By Lt. Tiya DeGhetto, Information Warfare Training Command Virginia Beach
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – Information Warfare Training Command (IWTC) Virginia Beach hosted the Navy’s intelligence technician chief warrant officer (CWO) community working group, welcoming intelligence professionals from across the active and reserve naval intelligence community, May 7-9.
Beginning in May 2017, the working group was designed to bring the intelligence CWO community together and restructure the existing program to meet the evolving needs of the intelligence community, information warfare community, and Navy at large. The ongoing transformation aligns with the intelligence initiative for Sailor 2025, and will happen via close collaboration between the enlisted and officer community managers to prevent overgrowth of the CWO cadre, and to ensure minimal impacts to senior enlisted intelligence specialist community manning. In addition to increasing annual accessions, intelligence technicians are now selected based on their Navy enlisted classification (NEC) codes, and demonstrated operational experience in that NEC.
Chief Warrant Officer 5 Sean Schwenneker kicked off the working group by providing a community update brief and discussing the future of the CWO billets going to fiscal year 2022. Schwenneker also addressed the previous working group from 2017, along with current issues and milestones that need to be reached in the process.
Other topics discussed during the three-day working group included:
• Collaboration with Reserve counterparts
• Maintaining a viable career path for CWOs in three core competency areas (CCA)
• Aligning CWO CCAs with enlisted community
• Generating operational intelligence (OPINTEL) and geospatial intelligence (GEOINTEL)/targeting additional qualification designation codes
• Drafting of discrete requirements
Further discussion amongst these experienced professionals took place during the breakout sessions. During these sessions, personnel discussed the problems faced within their respective CCAs, solutions presented, and even shared a few sea stories. A common theme discussed amongst the working group was sustainability and inventory growth at a healthy pace.
“We greatly appreciate Cmdr. Bosworth and IWTC Virginia Beach’s support in hosting the working group,” said Schwenneker, CWO working group lead. “There is no better place to meet than where each of us began our Navy intelligence careers. The working group, the second since May 2017, was designed to bring the intelligence CWO community back together to review progress of a modernization program that began two years prior and to address current CWO specific and broader intelligence community needs. The ongoing restructure places technical expertise back at operational and training commands to provide the most effective impact to the fleet. In so doing, the Navy will have technical subject matter experts in key billets that are ready to meet the demands for operating in the future warfighting environment.”
The CWO community has risen to the challenge of the task at hand, but is also mindful of a changing multi-disciplinary warfare environment and a shift to great power competition. The CWO community is self-directed to develop talent to meet future confrontations, with solutions proposed today aimed to solve the issues that may present themselves 7 to 10 years in the future. Priority of effort will focus on growing the OPINTEL CCA while slowly increasing GEOINT/targeting and maintaining counterintelligence/human intelligence manning levels.
“IWTC Virginia Beach is honored to host the chief warrant officer working group, and we appreciate everyone taking time out of their busy schedules to support this event,” said Cmdr. Richard Bosworth, commanding officer of IWTC Virginia Beach. “This is a great opportunity to ensure our community continues to take advantage of the technical expertise of our intelligence chief warrant officer community.”
IWTC Virginia Beach, located in Dam Neck Annex, currently offers 65 courses of instruction in information technology, cryptology, and intelligence with an instructor and support staff of 280 military, civilian, and contractors who train over 6,500 students every year. It is one of four school houses for Center for Information Warfare Training (CIWT) and also oversees learning sites at Jacksonville and Mayport, Florida; Kings Bay, Georgia; and Groton, Connecticut to continue aligning IW community training.
With four schoolhouse commands, two detachments, and training sites throughout the United States and Japan, CIWT is recognized as Naval Education and Training Command’s top learning center for the past three years. Training over 21,000 students every year, CIWT delivers trained information warfare professionals to the Navy and joint services. CIWT also offers more than 200 courses for cryptologic technicians, intelligence specialists, information systems technicians, electronics technicians, and officers in the information warfare community.
For more news from Center for Information Warfare Training domain, visit www.navy.mil/local/cid/, www.netc.navy.mil/centers/ciwt/, www.facebook.com/NavyCIWT, or www.twitter.com/NavyCIWT.
Date Taken: | 05.09.2019 |
Date Posted: | 05.13.2019 12:00 |
Story ID: | 322220 |
Location: | VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA, US |
Web Views: | 175 |
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