Hilton Head kid, now a Navy admiral, is staring down a ‘challenging time in history’ | Opinion
Rear Admiral Andrew Miller was on a sad mission when he returned to Hilton Head Island last week.
He was here for the Mass of Christian burial for his mother, Nancy Christensen Miller, at Holy Family Catholic Church and her burial in Six Oaks Cemetery. She was aware that in December her son became one of only a couple hundred admirals in today’s U.S. Navy. And that last May he was named commander of the Undersea Warfighting Development Center in Groton, Conn., the “Submarine Capital of the World.”
That mission, on top of 30 years of missions in the Navy, give Miller a special perspective on what America needs from the service — and what the service needs from America.
He says it has been challenging, demanding, exciting, adventurous and rewarding. Miller has been commodore of a squadron of 11 fast-attack submarines, kind of like the “Top Gun” of the underwater world he has devoted his life to.
Today he is in charge of a center that the Navy says leads its “undersea superiority; develops doctrine, concepts of operations, tactics, techniques, and procedures for undersea warfare performance and warfighting readiness of the fleet; provides training for undersea platforms, carrier strike groups, and theater anti-submarine warfare commanders; and advances undersea capabilities, wholeness and synchronization (including the incorporation of artificial intelligence and machine learning).”
Drew, as the 52-year-old admiral is now known, was 8 years old when his family moved to Hilton Head. That was when his father, John M. Miller, began a 17-year mission as senior pastor at First Presbyterian Church.
Miller went through Hilton Head Elementary School and H.E. McCracken Middle School in Bluffton. He was in the class of 1989 at Hilton Head Island High School, where he played tennis for the Seahawks.
While studying mechanical engineering at the University of Florida, Miller got a seemingly random postcard in the mail. It urged him to apply for the Navy’s Nuclear Propulsion Officer Candidate program.
He did it. And he got an MBA degree to boot, and married Joanne, a registered nurse and daughter of a career Navy officer. Joanne doesn’t get a star on her sleeve, but she has served our nation as a Navy dependent in all but one year of her life.
They have seven children, from a 27-year-old captain in the U.S. Air Force, to a freshman in high school.
That generation is much on the mind of Navy admirals. While the Marine Corps is doing well in recruiting, the other services are not. An article in the Navy Times last week took a long look “inside the Navy’s quest to fix its recruiting crisis.”
“The young people coming into the military are still impressive,” Miller said. “You watch the graduation ceremonies and it makes you feel good to be an American.”
He said to get ahead they’ll need to “learn how to learn,” but mostly they need to be hard workers.
The crisis is that fewer feel the desire to serve, that parents don’t view military service favorably, and for physical reasons or academic reasons, the population of eligible recruits is shrinking.
“I think it needs to be a national imperative,” Miller said. “The nation needs to look at the world. The number of our adversaries is growing, and their military strength is arguably growing as well.” Miller stressed that “we must have the right people. We can’t lower standards.”
Despite lucrative incentives, including signing bonuses and college debt forgiveness, the Navy fell well below recruitment goals last year. Miller says it would help if more Americans learned trades in high school — trades that would prepare them for the technical jobs of the Navy, or any number of “solid, good-paying jobs.”
He is certain today’s 8-year-olds at Hilton Head Elementary could grow up to find the Navy rewarding.
For him, it hasn’t been an easy mission. In one seven-year stretch, the Miller crew moved four times. “But I am happy to serve,” he said. “Particularly now. This is a challenging time in history.”
David Lauderdale can be reached at LauderdaleColumn@gmail.com.
