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Unrestricted Line Officer Promotions
Best and Fully Qualified?
The single competitive promotion category that consists of the Navy Unrestricted Line (URL) communities does not meet the community requirements of the Aviation, Surface Warfare, Submarine, Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Naval Special Warfare communities. Statutory URL promotion results have repeatedly contributed to shortages in most of these communities and fail to correct long-standing imbalances within these communities. Inequities will continue until changes are made to this competitive category. The function of promotion selection boards is to consider officers for promotion to meet the needs of the Navy with the standard of best and fully qualified. Department of the Navy policy is “
to establish officer competitive categories to provide for separate promotion consideration and career development of groups of officers with related education, training, skills, and experience needed to meet mission objective of the Navy that make separate career management desirable
”. The governing instruction for promotion categories (SECNAVINST 1400.1) calls for periodic review of competitive categories when “
needed to meet the mission objectives of the service
”. After more than thirty years of competing as a group, it has become increasingly evident that the combined group of communities in the URL competitive category can no longer compete on an equitable basis to meet the needs of the Navy. Differences in authorizations and retention differ significantly across the URL communities whereas promotion timing and opportunity are the same within this competitive category. Changes in force structure, relative size imbalances of the URL communities, and differing community milestones, career paths and timing have overshadowed reasonable consideration as a group and surpassed the ability of the promotion system to deliver officers from these communities in appropriate ratios to meet their separate requirements and the mission requirements of the Navy. It is past time for a periodic review of the URL competitive promotion category. Service promotions are regulated by law, including the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act (DOPMA), as well as policy established by the service secretaries. A key aspect for statutory
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promotions in DOPMA is the direct relationship to the established competitive categories for officer management and promotions. The Navy has 24 competitive categories defined by the Secretary of the Navy that span all the officer designators by community. Each community has discrete designator control grade (LCDR, CDR, and CAPT) authorizations that are central to promotion planning. The Aviation, Surface and Submarine communities have additional non-discrete 1000 and 1050 coded requirements (Line Officer Billets) that have been allocated to their authorized requirements on a 40-40-20 percent ratio. Promotions in each competitive category seek to fill projected vacancies created by retirements, separations and promotions out of grade for these funded requirements. Most of the Restricted Line and Staff communities have their own separate competitive category by designator where promotion planning enables management of promotion zones and opportunity to satisfy each community’s requirements to meet the manpower needs of the Navy. The URL competitive category does not.
Unrestricted Line Competitive Category
The Unrestricted Line category is unique among the competitive categories. It combines the requirements of the five URL communities to develop the number of promotions by grade to select from the pool of eligible officers in the aggregate. The promotion process is a time-based system carefully governed by law and policy to select on a fair and equitable basis with the standard ”
best and fully qualified”
to meet the needs of the Navy. The Secretary of the Navy is afforded legal authority to provide further guidance to address shortfalls for specific skill sets, critical requirements and competencies. In practice, this supplemental guidance has been limited to giving due consideration to performance and expertise in specific areas and has not addressed explicit shortfalls or overages in each of the URL communities. As a result, board results indicate that relative community proportions bear an overwhelming influence on promotion outcomes by community. The URL selection boards are comprised of a mix of senior officers from all represented communities to select those that the majority believes are best and fully qualified without regard to individual community requirements. Composition of the URL selection board members is governed by policy to include a minimum of five Aviators, four Surface Warfare Officers (SWO), three Submarine Officers, one Naval Special Warfare Officer (SEAL) and one Explosive Ordnance Disposal Officer (EOD). Selectivity for promotion varies by community and significantly by grade, but generally follows community milestones with the most emphasis on success in operational command path assignments. The absence of supplemental requirement guidance by designator, along with the diverse composition of the selection board members, leads to board results that are biased towards fair share and do not contribute to closing the gaps to requirement that most of the communities maintain.
Relatively Similar Opportunity
A primary legal requirement which must be met within a given competitive category is to maintain relatively similar opportunity for promotion within the competitive category and grade over a five-year period. For the URL competitive category, this means that all officers in zone, regardless of designator, are legally required to have relatively similar probability of promotion. Meeting the needs of a community that requires more or fewer promotions requires deviation from what is their proportionate fair share based on the relative opportunity. If the community
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with shortages were a standalone separate category, the size of the zone and the opportunity would be adjusted within DOPMA flow point and opportunity constraints to achieve the required number of promotions to meet the individual community requirements. Any community within the URL competitive category that is short by a significant number of officers cannot promote at a higher rate than the other URL communities to make up the gap. A common measure of effectiveness to URL selection board outcomes is how well a community’s promotions measured against the relatively similar opportunity. This is known as fair share or board rate. This focus on board rate is tacit acceptance that fair share from the selection board is the best a community can and should do while entirely disregarding the primary function of the selection board - to meet the requirements and competency needs of the Navy. In simplest form, these requirements and competencies are defined as the community’s funded billets known as Officer Program Authorizations. A much more appropriate metric for the URL should be an assessment of how well each community’s annual losses/vacancies, aligned with each community’s existing shortages, were met by the promotion board. This is the key factor applied to planning for all the other competitive categories that gets lost in the combined URL promotion plan. More often than not, due to relative size differences of the communities, URL promotion outcomes have been insufficient to meet annual vacancies in grade, let alone begin to reduce existing shortfalls to requirement for four out of the five communities. Achieving or exceeding board rate in the competitive category is inadequate to meet community requirements for each community and does not begin to overcome or reduce longstanding shortages. The underrepresented communities therefore carry a continuous shortage in the control grades without relief from the system designed to meet Navy needs. Shortages have persisted in the SWO, Submarine, EOD and SEAL Communities. No URL community can begin to close their historic gaps without attaining better control of promotions to meet community requirements.
URL Promotion Zones
Navy Officer promotions are centrally managed by the Chief of Naval Personnel working with the community managers to develop the annual promotion plan. The calculation of the number to promote to vacancy is the most important planning factor. The zone is then defined from the number to promote divided by the desired opportunity and the result is applied to the lineal list. Officers in zone are then selected with the “best and fully qualified” standard along with the authorized percentage to select for each competitive category. For the URL, the zone includes whatever combination of officers from each community that is contained within that lineal list. There is no relationship between the representative mix of URL community officers in zone and the promotion requirements of these communities. On the other hand, the Restricted Line and Staff categories have their zones and opportunity sized to satisfy each community’s requirements. In the current URL competitive category’s fair and equitable basis, the combined zone provides quantitative advantages to larger communities and hinders the smaller communities. Smaller communities have an insufficient number of eligibles in zone to support promoting at fair share or board rate to meet community requirements, particularly when trying to recover from persistent shortages. This condition results in perpetuating shortages and continuing overages without change to the status quo despite the best efforts of the individual communities to improve retention and better prepare eligibles for the promotion competition.