By Gerry Roncolato
Introduction
“Despite the remarkable developments in military technology, despite the weapons and machines which have vastly expanded our striking power, it is still a basic truth that the only absolute weapon is man. Upon his determination, his stamina, and his skill, rests the issue of victory or defeat in war.”1 –General Matthew B. Ridgway, U.S. Army
Long periods of peace between great powers generate certain characteristics in their militaries. Most notably, highly technical and mechanistic models of war come to the fore, and as Andrew Gordon brilliantly argues, system specialists take over.2 That is the import of the above quote from World War II’s General Mathew Ridgway. Militaries must always be on guard to preserve focus on the human element of war during times of peace, and to avoid slavish devotion to rules and a mechanistic approach to war.3
The U.S. Navy has largely been at peace since 1945. Certainly, elements within the Navy have seen combat, but even then, the Navy writ large fought from the sanctuary of an American-controlled ocean. Over the decades since 1945, the argument for ever-deeper specialization has been a consistent drumbeat. As early as 1946 some naval officers found it necessary to argue against the trend, and repeated efforts to stem the tide can be found up to the present.4
Specialization is attractive to bureaucratic organizations. It promises to solve the problems of building individual system knowledge in the face of extraordinary technological advancement. It works well in commercial applications, but its efficacy in military organizations that fight wars, suffer casualties, and adapt to unforeseen and highly dangerous events is at best unproven.5 The U.S. Navy is already heavily specialized, and today’s calls are for even more.
Specialization feeds more specialization. Each step seems to solve the immediate problem, but eventually each is insufficient. Specialization sets a navy down the path where the true purpose of that navy can be lost. That purpose is to fight the nation’s wars. A commanding officer who has devoted his or her attention disproportionately to mastering a specialty will find little remaining time and bandwidth to focus on the broader and less technical demands of the position. Consideration of war—particularly its human element—falls prey to deeper study of the specialty’s technical demands. This is how a Navy can lose sight of its purpose and the realities of war
Historical Debates and Evolution
The topic of specialization within the Navy, and specifically in the Navy’s Surface Warfare Officer (SWO) community, reemerges from time to time. This tendency is usually occasioned by a series of mishaps, dramatic changes to the strategic environment, or as Captain Mark Hagerott argues, bureaucratic changes like the emergence of the nuclear power navy in the 1950s.6 Now, based on a 2021 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on SWO career paths—incident to several 2017 collisions at sea—further specialization is under consideration.7
This debate within the Navy reaches back to the original amalgamation of deck and engineer officer corps in 1899. Then-Lieutenant Commander L. H. Chandler, USN, felt compelled to counter specialist arguments already surfacing in 1906.8 He laments the frequent refrain about ever-increasing complexity in naval weapon systems and therefore the assumed inability of an individual to master those systems. Specialization, he warns, will not solve the problem and worse, once embarked upon, will bring ever more specialization. The implication is that once you accept that technology overwhelms a generalist commander, there will be no end to the amount of specialization you will need.
He has been proven right. In the late 19th century, specialization of line officers existed between the old deck officers and newly forming engineer corps as the development of steam propulsion, steel hulls, and rifled ordnance continued to accelerate. The Navy Personnel Law of 1899 decided against this specialization, and “amalgamated” deck officers and engineers into a single line officer corps.9 Ever since its enactment, pressures to specialize line officers have been a consistent backstory to the Navy’s evolution.
First came the aviators and later the submariners. The SWO community itself was a relatively late comer to the game. Originally line officers assigned to surface ships were those who remained generalist, and often they broadened their experience by earning aviator wings or doing time in submarines. This practice largely ended after World War II, and by the mid-1970s specialization into these three main line communities solidified. In the intervening decades, specialization continued to expand, with the SWO community for example being sub-specialized into the AEGIS, non-AEGIS, amphibious, and mine warfare sub-communities. Juxtaposed to these groupings are functional specialties such as combat systems, operations, and engineering (nuclear and non-nuclear). Perhaps these categories are not official, but as many SWO will tell you, they are real just the same.
The key here is the reality that, despite the 1899 amalgamation of the Navy’s line officer corps, the balance between specialization and generalism has been steadily shifting in favor of the former. The 2021 GAO report focuses on SWO career paths, but it also argues for a more specialized approach to officer training and assignment. It includes the results of a survey across all SWO paygrades—from O-1 to O-6—which indicate that 69 percent of those surveyed felt that the current generalist approach is insufficient.
