Assistant Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Kohlmann has flown F-18s in combat, invested in startups, and run a hard-tech company. Now he's the US Navy's chief talent officer, responsible for a workforce of over a million people.
On the new Mission Matters Podcast episode, we discuss how the Navy recruits and retains talent for an era of software-enabled warfare, modernizing an industrial-age personnel system, bringing commercial expertise into uniform, fixing shipyard pay, and the demographic challenges ahead.
As always, please reach out if you or anyone you know is building at the intersection of technology and national security.
You can listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, the Shield Capital website, or right here on Substack.
Transcript
Maggie 00:36
In this episode of the Mission Matters podcast, we sit down with Secretary Ben Kohlmann, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. As ASN for M&RA, he is responsible for the oversight of manpower and reserve component affairs of the Department of Navy, including the full spectrum of policy and programs for military, that is active duty, reserve, retired, their families, and the civilian workforce.
David 01:04
Before his appointment, Secretary Kohlmann held a variety of roles both in and out of government. He served in the Navy for 20 years, where he was deployed into combat as an F-18 carrier pilot, flew as an instructor with the US Marine Corps, and worked in several tech-focused roles at the Office of Naval Research, Defense Innovation Unit, and Chief of Naval Operations Rapid Innovation Cell. In the private sector, Secretary Kohlmann worked as a consultant at McKinsey, as an investor and CEO at Cubic Capital, and as the CEO of New American Industrial Alliance.
Maggie 01:37
In this conversation, we cover everything from how the Navy can recruit tech talent, how they can upskill their existing workforce to prepare for the future of software-enabled warfare, how the Navy is modernizing its manpower management systems, what the private sector and public sector can learn from each other, and much more. So Secretary Kohlmann, thank you so much for joining this podcast. We’re really excited to have you.
Sec. Kohlmann 02:00
David and Maggie, honored to be here. Thank you for having me.
Maggie 02:03
So let’s start with just a simple question. I think most of our listeners are probably not familiar with your role and organization. However, it’s clearly a critical role. Organizations are only as good as the people within them. So can you tell us a little bit about what your responsibilities are as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Manpower and Reserve Affairs?
Sec. Kohlmann 02:23
Yeah, the government likes to put huge titles on what are... Have far shorter titles in the private sector. This is basically chief talent officer, Department of Navy. So a million personnel across our whole organization between active duty, reserve, military folks, and then all the civilian workforce, including the 200,000 civilians across the world, and a contractor workforce about 150,000. So everything from policy, promotions, retention, recruitment, all the things that go into fielding this workforce fall under my remit.
David 02:54
That’s awesome. And, so Secretary Kohlmann, it’s great to have you on the podcast. We’ve known each other, gosh, for over a decade, I think, when I met you, through the Defense Entrepreneur Forum, on Stanford’s campus 2016, I think it might have been. I’m sure we’ll dive into some of the DEF stuff and everything that your career’s entailed. But, in preparation for this podcast, I was, reading your Senate confirmation hearing notes, and clearly you come from a long lineage of military pilots, and so to say that this job is core to your DNA I think would be a bit of an understatement. But now having been in the role for, gosh, seven-ish months, eight months, what are your top priorities, for the Navy as far as manpower and readiness?
