Please correct me if I’m wrong, but for a Cryptologic Technician Sailor seeking a commission as a Cryptologic Warfare Officer (1810), there is a very narrow window of opportunity—one that effectively excludes most second class (PO2) and first class petty officers (PO1). Sailors who are no longer eligible for the U.S. Naval Academy or Officer Candidate School often find themselves waiting until they reach Chief Petty Officer (E-7) with at least 14 years of service before another pathway becomes available. Reestablishing the Limited Duty Officer (LDO) program would help close this gap, providing deserving Sailors a viable path to a commission while also strengthening technical expertise within the 1810 wardroom.
Below are the current requirements:
Officer Candidate School (OCS):
Navy Cryptologic Technicians applying for the 1810 Cryptologic Warfare Officer program via OCS must have no more than 5 years of total active service (or cumulative inactive service) at the time of application. Applicants must be at least 18 and no older than 42 at commissioning. A bachelor’s degree is required, with a minimum 3.0 GPA (STEM preferred).
U.S. Naval Academy:
To be eligible for the U.S. Naval Academy, Sailors must be under 23 years old. While specific guidelines on time-in-service may vary, most enlisted-to-officer accession programs limit applicants to no more than 5 years of total active service.
Chief Warrant Officer (CWO):
Cryptologic Technicians applying for U.S. Navy CWO programs (typically 781X or 782X) must be E-7 through E-9 and have between 14 and 22 years of service.
Seaman To Admiral (STA-21) is not authorized for 1810.
Station HYPO 
6 April 2026 at 07:47
This was a very poor decision made to probably save $$! Toss away a proven program which used years of experience and knowledge and replace LDOs with new butterbars who don’t know TEXIN from TEXAN!
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6 April 2026 at 11:18
terrible decision. Jan Tighe and Seth Lawrence, each with zero sea time, viewed the decades of Fleet experience our LDOs brought to the fight as useless and insisted it be replaced with a shore tour and then NPS and we’d be good to go. That doesn’t seem to be the case.
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6 April 2026 at 14:29
As noted in the discussion about this on FB, Jeff Sheidt also played a huge role in deep-sixing the LDO program. I was a CWO3 at NIOC Maryland in 2015 when then CAPT Scheidt spoke at the annual LDO/CWO program brief and said, “If you want to be an LDO, you better do it this year. We don’t need you. LDOs are likely going away.” My opinion is that it was a knee-jerk reaction (I know, shocking… the Navy makes a knee-jerk reaction) to the O-5/O-6 problem by blaming it on LDOs getting out at 20 years. There was never any consideration of the cultural problems that was causing many LDOs to punch at 20, many of which are addressed in the FB discussion. In my opinion, there is also an underlying problem in the IWC, and in the Navy writ large, of viewing the entire officer cadre (Academy, OCS, Direct Commission, LDO, and CWO) as all the same. From a detailing perspective it’s easier that way, but the consequences of not billeting LDOs and CWOs based on previous skills and expertise is costly. As many officer assignments in the IWC become increasingly technical, leadership sounds out of touch by insisting that “officers should be generalists.”
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6 April 2026 at 16:04
@ anom — was at MD at the same time; concur.
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11 April 2026 at 16:31
Perhaps there’s a relationship between the disbandment of NAVSECGRU and the disestablishment of the cryptologic LDO/CWO programs.
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