Special Duty Officer - Information Warfare

Special Duty Officer – Information Warfare. The 161X community will value and reward officers that “know it” and “use it” and possess the knowledge, skills, and abilities to fight, lead, and win in the maritime and joint domain:

Warfare Competency: IW Officers will understand the tenets of IO, sensor/weapons and national systems capabilities and limitations, and how to optimally use them for “effects-based” warfare. IW Officers must understand the role of IO in context of multi-dimensional warfare. No warfare area fights alone - understanding undersea warfare, surface warfare, strike warfare, and air warfare is essential to fully integrating IW within the Strike Group, the Joint Forces Maritime Component Commander, and the Joint Force. We will build this competency through operational tours at the LT and LCDR pay-grades to deliver peak value during operational tours at the senior officer level.

Leadership: Leadership is a core competency for all Naval Officers. We must have officers that can seize the initiative, motivate their people, effectively apply resources, and execute. We will build this competency through leadership positions that grow in scope throughout the IW officer’s career, ultimately delivering senior officers with all the tools for command in a war fighting environment.

Professional Expertise: IW engineering and technology (i.e. knowing how the signal or protocol was designed function) but it is also understanding the human elements of adversaries through language and culture that are critical to planning and executing any Information Operations campaign (i.e.: knowing how the adversary operates). We will build this expertise through state-of-the-art, in-residence and continuing education programs and through a billet structure that interleaves between national and operational tours at the right time in the career path to optimize value.

Way ahead

We must not confuse change, to include the possible mergers of ratings or designators, as a sign that our community is not valued or appreciated. In fact, the opposite is true. The professionals who want it, get it, know it, and use it are critical to our freedom and will be for the foreseeable future. The world has changed and our duty to our nation and Navy requires us to transform - this is our strategy for creating value to that changed world. Strategy is work never completed and our planned implementation will require continuous course corrections over time as the world continues to change. Our success will be determined by the strength of shared vision of our leaders and the commitment of all hands. Right skills…right place…right time.


From STRATEGY FOR OUR PEOPLE 2005 - ready for an update!


SECNAV APPROVED IW OFFICER COMMUNITY BRIEF IS HERE.