Destroyer Commander Fired After Navy Loses Confidence in His Ability to Lead

That's probably as true a statement in a Combat Arms unit in the Army. When you hit Brigade, the Commander of a mixed task force could be Infantry or Armor, but I can't think of an example where a combat commander came from even the Artillery or Engineers. What I see as the big difference is that your officers are more Generalist than the more specialized Army Branch's.

CPT Lawrence Cable - I'd agree somewhat with that. It's probably because a ship at sea does all the same things a command at shore does...it just does it with fewer folks. The Electrical Division Officer on an LPD is probably also an OOD, a member of the Damage Control Training Team, and maybe even a VBSS officer or Force Protection Officer. That differs dramatically from an aviator who may indeed have many collateral duties (NATOPS officer, training officer, etc.), but whose primary role is to fly a tactical aircraft. I won't suggest that being OOD on a destroyer is as technically challenging as flying an F-18. However, it is somewhat disturbing that the twenty-three year old responsible for safely navigating a warship at 2 a.m. has probably been up since 5 a.m. the previous morning. He likely came to watch tired, focused on several other "crisis" issues in his division, struggling to stay ahead of his own qualification process, and regarding his next eight to twelve hours on the bridge as something of a "break"...as opposed to his primary area of responsibility at that time.

LCDR Joshua Gillespie - I don't mean to imply that Army Officers don't wear a number of different hats. As an Engineer Platoon Leader, besides leading the platoon I was the Task Force Engineer on the Task Force Commanders staff, the Company NBC Officer, Movement Officer and all the others that the Captain didn't want and I couldn't stick on one of the junior officers. That doesn't stop as you go up. On Battalion Staff and above, however, most of the positions outside of Commander, XO and generally the S3, are branch immaterial. The theory being that an S1 Admin Officer or S4 Supply functions the same in an Infantry unit as it does in a transportation unit.

CPT Lawrence Cable - That makes sense, and it's not really any different in the Navy...perception is everything I suppose. You guys call it 'combat arms', and we call it 'line", but it seems to generally be the same mentality.