By James Houck
It was a sunny Tuesday afternoon, early summer, one week removed from the 2016 Class’ commissioning, and just a couple more before several hundred recent high school graduates are inducted Plebes—all seemed well and good, and calm, at the United States Naval Academy in the heart of Annapolis, where I was about to meet the “Sup” for an interview.
Between early summer and fall, before USNA’s pulse truly quickens and the grounds are walked by Midshipmen more so than tourists, it’s a ripe time to meet with top ass—specifically the Academy’s 62nd Superintendent, Vice Admiral Walter E. “Ted” Carter, Jr. who is tasked with not only maintaining this institution’s high standards of education, decorum, and shaping young men and women into the Navy’s finest, but also evolving the service academy’s curriculum and global initiatives.
Currently two years into his four-year assignment as Superintendent, Carter has come full circle to the institution from which he graduated in 1981. An aviator at heart, in training, and in service, Carter also graduated from the Navy Fighter Weapons School, Top Gun, in 1985. His aviation career includes 125 combat missions in support of joint operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He accumulated 6,150 flight hours in F-4, F-14, and F-18 aircraft during his career and safely completed 2,016 carrier-arrested landings, the record among all active and retired U.S. Naval Aviation designators.
Carter loves to fly, which is why it comes as no surprise that he loves the sport of ice hockey. He not only loves the game—the Rhode Island native is a confessed Boston Bruins fan, but “I greatly enjoy the Washington Capitals as well,” he tells me—he also enjoys playing it (he’s known to frequent pick-up games at the McMullen Hockey Arena at the Brigade Sports Complex).
Now, as ice hockey and football seasons start, and Mids are afoot at the Academy and throughout Annapolis, it’s an appropriate time to revisit that summer interview and meet Vice Admiral Carter.
What is the most challenging interview that you've had in your career?
The one that sticks out in my mind was back in 1995, I was the chief of staff of Fighter Wing out in California. We had just lost our first female fighter pilot in a crash. And I did an interview with a reporter from Channel 13 up in L.A., a pretty well-known anchor. And he had an agenda. It was very clear to me that he was not interested in any opinion about whether or not women belonged in a cockpit. So that was a tough interview. It was a lesson to me that I could have been better prepared for something like that. Not everybody has the same viewpoints obviously for what we do.
You graduated Top Gun flight school at about the same time a certain movie starring Tom Cruise came out [Top Gun]. Did that play into your experience at the time?
Sure. Not that the movie is an exact reflection of the school itself. There are some parts—the images of flying in the air—that are very well done. But I would say it’s more a period piece on American thinking in terms of how Americans perceived men and women of that era, 30 years ago. For me and my generation that were instructors at that time, yeah it probably put a little extra pump in our step because, you know, we thought we were all that [laughing]. But the longer you stay in business, the more you realize you don’t know everything and you tend to become more filled with humility. So yes, that was probably a point where I thought I was a little bit better at being an aviator than I actually was, but by the grace of God and flying with a lot of talented people, I’m still around and still able to talk about it.
Was there ever a moment, a crossroads, in your career path in which you had to make the decision, “This is what I want to do, perhaps, for my entire career?”
I think it was around that time actually. My first deployment, and I’m dating myself back to 1983, after I’d been through flight school, was on board the USS Midway flying an F-4 Phantom. We were one of the last F-4 squadrons in the Navy. It was an airplane that was 25 years old at the time. We lost three airplanes in one year, a couple of pilots. And to go through that with people that you slept next to in an eight-man bunk room had a very, very big impact on me. I was 23–24 years old and to go through that loss of a shipmate, a friend, a fellow aviator—not just once, but a couple times—and see three of your airplanes crash gave me a very grown-up perspective very quickly. And then to be selected to go to the Navy’s premier flying school in 1985; that said to me that I might actually have some business being here. And then as the leadership opportunities came up after that, it never seemed a question of whether or not I’d stay in; it seemed like what I was supposed to do.
And then to get into command for the first time, where you’re in charge of a squadron. That has lifetime impacts. You’ll never be closer to those you work with and for; I had 30 aviators, we were involved in significant combat in Kosovo and Iraq. And 300 enlisted sailors, 25 percent of whom were women in that squadron; it was a newly integrated, gender integrated, squadron. So to put that all together in 1998 and 1999…that was a lot. I was very fortunate. I had tremendous people working around me. It was a very high-performing squadron.
Having served through that challenging time, are you pleased with the progress the service academies have made in that regard?
I think we have definitely moved very far down the road and made great improvements. As I see what we’re achieving today, I am very pleased. It doesn’t mean that the work is done. There’s still plenty to do. As I look at the quality of how men and women behave here at the Academy, I would tell you that we are a few years ahead of the rest of the fleet in terms of how well we’re integrated, of how they understand the concepts of dignity and respect for each other. We just crossed over 25 percent of the igade being women just last year. And now we’ll be steady with that. The incoming freshmen class will be 28 percent women this year. Highest ever.
