Rear Admiral Jan Tighe
Deputy Director of Operations for U.S. Cyber Command
Deputy Director of Operations for U.S. Cyber Command
Rear Admiral Jan Tighe was born in Bowling Green, Ky., and raised in Plantation, Fla. She was commissioned from the U.S. Naval Academy as an ensign (Special Duty Cryptology) in 1984 after earning a B.S. in Mathematics.
Tighe’s operational cryptologic tours include duty with Naval Security Group Activities in Florida, Virginia, Atsugi/Misawa Japan and on the Pacific Fleet staff.
In 1989 Tighe studied Russian at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif. She was subsequently assigned to the Naval Security Group Detachment Atsugi, Japan, where she earned Naval Aviation Observer wings while deployed as an airborne special evaluator aboard VQ-1 EP-3E aircraft in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Shield/Storm. During her tour, Tighe served as operations officer and assistant officer in charge, in addition to accumulating over 1,200 operational flight hours in the EP-3E aircraft.
Tighe attended the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, Calif., and in 2001 was awarded a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and a M.S. in Applied Mathematics. She subsequently reported to the Naval Information Warfare Activity, where she served as chief staff officer and chief engineer. During her tour she earned a Level III DAWIA certification in Program Management.
Tighe reported as director, Sea Warrior at Naval Security Group Headquarters in July 2004 where she oversaw the development of the Human Capital Strategy for NSG and the IW/Cryptologic community. She fleeted up to the chief of staff in August 2005 and prepared the staff for merger with NETWARCOM. She also served as deputy director of Information Operations within NETWARCOM.
From July 2006 through September 2009, Tighe commanded over 2800 multi-service and multi-agency personnel at the National Security Agency/Central Security Service Hawaii in Kunia. Following command, she served for a year as the executive assistant to director, National Security Agency/chief, Central Security Service and commander, U.S. Cyber Command.
Tighe was selected for rear admiral by the FY11 Selection Board and reported as the deputy director of Operations for U.S. Cyber Command in August 2010.
Tighe has been awarded the Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Meritorious Service Medal (second award), the Strike/Flight Air Medal, the Navy Commendation Medal (fourth award), and the Navy Achievement Medal.
I don't think NSGA Florida, Northwest VA or the CINCPACFLT Staff are "operational" tours. Some of you smart officers will correct me if I am wrong. But remember rule #1.
ReplyDeleteWhat really bothers me most is when someone succeeds and another person disagrees with wording a bio - a shot is fire. RDML Tighe worked hard, educated herself, held command (a unique responsibility few get to enjoy) and yet someone takes a shot.
ReplyDeleteIf you are going to take the shot - put your name on it.
Brian,
ReplyDeleteAgree with you completely. I'd like to know what definition of "operational" the chief wants us to use.
Mike
I hope this isn't sexist but she is the best looking admiral in the Navy. Smart as heck too. PhD!!
ReplyDeleteFirst off, no shots being taken. However, I am intrigued by the definition of "operational."
ReplyDeleteWhat’s operational? That’s easy. “Operational” is sea duty, “non-operational” is being on shore. That’s the way I’ve always heard CTs use those terms. And sea duty is the business of the Navy and something that every Sailor, officer and enlisted should seek out. Being a division officer at a shore site is not being “operational.”
Don’t get me wrong. Not being operational does NOT equal “dirtball,” or “non-contributing,” “lower than whale excrement,” or any other number of epithets sometimes thrown at “sand crabs.” But there is still a very fundamental difference.
Take, for example, Captain Joe Rochefort, OIC of Hypo Station during World War Two. I use him as a superb example of a “non-operational” Sailor making a huge contribution. Before the battle of Midway, the incredible intelligence that Rochefort’s team provided allowed Admiral Nimitz to most efficiently focus his forces and decisively turn the tide of the war. Nimitz himself very publicly recognized Rochefort for having accomplished that.
