PENSACOLA, Fla. – The Center for Information Warfare Training (CIWT) held a domain-wide commanding officer, officer in charge and command master chief/senior enlisted leader offsite meeting virtually, Nov. 3-5.

With a geographically diverse training domain of four commands and two detachments, fostering and maintaining regular and unfiltered communication is of paramount importance to CIWT. Therefore, the three-day CIWT domain event was designed to provide participants an opportunity to contribute to Navy and domain-centric discussions, review strategic priorities, propose command initiatives, training, team-building events and engage with CIWT directorates other guest participants virtually.

“We are living in a resource constrained environment, where our priorities and shortfalls are in direct competition with equally as important operational priorities across the information warfare enterprise,” shared Capt. Marc Ratkus, CIWT’s commanding officer. “To remain relevant and effect in executing our mission of developing the future technical cadre of the Navy's information warfare community, we have to creatively align our resources against our highest priorities and advocate for additional resources via the POM process. For this offsite, our objectives were to focus on three key areas: domain optimization to include force development in a COIVD environment; culture of excellence; and training support centers disestablishment and the way ahead. The event offered collaboration, teambuilding and teamwork. More specifically, it was an opportunity for our CIWT domain leaders to openly and honestly discuss our challenges and struggles, and how to better work together to develop solutions to drive to the forefront our ability to develop more lethal and effective information warfare warfighters to fight and win in great power competition.”

The participants included leaders from CIWT, Information Warfare Training Command (IWTC) Monterey, IWTC Corry Station, IWTC Virginia Beach, IWTC San Diego, CIWT Det. Fort Gordon, IWTC Monterey Det. Goodfellow and Naval Service Training Command Great Lakes.

“The CIWT domain’s synergy is one of our greatest assets and trust, cooperation and effective communication are the key to our success,” said CIWT’s Command Master Chief Francisco Vargas. “I’ve participated in many offsite meetings during my 29-year career, and through our collaborative discussions and teambuilding events virtually over the past three days, I feel we're now better aligned to deliver trained information warfare professionals to the Navy and joint services.”

When commands invest their time in collaborative events like the one offered by CIWT, they have the opportunity to separate the daily grind to better focus and align their teams. It also provides an opportunity for team-building activities and interactions that indisputably build stronger teams.

CIWT facilitates events like these at least annually to help stimulate innovative ideas, synergy and creative exploration, invaluable insights and build team spirit.

“I believe we all left with a greater understanding of not only the challenges faced by all the subordinate commands, but the entire CIWT domain as a whole,” said Cmdr. Tim Raymie, commanding officer of IWTC San Diego. “It was a great opportunity to sync our missions with our echelon-3 command, receive personal guidance from CIWT headquarters’ staff, look at very complicated problems specific to our commands, and discuss ways ahead as a leadership team. Annual planning, no matter how it's facilitated, offers a great opportunity to sync up and use gained network resources to meet future goals.”

With four schoolhouse commands, a detachment, and training sites throughout the United States and Japan, CIWT trains over 22,000 students every year, delivering trained information warfare professionals to the Navy and joint services. CIWT also offers more than 200 courses for cryptologic technicians, intelligence specialists, information systems technicians, electronics technicians, and officers in the information warfare community.

For more news from the Center for Information Warfare Training domain, visit https://www.netc.navy.mil/CIWT, www.facebook.com/NavyCIWT, or www.twitter.com/NavyCIWT.