SOFREP Reader Response to Navy SEAL Officer Selection Piece

Editor’s Note: This piece was written by SOFREP reader John Miller, USMA ’20. It is presented here unedited. Miller is currently on active duty, and the views expressed below do not necessarily reflect the position of the United States Military Academy, US Army, Department of Defense, or the US Government. They are solely the opinions of the author in a personal and unofficial capacity, acting as a private citizen. We thank him for his contribution

Rebuttal

Response to “Does the Officer Selection Process for Naval Special Warfare Leave a Lot of Talent on the Beach?” by Cole Black, 18MAR2023.

It is a common refrain across the combined force that academy graduates have the creativity stamped out of them during the course of their four (and occasionally five) years of study. There is a belief that somewhere in the melee of the summer trainings they attend or the uniforms they wear to class, their creativity and imagination is drilled out of them by granite mess halls and endless pass-and-reviews. It is assumed that the cadets and midshipmen you see walking up and down the central quads on Saturdays in their dress uniforms are coerced into their endless march because they painted a piece of art that was too vibrant or imagined a scene too fanciful for a creative writing assignment. Are we to believe that all the academies are capable of graduating are soulless robots? Or is the truth, as it always is, a little more complicated?

One of my classmates had more varieties of tea in her room at any given time than I thought existed. Another restored old Volkswagens and Toyotas on his free time. It seemed like almost every room you walked into had a guitar or keyboard in it, and you would often hear cadets practicing on the weekends. I had classmates from Egypt, Germany, and Mongolia. Many spent semesters in Tajikistan or Spain, and traveled on cultural immersions to Korea, Africa, and all across Europe. Countless clubs met after class to watch foreign films in the languages they were studying, and there was a yearly art show where poetry, paintings, and photos taken by cadets were displayed and celebrated.

In addition to the creativity and vibrance that the academies would like to advertise, cadets often expressed creativity in other, less ‘approved’ ways. Alcohol is strictly forbidden in the barracks; yet when the MacArthur barracks renovations were happening, the dumpsters outside were filled with enough liquor bottles found during the demolition to stock a medium-sized Class Six. Cadets had found unique and creative ways to ‘modify’ furniture, fixtures, and the very buildings themselves to hide their precious drink, a practice that I am sure is still on-going.

Personal refrigerators were also forbidden, so many cadets modified their issued trunks into makeshift but very functional fridges. I even know of a case where a route was mapped out to avoid cameras and the very rare MP or TAC ‘patrol’ so that cadets could sneak to other barracks in the middle of the night through the steam tunnels and meet up with their significant others. Perhaps, instead of believing that the strict (although not as strict as you may have been led to believe) rules of the academies stifled creativity, you should consider how such an environment has the potential to instead force its expression.

I also have a particular issue with this statement; “The Academy produces qualified, even overqualified, candidates, but can impress upon them a rigid, uniform approach to being a naval officer.” During my time as a cadet at West Point, I was taught by ORSAs, Space Operations, Signal, Armor, Infantry, Cyber, Field Artillery, and Logistics Officers. My TACs and TAC NCOs were Transportation, Military Police, and Aviation Officers and NCOs. I had touchpoints with officers and senior NCOs from almost every Officer MOS in the Army on a regular basis for four years. Contrast this to the staff of an ROTC program where there may be less than five Officers and NCOs in the entire school, and I think my point should starts to crystalize. Post-graduation during Infantry Basic Officer Leader Course, Ranger School, various other schools, and especially the jobs I have filled since arriving at my unit, I have yet to see an environment approaching that level of diversity. In my time at the Academy, I had daily access to countless different leaders who all had their own unique (sometimes highly unique) versions of Army Officership. Contrast that melting pot of experience to the limited staff of even a well-funded ROTC program or the limited course time of Officer Candidate School, and I believe that the original statement falls apart.

I’ll wrap this up by doing a brief analysis of the author’s last paragraph line-by-line.

“ROTC candidates, if they lack quite as scrupulous a military bearing as their Academy peers, benefit from the creativity of a diversely spread education, especially those candidates from our country’s prestigious universities.”

