During a war and in peace, engineering staffing of the U.S. Navy is the same, according to Lt. Bill Davis, deputy public affairs officer, Navy Recruiting Command. "The Iraq war has not affected staffing levels," says Davis. "We are always training for the job. Now we have turned the job training into a real life situation. Wars don’t necessitate more people. We’ve been training for the job; now we have to do it for real."
Annually, the Navy requires 274 people with degrees in engineering disciplines. It also takes a much larger number of enlisted, high-school graduates and trains them to be technicians in electronics, video, information technology, computers, etc.
The degreed officer ranks, and the number of persons needed annually, are broken down into the following categories:
Submarine officer, all nuclear: 140
Surface warfare officer with nuclear training: 40
Nuclear reactor engineering: 8
Nuclear power instructors: 26
Civil engineer corp.: 60
Officers with design, acquisition, and repair experience transfer from other Navy positions, rather than be recruited into those posts, says Davis. These people must have math, engineering, and physics backgrounds.
Naturally, all its engineers must be U.S. citizens with a high security clearance.