Sec. Kohlmann 03:45
Yeah, there are three things I’m focusing my time and attention on. The first is broad talent management and kind of updating our approaches for the 21st century. Military manpower and even the civilian manpower force that I’ve, have the honor of serving and leading has an industrial age approach. Single widget comes in on the entry. There’s career pipeline things that happen. For the most part, they’re interchangeable, then you retire on the back end We’re trying to change that into an into an information age approach, where an individual has unique skills and talents that they have inherent to who they are, the things they are gifted at, the things that they like to do. The organization has specific problems that they need solved. Figuring out ways to better match the specific skill sets with the problems the government has, and then providing promotion paths and options through that is somewhere where I’m trying to push the department. The second category really gets into really ensuring we have a strong foundation, and this gets into our civilian workforce. You know, when I was in the military, I didn’t realize we had, you know, 200-plus thousand civilians that were doing a lot of great work behind the scenes. How do we ensure that they have the right promotion pathways, the right recruitment opportunities, the right baseline of interesting things that we can leverage?And then more importantly is... Not more importantly, but equivalent to that, is the shipyard workforce. You know, shipbuilding has become, front of mind all the way from the president down to where we’re at right now. And to be honest, we’ve kind of hollowed it out over the past 20 or 30 years. And we’ve realized that the American shipbuilding industry and our maintenance approaches could use some improvement. And so we’re spending a lot of time trying to figure out, do we have the right incentives in place to recruit, retain, and then attract the next generation of shipyard workers, to do the maintenance activities that are in our four public shipyards right now. And then the last one is what I call white glove service for those who have served and those who serve. And this is about the day-to-day processes that folks might experience. So I’m also responsible for a number of boards that we have, the Board of Naval Corrections, being one of them. And if someone who is of, former service comes in and says, “Hey, there’s something wrong with my record. I wanna have that corrected,” they send a mail package into this mailbox, and it kind of gets in the system. And the system does its thing and might pop out six months later or three years later or some amount of time. We have all these processes in the department that if we can map and understand better, we can compress that time in order to deliver the outcomes that our service members both in uniform and out of uniform deserve. Those three areas are spending a lot of my time right now.
Maggie 06:19
Yeah, so I’d love to pull a thread on that first one, on, you know, talent management and modernizing that process. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, what does this industrial age approach look like today, and what will it take? You know, what is your vision for bringing it into the 21st century?
Sec. Kohlmann 06:35
Yeah, I mean, on the military side, there’s been what we call golden path career paths for a long time, especially in the officer community, where if you’re an aviator, surface warfare officer, a submarine officer, you kind of know what every step of the hierarchy is from the time you enter service to the time you retire, whether it’s at, you know, 10 years and you transition out, or 20 years, or 30 years. And There, there’s a lot of flexibility though that isn’t really built into the system. So my personal story, I chose to leave the military at about 12 years of active service to go get a graduate degree. At the time, graduate degrees were not really encouraged in the aviation community. And if I wanted to do it on the government’s dime, I’d basically be pushed off track and would go into a different category of officer. That didn’t necessarily seem right to me. On the civilian side, we kind of don’t really have any track whatsoever. There are some for highly technical areas, but most folks, you know, kind of feel their way around promotions and opportunities and people they know, as opposed to, you know, clearly defining what their outcome they wanna be and then knowing how to get there from step first to step last. And especially in the reserves as well, one of the things we’re seeing is there’s an immense amount of talent in the commercial sector that has a deep desire to serve their country How do we slot that in to the organization so that they can get recognized for kind of their skills on the outside, but also bring those skills directly into what’s happening in the military? This is what we’re doing with the Naval Innovation Unit and other organizations. But it comes down to that fact, you gotta find the right person in the right job to solve the right problem. And I think up until recently, we’ve had more of a, “Hey, anybody will do for this specific job. There’ll be a good enough outcome that happens,” as opposed to take, as opposed to taking advantage, like the asymptotic upside that comes when finding the perfect genius for the perfect thing to be solved. With kind of a full force data analytic view, we can start parsing through and finding more signal amidst the noise to really match the right people into those jobs that really will accelerate the outcomes that we have for the organization.
Maggie 08:34
Yeah, I wanted to ask one question on something you brought up, which is this, you know, how do we get more people from the commercial sector into the Navy and into the armed forces more broadly? I mean, I know I have some friends who have looked into it. It’s a pretty long process to get in, and even once you’re there, you’re not guaranteed to necessarily get a role that is gonna fit your particular skill set. I know this is something you’ve had some initiatives around, like with the Navy Innovation Unit, so would love to hear a little bit more about how you’re thinking about getting people from the commercial sector into either the Reserves or other parts of the government.
