Rear Admiral Tim White and Captain Don Elam sat the O6 selection board representing the Information Warfare Officer community. Looking at the board tracker, it appears we are just a day or two behind last year's release. Here is a snapshot of the Community Values and Career Progression for our community. Best of luck to all of those "above", "in" and "below" the zone.
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JOB DESCRIPTION
Executing the full spectrum of cyber, cryptology and signals intelligence; information operations; computer network operations; and electronic warfare missions across the cyber, electromagnetic and space domains, Information Warfare Officers (IWOs) play a vital role. Their mission: to deter and defeat aggression, to provide warning of intent, and to ensure freedom of action while achieving military objectives in and through cyberspace.
Serving as Officers (four-year degree required), IWOs are leaders in the Information Dominance Corps (IDC) – a group of highly specialized information experts fully integrated across surface, subsurface, air, space and cyberspace domains. With shared functions, capabilities and resources, IDC members leverage their skills to optimize decision making and to maximize the use of sensors, weapons, network communications and control systems for purposes of national security and warfighting.
Serving part-time as a Reservist, your duties will be carried out during your scheduled drilling and training periods. Take a moment to learn more about the general roles and responsibilities of Reservists. And know this: The impact of your work and your service will go far beyond the time that you put in.
SPECIFIC RESPONSIBILITIES
Information Warfare Officers are directly involved in every aspect of Naval operations – delivering information to decision makers by attacking, defending and exploiting networks to capitalize on vulnerabilities in the information domain. As an IWO, you will employ a thorough understanding of sensors and weapons, strategy and tactics, as well as national systems’ capabilities and limitations. This role may include:
Qualifying as an Operations Watch Officer, responsible for real-time signal intelligence collection, processing, analysis and reporting
Conducting computer network operations
Developing and acquiring cutting-edge exploitation and defense systems
Planning and delivering information warfare effects during exercises and operations
Leading Information Dominance personnel across the spectrum of military operations
Overseeing the work of Cryptologic Technicians – Enlisted Sailors (no degree required) who serve as specialists in different areas of cryptology
I often wondered how comms and computer networks always got instantly screwed up for exercises and now I know. Information warriors have to practice too. It sort of cements the relationship where I thought though; them deciding that we're the enemy and acting on that information.
Having just seen the Reserve O6 results, I am left wondering how many of these experiences they bring with them to the senior ranks. It is bothersome that we have Naval Officers at our senior levels who are JOs (at best) from an experience stand-point and often times have affiliated with the reserves after having been passed over on the active side. I've seen some reserve Captains roaming the halls of late that really make me scratch my head. No doubt that there is some technical talent on the RC, but many seem to misrepresent what we stand for. We need a Total Force, not a "Total Farce."
Well anonymous, not everybody wearing a uniform and working at NSA can honestly, ethically and professionally spy on Americans in a sneaky dishonest way and make 06 because, let's face it, are you ready to believe a man who has spent decades denying that he is actively spying on you is capable of telling the truth?
Yeah, me neither.
These slides are a joke. They haven't changed in any meaningful way since before the IDC stood up and offer little to no insight into what IW Officers should be striving for when planning their careers. There is not any substantive incorporation of the IW Milestone billet listing in a way that signals to the Officer that they should be seeking out those billets at the O-4 and O-5 levels. The jobs listed at each juncture are simply a general listing of jobs available. The "valuable achievements" are pretty much the same thing, especially LCDR. The LCDR one may as well read "do some jobs prior to LCDR"; do we really think an Ensign can look at that and prioritize with any level of specificity, two tours out, what she/he needs to be planning for? Compare these slides against some other communities and it becomes obvious we have no idea what to tell our JOs when it comes to career planning, or what we really look for in terms of promotion. This has been a problem for years and despite all the flowery language and kumbaya messaging, we are still woefully inadequate in this area, and there are a lot of frustrated and confused Officers out there because of it.
"and there are a lot of frustrated and confused Officers out there because of it."
They don't sound very smart to me. You sure you want to keep them?
And of course then there are the RC officers who left active duty because they are sharp and motivated and saw tremendous professional opportunities in the civilian arena, either as industry mavens or government civilians. Many of these officers were front-runners while on active duty, and simply made a life and career choice. Mixing this civilian professional path with a RC IW path often makes them a double or triple threat - especially as they learn and succeed in two distinct career tracks simultaneously, something the AC officer don't have the challenge or opportunity of doing. And in recent years, pretty much every single one of these RC officers ultimately selected for O-5 or O-6 has served capably and admirably on active duty, typically in a war zone - distinguishing themselves elbow-to-elbow with their AC counterparts. Every now and again, on both the AC and RC sides of the equation, less-than-ready officers slip through the promotion board cracks, and put on CDR or CAPT, only to cause a trail of destruction (or more often just a good amount of embarrassment for the community) in their immediate sphere of influence. I've not seen that the "head-scratching" regarding some of these ill-prepared officers is confined to RC or AC; there are a small number of really terrible leaders at senior ranks in both communities.
@422pm -- +1
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