Implied within the report is the increasing complexity of naval warfare—especially surface naval warfare—and the difficulty individuals have in mastering that complexity. Such an environment, the report argues, is prejudicial to SWO retention, which appears to be the lens through which the analysis was conducted. The GAO report includes an extensive appendix that contains the Navy’s response—a response which largely concurs with the report.10
The GAO report is rigorous and well-written. Its conclusions are based on solid managerial principals. And in one sense, it addresses real concerns within the SWO community. However, the report fails to consider broader issues related to SWO training, career paths, and warfighting excellence.
The Requirements of Command
The core issue is what the Navy expects of its commanding officers. Are they managers and leaders focusing on the efficiency of their organization and the well-being of their crews? Yes, of course. But what gets far less attention is that the commanding officer is above all responsible for fighting the ship. Today, the assumption within the SWO community may be that to do so effectively, the commanding officer must be a master of all the systems on that ship.
If one reads the redacted command investigation into the USS Gettysburg’s friendly fire incident in the Red Sea in December 2024, it is clear that commanding officers face a bewildering amount of information they must master—not only the ship’s systems, but also how the ship fits within the broader and even more complex system of the strike group, and ultimately the Joint Force. What bit of knowledge should the commanding officer not know? Underlying the investigation report is the assumption that he should have known more than he apparently did.11
Yes, a commanding officer must know the ship’s systems, but not only the combat systems. They must also know how the engineering plant works—to be able to visualize the inner workings so that capabilities and limitations become second nature—or the various elements of the ship’s extensive communications capabilities, and even lesser systems such as the various elements of the shipboard supply organization. The commanding officer’s knowledge must also extend beyond the ship’s lifelines to how other elements in the strike group and Joint Force work, what they bring to the table and what are their limitations. And, not least, the commanding officer must know the enemy’s capabilities and limitations—and most important, how the enemy commander thinks and what their role is in their system of war.
This is a lot to demand, and it is one reason the Navy chooses its commanding officers very carefully. But that is not to say the commanding officer need be expert in all of those aspects. Indeed, it is impossible for one person to be expert in all things. The commanding officer needs to know the ship, but also how to fight the ship. This extends into the human realm beyond the world of systems.
The drive toward increased specialization has other causes as well. For example, today’s SWOs spend less time at sea than their predecessors. The majority of an officer’s career was spent at sea in the pre-WWII Navy. At the same time, there was much more command opportunity at junior levels than possible today. Famously, as commanding officer, a young Ensign Chester A. Nimitz, USN, ran USS Decatur (DD 5) aground in the Philippines in 1908.12 Not only did his career not suffer too much, but the example illustrates how junior a commanding officer could be. The biographies of surface officers serving in the 1950s and 1960s show a plethora of command opportunities as well.
We have come a long way since the pre-WWII days when duty in Washington was limited if not openly discouraged. Modern day SWOs not only have to master their primary role as seagoing line officers, but they are also expected to serve significant time on shore staffs, especially in Washington. They are also required to serve in Joint billets and earn a master’s degree. These requirements were not present before WWII and important though they may be, they cut into sea time.
Today’s SWO faces ever increasing system complexity while simultaneously having less time at sea to master that complexity. One gap filler could be the training system. Current computer technology—digital twins, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and immersive simulations—offers the possibility of training at a much faster rate and with much greater knowledge retention. Yet, the Navy (and the military as a whole) continues the century-old practice of instructor-led instruction. Immersive trainers are making their way into the Navy’s training system, but the transition is too slow and much more could be done. One of the key problems more specialization is trying to solve could be addressed by increased training efficiency and effectiveness. This could be done without compromising the more generalist needs of command at all levels.13
In facing the potential for future great power war, we must better balance between bureaucratic efficiency and warfighting effectiveness. The former is necessary to maximize the benefits of funds expended, but the latter is essential in war. Trent Hone brilliantly explores this dynamic. At the strategic and high operational level of war in the Pacific in World War II, efficiency was critical to generating the material needed to project power over thousands of miles, but warfighting effectiveness at the point of contact (low operational and tactical levels of war) brought with it a highly inefficient consumption of material.14 Admiral Paparo, current commander of USINDOPACOM, recently argued for just such a rebalancing.15 Service (especially SWO) culture in part will determine how effectively we shift focus toward effectiveness. A highly specialized officer corps may not easily recognize the need or the right steps essential for such a shift.
Adjusting the Generalist/Specialist Divide Between Officers and Enlisted
Over the decades since World War II, the surface community expected its officers to delve increasingly into the technical details of its systems. This has had the unintended consequence of reducing the role of senior enlisted technical experts. As SWOs have descended deeper and deeper into minutiae, they have tended to focus less and less on the warfighting aspects of their profession. This trend has continued unchecked because, in part, we have not faced credible enemies at sea for decades, and arguably since 1945.
