Overhauling ‘A’&‘C’ Schools Navy’s aims: Get sailors to the fleet faster, provide more customized skills training (NAVY TIMES 12 JAN 15) ... Mark Faram The Navy is planning to overhaul its enlisted training, with substantial changes to its “A” and “C” schools. Fully realized, the radical re-imagining would totally alter how and when sailors receive the instruction they need over the course of their careers. The plan will affect nearly every shipboard rating over time, shortening many initial “A” school training tracts and getting sailors from the street to the fleet much quicker – with the knowledge they need for the billet to which they’re assigned. Over the long term, the impact will be to improve and increase follow- on training – known as “C” schools – by individually tailoring the instruction to better prepare sailors returning to sea duty with the knowledge they need to hit the deck running. Moving away from the “one-size fits- all” template that’s been in place for more than half a century, the Navy eventually will offer fleet sailors customized training tracks that emphasize the knowledge and systems they’ll need to master for their next billet. No longer will they be forced to relearn topics and skills they’ve already acquired. Instead, they’ll be tested upfront on what they know so they can concentrate on the material they need to learn, including a familiarization course in their rating and any relevant specifics on the type of command or systems they’ll manage there. Sailors also will have more chances to get into highly sought training as the Navy moves more instruction – including many NEC-conferring courses – to fleet areas. And the majority of this training will be conducted near the waterfront in fleet concentration areas – keeping sailors at home and training costs down. “We are hearing a lot from sailors that they want to be as current as possible. They don’t want to show up on the waterfront and not be the expert – not be the master of their craft,” said Vice Adm. Bill Moran, chief of naval personnel. He plans to leverage recent advances in training and simulation technology to give sailors more advanced training throughout their careers and deliver that training closer to their commands, which will mean they can get back to their units more quickly. That’s been a stumbling block for many sailors who want to acquire more Navy Enlisted Classifications but have to travel and remain away from their commands for long periods of time to do it. The planned changes to “A” and “C” schools, which will provide more specially trained sailors to the fleet more quickly, will begin in 2015 but take years to fully accomplish. But they are essential if the Navy is to have any hope of filling the remaining open fleet jobs, a gap now estimated at 5,000, officials say. To accomplish all this, the Navy must pool its resources, Moran said. He’s responsible for all the Navy’s traditional school houses, which may or may not be located in fleet concentration areas. But such an overarching effort will extend well beyond his domain. It will require tying together all the Navy’s training assets, not just those at his training bases. It will require leveraging assets at fleet and type commander-run training commands in fleet concentration areas. “They’re participating in this, and I believe they see the wisdom of pooling our resources to try and get at a better end state for training and readiness, especially in the enlisted force,” Moran said. “We can make it more affordable and give time back to our commands at sea so that they can focus their energies on war fighting.” Leveraging Technology A key part of the initiative is to use the latest virtual reality and gaming technology – some that’s already being fielded in the submarine and aviation communities – with an aim toward more accurate sailor training. “I’m not looking to replace brick and mortar schools; we can’t afford to do that for every rate in the Navy,” Moran said. “But I do believe, based on what I see from industry and from some of our more advanced programs like LCS and F-35 and E-2D, that the technology is available to do some of this training virtually on the waterfront and to [provide] this training when and where sailors need it.” He hopes to break down the traditional command “stovepipes” in training and pool all money and assets across the fleet together toward a common set of goals. “The first obstacle is our belief that the way we’ve always done [training] is the way we need to do it moving forward,” Moran said. “We need to challenge the idea that we can only train through brick-and mortar schools and that we need to provide sailors most of their career training upfront at the start of their careers – and we need to bring as much of that training lower to the waterfront – where arguably it has its greatest impact.” He’s already hearing the groans from those who were around in the early 2000s when the Navy started its so-called “Revolution in Training” drive, which attempted to use virtual training while cutting back on schoolhouse class work. That effort overpromised and under delivered, he said. “It wasn’t because of lack of effort,” Moran said. “But it didn’t work well, and I believe that was because the technology just wasn’t there yet.” So that’s what has his focus now – laying the groundwork and getting the buy-in from the Navy’s senior leadership across every community and type commander to tie this all together. How It Would Work So what does this mean for sailors? Less training at the beginning of a career, with more updates and training later on. Currently, sailors enter the Navy and attend boot camp, then head to “A” school and often a more advanced “C” school before getting to the fleet, a process that takes months and