified for pilot, and didn’t quite qualify for NFO on their ASTB–something I’d grant would be basically impossible to do on purpose) I would flag that record. I would also look at the results of the Career Interest Surveys for the three preceding years and match them against service assignment preferences to look for inconsistencies (such as, again, if a midshipman indicated a strong preference for NFO, second only to Pilot, on the CIS, but suddenly had NFO as their number 6 preference–or no preference at all–for service assignment). I also used the MIDS database to spit out spreadsheets full of other relevant information. I could see, in a glance, how each midshipman performed at USMC’s leatherneck (if they attended at all), their OOM (and AOM and MOM), their CQPR, their major, their ASTB scores (if they had them), their PT scores, a summary of any major or minor conduct offenses, etc., etc.

With that information I knew–and the SARB would be sure to know as well, from the materials I helped prepare before each meeting of the SARB–exactly what “Midshipman Gamer” was doing when he or she indicated “Navy Pilot” as their top preference, followed by “USMC Pilot,” “USMC Ground,” “Submarines,” “SWO(N),” and “Naval Flight Officer,” in that order, particularly as said Midshipman Gamer had a respectable (but not Earth-shattering) 6/6/6 ASTB score, didn’t complete Leatherneck, was a PoliSci major with a 2.7 CQPR, and never did a nuke interview. Don’t quite follow me? Consider:

A. With very few exceptions (refer to USNAINST 1301.5L, section 5, paragraph b for details), midshipmen are limited to selecting from mainstream (non-special operations) Navy URL and USMC career options. Those options are:

There are certain allowances for midshipmen to select SEAL, EOD, IWC, medical/dental, and various “SWO-options” as a first preference, and provisions for midshipmen who are not physically qualified for a URL or USMC commission to have an alternate list of potential communities, but the bulk of midshipmen will be assigned to one of the mainstream Navy URL/USMC communities listed above.

Therefore, the communities Midshipman Gamer listed as “preferences” in this example were most likely, with the possible exception of USMC NFO (or whatever USMC Cyber is), the only communities Midshipman Gamer could select from (there are other restrictions on who even has the opportunity to choose SEAL, EOD, IWC, or medical/dental as a preference, further highlighting the extent to which the bulk of midshipmen are funneled into choosing from mainstream Navy URL/USMC communities).

B. There is a strong preference to place midshipmen in one of their top three communities (or is it top two now? See also).

So, with such a range of preferences, it would seem we just have to make Midshipman Gamer a Navy or Marine Pilot, or at worst a Marine ground officer, or else, gosh!, we’d have to give them something other than one of their top three preferences, and we just can’t have that, right?

C. With very few exceptions, those assigned to commission into the USMC will have completed Leatherneck and would have very slim chances of selecting USMC without a grade of B or better (or at least that was the general rule ten years ago).

So we certainly can’t put Midshipman Gamer into Marine Ground or USMC Pilot, because they didn’t complete Leatherneck, right?

D. As far as any hypothetical “nuke draft” might go, some midshipmen just aren’t qualified to be nuclear engineers. Not even if Admiral Rickover came back to life and demanded to interview every last one of them. Per USNAINST 1301.5L, there is a hard CQPR limit of 2.5, below which a midshipman won’t even have the ability to select SWO(N) or Submarines as a service assignment option. I also recall that there were varying minimum CQPRs identified (as internal guidance) for potential nuke interview candidates based on whether they were pursuing a Tier I, II, or III major. A PoliSci major with, as in Midshipman Gamer’s case, a 2.7 CQPR, would likely not be selected for a Naval Reactors interview because that is a Tier III major and we wouldn’t expect a Tier III major with those grades to do well at all in the nuclear training pipeline.

With all that taken together (A, B, C, and D above) it seems Midshipman Gamer has tied our hands, right? Ticking off the boxes, we couldn’t make Midshipman Gamer a Marine of any sort because they didn’t do Leatherneck (although maybe an exception could be made–maybe), they don’t have the right major/grades for a nuke interview, and, well, I mean, they ranked NFO dead last, and we obviously can’t give a midshipman their dead last preference when they are otherwise equally qualified for their first preference (Navy Pilot), right?