When this author asked a World War II Navy enlisted veteran about the differing roles of officers and enlisted on his ships during the war, he answered simply: officers fought the ship, the enlisted made it work.16 Then-Captain William P. Mack, USN, argued in the same vein in 1957. He reasoned that “…there is only one real specialty—command.”17 Mack went on to argue that the focus of the line officer is to command, and that doing so required a generalist with wide understanding of the various platforms and systems that make up the fleet. What both men were saying is that officers have roles and responsibilities beyond the technical, while enlisted experts are the true specialists in the Navy.
The reemergence of great power competition and possible conflict should once again drive the officer corps to focus more on warfighting than it has in recent decades. As officers spend more time studying and thinking about war and their role in it, senior enlisted technical experts—highly trained as they are today—will grow into the shoes formerly filled by officers. They will exercise their competence as the true system masters. Such a division of labor should never be absolute or rigid, but it does suggest a rebalancing. Moreover, it more fully engages a wider range of a ship’s crew. Both officers and enlisted together will take greater ownership in the ship and its missions.18
Preparing for the Future Fight
We now face an unknown warfighting future. No one has experienced the kind of high-end fight against a capable maritime enemy that lies on the horizon and about which we should be giving serious thought. In such a situation, the experiences of today’s naval leaders over the course of their careers hold only a limited relevance. How can we prepare for such an unknown? This is what Clausewitz struggled with in his classic On War.19 His answer – deep and empathetic study of military history. Any military history would suffice because the focus of such study would be on the human element, specifically, the commander. What caused commanders to make the decisions they did or did not make? A similar approach today would help arm future leaders with the tools they will need to deal with the unexpected.20
No one individual can master all of the technologies and systems in use on our ships. A specialized commanding officer is ill-equipped to comprehend the myriad complexities and uncertainties of a future joint fight against a capable maritime opponent. We cannot be masters of every technology or mission area.
The answer is contained in the history of the debate over specialization. The commanding officer must be the conductor of their ship and its systems, not the putative expert in a narrow technical or specialty field. As the Navy looks to high-end conflict at sea in the future, officer responsibility will shift to fighting the ship, accomplishing the mission, and to the degree possible, bringing ship and crew back home. That is a heavy burden, one we have not had to bear for a very long time. It demands a more generalist officer corps, increased ownership by enlisted technicians, greater warfighting focus, and in a world of rapidly changing technology, a training system that can pace those changes.
Today as in the past, specialization promises more than it can deliver. It is attractive to those who do not know the past, because they are free to zero in on technical challenges—as if warfighting capability rests solely on that foundation. Increasing specialization does nothing to answer the challenges of future war at the tactical, vice procedural level, nor does it answer the challenges of combat leadership in command—at any level. Andrew Gordon warned us about this in his book The Rules of the Game.21 Trent Hone offered an alternative approach in his excellent work Learning War.22 And numerous article authors over the past century and a half have argued that specialization is an alluring but dangerous path.
The U.S. Navy has not fought against a peer adversary since 1945. No one on active duty today, and almost no one alive today, knows about the kind of war we fought in the Pacific in the 1940s. A future great power war will more closely resemble World War II than any of the conflicts since its end in 1945. Since that time, the Navy and its SWO community have increasingly come to see the role of the officer as being the technical expert. It was not always so. What has been lost is the concept of the generalist who is well versed in all aspects of naval and joint warfighting. In 1946, Lieutenant Commander Preston Lincoln, USNR, wrote about specialization in the Navy. He wrote from the perspective of a just-finished war where the Navy had grown to an immense size, where technology had leapfrogged far beyond where it was at the start of the war, and, consequently, where no combat officer had the time to become a true expert in any one area. A lawyer since World War I and a veteran of World War II, Lincoln succinctly stated the role of the naval officer: “The primary function of a U.S. Naval officer is to be a director and coordinator of specialists and technicians rather than one himself.”23
Today’s Navy would do well to consider this wisdom and ask itself if the current path of increasing specialization will serve the Navy and nation into a future of great power conflict. Specialization is not the solution, but even if we slow its long creep in our military, we will still face significant challenges as we prepare for an unknowable kind of maritime war in the future. Meeting that challenge requires honest assessment of our strengths and weaknesses against the backdrop of a deeper understanding of war and swift action to change course. This is where the focus must be.
Captain Gerard D. Roncolato, USN (Ret.), is a retired surface warfare officer with extensive experience in policy and strategy work. He commanded the guided-missile destroyer USS The Sullivans (DDG-68) and Destroyer Squadron 26 at sea.