However, I don’t think that Admiral Nimitz, or even Captain Rochefort , would call Rochefort “operational” using my definition of the word. Rochefort wasn’t sitting in one of those torpedo bombers that were decimated by the Japanese fleet, he wasn’t in the dive bombers that finally destroyed the Jap carriers. He wasn’t on the Yorktown which went down during the battle. He wasn’t on the tip of the spear, wasn’t in harms way. He wasn’t putting his life on the line, he wasn’t sacrificing a normal life for the defense of the United States.
Sea duty implies sacrifice and risk. With notable exceptions, there is little danger in shore duty (at least “CT” shore duty). With commitment to sea duty one commits to years of sacrifice: duty every third day, no sleep, work days without end, months away from loved ones, missing birthdays, births, deaths, Christmas, Thanksgiving, pick your holiday.
Dedication to sea duty means putting yourself in harm's way. Not too many shore sites will have a hot run in a torpedo tube or run into a mine or get slammed with an Exocet or torpedoed by a Kilo or have a reactor scram or a fire at sea or fall into the ocean and be lost at sea...
Remember, “operational” does not mean “more important.” It does mean “smack dab in the middle of the core mission of the Navy.” Everything else is support to that core mission. And every Sailor should want to participate in that core mission, that basic mission of the USN. Every Sailor.
When I was an LCPO at an “A” School, one of the students in my division, straight out of boot camp, unashamedly told me that he never wanted to go to sea. I promptly offered to march him down to the Air Force detachment to request a transfer. To this day, it totally baffles me why anyone who does not want to go to sea would raise their right hand and commit to the Navy.
Everyone in the Navy has the opportunity to “down to the sea in ships.” It should be a no brainer that anyone aspiring to Flag rank would want to do that every chance they get.
LCDR Robert Maguire, USN(Retired)
"RDML Tighe worked hard, educated herself" I'm going to call the BS flag on this! Education does not equal leadership...and shore duty does not equal operational. We have enlisted personnel with Master degrees and some with PhDs...The Officer corp is BS and are over paid prima donnas !
ReplyDeleteDamn right - "drive-by" shots like that are worthless and do nothing more than pronounce the author to be worth even less. Gene Miller, cpo usn ret
ReplyDeleteReally, do I have this right? We have a couple of CPO's here who don't understand the differences between Tactical and Operational?
ReplyDeleteChiefs, RMDL Tighe's experience at VQ-1 qualifies as being at the pointy end of the spear <-READ TACTICAL. Her expericence as the commander of NSA/CSS Hawaii is sufficent experience of being in charge of an operational command.
Bob, your "easy" statement is simply wrong. Operational doesn't require you to be at sea. An operational commander, who can put a world of hurt on you with trons or zero/ones is as operational as I need my admrial to be, and you should know better.
Your "to this day statement" also is so far off base that I will refrain for assaulting you with all the reasons why it is good that you retired. But, your telling some young sailor to march his/her butt down to the Air Force should have put you on the carpet. I get your passion, but there are better ways to inspire sailors.
IDC officers/enlisted don't need to be at-sea to provide the effects we bring to bear "operationally". In a vast majority of cases it is better that we are not.
Yes, there is the need for IDC personnel to be "at sea", and that is a great experience to have under your belt but it is not a make or break career milestone.
For the sake of openness, this is LCDR Shane Jaeger.
So....Sailor don't need to go to sea? This will be the death of the Navy as we know it. When the "bean counters" figure out they can pay a civilian to do the job on shore these billets will be few and far between.
ReplyDeleteYou might want to review the "Reducing Overhead and Improving Business Operations" presentation. There is a sizeable portion of the active military who are performing what would otherwise be not inherently government work or work that should be more appropriately assigned to DoD civilians. How do these "operational" or "TACTICAL" billets in Hawaii justified? The report states that of the 1.4M military personnel only 340K are "deployed."