Sec. Kohlmann 09:09
Yeah, it’s challenging, but it’s, now’s the time to do it. So we’ll use the Naval Innovation Unit as a great example. So the Army actually led the way here about a year and a half ago now with what they’re calling Debt 201, which was taking senior executives from Silicon Valley and quickly getting them through a commissioning process, through an application, and then applying them directly against the problems the Army had. The Navy’s taken a little bit more expansive view with a larger footprint, but taking 10 folks from the outside, direct commission them in as 0-3s or 0-4s or 0-5s, so lieutenants, lieutenant commanders, or commanders, commensurate with the level of skill, and then putting them within the Rapid Capabilities Office, which is a group in our Research, Development, and Acquisition organization, and then using them combined with existing Naval Reservists that have, working in Silicon Valley but have risen through the ranks to kind of have that cultural, insight that they already have, then applying them against direct problems. Bit of an expedited pathway, kind of an experiment where it’s an application process. Hey, we have 10 slots available, got about 300 folks who have thrown their name in the hat right now. Have a filtering, select those 10 folks, and then very quickly commission them and put them through a five-week, what we call, ODS, so Officer Development School, that gets them up to speed on the militarization pipeline faster than you would normally. And what we’re trying to seek out is like, hey, the Navy knows that we have gaps in particular areas. How do we then, again, take the unique individual to solve that problem and slot them in more quickly? You know, there are a number of other areas the Navy has as well that are professional in nature. We already do this with doctors a lot. One of the biggest challenges and shortages that we have in the Navy is with high-skill surgeons and other skillsets that, you know, people on the outside are making a lot of money on. They don’t necessarily wanna deploy, but if they do, we can direct commission them, ‘cause really what we’re solving for is their specific skillset as opposed to their military rank equivalent of militarization. We have things as the Supply Corps or the JAG Corps or others that at the end of the day, you have to have some level of militarization, but if you have the right skillset and you’ve proven the outside, we should be able to bring you in at a relatively senior level to actually apply your insights to solve that problem for the military. So for me in the organization, NIU is a way to start that with the tech scene, but I can see that if it works, kind of expanding it to broader segments of the reserve population in particular, to have that kind of revolving door between the civilian and military sectors to get the best of both worlds.
David 11:36
Yeah, it’s fascinating. And, you know, this translation between going from the commercial sector into the military apparatus and back and forth to try to take advantage of some of the cultural norms within the commercial innovation ecosystem, apply it to the national security use case. I think that’s something that, you know, we stumbled upon with Defense Innovation Unit so many years ago when we brought in these hi-highly qualified experts, essentially entrepreneurs, and, you know, put them on some of our most vexing problems across the department, and then just see the magic happen. And it’s really cool to see the Navy and the Army, and I’m hoping my, beloved Air Force at some point also adopts these types of innovative approaches as well. But maybe, you know, moving gears to your second pillar on the civilian workforce and incentives especially, you know, whether we’re talking about those in acquisition program offices, which is the world I came from. And so, yeah, upon commissioning and getting out to Peterson Air Force Base, you know, the military people were the minority, and the majority of people that you interacted with on a day-to-day basis were civil servants. And then you go out to the shipyards, and it’s even more dramatic, right? As far as seeing a uniformed, member versus a civilian corps. So how are you thinking about incentives and, you know, especially with a very robust private sector that you’re ultimately competing against and trying to take advantage of the reindustrialization excitement that’s happening, especially in the Navy around shipbuilding. You know, I’m curious how, you know, how you’re taking a very, like, strategic vision but then a tactical approach towards making it better, right? And it can always be better, but certainly, you know, we have a lot to work with here.