Ha! Wrong. This would be precisely the pattern of “oddities” we would pick out from just a cursory review of available data (which, again, we would have ready for easy viewing on a single spread sheet, generated on demand from the MIDS database for all one thousand plus MIDN 1/C with minimal effort), and so make Midshipman Gamer a prime candidate for an invitation to the SARB. Not necessarily to be drafted, but just to give them an opportunity to “explain” their preferences (and why they should–or should not–be taken seriously at this, the dawn of their naval career).

So the SARB wasn’t just a “nuke draft.” But, much as it pains me to say it, the “nuke draft” was part of it, and some mids did get called in for precisely that reason. That said, between being a nuke myself and seeing all these SARB outcomes, I started to wonder….

4. What if the nuke draft is only in your mind?

I frankly have no idea what might happened if someone went to an interview at Naval Reactors and expressly declined to volunteer, but aren’t they always saying the submarine force is “all volunteer”? What if that’s actually true, even for officers? Or is the property and nature of being “volunteer” or “voluntary” transitive, such that having an all volunteer military necessarily makes the submarine force–which is but one component of the military–“all volunteer” as we well, or am I just going down a philosophical rabbit hole that might lead you to stop reading?

For full disclosure, I was a nuke myself–a surface nuke. And I wanted to be a surface nuke. I interviewed and was selected for surface nuke. I was thus a full and willing participant in the nuclear enterprise. When I interviewed at Naval Reactors in DC I was asked about my preference for SWO(N) and why I wanted to be a SWO(N) specifically (and not a submariner) during at least one of my interviews. I explained my reasonings thusly: I really wanted to be a SWO. I really, really wanted to be a SWO (and for that I had my reasons, which I expanded upon). However, as a math major, I was also happy to have a chance to continue utilizing my degree in the Navy, and as soon as I learned that SWO(N)s are just SWOs with additional training, that they follow the same career path and have the same designator and qualifications as SWOs, up to and including command at sea, I was more than happy to be a SWO(N). Because a SWO(N) is just another kind of SWO, and as a SWO(N) I could do all the things I’d joined the Navy to do, plus some other things. I also had a really good experience on my summer cruise aboard a CVN. Basically, I gave my reasons for wanting to be a SWO(N), and not too much detail into why I didn’t want to be a submariner (I didn’t have very strong feelings against it, it just wasn’t what I joined the Navy to do), and I was not pressed further.

In addition to that line of questioning about “Why not subs?” at the nuke interview (to which, again, my answer was mostly an affirmative “because SWO(N)” rather than a negative “not subs because…”) I, like every other NROTC midshipman selected for SWO(N) that year got a phone call from… someone (I don’t remember who, probably just someone on the staff at NR, or from Navy Personnel Command, certainly I don’t think it was anyone very senior). The purpose of the phone call was to ask, one last time, whether I might be willing to go submarines instead of SWO(N). I again politely declined, and did not have to go into so much detail. It was a short phone call, no pressure. But sometimes being a SWO(N) was like…

I still have a lump on the back of my head from nuke school.

While I never had to explain in great detail why I didn’t want to be a submariner (I just had to offer good enough reasons to be a SWO(N)), I recognize that my experience coming out of NROTC may not be representative of what those going through USNA have experienced. Maybe USNA midshipmen do, at some point, have to explain “why not subs?” on the way to NR. That said, I wonder… if someone actually got to NR and, when asked, respectfully explained they really didn’t want to be a submariner, what would happen next? Would the interviews continue? Do such people still get “nuke drafted”? Has anyone even tried just saying (respectfully) no? I’d be interested to hear the story if so.

But in lieu of direct personal experience with saying “No” to the submarine community and NR, here’s another story. At the end of my nuclear division officer tour, I volunteered to deploy to Iraq. Although most such assignments involved performing staff duties with an Army unit or on a joint staff, I specifically picked one of the rare Navy-oriented assignments: I deployed as an advisor to the Iraqi Navy. Pretty cool, right? This is what it looks like when you try to build a Navy in the desert, in case you’re wondering:

Crazy, right?