Define, if you will, a “diversely spread education.” If you define it as a ‘liberal arts education,’ then congratulations because West Point, Annapolis, and the Air Force Academy (which refuses to fully adopt ‘Colorado Springs’ as its nick-named for some obtuse reason) are all widely considered and self-profess to provide one. You would be hard pressed to find a category of courses that is not available at the academies. English, philosophy, and history are all common degrees for academy graduates, though underwater basketweaving was regrettably only offered for one semester at West Point before it was replaced with Survival Swimming. On top of this, the core academic course load of cadets and midshipmen is often far larger than the core classes required by civilian institutions, meaning academy graduates generally have a wider academic foundation to build off of, and experience a greater diversity of topics and courses (much to the chagrin of many cadets who would rather not have taken calculus or English).

“An applicant motivated and competitive enough to gain admission to an ROTC program at a top university clearly has the ambition and talent needed in NSW.”

No, they don’t “clearly have the ambition and talent needed in NSW.” That’s why they must go to BUDs. Graduation from ROTC at Yale does not ‘clearly show’ that they are SOF material any more than graduating from the Naval Academy does.

“OCS candidates come from countlessly varied backgrounds, with professional expertise and real-world experience that can improve their decision-making as naval officers.”

Check out “A Day in the Life of a West Point Cadet.” Courtesy of YouTube and Matthew Preston

This is true for some of them, and not true for many others. At least for the Army, many OCS applicants are people who got their college degree and realized that paying off college debt was harder than it looked. The rare prior-E6/E7, or the 30 year old with a ton of positive life experience is always there and cannot be discounted, but they are outlier, not the norm. Anecdotally, of the multiple OCS officers in my IBOLC class, only one was older than me by more than two years. “Professional expertise and real-world experience” are where the NCO Corps shines, and why they are so vital to the success of America’s armed forced.

“Think of the Olympic athlete who turns to the military.”

Name five. I certainly cannot name any off the top of my head. Name one that tried out for NSW and failed, because I can’t. I am not sure what point the author is trying to make here, but pure common sense suggest that someone with the mental focus and drive, combined with the necessary physical prowess to compete in the Olympics, has a far better chance of passing a selection than the average applicant. If evidence exists to the contrary, I would love to examine it.

“Candidates commissioning from sources outside the Naval Academy should of course be assessed relative to their qualified Academy peers, but not in a way that dismisses or marginalizes their mismatched makeup.”

And how are they currently not being assessed fairly? The author provides no evidence that NSW selection in any way favors Academy graduates, instead making the claim that the Academy merely prepares its graduates for selection better. These statements are not analogous. And what is the proposed solution to this perceived slight? Is the author claiming that NSW applicants who did not graduate the Academy should be held to a lower physical standard? A lower mental-toughness standard? A lower educational standard? If not, what about NSW selection “dismisses or marginalizes” them? As far as I am aware, though I will admit to never having been part of any NSW selection board, ‘commissioning source’ is not evaluated on the rubric used to determine acceptance into NSW, just as it is not in SFAS or AFSOC selections. What standards would you have them change to offset this ‘mismatch?’

In conclusion, I felt the need to respond to the authors claims and assumptions for two reasons. First, I was always taught that if you are going to complain about a problem, come with a solution to your complaints. Not only does the author fail to effectively define and demonstrate the problem outside of the vague claim that having more Naval Academy graduates selected for NSW than from other commissioning programs is weakening the force, but he also flatly fails to offer any concrete paths forward. The second reason is that the entire article is seemingly written based on two main claims; that Academy graduates are not as creative and imaginative as their ROTC and OCS peers (not even anecdotal evidence is presented to support this), and that NSW selection is broken because the selected officers are not evenly distributed across the commissioning sources.

I openly invite a reply so long as it comes with some level of evidence or support for the claims being made. I am absolutely certain that all DOD selections processes are not perfect and often fail to select qualified candidates who would do well in the positions they end up barred from. But in order to fix that, we must start by making claims with specific examples and offering specific solutions to guide how we move forward and make our force more lethal

Bio: John Miller is currently serving as an Infantry Platoon Leader in the US Army. He graduated from USMA in 2020.