Sec. Kohlmann 13:29
Yeah. I mean, incentives absolutely matter, and increasingly over time, the patriotism premium has gotten higher and higher for those who choose to serve their country and their government. I use the shipyard example in some of the things that we’ve tried to do recently to kind of bridge the gap. You know, up until a couple years ago, it was in some cases better for someone, say, in Pascagoula, Mississippi, to actually work at a Chipotle across the street than be in the shipyard because the wages they were paying just weren’t competitive with the market. And so, we had to figure out how to, how to incentivize them and make sure that they were getting paid what they were worth. So a number of things that we’ve done, include more pay-for-performance opportunities. We’re working with a number of organizations, both within the executive branch and legislative branch, to think about how do we restructure the pay scale, to reflect specific skill sets but also reward people for outstanding performance? What’s been interesting is many people heard about the Department of War awards that happened at the end of 2025, kind of, 15,000 or $25,000 bonuses that were given to a set number of folks, for high performance. And as I walked around to some of the shipyards getting some feedback on that experience from some of the frontline workers and even the supervisors, there was one supervisor in particular that said, “Hey, this has actually transformed our workforce.” In one instance, it was life-changing money for some of these shipyard workers, but it also was an opportunity for those that didn’t quite meet the bar to have hard conversations with their supervisors, asking, “Hey, why wasn’t I eligible for this?” Or, why did I just not meet the cut?” And a lot of the supervisors are gonna lay out expectations in a way that they hadn’t been able to do before, ‘cause now there was a motivation to get to that higher compensation level. And got a report a couple weeks ago from this individual, that I’d followed up with kind of earlier in the year, and he said, “Hey, output’s basically doubled on some of our core projects because people now realize there’s an opportunity for them to be rewarded for hard work.” Another example that we looked at is the way that the government does wage scales and GS employees, one’s kind of the touch labor, individual contributor, the other are supervisory roles in the GS scales, is there was a crossover point where if you had a... If you, if you were sufficiently advanced in your individual skill, like a welder, for instance, 10 or 15 years in, you kinda capped out on your pay, and you had to then jump over to the GS scale to be a supervisor to make more money. But not everyone’s built to be a supervisor or manager, and David, as you and I know from our work in Silicon Valley, sometimes the IC software engineer is making more than their manager ‘cause the value they’re providing to the force is that much higher. And so you look at some of the Korean shipyards and Japanese shipyards, one of the reasons they’re so good is they have this cadre of folks who have been there 20, 30, 40 years that are absolute exceptional people in their craft in one specific thing. How do we take that mindset and bring it to the government workforce as well? How do we create those master welders that they can stay on the front lines doing that job for decades and get rewarded for that without having to hop over to be a supervisor? So we’re exploring ways to kind of fix that gap And then on the, on the, on the civilian side, just writ large, I think we gotta we gotta be more intentional how we reward people. Right now, the government has a lot of authorities with, you know, what it can do for spot awards or special purpose awards, and being more intentional about being clear of, “Hey, if you do X, Y, and Z and excel at a great level, there will be a bigger award bonus pool.” We have authorities to do that right now, but it’s a matter of shifting it and then shaping our budget in such a way that we have the right amount of money given to the right people to drive that incentive loop moving forward. So a lot of it has to do with incentives within existing authorities, kind of restructuring the way that... Again, things were designed in the ‘50s and ‘60s for a reason, but, you know, 2026 is different than what it was 60, 70 years ago.
Maggie 17:24
Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. You know, I wanna turn to a question. This podcast, we typically focus on our discussions around technology. I think we’re all tech nerds here. So I wanted to hear, how do you see the role of technology helping to support your priorities when it comes to managing talent in the Navy?
Sec. Kohlmann 17:43
Yeah, I’m gonna go in a little bit different direction. We can circle back to that question as well. You know, I’m a, was a venture capitalist, ran a hard tech startup, flew F-18s, another value of technology. Technology’s a critical enabler, especially in warfare, and even our broader American economy. But at the end of the day, technology is always in service to humans, and technology does not actually work or accelerate unless it’s solving a human problem. And on the battlefield, it’s men and women who are on the front lines using technology who find the most creative uses in that crucible of combat, something I call weapon-warfare fit. If you have weapon-warfare fit, it means that there’s a system that’s actually doing something in service to fighting and winning that war. And the most tangible example recently is Ukraine. You know, it’s the tens or hundreds of thousands of folks on the front lines who are having, you know, their friends killed beside them with these unmanned systems. And on a daily and weekly cycle, they’re taking that technology and modifying it to sort to human ends, and that requires a very creative human to get that, to get that question right. So as I think about, like, talent development, it’s about how do you think about that technology-human fusion such that technology is built to solve those human problems, but at the same time, the human is in or on the loop to be able to utilize it in the best way possible and use creativity to kind of break the rules when needed because it’s a life or death situation. And so as we think about talent development in the, in the, in the Department of the Navy, on the military side, it’s about creating great leaders who can use technology to the best of their abilities. But on the civilian side, it’s about how do you find those exceptional people that then can be put in positions to drive change and opportunity? And I’ll end this, kind of this theme with a story. So we ran a data challenge back in the, in the spring, and we kinda gave open access to a much of our HR data. As long as you had clearance to view it, you were allowed to do it, and self-generated teams across the force. And we probably had 10 teams kind of develop themselves, and one of the, one of the winning teams, one of the top three teams, they were sharing their development story with me, and what was interesting is their senior leader actually didn’t want them to participate. They said, “This is taking away from your day job.” And for one of these individuals, their boss actually put more workload on them to prevent them from taking part. And yet this individual, with their team, still managed to do exceptional things and developed a solution that’s now very useful for us at the Department of the Navy. Like to me, it wasn’t the tool or technology that was the problem, it was the human systems that elevated the individual capability to a level that could take advantage of the technology that we had right now. So as I think about talent management in the department, it’s about how do we find those nodes of genius and make sure that they’re empowered to solve the problems they can and align with the, with the technology advancement we have that’s developing. So it’s gotta be a parallel process.
