In February 2023, a cohort of 62 early to midcareer professionals—officer, enlisted, and civilian, selected from more than 130 applicants—gathered in San Diego for the 8th annual DARE Innovation Workshop. DARE is a unique opportunity for participants to troubleshoot challenging problems over a three-day period and brief findings directly to service chiefs. This year, Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Michael Gilday asked teams to address:
Talent Management: As the U.S. armed services approach the 50-year anniversary of the all-volunteer force, they all agree on one thing: Our people are our asymmetric advantage. The naval services will be increasingly challenged to meet their recruiting numbers in a competitive job market from a dwindling pool of qualified young people. What actions can they take to better attract, recruit, and retain the talented leaders of tomorrow?
• If you were a coach, teacher, guidance counselor, religious leader, or parent, what would you value most in recommending a career? What should the Navy do to make those recommendations easier?
• In your organization, what is the leading reason people choose to leave? What are the leading reasons to stay?
• How does your organization help people improve, adjust, or evolve in their organizational roles to feel valued by and remain invested in the organization?
• Resilience and inclusion anchor positive culture and help ensure those we lead can overcome obstacles. How can the Navy better foster resiliency and inclusion?
Force Design: Introducing new capabilities to the fleet requires retiring legacy platforms that cannot stay relevant in contested seas. Today, the Navy is challenged to operate, sustain, and modernize the current force within fiscal constraints without approved divestments, which means it must shoulder the long-term fully burdened costs to retain its existing force structure. In addition, through a rigorous campaign of learning, we recognize that the Navy needs a more continuous, iterative force design process to focus its modernization efforts and accelerate the capabilities it needs to maintain its edge in this critical decade and beyond. The Navy must modernize, or it risks falling behind.
• While prioritizing readiness, what investments/divestments should the Navy make to improve the naval services’ overall warfighting capability?
Divided into teams, participants addressed Admiral Gilday’s questions.
Question #1: Talent Management
The pool of qualified individuals continues to shrink, and positive messaging of military service is lacking in our communities. Keeping service members past their initial service obligations and beyond will take more than the status quo. Four of the DARE workshop’s integrated teams focused on tools to improve both recruitment and retention. Their recommendations were a blend of new innovative ideas, modernization of existing policies, and successful techniques from other services and companies. Specifically, they recommended:
• Develop an effective marketing strategy. Currently, the military is struggling to explain the value of service. Community leaders—parents, guidance counselors, coaches, clergy, etc.—are not prioritizing military service when discussing future opportunities with their youth. The teams concluded that community leaders are not informed, have misperceptions of military service, or lack relationships with military leaders. To effectively counsel youth, they need to understand the value of service beyond the pride of service to the nation, including the significant monetary, educational, and skills-based incentives.
• Establish a “CNO Road Show” to maximize awareness of military service by sending members out to local communities to augment recruiters. High performers of all ranks could be afforded the opportunity to travel to their hometowns or to locations they wish to visit and spend time engaging with community leaders, religious institutions, schools, and gyms to magnify ongoing recruiting efforts. Travel would be funded by the service and could be combined with leave, a boon for both the service member and the service. This idea already has roots in the Hometown Area Recruiting Assistance Program.
• Create a “Grass Is Greener” campaign to inform service members of the true value of military service compared to civilian counterparts. Conversations that occur in transition assistance programs should occur during the first enlistment and be revisited regularly throughout a career. Informing members of the full value of their compensation package compared with the private sector will ensure they understand the financial implications of separation. Specifically, providing a dashboard of information when logging into records or administrative websites could show the adjusted compensation of service and what salary you would need as a civilian to make an equivalent amount. Included in the adjusted monetary compensation are healthcare, educational opportunities, and matched investments, many of which are not offered in the private sector.
• End subsequent reenlistments, effectively mirroring officer careers in the enlisted ranks. Once an initial enlistment is completed, instead of signing a four- to six-year contract, service members could negotiate for specific orders, and commitments would match execution of negotiated orders. This would eliminate the stigma of a long obligation that may span multiple duty stations and remove a perceived “end point” of military service. Instead of being offered at reenlistment, bonuses would be paid in conjunction with orders to historically hard-to-fill billets or at career milestones. In addition, each branch’s human resources departments should be bolstered to levels comparable to those at private-sector companies to offer service members more career counseling opportunities.