You're two years into the Superintendent position; when you received your orders did you seek counsel from any of your predecessors, or whom in general?
I wasn’t sure how that worked really. First of all, you think if you’re worthy to come into this position. Now that I have been here, I can tell you, it is the highest calling of any job I’ve ever had because it’s shaping the future of the Navy and the Marine Corps. But I immediately thought back to who was the Superintendent when I was here; it was Vice Admiral Bill Lawrence who we revered. He was a long-serving POW; we didn’t see him a lot, but we knew where he was and, of course, his daughter, Wendy Lawrence, was in my class—the first woman to go into space from the Naval Academy. So we had this incredibly high opinion of him as our Superintendent and it was a hard pill to swallow to think, “I’m supposed to be following in the footsteps of a giant like that?” But then immediately, the day I was confirmed, I started getting contacts from former Superintendents and everyone that reached out to me said, “We’re here to help guide you and give you some lessons from the things that we’ve learned.” So that was incredibly helpful and they all have different perspectives. It wasn’t all the same. I still stay very close to a number of them. We’ve done some reviews on things here and I’ll often use their counsel.
Do you find much in the curriculum today to be similar to your own experience?
It still is; about two thirds of our overall curriculum is standard throughout the igade. So there is still a tremendous amount from the curriculum that I entered into in 1977, because those are still the building blocks you need to get an undergraduate degree. But a lot has also changed. We used to take two electrical engineering courses that were required; well now we only take one, but yet we take two cyber courses.
Are the teachings of Sun Tzu applicable within the context of cyber warfare today?
Having been the president in Newport [at the Naval War College], we obviously relied a lot on the teaching of The Art of War by Sun Tzu and it’s a complicated piece. Part of the teachings of Sun Tzu is this idea that direct force is not necessarily the best way to win in a conflict. The misinterpretation I think that a lot of folks have with cyber is that it’s some separate domain, which we either have to defend or fight. It’s actually threaded throughout everything we have now. So I don’t think of cyber as its own separate domain; it’s just interwoven into every aspect: air, sea, space, and land. So the same application that works for Sun Tzu has a direct application in cyber. But I think as we are going into the future of warfare, the application of what Sun Tzu teaches and how to understand your potential enemy, how to win in battle rather than go into an all-out absolute war, is a much preferred way to sustain the peace. I think that has more application in the future of warfare that what we’ve seen maybe dating back over the last 25 years.
How has the cyber program and new building progressed?
It’s coming along very well and I owe a lot of credit to those who have come before me. If for no other statement of fact than Congress and members of Senate have appropriated $120 million to the Naval Academy to build a cyber studies building and that is underway. We closed the contract on that this past March. On the yard, we’ve got a parking garage that is going up; that is important, all part of that $120 million. $10 million from that is going to help off-set some parking, because the space between Rickover and Nimitz [Halls] will be a 200,000-square foot, five-story building. We’re putting shovel to ground this October 21st and that will start the construction phase of this building. And there will be a name to it that will be coming out in about another four to five months. And we expect construction to continue for about two years. We think the building will be fully occupied and operational by the fall of 2019.
But we’re not waiting for the building to move along [the cyber program]. We just graduated the first class with cyber majors this year. Next year there will be a fully-accredited cyber majors program. The distinguished professors that are coming in to teach; we are getting the best that are available throughout the county. The Classes of 2017 and ’18 that are going into their senior and junior years have very robust numbers that are in that major. As we move along, we’re going to carry well over 100 Midshipmen in that major. And, as I mentioned, everybody takes a plebe course and a course as a junior in cyber operations. We’re continuing to mature the quality of that coursework and it just gets better and better every year.
And to ask, “Well what’s the proof that you’re doing well in that?” We have cyber teams, almost like sports teams. Sometimes to compete in competitions to defend a network; so there’s an actual cyber competition where the National Security Agency will come in and try to infiltrate a certain network. The service academies play in that; we play in that. We do exceptionally well. We won the overall competition the year before last. This last year we put together a team that competes in cyber policy competitions. Sometimes these are written competitions; sometimes they’re like debates. We won a significant cyber security policy competition at New York University called “Cyber Securities Awareness Week.” For an undergraduate institution, a three-man team went up there and won the whole competition for cyber policy. And we came in second at an international policy competition in Geneva. We’re competing against undergraduate and graduate—doctoral level—programs for cyber. You could argue that we have one of the leading cyber programs in the nation.
The building will become the cyber “field of dreams.” If you build it, they will come. It’s [likely] going to be one of, if not, the last academic building to go up in the yard. For us to put another one up, something else would have to come down. That’s not lost on us.
In your opinion, what characteristics define an exemplary leader?
If you’re looking at the young men and women that we take applications from—and we go through a very detailed process for admissions here—you’d ask, “Well how do you know that you’re getting the best and ightest from all across the county?” We’re looking for young men and women that can do everything—so in other words, that whole person concept. Not just being an athlete, not just being the student body president, not just being an Eagle Scout or head of the Girl Scouts. We’re looking for people that can do everything as a whole person.