Well, not long after I joined my unit in Iraq, there was a call for… “volunteers.” What sort of duty do they call for volunteers for once you’re in Iraq, you ask?

Only the worst kind.

The call was for volunteers to serve on the staff of the Deputy Commanding General for Advisory and Training, United States Forces Iraq (Lieutenant General Something O’Rother, I believe). See, being as DCG A&T USF-I was a joint command, the general wanted a “joint” front office. Army, Air Force, Marines, and… Navy. From the Navy, he wanted an O3/O4-type to serve as scheduling officer (basically someone to sit at a desk 18 hours a day watching his calendar in Outlook). Since I’d only just arrived in Iraq, my chain of command thought I’d be perfect. Plus, I was a nuke, and everyone knows nukes are smart. So they scheduled me for a VTC with the Under Assistant to the Deputy Backup Chief of Staff (whatever–some Colonel), and he seemed as eager for me to volunteer to be on the staff as my chain of command was to volunteer me. But of course I did not go to Iraq to serve on a staff in Baghdad: I specifically volunteered for the novel experience of helping to build (okay, re-build after we blew the last two up) the Iraqi Navy. In point of fact, I had taken this particular deployment–a full year on the ground–over several much shorter options with Army units (amounting to only six months in-country) because it was such a unique opportunity. So there was no fucking way I was going to volunteer to spend a whole fucking year doing the kind of job I wasn’t even willing to spend six months doing.

So here’s what I told the Colonel (more or less, going off memory, not an exact quote):

“I will go wherever I am ordered and do my job to the best of my abilities whatever it may be. But to be clear: I do not volunteer for this assignment. I came to Iraq to be an advisor with the Iraqi Navy, even though as a Navy nuke I could have taken a job that would have guaranteed I would never have to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan, even though it was twice as long as the other jobs on my slate. So while I will go to Baghdad and I will work diligently as scheduling officer if I am ordered, I do not volunteer. If you don’t need me to volunteer, then I understand, but if you really want a volunteer, I am not it.”

The Chief of Staff was… perplexed, even flummoxed, but I persisted. I made it clear that I would go where ordered and strive to do my job well, but if they wanted me to do this particular job (scheduling officer for a 3-star), they would have to actually order me to do it. Which, to be sure, the military does all the time. So I don’t think it was too much to expect that if they wanted someone to do the job and do it well, and they wanted that someone to be me, all they had to do was order me. But I wasn’t going to volunteer.

And you know what? I did not have to go to Baghdad to be a scheduling officer. I did have a short, one-sided conversation with my 1-star (a SWO Rear Admiral) whose own Assistant Chief of Staff had been sitting in on the VTC alongside me and who was also somewhat… disquieted by my persistent refusal to volunteer. And my normally chill (very British) Commanding Officer was likewise upset (I believe the words “You have caused us no end of trouble” were used), but at the end of the day, I stayed with the Iraqi Navy in southern Iraq. I made myself useful, and by the end of the deployment my FITREP was good, my end of tour award was great, and that particular deployment would prove to be both one of the most rewarding and one the most traumatic experiences of my life.

So what am I getting at? Put simply: if the official story is they want a volunteer and you don’t want to be that volunteer, then consider… maybe just… don’t volunteer, and see what happens? If they sit you down in front of a bunch of O6s (like the SARB) or even an Admiral (like the 4-star at Naval Reactors, who has the final say on all nuclear officer accessions), and you haven’t said it, just consider saying: “Sir/Ma’am, to be clear, I understand must go where I am ordered and strive to do my duty to the best of my abilities no matter the task, but I do not volunteer for this and I do not feel I would be a good candidate on that basis, please do not assign me to duty aboard submarines.” If they don’t cut you off immediately, you might even consider offering a few words on what you feel you would be a good candidate for and why.

The point is, it’s your life and I don’t think it’s wrong to require the Navy to actually flex it’s muscles and actually exercise its coercive power if it’s expecting you to do something you’d rather not do. See also Before the Law, by Franz Kafka (it’s a very short story, barely more than a page, consider giving it a read).