David 20:31
Yeah, and what you talked about with that anecdote also highlights a lot about culture and, you know, no amount of tools can fix culture. Though, you know, I’ve been in the military now for a long time on the active duty and the reserve side, and Lord knows I’ve interacted with any number of HR admin tools I honestly feel as though it’s sort of a potpourri of at some point I get to the right conclusion of the task I’m trying to figure out, but it was never as obvious and intuitive as it should’ve been. And I feel as though part of the issue when it comes to the military, and you touched upon this a little bit with your people are thought of like fungible assets that are just interchangeable cogs of the, of the machine. And really, we should be treating individuals for the unique talent that they are so they can reach their highest potential. And I find that a lot of our HR and admin systems are trying to boil the ocean and treat everyone, regardless if you’re a fighter pilot or an acquisition officer or something in between the tip and the blunty part of the spear, one system to solve everything. And I’m curious if in part of this, you know, priorities of execution that you’re trying to maybe subjugate the career fields and find the right tools given, their culture, the lifestyle, whether or not they’re in an office or on a computer more often than not, or if they’re behind, you know, a joystick in a cockpit. Curious how you’re kind of thinking about that piece of the equation instead of one size fits all for the entire workforce.
Sec. Kohlmann 22:12
Yeah, I mean, it’s truly a balance. I think one of the eye-opening experiences in this job is you kinda do have to look at the macro to some extent. You know, the three hundred and sixty thousand Navy active duty folks and another sixty thousand on the Reserve side. There is a degree in which People are a part of the whole, and so you wanna have the broad trends. Do we have enough, you know, department heads in the surface warfare community? Do we have enough commanding officers in the, in the submarine community? Those are somewhat interchangeable. And yet each submarine is gonna have a different setup of the commanding officer, the executive officer, the wardroom. If you inject a new person, that person has a personality, and that person has a unique skill set. What if you could have an algorithm that inherently knew, a, I’ll call it a digital twin or digital human, that, hey, Ben is an INTJ. He had, you know, one and a two on the working genius, and he was X, Y, or Z on another personality profile. And oh, by the way, he’s really good at kind of high-level strategy. He loves playing Axis and Allies and Risk, loves to read on the weekends. And then you have person X who’s very gregarious and outgoing, an X, Y, or Z thing. Well, how do Ben and person X interact? Well, you can imagine a world in which it’s not just about putting Ben in the same squadron because he’s a body, but, like, how does this, how does this interactive team work together, across the whole? If you can have the quantum of data of a digital human that has characteristics about their performance, about their skills and whatever, you can, you can do the macro-level aggregation. Hey, I know I’ve got 11,000 financial analysts in the Department of the Navy. I’ve got 8,000 contracting specialists. But you can also say, okay, when Ben goes to apply for this job or when Ben goes to in this squadron, here’s the characteristics of people around him, you know, based on trends or performance reasons. We realize there might be a mismatch in terms of how he fits in. Maybe he’s better suited over here. Or we know that he wants, his family is in Dallas, and he should be stationed in Dallas, and so our matching algorithm kind of highlights that in whatever capacity he thinks is important. I think there’s a world in which we get there, where we can take the macro and the micro and kind of find the right happy medium. And we’re starting to do this right now with detailing for the enlisted force, and this is to the deep credit of Admiral Hames and some of the folks down there, is there’s right now an algorithm that a bunch of sailors can, apply for basically, and it’ll send them, “Hey, these are the top 10 jobs we think that you’re eligible for based on what your career progression needs to be, what your skill sets are, what you care about from a, from a location standpoint.” You don’t have to take these 10, but it’s a great starting point to have that conversation with your detailer. What we found is even though that’s like a human on the loop with a computer doing the system, there’s, there’s a higher level of uptake rate and retention because the sailor now realizes there is some intentionality around their careers. They may not leave the service. We’re seeing anywhere from 30% to 40% of the people who would’ve left staying because of that more, that more high-touch detailing approach. So I think we’re seeing a convergence of technology and insights right now where in the medium term, maybe a year or two if we build it right, we could start having these nascent systems to kind of do this matching better to ensure people are in the right job.
