As tomorrow’s leaders, the best thing junior officers can do to improve the Navy is invest in their sailors today. High-performing individuals are the best weapon the Navy has, and junior sailors are the tip of the sword. Junior sailors make up the largest portion of the Navy workforce, are likely the most similar in demographics and culture to future recruits, and will one day be the leading petty officers, chief petty officers, and even officers in the Navy. Taking measures to improve their quality of service will result in a better product of work now, make the Navy more attractive to prospective sailors, and will build a stronger cadre of future leaders. There exists great potential for junior officers to look out for junior sailors. They generally come from the same generation and share newness to the Navy. In addition, they are best equipped to bridge the gap between the needs of junior sailors and the ability of senior officers to address those needs. The Navy’s competitive edge can be most effectively sustained and strengthened through an immediate and ongoing commitment to improving relationships between junior officers and enlisted personnel.
Suicide rates in the Navy are rising, and they are the highest among junior sailors. The suicide rate just increased from 20.1 per 100,000 active-duty service members in 2018 to 22.3 in 2019. This is significantly higher than the national suicide rate among all Americans in 2018 (only 14.2 per 100,000 individuals). Furthermore, in 2016, the Navy was reporting figures much closer to the national average, which demonstrates that the suicide rate in the Navy is increasing at a faster rate than the nation’s. Last October, USA Today reported that although young enlisted troops comprise only 43 percent of the military population, they account for 61 percent of suicides. The Washington Post in 2019 reported that most service members committing suicide are “under the age of 30.” Not only is this a troubling issue facing the Navy, but it is disproportionately facing the youngest sailors. Vice Admiral John Newell spoke about suicide in the Navy in a statement to USNI News:
The most important warfighting asset of America’s Navy is . . . our people. . . . The health, safety and well-being of our sailors . . . is absolutely essential and our top priority. The Navy’s suicide prevention programs are focused on building healthy relationships, creating connectedness and reducing barriers to those in need of help.
This sentiment is echoed by former Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer, who said the most valuable asset in the Navy is the human component. Retired Colonel James Helis, director of the Army’s Sexual Assault Prevention Program, and former superintendent of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, says changing the suicide rate in the military requires a cultural change. According to Helis, leaders need to “know their soldiers . . .really know their soldiers, and what’s going on in their lives.” He goes on to say that “people are our number one priority. We can’t do anything without people. . . . Eliminating death by suicide is . . . at its root, about taking care of people.” If the Navy wants to be serious about protecting its most valuable asset, then it needs to take care of its people, and those statistically the most in need of care are junior sailors. If people are truly the number one priority, then service must do as Vice Admiral Newell suggests and get serious about preserving their well-being. Healthy relationships matter. Connectedness matters. They are a matter of national security.
If people are the Navy’s most important warfighting asset, then retention problems are another major threat to maintaining U.S. military advantage. In 2014, Vice Admiral Bill Moran, then–Chief of Naval Personnel, received a report that warned of impending retention problems, a theory formed after interviewing hundreds of sailors. In response, a Navy Retention Study Team was formed that interviewed close to 6,000 members on what they called “quality of service,” which they broke down into quality of work, quality of life, and quality of leadership. The study revealed quality of leadership was the “most polarizing aspect of a sailor’s determination of total quality of service perceptions,” backed up by the overwhelmingly negative responses that area received. In fact, the “most troubling” issue they found was a rampant distrust of senior leadership. In other words, the greatest contributor to a retention problem among sailors was their leadership. In its conclusions, the study emphasized the importance of junior sailors maintaining an edge in any global competition, called them the “difference between success or failure,” and recommended “Senior Leaders Should be Sailor Advocates.” If the Navy wants to be serious about fighting retention issues, then it needs to heed these recommendations and improve it leaders’ capacity to advocate for sailors.
Caring for sailors at the highest levels is easier said than done. Senior leaders do not interact as regularly with junior sailors by design, and with the number of responsibilities facing senior leaders, it is understandable that issues facing only the most junior sailors might go overlooked. Nevertheless, this must be rectified. Junior officers hold an important position in the chain of command because of their potential to more frequently interact with both junior sailors and senior leadership. And although there are demographics differences among officers and enlisted personnel, such as race, education, and socioeconomic background, as officers reach the higher ranks, these disparities become more apparent and significant. As they are closest in age and experience, relationships between officers and enlisted personnel could be most easily achieved. Therefore, the position of the junior officer could and should be more strategically used so those officers can hear the needs of junior sailors and communicate them to senior leaders.