5. Impressions matter. Especially if you get called in for trying to game the system.

I think I made this point clear enough in the proceeding section: it’s important to be able to state your service assignment preferences in positive, rather than negative, terms. That is, “I want to be X because X is…” rather than “I want to be X because I don’t want Y.” However, if you’ve made the (intentional) mistake of trying to game the system–such as by indicating a strong preference for pilot, but weak or no preference for NFO–and now you’ve been called in to face the SARB to explain yourself, you are already in a tough spot. Because you might just be called upon to explain why you don’t want to be an NFO, even though your official story (when you put in your preferences) was that you absolutely did not want to be an NFO.

If you find yourself in that position, as a pilot hopeful who tried to game the system getting called in to the SARB (and they might not tell you why–they might just ask you to explain your preferences, or something vague like that), I strongly recommend… not so much that you admit to trying to game the system, but that you allow that while you really do want to be a pilot for [insert good reasons here–briefly, and without trying to hijack the board], you’ve also been thinking a bit more about NFO, and you have come to the mature understanding that NFO would be a pretty good outcome too, and maybe you would rather have that be your number two preference, if only it were possible to make that change…

That is assuming you really would rather be an NFO if you don’t get a pilot spot. Obviously don’t lie just to please the SARB.

If you genuinely cannot stand the idea of being an NFO, and you really weren’t trying to game the system, then all I can say is you had better have some really good explanation as to why. And here, why you want to be a pilot (positive terms) probably isn’t good enough. You might actually need to be prepared to explain why you would not be a good fit for NFO, and in doing so you had better indicate more than a vague understanding of what NFOs do. You should be prepared to talk about how thoroughly you educated yourself on cruise and by talking with actual NFOs to get a sense of what the job is like and why you would actually be a better SWO or Marine than NFO if you don’t get pilot. It’s quite the needle to thread, and I don’t believe I ever saw anyone do it effectively. Pretty much universally, midshipmen who tried to do that ended up casting shade on one or more communities that they clearly did not understand beyond the sort of tribal knowledge that gets spread within the brigade, and the end result was something of an “eff that guy…” conversation after the offending midshipman departed the room. Which is not a good place to be in when that same room full of O6s is discussing your service assignment, your future.

Similar caution should be adopted by anyone called into the SARB (particularly as you might have no idea why you are being called in, even if you didn’t game the system, even if you put subs as your top choice, followed by SWO(N), NFO, pilot, and SWO in that order and have the grades/test scores to support). It’s the reason why, again, my first advice is to frame your preferences in positive terms (why you want what you want, rather than why you don’t want what you don’t want) until such time as you are specifically called upon to answer, “Why not [insert less preferred option]?” Because the ugly truth is very few midshipmen–I would wager even very few commissioned officers–are capable of answering that question, why not?, without casting shade or trash talking other communities and with sufficient detail to satisfy a board made up of O6s, including at least one from… whatever community you don’t want to be in. Remember, the SARB is all the mainstream URL communities, represented by an O6, together in one room. Even the ones who don’t mind trash-talking other communities behind closed doors (be it the wardroom on a destroyer, or a ready room on a CVN) will cringe at hearing a midshipman trash-talk another community in front of one of its O6s–one of their fellow O6s. And they especially don’t like having to sit there and listen to a midshipman trash-talk their own community.

If called upon to give a negative (“why not?”) explanation, my first advise is to still try and frame it in positive terms, “Because I really want [insert preferred community here] because [insert preferred community here] is great for all these reasons.” If further pressed, along the lines of “Okay, but you still haven’t answered my question: why not [insert less preferred community here]?” there is a real danger of going down in flames. If it comes to that, the best way to survive is to show up to the SARB armed with knowledge about what other communities actually do (not just what you’ve heard other midshipmen say they do).