When we get them here, we eak them down to the most basic level. No matter how great they are or told how great they’ve been told they are through high school or prep school or even a four-year college program, we’re going to get them down to understanding this concept of humility and the idea that it’s not just about you, it’s about being a teammate. Those are very important aspects of being a leader. To be a leader, you have to first learn how to be a follower. Followership is first and foremost, and then build them up from there.
As you go through that process—and this is a leadership schoolhouse—there are some things you can do in the classroom by using case studies; examples of good leadership, bad leadership. But a lot of it is experiential. [For example] everybody who comes here has to learn how to sail. Everybody has to learn how to box. You put those two together and you go—well here’s an example of where you’re all going to be in a boat figuring out how to do something that you probably have never done before in your life, with instruction, but now you’re in a boat and everybody is going to be taking turns being the leader. But then you’re also going to be put into a situation where you’ve got gloves on and it’s you against another opponent. It’s going to be safely managed but the dynamics of how you’re going to engage in a boxing round will teach you as much about yourself as getting out on a sailboat with your classmates. So those are examples at the lower level of how we’re building the beginnings of how to become a leader here.
The igade runs and manages itself. There’s leadership positions in there. We expect a lot of our seniors and juniors, as to how they lead, manage, and shape the sophomores and the freshmen plebes. But when they leave here, they have to have some pretty basic understanding of what it takes to get a job done, how to take care of your people, how to understand what motivates people to do their job well, and we think we do a pretty good job of inging that all together here. Everybody who graduates is ready to lead in the Navy and Marine Corps. Again, they’re at the beginning stages of their career, but we have very high expectations of those young men and women that go out and start their naval career.
To lead any group of men and women, first you have to be competent at your job and having good listening skills, beyond which you can hear but what you see, to understand what is the mood and morale of the organization you’re operating. Communication skills, not just by email or text—how you communicate in eye-to-eye, face-to-face—that is critically important. Again, how to take care of your folks, whether it be the physical, emotional, social, professional—all those parts are in the curriculum here to make sure our men and women are ready to lead when they graduate.
And part of your early Academy leadership experience was ice hockey…
One of the reasons we love our physical mission here with all of the different Division 1 NCAA sports programs and high end club sports like ice hockey—those team experiences are very much leadership experiences. And much of what I learned about how to be successful in leading airplanes into combat, came from my experience of being captain of the ice hockey team here in 1981.
Do you still play?
Oh yeah! Friday mornings at the Brigade Sports Complex. Hockey is played everywhere. I played in organized hockey leagues every year that I’ve been in the Navy, with the exception of the year I went to flight school and when I went to nuke power school. That’s what’s really cool about the Navy. You can play anything just about anywhere—I’ve played in Japan, on ice in Bahrain, in UAE, there’s ice everywhere.
Two years left…what do you hope will be your legacy?
If you were to talk to any other major college president or university president, they would tell you that it’s very difficult to leave a mark unless you’re at an institution maybe 10 years. So I have no visions of having anything be about me; what I would like to think is that I will have put some things in motion—along with the staff who are here, many of whom will outlive my tenure—focused in the three areas: ensuring that we make leadership curriculum job one; taking the cyber application and discipline to the next level; and third, our ability to interact with our international partners. We’ve had an international programs office here for about 10 years. Last year we had about 450 Midshipmen that got a oad to about 35 different nations and there’s obviously a cost to doing that, but the return on investment—when our Midshipmen come back with an understanding of what it’s like to live in Beijing, China, for six months and speak only Chinese—is a life engaging experience that we know benefits the Midshipmen and helps us engage with our international friends and partners.
International policy is incredibly important, especially in those waters [Western Pacific]…
We’re busy with that; we’re doing everything that we can to keep up the numbers. My vision on that would be to have—out of the 4,000 Midshipmen—about 50 percent of them get an international engagement during their four years. That takes some work. If we could sustain the numbers that we had last year, we would achieve that. We’re driven by our fiscal realities, but we’ll continue to have that program. And, of course, I ing international partners here; so 60 [international] full-time Midshipmen are here at any given time; we’re having 17 international students start with the freshman class this summer. And then I’ll ing in somewhere between 50 and 150 international Midshipmen for a semester study a oad over the course of the year. Right now, I have exchange programs with nine different countries, and by the end of this [past] summer it will be up to 12. I’ll sign additional agreements with Italy, Israel, and South Korea.
So there never is any down time for you…
No, I will be in South Korea this summer to sign that agreement in person.
Thank you for your time and for your service.
And thank you for staying plugged in; the Academy and the City of Annapolis, as you know, are bound together. Unlike any other service academy. If you go to West Point, or the Coast Guard Academy in New London, or the Air Force Academy, the relationship with those service academies and their local downtown is not what we have. We feel very appreciative that we have this wonderful relationship with Annapolis.
