On April 6, 2021, the U.S. Navy officially disestablished the Limited Duty Officer (LDO) program for the Cryptologic Warfare Officer (designator 6810) community. This marked a significant shift in how the Navy manages talent and expertise within the Cryptologic Warfare (CW) wardroom.
The decision to eliminate the 6810 LDO path raises important questions about the long-term impact on the CW community. Was this move ultimately the right one? Did it enhance the effectiveness and cohesion of the wardroom—or did it remove a valuable pipeline for technical leadership and operational experience?
LDOs historically brought a wealth of hands-on knowledge and deep operational insight from the enlisted ranks. Their perspectives often bridged the gap between senior enlisted personnel and unrestricted line officers, enriching the CW community with leadership grounded in real-world execution. With their departure, the CW wardroom now relies solely on officers who typically enter through more traditional accession paths, such as Officer Candidate School, the U.S. Naval Academy, or NROTC—routes that, while robust, may not always bring the same depth of operational cryptologic experience early in an officer’s career.
Station HYPO is interested to hear your thoughts: Was this disestablishment a strategic alignment with the Navy’s evolving vision for information warfare, or did it unintentionally narrow the diversity of thought and experience in the CW officer corps?
Cheers,
Mario
Station HYPO 
7 April 2025 at 01:46
Appreciate the post, Mario. I know this topic has elicited different perspectives (with the most vocal seeming to be against the decision to disestablish the 6810 LDO program). From my perspective, this is an issue where I agree with RADM Scheidt on. I recall being privy to various community briefs talking about the dire manning situation that the Cryptologic Warfare Officer (CWO) community was in, particularly at the control-grade levels (and especially for LCDR billets). While they weren’t the sole or even predominate cause of the problem, LDO CWOs were shown to add to the problem as far too many of them were shown to be retiring at 20 years as LTs. If we had unlimited officer slots, this wouldn’t be an issue, but the community was limited in how many officers it could commission each year. The way things were going simply wasn’t sustainable, though.
Regarding the loss of a certain technical expertise, there is no doubt that LDOs had a lot of it and provided great mentorship to new accession JOs, etc. But even then I think this point is oversold. Not only has the community become more technically minded from an educational background as we’ve started to allow fully medically qualified Naval Academy and ROTC grads to commission directly as 1810s (gone are the days of having to go option or laterally-transfer), but we still have the warrant officer 7810 community and the community is still served by talented line officer and enlisted leadership in this regard.
Going back to the Naval Academy and ROTC community point for a second, I’ve served in various 1810 oriented positions and commands (major fleet commands, NIOCs, cyber teams, joint billets, etc.). When I say that I’ve been impressed by the ability of the Naval Academy and ROTC grads in terms of the technical knowledge they immediately brought to the community (based on degree type, often in challenging programs) and how quickly they’ve been able to learn community-specifics, I mean it. As an example, in light of the decision to focus the 7841 cyber warrant community on the OCO side, there has been a huge gap in DCO cyber warrants to serve as in the OPSO role on CMF teams as they had done. But the Academy and ROTC JOs we’ve been putting in those roles (and shout out to CDR Seth Lawrence who helped spearhead that effort and got a bunch to CDA 64–coming in with technical educational backgrounds and strong leadership gained throughout 4 (or more in the case of NAPSters) of military education–have been crushing it. This isn’t to say that OCS graduates have failed to impress in this regard, too, but (and I’m an OCS grad myself) the Academy and ROTC grads have elevated things to a different level not seen when I first joined.
To be sure, 6810s were assets to the community, particularly from a technical aspect; I don’t want it to seem like I believe otherwise. But I also point out that enlisted to officer leadership is not lost either as Sailors are able to apply to both the Naval Academy and to OCS; just have to be careful with the TIS issue. In short, the CWO community hasn’t fallen apart due to the sunset of the LDO program, and nor will it fall apart.
Just my humble two cents.
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7 April 2025 at 02:25
To add, when talking about utility, let’s be honest with ourselves. We were not using LDOs as we should have. They were being put into 1810 roles, etc., which somewhat takes away from the argument in bringing them back, IMO. That’s something that “we” as a community did to ourselves, but it’s an important discussion point all the same.
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7 April 2025 at 05:49
Active duty CTI1, went o reserve as CTI1, commissioned through reserve’s direct commissioning program as O-1E in cryptology (with college degree required). I think this is a mistake, since many of the knowledge would be difficult to obtain through university education. Also, I think the answer given in the memo is very vague. It didn’t say clearly the reason(s) that it was de-established, but only offered boilerplate answers. I’d like to know the direct or specific reason(s) for this.
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10 April 2025 at 02:39
I am so glad I retired before this happened.
Sursum Sub Ordine!
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10 April 2025 at 03:47
Good decision from a force generation perspective. Opportunities still exist to bring forward expertise from Enlisted to Officer. We did not have unique billets that leveraged LDO experience. The technology that underpins this community moves so quickly that old new institutional knowledge is weighted less against fresh technical expertise of our new accessions compared to some other warfare areas. As mentioned above, we have routes for our outstanding enlisted talent and we should highly encourage our Officers to go to bat on behalf of those who want to transition their talent to our Officer community. Those who combine their Enlisted experience with a still hungry learning mindset will select for and excel within the Officer community.
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