David 25:33
Yeah. And so it sounds like, you know, you are trying to incorporate AI and just a ton of big data into helping identify, you know, jobs and roles and opportunities for folks. I guess I’m curious, you know, where from a Navy standpoint are you guys taking inspiration, right? Obviously, the Navy it’s the best navy in the world, and I think probably potentially the largest. Not sure exactly what China’s numbers are relative to the US. But, you know, you’re not the only large corporation trying to figure out a diverse set of skillsets across a diverse set of locations to ultimately, you know, get mission readiness, mission effectiveness. And so where, you know, when you think about solving these problems, are you looking towards large private corporations, whether they be, you know, big energy, you know, from the state that you hail from, or other Fortune 10 type entities, or maybe the Air Force?
Sec. Kohlmann 26:33
Yeah. I mean, to be honest, this is probably a gap in where we’ve spent our time to just know what’s happening in the outside world. You know, in my consulting days, I did a number of HR studies for large organizations, so taking some of the lessons learned there of how to look at the workforce, how to think about restructuring, how to do some of this data analytics. But I think there’s actually a big opportunity for us to improve, and I think there’s a, there’s a couple cultural things that, you know, we can, we can lean more heavily into The first is this belief like the government is different, and the military is different, and the broader skillsets that are over there don’t apply to us. I think one of the things I learned in consulting, having worked in the government, having worked in a bunch of industry is a lot of the problems are the same, and the insights are like 80 to 90% there. There’s the 10% that’s important, you gotta get it right, but the foundational of how to manage humans, how to think about structuring, they’re all similar. So we could reach in there and grab some more information. The other thing too is more cross-pollination, and we talked about this earlier in the conversation. More cross-pollination for business ideas coming into government to just, you know, raise the awareness. There is a different way to do things, and I think this is where the Department of War has been leading forward in the bond program especially, where they’ll bring in senior executives who are post-economic in many cases and just want to serve, and bring them in executive roles to kind of partner up with their equivalent to kind of Hey, this is what’s happening in the private sector. This is what we did at Energy Company X. This is what we did at Walmart or whatever, and help that, help that, help that kind of exchange of information flow. I can’t help but think there’s probably value in more secondments, you know, mid-grade GS’s goes over to work in industry for a couple years knowing they’re gonna come back to solve a problem, to kind of get that experience, the... I think there’s a, the, what is it? Secretary of Defense Technical Fellows or something like that goes to industry. That cross-pollination is critical. Not as good as we could be at it. I’ll also say one other thing. You know, the Chick-fil-A model of high customer experience I think is one I wanna see about integrating into our reserve centers. You know, who is the customer of a reserve center? It’s the reservist who’s coming in on the weekend, and right now the experiential level isn’t as high, which kind of drives misintegration. How do we get the lesson learned from high customer service organizations and apply them into high customer service facing military functions to drive that experience and also the outcomes better? So a lot of work we could do, but we’re thinking about it.
