This ship was a poor platform for surface warfare officer (SWO) and Enlisted Surface Warfare (ESW) candidates for the following reasons:

• It was a non-combatant ship, meaning it had no weapons systems installed.
• It did not steam in formation with other vessels.
• It had no underway refueling ability.
• It had no flight deck for air operations, while most naval vessels have at least a helicopter pad. 
• It never performed tactical maneuvering operations with other surface vessels. 
• Its underway schedule was relatively sparse due to the ship’s limited 1980s mission as a support vessel for the submarine force Trident missile testing program. Equipment for this purpose was owned and operated by private contractors.  At other times, its mission was to haul deep submergence vehicles where needed. 
• There was no organized training for bridge watch standers, who were left on their own to question “qualified” individuals whose own knowledge was hampered by the ship’s limited mission and their own inexperience.
• Standards of knowledge for qualification were never identified.  The whole process for evaluating SWO candidates was completely arbitrary and intended to meet political goals.
• Rampant, unaccountable sexual misconduct between senior and junior officers and with crewmembers influenced some of these awards. 
• Submarine officers with no previous experience on a surface ship were assigned to command this ship, and to act as Executive Officers.  The Navy allowed them to receive SWO qualifications automatically, and to grant qualifications to each other in addition to subordinates.  Knowledge of surface warfare was not tested for these submarine officers prior to award. 
• No one in the chain of command monitored the integrity of the SWO qualification program, despite Navy instructions requiring it.  Case in point: the ship’s commanding officer, CAPT D.J. O’Shea, never attended anyone’s oral boards, and neither did the Executive Officer.  Their decisions relied on the opinions of newly qualified, inexperienced junior officers with personal agendas to destroy their competition.    
• Any junior line officer with a “qualification” from the USS Point Loma would have been at a disadvantage if assigned to other navy vessels which possessed any of the above capabilities. 

NOBODY CARED, BUT WHY NOT?

What is most surprising is that no one in the SWO community cared about the integrity of their own qualification program.  They simply allowed the submarine force to corrupt it with not a care in the world.  They cannot say they weren’t aware, because my complaints made them aware.  It is not a stretch to say that submarine officers, including CAPT O’Shea, did not care either.  All the way up the chain, nobody cared.  Why?  I say no one respected SWO qualifications and SWO officers.  Try doing this in the aviation world, or the SEALS, or in Navy Diving, or even the submarine force itself.  There is far more scrutiny for their qualifications.  It’s interesting that under current navy regulations on SWO qualifications, submarine officers are not eligible for this award.  There’s a switch of policy no one has explained.     

One explanation for the indifference can be found in the history of the SWO program itself and how it began.  Prior to the 1960s, there was no such thing as a SWO qualification.  All those great surface warriors like Admirals King, Nimitz, Halsey, didn’t have one. These are the leaders that helped us win WWII.  The aviators had their “wings of gold”, and the submariners had their “dolphins”, the SEALS had their “tridents”.  But the surface force had nothing but ribbons to pin on their chest.  It wasn’t enough.  Call it Pin Envy.  So, some genius came up with a half-baked qualification program that made it easy to get rid of officers the leadership either didn’t like or didn’t want by making the qualification mandatory for all junior line officers assigned to their first ship.  Even after completing SWO school, after the junior line officer is assigned to a ship, he/she must obtain signatures for a laundry list of line-item topics supposedly testing their knowledge along the way to being eligible for an oral board.  The signatures are not binding, so they’re useless.  The process of getting all those signatures is political, based on whether the candidate is liked or favored by the qualified officer.  Even if the junior officer gets all the signatures to be eligible for an oral board, he/she must face several “qualified” officers from the same ship with mixed levels of experience, who may or may not like a candidate for any number of reasons having nothing to do with performance or competence.  By this point, I hope you understand that this qualification is not based on merit.  However, some officers manage to get SWO qualified on merit despite the setup. I say those are the exceptions.    

In recent years, the Navy was forced to change this experience to standardize the qualification program for all line officers serving on all ships. This happened after highly publicized collisions in 2017 that resulted in several fatalities at sea.   A combination of inexperience, lack of training, and exhaustion contributed to those catastrophes.  It’s a step in the right direction but unclear of its effectiveness at the moment. 

Another more obvious explanation is that neither the submarine or the SWO community wants to admit their negligence/dereliction of duty in failing to monitor the integrity of the program on the USS Point Loma.  Why is that?  I’m glad you asked. 

I wasn’t just trying to earn a warfare pin or move up the ranks.  I was fighting for a Navy that lived up to its own standards, a Navy where merit mattered, where women could serve without being harassed (sexually or otherwise), and where leadership was held accountable.  When people report harassment, discrimination, retaliation, they expect accountability.  Powerful institutions will never admit wrongdoing.  They fear lawsuits, bad press, financial consequences.  So they create another narrative, where the “whistleblower” is the problem, and where the abuse is individual, not systemic.  Of course, they do it to protect the institution from any liability.  This should be a powerful reminder of why whistleblowers matter – and why they need real protection.