Officers understandably reluctant to get to know their sailors too personally. Fraternization is an obvious barrier, but it also may be a deterrent to connectedness that could otherwise be professional and helpful to the Navy. In 2018, Admiral John Aquilino, commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet, outlined his fraternization policy by prohibiting any relationships that were “unduly familiar.” He defines unduly familiar relationships as any that “create the potential for real or perceived conflicts of interest within the command, and are therefore detrimental to positive morale, unit cohesiveness, and good order and discipline,” but this is still nonspecific. What exactly creates potential for real or perceived conflicts of interest? If there are no conflicts of interest and no threat to good order and discipline, it seems that improving relationships among officers and enlisted personnel could be pivotal to improving morale and unit cohesiveness. But when the definition of unduly familiar includes a reference to perception, one might be nervous to go down that road at all. As Major Charles Thomson addresses in his report Fraternization—A Military Offense?, there is insufficient written guidance on what constitutes fraternization. Though most service members would be familiar with obvious examples of fraternization (i.e., romantic relationships), many officers (or any service member) might avoid any level of closeness or establish an overly cautious distance with their subordinates out of concern that anything else could be perceived as fraternization. By better defining what does and does not constitute fraternization, the Navy might create safe opportunities for officers and enlisted personnel to build camaraderie professionally, without concern for misperception.
Connectedness among officers and enlisted junior officers and enlisted members must be encouraged. Connectedness is proven to reduce suicide rates and also would help facilitate better communication and trust with leaders, which would improve retention (retention, by the way, can translate into saving up to $60,000 that would otherwise be spent on training and recruitment a single recruit, in case a financial incentive was needed). In the absence of amending language in the Uniform Code of Military Justice or a new guidance from overarching leadership, commanding officers should at least be encouraged to write specific stipulations of what rapport-building activities or programs could be authorized that do not constitute fraternization. For example, the 2014 Navy Retention Study showed that 42.8 percent of Sailors reported not having a mentor; it seems that establishing a clearly defined junior sailor–junior officer mentorship program within commands could be one step toward improving this issue. Programs such as this would help enable and empower junior officers to better connect with their sailors, and therefore know and understand their unique concerns. The more clearly fraternization is defined Navy-wide, the more opportunities that might open which could improve relationships and open communication among officers and their sailors. The Navy must affirm its commitment to this goal. All avenues toward improving connectedness through responsible, professional, and healthy relationships should be explored.
If junior officers and junior enlisted personnel can improve their relationships now, the future success of the Navy is even more assured. Those ensigns and lieutenants who take an interest in understanding the unique needs of their seamen and petty officers will carry that knowledge with them as they move up through the ranks. This will allow them to better consider the needs of young enlisted sailors, because the enlisted sailors they connect with now are most like those who will be enlisting next. They will more intimately understand the concerns facing junior sailors and are likely to remember those concerns as they progress in their own careers. This baseline understanding will only create a foundation from which to continue to build awareness (and if programs geared toward connectedness continue, then the next cadre of junior officers will merely be an additional supplement to their leadership’s understanding of the issues facing junior sailors). Furthermore, what was once a mentorship between a lieutenant and a third-class petty officer may become a mentorship between a captain and a chief. These kinds of relationships can happen organically, as service members often cross paths with shipmates past, but that is no reason to not begin implementing a more formal approach to achieving this goal.
The people who comprise the Navy are its greatest asset. Though the service has advanced technologies and weapon systems, none could be employed so effectively without the highly motivated mass of patriots who serve. Unfortunately, the Navy itself presents some of the greatest threats to compromising this asset. Suicide rates are higher in the Navy than they are in the nation and they are highest among our junior sailors. Meanwhile, many of sailors are leaving the Navy, attributing the decision to a poor quality of leadership. Navy leaders must grow to tackle both threats to personnel. Given their position in the chain of command, future capacity to lead the greater Navy as a whole, and inherent common ground shared with junior sailors, junior officers may have one of the simplest and most direct paths to preserving the potential of junior enlisted personnel.
Providing concrete examples of connectedness which offer no risk of being misunderstood as fraternization may enable and empower junior officers to become more involved and interested leaders. Not only would efforts to enhance connectedness between officers and enlisted personnel streamline communication with senior leaders, which might address issues such as retention and suicide, but also the act of making the effort to connect would likely increase morale, camaraderie, and esprit de corps, and make it easier to identify struggling sailors. This would have an immediate positive outcome, and the long-term effects would only multiply as these conscientious officers with broadened perspectives promote. The better junior officers know their sailors today, the better future commanding officers and flag officers will be able to lead the entire Navy tomorrow.