6. Learn as much as you can, as early as you can, about all the communities

This last one really draws on my Career Information Officer role, but it has implications for service assignment and the SARB. If you don’t actually know what, for example, an NFO actually does (or how experiences in the NFO community, like every other community, can vary quite a lot depending on platform and command climate), then how do you actually know you don’t want to be an NFO? I mean, I knew because I get air sick, which was another reason for me to be some kind of black-shoe (turns out I get seasick too, but oh well). But how do you know you don’t want to be an NFO?

Here, I must confess I didn’t really have a good sense of what NFOs did when I showed up to USNA. And yet “Career Information” was, like, my job. While much of my work involved referring midshipmen to and working with representatives of the various communities at USNA, I needed to be able to at least make a short pitch for each community, and also to recognize and challenge the common misconceptions about the various communities as I encountered them within the Brigade. While being a SWO(N) gave me a fair amount of insight–fair enough at least to deal with midshipmen–into both the SWO community and submarines, my knowledge of what pilots and NFOs actually do hadn’t advanced much since I was a midshipman myself. And that was even after two whole years on an aircraft carrier (during which time my primary exposure to naval aviators involved glaring at them for being too damn loud in the wardroom).

And as I thought back to my experiences as a midshipman, I realized I had been no better informed of other communities than most of the midshipmen I encountered at USNA. While I did learn something more about NFOs while on the staff at USNA (I arranged for a couple squadrons–one Super Hornet, one Hawkeye–to come hold information sessions with mids and talk about what NFOs did on their respective platforms) I didn’t really understand how cool it could be to be an NFO until I attended the Surface Warfare Officer School’s Department Head Course (which came only after I completed my assignment at USNA). Knowing what I know now about NFOs, I might actually have taken the ASTB and put in a preference for NFO myself (I did eventually take the ASTB, but only when I got to USNA because one of my collateral duties was to administer the exam and it helped to have some sense of what it was like).

All that to say, you don’t need to be an expert on life in the fleet for JOs in every community, but if you don’t at least put in a good faith effort to learn something about them, you don’t know what you don’t know. You might think you know everything you need to know to make an informed decision, but then if you wind up in from of the SARB you might just end up with your foot in your mouth, and leaving a terrible impression all around. In my own defense, I can at least say that, being a product of NROTC, I had fairly limited opportunities for exposure to the various communities as a midshipman. There was either a pilot or an NFO (but never both at the same time), with one submariner, and no SWO(N)s. We did have up to three SWOs at a time, and all three were really great guys who went on to command (maybe one of the reasons I was so hyped on going SWO?), but otherwise it was like looking at the Navy through a straw.

But at USNA? Well, when I was there at least the were, like, half a dozen SWO(N)s alone on the Yard, including a post-command O5 serving as a Battalion Officer, and probably dozens of submariners, conventional SWOs, NFOs, and Pilots of every stripe. There were even a couple Navy SEALs and an EOD officer, veritable unicorns by NROTC standards. With all that, if you don’t put in the effort to learn about other communities–communities other than the one you want to join–it can only reflect poorly on you in front of the SARB, and it might even lead you to make an uninformed decision in your service assignment preferences that will have life-long ramifications (in fact, if you think you’ve done that, particularly if you’ve gamed the system, you might want to shoot an email to the CIO or SAO, or stop by their offices, asking if you can tweak your preferences: if it’s to move NFO from 6th place to 2nd, they might just allow it).

That said, if you put in a good faith effort to learn what all the various URL communities do, and yet you still end up in front of the SARB, whether for a draft or just because your preferences appear confusing, and the board appears dissatisfied with your explanations as to why you think you would be a good fit for your preferred community, you can’t go far wrong by (briefly) reiterating your desire to serve in your preferred community, but concluding you will go where ordered and appreciate the opportunity to serve and lead sailors however you are assigned.

Conclusion: A Non-sea Story

So there I was. It was a SWO(N) pride event hosted by one of the Battalion Officers at his government-furnished quarters on the Yard, with then-Rear Admiral Rowden as our guest of honor. There were some light refreshments, all the MIDN 1/C going SWO(N) were “invited,” and it was just one of those opportunities to talk about… stuff.

