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DTIC AD1001896: The Navy's Moral Compass: Commanding Officers and Personal Misconduct

The U.S. Navy has an integrity problem in the ranks of its commanding officers(COs). Consider these headlines: Cruiser CO Relieved for Cruelty.1CO Fired, Charged with Solicitation.2 CO of Attack Sub Fired for Drunkenness.3 These are just a few cases in a recent deluge of early reliefs of skippers. In 2010, twenty-three Navy COs were relieved of command and detached for cause, an enormous increase over previous years. The trend continues: twenty-one commanding officers were fired in 2011 as of the end of October.4 Even more worrisome is the fact that a large and increasing percentage of those dismissals are due to personal misconduct, such as sexual harassment, drunkenness, and fraternization. Although (as far as we can tell) over 97 percent of the Navy's commanding officers conduct themselves honorably, the increasing number of those who do not raises concerns that the Navy must address. Alarms should be sounding at the highest levels of Navy leadership, but a review of recent literature reveals only a trickle of discussion on the subject of personal misconduct by military commanders. Instead of calling the service to action, a Navy spokesman said in January 2011 that there was no

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