Maggie 29:07
I recently read, an article with some pretty concerning statistics, or statistics I found concerning. It said, you know, fewer than 25% of Americans age 17 to 24 are eligible to serve in the military without a waiver. The number of 18-year-olds is actually projected to decline by 13% by 2041, and the propensity of Americans to serve in the first place has fallen from 16% in 2003 to 10% in 2022. However, I also saw the Navy is actually ahead of schedule on recruiting this year. So I just wanted to hear a little bit about how you all are thinking about recruiting and some of the challenges that the department as a whole is facing.
Sec. Kohlmann 29:50
Yeah, it’s a paradox. I attribute it to probably three things. The Navy Marine Corps, you know, I have the honor of helping to oversee both. 2022, 2023 was a real nadir for us, and Navy Recruiting Command saw that deficit and started to apply kind of best practice from industry with Salesforce and others. And the current commander of Navy Recruiting Command, Jim Waters, he’s basically instituted a daily ops update that has incredible dashboards to highlight and pinpoint which specific recruiting stations are falling short on which specific line items they need, they need to fill for. And as a result, it’s driven attention to leadership level to areas of improvement. And it’s, you know, it’s an accountability measure, but it’s also like, “Hey, what’s going wrong here? How do we problem solve that?” So that deep dive execution and being relentless at the basics, I think, has gotten the Navy back on track On the Marine Corps, it just comes back to the core ethos they’ve always had, the few, the proud, the Marines. Like, that mindset continues to resonate, that are you good enough? Can you meet the standard? There’s a lot of young men and women who wanna try out for that, and they-- If I do that, if they achieve that, like, that’s something they can hold their head high about. And I think that has driven kind of a resurgence in recruiting, across both the Navy and Marine Corps right now. You know, looking to the future, the demographic cliff is real. You know, 2028, I think that’s when kind of the 17, 18-year-olds kind of fall off, given what happened in the early 2000-- or, you know, kind of post global financial crisis era. And I saw this when I was at the board of a university down in Texas. We were kind of looking at that number. It’s like, “Hey, how do we make this math work?” there will still be the cohort of 17 to 23-year-olds that will be a target market. But the question is, how do we think about then augmenting it from folks who are kind of in career one and a half or two? Maybe the more reserve option. You got five to 10 years in, how do you slot that experience in a different capacity? Who knows where AI takes us, but as those jobs become maybe less secure, there will always be a need to have people defend their country and make it high enough status and high enough paying that it’s a, it’s a, it’s an option for people to flow back in. Maybe there’s a world in which we have some sort of loan repayment program for 25 to 30-year-old folks who tried the private sector out, couldn’t quite get traction. It’s an incentive bonus to kind of get those folks back in the, in the realm. I don’t know. There’s a bunch of stuff that we’re thinking about to try to, try to accelerate. But I’ll also say, whenever the American public realizes there’s a need, and a legitimate one, they tend to, they tend to fill that gap. You know, we saw it in 9/11, we saw it, you know, kind of 2024, 2025. So I’m optimistic, but, like, w-we are watching it closely, and there are some changes that will have to be made down the line.
David 32:31
Yeah. So, you know, you highlighted on the top of the funnel with the next generation of uniform wearers. I’m kinda curious on the other side, right? So you and I are kind of anomalies getting out at the 12, 13 year point, or at least separating. Normally, people would stay in for the full 20, right? The whole cliff vesting strategy that we were under. But about 10 years ago, they implemented the blended retirement system, which makes it a little less obvious to stay in from a financial reward standpoint as you become a, you know, mid-career officer. I’m curious if there’s anything you could speak to on whether or not recruitment at the later stages of officers to get to go for O-five and O-six, or whether or not there’s a bit of a fall off there too.