If that doesn't seem lopsided you are blind...especially for the Navy...I would love to know the ratio of people at Sea vs. at Shore. The numbers might scare you.
LCDR Jaeger,
ReplyDeleteSir, I appreciate your using your name. For some obvious reasons (junior LTJG), I will not. The detailer told me that sea duty IS a MAKE OR BREAK career milestone. If you don't go to sea, it is unlikely one can make LCDR and certainly not CDR. That seems like MAKE OR BREAK to me.
Very respectfully,
Anonymous
With the retirement of Captain Cindy Widick from NSA, RDML Jan Tighe is exactly the right person to select as the 1610 community's first female flag officer. Like Cindy, Jan has the intellect, integrity, charisma, poise, and broad community experience to lead the community forward. If you don't like the fact that the 'good old boys club' has a crack in it, too bad.
ReplyDeleteDeath of the Navy as we know it? I am sure the Good Captain can find a quote attributed to steam-power, aircraft carriers, women at sea, and minorities in the service at all.... Death in the Navy as we know - I hope so.
ReplyDeleteIf we don't evolve we will get are ass handed to us.
To the LTJG, being and IWO/IDC officer at sea is not the make or break aspect, but rather sustain performance in all the jobs you do. There are talented LTs who didn't make LCDR who pushed the button and "went" to sea. Don't worry if you can't get an LT job at sea, if you can get it later, or via DIRSUP, or VQ, it's about performance. I know CDRs whose at-sea experience is all DIRSUP.
I personally spent more time underway in DIRSUP than a contemporary who's been PCS more than once. So, without question you should go to sea if you are given the opportunity - the experience is invaluable. Keep in mind PCS afloat doesn't immediately get you tactical experience, can someone say dry-dock?
This conversation has gotten away from the point. Like it or not, RDML Tighe was promoted to her present grade. There were arguments about who was on the slate that didn't get selected. In the end, she was promoted, and for those in our community there should be no doubt that she is very capable.
Those who are being negative here are most likely basing their opinion on a biography. We've all seen the self created propaganda that some put in their bio's. RDML Tighe is nothing like those drum-beaters. Time will tell, and if you never hear what a great job she did at CYBERCOM than you should assume she kicked ass and send a thank-you note to the CNO.
Spelling and grammar do count. My apology for the detractors.
ReplyDelete11 Steps observation is excellent in that RDML Tighe WAS promoted, like it or not. Every organization screens and selects people for leadership positions with the traits and resume that it values at that period of time. Understand that, and your opinion of a selectee will always be correct, whether or not you personally agree with the selection. If you do not agree, your opinion may be perfectly correct, but out of line with the broad standards of the organization.
ReplyDeleteOnce upon a time, not so long ago, corporate CEOs were almost always selected based upon strong performance in sales, that being the "operations" equivalent of the corporate world. It was thought that sales made the company, and you therefore must have strong background in it in order to be effective at the top. In many industries, the tide is turning, and backgrounds in other specialty areas such as finance and R&D are more highly valued because the global markets are complex and dynamic, and well...many people who excel at the people skills of "closing the deal" can't handle the math (for example). Organizational needs change, and there will always be these "better" or "worse" arguments.
Shane, we’re going to have to agree to disagree on all counts.
ReplyDeleteI’ve been around the Navy for quite a while and I’ve never heard the phrase “tactical tour” used colloquially. Perhaps you can make an argument that phrase is the most exact way to define sea tours, etc. but this is a blog, not a doctrinal pub. Everyday Sailors in everyday conversation say “operational tour” for sea duty.
My office is filled with URLs and a cryppie. Just for the heck of it, I asked many of them what they would think I was asking them if I wanted to know how many operational tours they had under their belts. To be fair, I didn’t mention this ongoing discussion to any of them. To a man, their response was “sea tours.” I also asked the cryppie in the office the same question. “DIRSUP or PCS sea tours.”