References
[1] Attributed to General Matthew B. Ridgway, USA. Quoted in Captain William P. Mack, USN, “The Exercise of Broad Command: Still the Navy’s Top Specialty,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, April 1957. VADM Mack went on to be Superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy and a naval fiction author.
[2] Andrew Gordon, Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command, (Annapolis, Md.: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2000). In particular, the twenty-eight “Syndromes of Peacetime Navies,” pp. 579-601.
[3] David Kohnen, “Charting a New Course: The Knox-Pye-King Board and Naval Professional Education, 1919-1923,” Naval War College Review, Vol. 71: No. 3, Article 8, Summer 2018.
[4] See, for example, Lieutenant Commander Preston S. Lincoln, USNR, “Specialization and the Post War Navy,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, November 1946.
[5] This too was an argument in the earliest days of the “generalist” Navy after the 1899 Line-Engineer amalgamation. See Lieutenant Commander L. H. Chandler, USN, “An Answer to Criticism of ‘Is Amalgamation a Failure’”, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, April 1906.
[6] Mark Hagerott, CAPT, USN (Ret.), “Commanding Minds: Naval Leadership in the Age of AI,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, December 2025
[7] General Accounting Office (GAO), “Navy Readiness: Actions Needed to Evaluate and Improve Surface Warfare Career Officer Career Path,” June 2021. Report #GAO-21-168.
[8] Chandler, “An Answer to Criticism of ‘Is Amalgamation a Failure’”.
[9] See Lieutenant Edward L. Beach, USN, “The Results of the Navy Personnel Law of March 3, 1899,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, April 1902. He discusses the details of the law (including and beyond the deck-engineer corps amalgamation provisions) and assesses its impact three years after the fact.
[10] GAO, “Navy Readiness,” Appendix VI, pp. 151 ff.
[11] U.S. Central Command, Memorandum for Commander U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT), “Second Endorsement of Command Investigation into the Facts and Circumstances Surrounding the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group (HSTCSG) Friendly Fire Incident and Class A Aviation Flight Mishap on 22 December, 2024,” dtd 23 April 2025. Redacted.
[12] Christopher P. Michael, “Making the Most of Failure,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, November 2006.
[13] See Captain Gerard D. Roncolato, USN (Ret.), “Effective and Affordable Trainers Are Possible,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, September 2017. See also the same author’s article on building a warfighting culture: “A Warfighting Imperative: Back to Basics for the Navy,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, January 2022.
[14] Trent Hone, “From Mobile Fleet to Mobile Force: The Evolution of U.S. Navy
Logistics in the Central Pacific During World War II,” Journal of Military
History, 87:2 (April 2023), pp. 367-403.
[15] Sam LaGrone, “PACFLEET CO Paparo Talks Combat Logistics,
Chinese Coercion,” U.S. Naval Institute News, 14 February 2023. See also Gerard Roncolato, CAPT USN (Ret.), “The Navy Needs a Lot More Logistics, or a Different Strategy, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, May 2024.
[16] A 2013 discussion with my father, a signalman first class, 1943-1946.
[17] Captain Mack, “The Exercise of Broad Command.”
[18] This is not to ignore programs like the Propulsion Examining Board or the Planned Maintenance System (PMS). Both were necessary at the time they were implemented. However, while they improved ship material readiness, they had the side effect of diminishing the role of the Chief and enlisted technicians. The challenge is to stimulate enlisted ownership of their systems, especially adherence to engineering standards, while freeing officers to focus on that which only they can execute: fighting the ship. Hagerott suggests that the nuclear power community under Admiral Rickover’s leadership pushed the Navy down this road. The SWO community copied much of the nuclear power community’s philosophy and techno-centric culture. One could argue that the Surface PEB and PMS programs flow logically from this post-W.W.II trend. See Hagerott, op. cit.
[19] Jon Tetsuro Sumida, Decoding Clausewitz: A New Approach to On War, (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2008), p. 3 and pp. 99-101. See also Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. & trans. by Michael Howard and
Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976),
[20] This is a core piece of Hagerott’s argument in preparing for the emergence of AI in war. “Commanding Minds”, op. cit.
[21] Andrew Gordon, Rules of the Game, op. cit.
[22] Trent Hone, Learning War: The Evolution of Fighting Doctrine in the U.S. Navy, 1898-1945, (Annapolis, Md.: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2018).
[23] Lincoln, “Specialization and the Post War Navy.”
Featured Image: PANAMA CITY, Fla. (November 13, 2025) — The Independence-variant littoral combat ship USS Pierre (LCS 38) is moored at the Port of Panama City ahead of its commissioning ceremony. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kassandra Alanis)
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Mostly been at peace?