Sec. Kohlmann 33:24
Yeah. Broadly speaking, we’re hitting our retention numbers, in many cases are exceeding them. But there are specific communities where we’re struggling. These are kind of the more high skill communities, cyber, aviation, submarines, places where there are really clear and tangible, financial benefits on the other side that even if you stayed at 20 to get your pension, you know, you’re missing out on millions of dollars potentially. I think the integration of the Blended Retirement System, if anything, forces us to be better to make sure that what do we have to do to keep these folks? And it’s not the same thing that took in the ‘90s or the 2000s or even the ‘80s, but, like, it forces the organization to shift their approach to try to retain these people with the salary caps that have been given to us by Congress and others. And I think we’re kind of going through those growing pains right now, especially with aviation. This is something near and dear to my heart One of the reasons I got into this, you know, 15 years ago was I saw the flight of fighter pilots from the Navy and wanted to figure out why, and it’s only snowballed from there. This is getting increased congressional attention, attention elsewhere in the Department of War. And it comes down to quality of service, what’s the experience they have, do they have other options? A lot of people are putting a lot more stake, especially men, into families, and so they’re not maybe taking the 8 to 10-year carrier pathway ‘cause they wanna spend time with their kids between 18 and 20 in a way that maybe they didn’t 20 to 30 years ago. So that’s having an increased effect on that as well. So what does that mean for what it means to be a fighter pilot in 2026 and beyond when you need that exceptional skill set? I think we’re wrestling through that question in particular. We have some things that we’re thinking about, but it’s becoming more and more apparent in that community. But writ large, we’re actually meeting a lot of our ‘04, ‘05, and ‘06 goals. It’s just those highly skilled roles where there’s a deep market, competition, that it’s becoming trickier to retain those folks.
Maggie 35:19
You’ve now spent time in government, in the military, active duty, as an investor working with startups. Having seen all sides of this equation, what advice do you have for startups looking to work with the Navy and the U.S. Military as a whole?
Sec. Kohlmann 35:36
First of all, find exceptional talent. I mean, I think at the end of the day, like, this job just reinforces something I learned being an investor, is that the best companies win ‘cause they have the best talent. They can solve the hardest problem. They can figure it out. And that talent in government comes down to understanding how the government buys things, how Congress works, who the true decision-makers are in the department, and what the non-intuitive problems are, you know, downstream of what happens. I’ll just give an example. You know, submarine supply base, not just about building the submarine itself. It’s about the tier two and tier three suppliers that have to supply the parts to both maintain the submarines and build them. Well, if we know that we’re gonna have an increase in the total number of submarines and, maintenance capability, we’re probably gonna have a submarine supply shortage. You’re seeing a couple startups that have kinda sneaked into that realm in a very impressive way and are filling that gap. So where do you see the puck going that is gonna be a funded source that is not yet filled yet? So thinking about it that way. There’s a little bit of luck. Two, three, four years ago, UASs weren’t... Well, I guess they’ve always been big. But there were some capabilities and systems that if you were ahead of the curve building then, are now emerging right now. Are you ready to jump on that, take advantage of it? But honestly, David’s probably the best expert here. He’s written the most on it. I know you have too, Maggie. You guys are, you guys are well-versed in this. But it comes down to finding the right people to find the other right people in the organization to then win those contracts and kinda find the scaling opportunities.
David 37:12
Awesome. Well, thank you. And I guess, as we wrap up, we just have one special question that we did not prep you for, and we were wondering what kind of insight you can provide us about Top Gun 3 coming out, and will you be playing a starring role as a wingman to, Tom Cruise?
Sec. Kohlmann 37:30
Well, I can’t say much, but there won’t be any people in it ‘cause it’s gonna be all unmanned, so.
David 37:35
Will it, though? I mean, gosh, the magic of Top Gun: Maverick was, you know, going back to the third gen fighters, right? Or fourth gen fighters to take out whatever adversa- fictitional adversarial was.
Sec. Kohlmann 37:48
No, that’s right. That’s right. Well, the sad part is when they come out with Top Gun 3, the old airplane will be the Super Hornet, which is what I flew, which makes me feel really old. So no, like I can’t wait for the third one to come out if they choose to do it. So I don’t know if you guys have any tipper, but that’d be a great one.
David 38:01
Awesome. Well, Secretary Kohlmann, thank you so much for spending your time with us, and really look forward to all the great work that you’re doing to help increase readiness, get the talent pool ready to go, and make sure that we can deter our adversaries that, not today, not tomorrow. That’s right.
Sec. Kohlmann 38:17
Thanks, David. Thanks, Maggie.