Ceaseless toil aside, if the nuclear Navy is known for anything it’s tales of Admiral Rickover. For three decades, he ruled the Navy’s nuclear propulsion program with an iron fist, gaining a reputation for eccentricity bordering on (or surpassing) toxicity, coupled with a ruthless adherence to standards. He essentially created the job, Director, Naval Reactors, himself, and then exemplified the expression “if the seat is open, the job is open” well over half a century before it was coined. Materializing at Oak Ridge National Laboratory before the ink was even dry on the Japanese surrender document at the end of WWII, he inserted himself into the Navy’s nuclear propulsion program while it was still in its infancy, cajoling his way to a position of power by kindly “volunteering” (like, for real volunteering, but this time with more sinister undertones) to act as the reporting senior for the handful of other naval officers present at Oak Ridge (basically, he volunteered to be the guy who would sign their fitness reports, thus having a say in whether they would have any chance at ever being promoted again). Soon after recalled to the Pentagon in what might have been the twilight of his career, Rickover then managed to gain the support of the Chief of Naval Operations and Secretary of the Navy for development of a nuclear-powered submarine and get himself appointed to the lead the newly created Nuclear Power Division of the Bureau of Ships (the predecessor of today’s NAVSEA 08, headed by the Director, Naval Reactors). There was a point in the early 1950s when Rickover was nearly forced to retire after being passed over for promotion to Rear Admiral, but by then he was so inextricably linked to the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program that he managed to convince Congress to create a flag officer billet for someone with his exact and exclusive qualifications, effectively forcing the Navy to promote him. By 1982, Rickover had managed to remain on active duty for sixty years and achieved 4-star rank as a full Admiral.

Enter then-Midshipman Rowden (remember Rowden? When we began this story, in medias res as it were, it was circa 2012 and he was a Rear Admiral). It turns out Admiral Rowden, graduating from the Naval Academy as SWO(N) in 1982, had interviewed with Admiral Rickover as a midshipman. And like so many of Rickover’s other victims, he had a story to tell about it. On that night on the Yard, circa 2012, he told us that story of his interview with Admiral Rickover.

But that is not my story, and it is not the story I mean to tell.

I only mention it because it turns out then-Midshipman Rowden was Admiral Rickover’s very last nuke interviewee. He didn’t just go in to see Admiral Rickover on his last day of interviews: he was, as Admiral Rowden tells it, the very last candidate for the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program to interview with Admiral Rickover ever. Neither then-Midshipman Rowden nor Admiral Rickover knew it at the time, but Secretary Lehman was sufficiently fed up with Rickover’s antics (okay, Rickover probably knew that at least) and (what Rickover didn’t know) the political circumstances were, rightly or wrongly, ripe for his “retirement.” Before another round of interviews could be held, Rickover learned of his “retirement” from his wife, who had herself learned about it from a radio news broadcast. So after an unprecedented and as yet unmatched naval career spanning sixty-three years and thirteen presidents, Admiral Rickover, “Father of the Nuclear Navy” and the focus of so many now-legendary tales, had to find something else to do with his life. He spent his few remaining years on Earth promoting science education–a worthy enough cause, I suppose.

As for Rowden… he rose to be Commander, Naval Surface Forces. After obtaining the rank of Vice Admiral, his career, too, came to an end, rightly or wrongly, under somewhat of a shadow. Two disasters at sea, amounting to seventeen sailors drowned in their beds, led to his somewhat earlier than expected retirement, followed soon after by a recommendation for him to be retired at a lower grade. So Admiral Rowden also had to find something else to do with his life. As of posting, at least according to his LinkedIn page, that is Vice President for International Strategy and Business Development at Lockheed Martin (among other things, no doubt).

As for me, well, it turns out my time in Iraq and an earlier overseas tour took a toll on me, and I began my retirement at the age of thirty-five, barely a year after Admiral Rowden began his. So I, too, have had to come up with something else to do with my life. I’m currently in law school if you’re curious.

Point being, while the Navy reaches deep into our lives and has a long memory, it is not everything, and it does not last forever. At some point, barring tragedy, and regardless of how the Navy has treated us in our time, we all have a chance to find something else to do with our lives.

Go blue!

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