in some cases more than a year. Take the case of fire controlmen, who have one of the longest initial training pipelines. “Fire controlman is a classic example, where we spend a long time in school upfront giving them everything we think they need to know,” Moran said. “But as they go through the rest of their career, we provide very little opportunity for those sailors to go back to school.” For FCs and other technical ratings, this can take 18 to 24 months. In many cases, however, they don’t get fully trained until they get to their commands and qualify in other NECs and special qualifications. “We currently rely on fleet experience to make ready our sailors for the jobs they are in or will do in the future, Moran said. “This is an inefficient and frustrating system for both the individual sailors and for the units that gain them, as those sailors are unable to hit the deckplates with the knowledge and skills they need to make an immediate impact.” Officials are looking to break up the process so sailors will only need to complete the training where they lack the requisite knowledge or experience to perform their jobs. The new system will be designed to quickly gauge what a sailor knows – something that doesn’t exist in the service today, said Rear Adm. Mike White, who works for Moran as head of Naval Education and Training Command. All existing training will need to be reworked into modules on which sailors can be individually tested; at different stages of their careers, they will test out of modules they grasp and focus on the ones where they need to boost their understanding. That gets the training regimen a big step closer to officials’ ultimate goal: sailor-specific training. “The big initiative, and it’s a long term one, is to tailor training to the individual sailor,” White said. “Whether it’s a new accession sailor or a sailor returning to the fleet who’s not necessarily been working in their rating – we want to leverage their existing skills.” Right now, White said, Navy training is essentially one-size-fits all. “For example, every sailor who comes in the Navy to be an [aviation machinist’s mate]goes through the same course, whether they’ve had any experience working on aircraft engines or not,” White said. “Our goal is to start to determine what skills a sailor brings with him and tailor the training so he doesn’t repeat things he already knows.” To manage and document what a sailor knows, White said they’re developing an enhanced training jacket that documents a sailor’s schools and skills throughout his or her career. In addition to speeding up the initial training pipeline, another focus will be to set up days- or weeklong refresher courses in fleet concentration areas that get sailors up to speed in their rating. “Instead of teaching sailors all the skills they will ever need to know before reaching the waterfront, we would look to better tailor the training upfront – a modular “A” school that teaches basic rate knowledge, paired with a specialty school on the waterfront or flight line that better prepares the sailor for the specific job and platform they will serve in,” Moran said. As the sailor’s career advances, he or she will receive follow-on learning and qualification opportunities, mostly at the waterfront. To go back to the example of the FC, he could have a targeted “A” school curriculum to teach him the basics he needs for his first tour, say on a destroyer outfitted with the latest Aegis Weapon System. The sailor’s next training opportunity will come after the initial sea-shore rotation, including the refresher training. “This training would encompass a variety of things, including leadership, core values and the latest in-rate information to prepare him to arrive at the ship, ready to lead as a first class petty officer,” Moran said. “A similar approach would be used through successive tours as the FC advances up through the senior enlisted ranks. We use a similar model for officers in the aviation community. We want to simply expand on a model that works well.” How a sailor learns under this model would be different, too. Officials want to leverage gaming technology tailored to learning objectives. Under this idea, these waterfront refreshers and other courses could use virtual training opportunities. The training would continue aboard ship, where sailors or commands could set up targeted training to prepare for an inspection or evolution, or explain a new system recently installed on the ship. Timeline This radical training revamp is set to start soon. Many sailors will begin to see their career paths change by the time they head back for their next sea tour. “We’re going to pilot some ideas in the near term,” Moran said. “Those will be done in the next year or two, but I don’t want to jump all in without understanding all the impacts.” The service is beginning to field a few pilot programs that could pave the way toward bringing more effective and realistic training to the waterfront using simulation and virtual reality, with the backing of Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jon Greenert, who said recently the Navy needs to get sailors to the fleet sooner. “The driving force here is CNO; he’s heard similar feedback,” Moran said. “He’s put his finger in my chest and told me, ‘Let’s move out and get this done.’“ But to set Navy’s training ship on this new course will take time and, of course, money. “We’re going to lay in proposals in the budget we’re building right now [the fiscal 2017 budget request], and that will go in front of CNO. That will be our opportunity to stack hands and say, ‘ This is how we want to move forward,’“ Moran said.
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000
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