• Allow for opt out and opt in for both the officer and senior enlisted ranks to enable high-performing service members to compete for early promotion opportunities. This would incentivize service members who meet career milestones ahead of schedule—often by their own determination and drive to succeed. Conversely, other services are testing the ability to opt out of promotion, and the Navy should immediately implement that policy. Flexibility in service is valued across all ranks, and the ability to remain at a current rank or position could remove potential career risks such as delaying an operational assignment to start a family or pursuing unique out-of-specialty billets.
Question # 2: Force Design
Near-peer competitors are aggressively pursuing larger spheres of influence, often promoting authoritarian and/or extremist ideology that directly counters Western values of freedom and the rules-based international order. DARE teams developed force design solutions to address this growing threat.
Effective force design is the only way to maintain our competitive edge in a rapidly evolving security environment. Capabilities that are no longer required for the future fight need to be considered for divestment. In the CNO’s navigation plan he states, “In close collaboration with the other Armed Services, the Navy has prioritized the future capabilities we need to employ our warfighting concepts and maintain credible deterrence,” but the path is far from clear. To make that path clearer for senior leaders, the services must tap into the energy, experience, and ideas of the young service members who will be implementing and operating these investments for years or decades to come. Specifically, DARE teams recommended:
• Create an Office of Force Design, nested under the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, manned by service operators across the joint force, and charged with developing the capabilities of tomorrow to fill the gaps of today. The target demographic to serve in this office would be E-5–E-7s and O-3–O-5s who have recent, relevant experience. Removing the flag- and Senior Executive Service–level oversight in this shop would foster the out-of-the-box thinking required to effect positive change.
• To fight and win at sea in 2045, the Navy should consider divesting and investing:
In addition, the joint force should continue investing in capabilities and equipment that already are operational and have proven successful. Specifically, allies and partners often field platforms that would meet U.S. capability requirements. Through acquisition and foreign military purchases, the Navy could save valuable time and resources. This would require a mindset shift in Congress, as the United States historically spearheads innovation and is devoted to internal investments through national contracts.
Finally, the Navy should encourage allies and partners to deploy to our waters and visit our cities. This not only fosters good relationships, but also increases training, interoperability, and, in times of crisis, a seamless, coordinated response.
• Increase cyber wargaming and resiliency across all services. Tabletop exercises and training to the future fight are essential. Baseline training in cyber and IT skills for all service members, coupled with these exercises, will enable leaders to operate in contested environments. U.S. forces must be agile and resilient, even when services and technology fail, to successfully execute distributed maritime operations. In a future conflict, defense and repair of cyber and IT systems will be akin to damage control on board ship. In addition to “every sailor a damage controlman,” every sailor will be responsible for maintaining the cyber mesh that connects command-and-control platforms, requiring a new motto of “every sailor a cyber defender.”
• Do not always rely on the newest technology and force the “best” available innovations into a platform design. Use the foundations of proven, established platforms and implement a “bolt on, bolt off” approach to update mission requirements and technological advances. This reduces the time to field a brand-new asset and creates a process that works at the speed of industry.
An Unparalleled Experience
This year’s DARE workshop was an engaging, productive, and special experience. The event provided an unparalleled networking opportunity as participants assembled from nearly every warfare community across the Sea Services and industry. Under the guidance of Professor Michael Meyer from the University of California’s Rady School of Management, participants completed a crash course in “Design Thinking”— using brainstorming and analysis sessions to break apart the problems and identify solutions. At the conclusion of day two, each team nominated a representative to brief the CNO. Teams then spent the morning of day three preparing their briefers for the afternoon’s presentations.
Admiral Gilday was scheduled for 60 minutes of debriefs, but he spent nearly 90 minutes engaging in questions and answers. In addition, the admiral engaged the entire DARE team, asking and answering questions from all participants, not just the presenters. Following a robust conversation, he requested a video recording of the event to share with fellow flag officers. He also noted that many of the recommendations could be implemented on an accelerated timeline, and his intent was to start working toward change immediately.
Recent years have brought tectonic shifts in geopolitics, the nature of military service, and the daily lives of American citizens. In these turbulent times, efforts such as the DARE Innovation Workshop are more important than ever. DARE is a unique mechanism that enables junior and midcareer professionals in the Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and civilian organizations to have their voices heard and share their ideas directly with service leaders.