No matter how you slice it, being a divoff at a shore site is NOT an operational tour. I will also say again that being on shore duty does not mean that the work one does is worthless. It can be extremely valuable in support of the core mission of the USN, ships and aircraft at sea. As in the example of Joe Rochefort, it can be a monumental achievement.
Regarding the Sailor who didn’t want to go to sea, I stand by the way I handled it one hundred percent. Anybody who walks into a Navy recruiting office with absolutely no desire and no intention of going to sea is making a seriously flawed decision. As a CPO, one of my jobs was to mentor my Sailors and I would have been very remiss in not giving my “shipmate” a bit of a wake up call. Every situation demands a different approach. This situation called for a little “tough love.” It worked very well in this case.
Another example of a Sailor who didn’t want to go to sea. A CPO worked for me who had never seen a ship. He couldn’t understand why he couldn’t make SCPO. He did do a very good job in lots of shore tours, but he just couldn’t advance. My CMC and I finally convinced him that, though it would be the hardest tour of his career, it would also be the most satisfying …and he would make SCPO if he did a good job. He finally did it, enjoyed it immensely and…made SCPO the first cycle into his sea tour.
If you want to make flag and you have the opportunity, you need to grab the sea tours. A Navy that moves away from demanding that is making a big mistake.
It seems that IW, as a specialty discipline, is evolving separately and away from the sea going Navy due to mega-shifts in technology.
ReplyDeleteI don't think thats bad, rather consider it more like the Construction Battalion or the old time SOSUS cowboys at NAVFACS...necessary to support overall Navy mission, but full capability neither required, nor applicable at sea. If correct, an IW leader with a EE Ph.d might be far more valuable than one with extensive experience checking for light leaks in the SSES. Your cue to throw rotten fruit and veg.
Time for another ORF to weigh in --
ReplyDeleteFirst off, congratulations to RMDL Tighe on her selection and promotion. You earned it, BZ.
There seems to be some confusion here about what is an "operational" tour. I would submit that the definition is specific to community, and in many cases doesn't involve sea duty. Many of the restricted line and speciality communities, and even certain portions of some line communities (VP/VQ for example), see little sea duty in their career. Yet there are operational tours in these communities, and the members therein certainly aren't any less Navy because they don't spend a lot of time underway (try telling some Seabee they're not in the Navy!)
What then, is an operational tour. I submit that it is a tour where one's assigned duty pertains to the primary assigned mission of the unit, whether ashore or afloat. I can't speak for the IW world, but in the NSG assignment as a division officer of a collection division was considered an operational tour, even though no underway time was involved. Same reasoning would apply to those assigned to BULLSEYE or the operations portions of Classic Wizard; or personnel assigned to NAVFAC units or VP/VQ aircrew. (As an aside, VP/VQ officers do on occasion go to sea, usually on a carrier in some capacity other that that which they were trained for. They refer to these as "disassociated" tours). In a community such as surface or subsurface, operational time almost always equates to sea duty (not necessarily underway, though).
Other "types" of duty could be classified as support (admin or maintanence), staff, training (either as an instructor or trainee) and command. As with operational duty, this may or may not involve duty at sea. We're still all shipmates none the less.
The bottom line here is RDML Tighe did well in all the areas described above. Once again, congrats.
**Operational Tours are defined as any one of the following: GSA, PCS Afloat, DIRSUP Air/Surf/Subs, NSW, and DEVGRU.
ReplyDelete**per NPC-47 IWO detailer
"CTRC(NAC) Retired said...
ReplyDeleteI don't think NSGA Florida, Northwest VA or the CINCPACFLT Staff are "operational" tours. Some of you smart officers will correct me if I am wrong. But remember rule #1.
October 15, 2010 7:23 AM "
I was at NSGA Northwest for 2.5 years. 1.5 of that was underway for the DIRSUP shop. What's not "operational" about it?