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Navy Supply Corps

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U.S Navy Supply Corps
Collar and Sleeve Insignia of the U.S. Navy Supply Corps
Active23 February 1795 - present
CountryUnited States of America
AllegianceUnited States U.S.A.
BranchU.S. Navy (Active & Reserve Component)
TypeStaff Logistics Corps
RoleSustain U.S. Navy and U.S. Military Operations worldwide
Size~3565 Supply Officers
Nickname(s)SUPPOs, Chops, Pork Chops
Motto(s)"Ready for Sea"
"Ready, Resourceful, Responsive"
Anniversaries23 February
EngagementsEvery U.S. engagement since the 1798 Undeclared Naval War with France - present
Commanders
Current
commander		RADM Alan S. Thompson, SC, USN
Chief, U.S. Navy Supply Corps

Background

The Supply Corps of the United States Navy traces its beginnings to February 23, 1795 when the nation's first Purveyor of Public Supplies, Tench Francis, Jr., was appointed by President George Washington. The Supply Corps is one of the oldest staff corps in the U.S. Navy. Supply Corps officers are concerned with supply, logistics, combat support, readiness, contracting and fiscal issues. The official motto of the Supply Corps is "Ready for Sea" -- reflecting the Supply Corps' longstanding role in sustaining warfighting.

Commissioned officers in the Supply Corps are schooled and experienced in a variety of disciplines such as supply management and expeditionary logistics, inventory control, disbursement, financial management, contracting, information systems, operations analysis, material and operational logistics, fuels management, food service and physical distribution.

Supply Corps officers can be members of a ship or shore activity's supply department or can be billeted into supply units/commands -- such as the Navy Expeditionary Logistics Support Group (NAVELSG), Fleet Industrial Supply Centers (FISCs) or Navy Special Warfare (SPECWAR) Logistics Groups which support the U.S. Navy SEALs. While Supply Corps officers are not eligible for command at sea, which is the province of certain unrestricted line officers, they can command supply units. A Supply Corps officer is always the Commanding Officer of a Naval Cargo Handling Battalion -- groups charged with stevedoring and logistics whose constituent companies are led by both Supply Corps and Civil Engineer Corps officers. Supply Corps officers also serve in forward deployed land-based units -- such as the U.S. Navy Seabees -- working right alongside Civil Engineer Corps officers and in a joint capacity with U.S. Marines.

NSCS Seal

New Supply Corps junior officers attend the Navy Supply Corps School (NSCS) in Athens, Georgia. NSCS was first opened as the Navy Supply Corps School of Application in 1921, located at the Navy Department in Washington, D.C. After just three years the school was closed, and for the next ten years supply officers learned their profession on the job, at sea from senior supply officers and through formal, but independent coursework.

A more formal arrangement was achieved when the Naval Finance and Supply School was opened at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in September 1934, for instruction of regular Navy Supply Corps officers. The training of reserve officers did not become available until 1940, when the Supply Corps Naval Reserve Officers School was established in Washington, D.C. After ten months the two schools were merged, creating the Navy Supply Corps School, located at the Harvard University Business School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

During U.S. involvement in World War II, 13,000 officers graduated from NSCS at Harvard. In 1944, the Naval Supply Operational Training Center was established at the Naval Supply Depot in Bayonne, New Jersey. It was redesignated the Navy Supply Corps School in 1946, but within a few years it outgrew its facilities. Through the efforts of two Georgia politicians, U.S. Senator Richard B. Russell Jr. and U.S. Representative Carl Vinson, the school was moved to Athens, Georgia in 1954.

NSCS occupies a fifty-eight-acre campus rich in educational heritage. The site had been used as a school since the 1860s, first for the University of Georgia's University High School, then as a Confederate military school, and at the end of the U.S. Civil War, a federal garrison. In 1866 the site housed a school for disabled young Confederate veterans, which existed with state support for two years.

The Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission of 2005 decreed that NSCS will be re-located to Naval Station Newport, Rhode Island in 2011.

Additional Information

Supply Corps officers can earn one or more of four warfare insignias: the Surface Warfare Supply Corps Officer (SWSCO) pin, the Submarine Supply Officer pin, the Naval Aviation Supply Officer (NASO) pin, and the Seabee Combat Warfare Officer pin -- for supply officers assigned to a Navy Construction Battalion (CB) unit.


Supply Corps officers are sometimes called "SUPPOs", which is incorrect nomenclature except when referring to those officers who hold a department head billet. Aboard submarines the Supply Officer is known as the "Chop". While the term "Supply Officer" or SUPPO is a specific role which an officer may fill, there are also many other positions open to Supply Corps officers as this is an inherently multi-disciplinary career field. Enlisted ratings that comprise the Navy supply community are: SHs (Ship's Servicemen), who assist Supply Officers in managing shipboard retail and service activities; SKs (Storekeepers), who assist Supply Officers in managing inventories of parts and supplies; PSs (Personnel Specialists, a recent merger of the former Disbursing Clerk (DK) and Personnelman (PN) ratings), who assist with the disbursement of funds; CSs (Culinary Specialists, formerly known as Mess Management Specialists (MSs)), who manage and execute all food service operations; and PCs (Postal Clerks), who assist in the management of fleet postal activities). Supply Corps officers are nicknamed "pork chops" for the resemblance their distinctive oak leaf insignia is said to bear to that dish. If more than one Supply Corps officer is attached to a command, then the junior Supply Corps officer or officers are nicknamed "lamb chops".

Statistically, members of the Supply Corps have been involved in more intra-military criminal acts of misappropriation than other branches of the U.S. Navy, due to the exposure Supply Corps members have to large amounts of cash, goods, and other untraceable assets.[citation needed] A well known case in the 1980s had a U.S. Navy Supply Corps officer disappearing from the USS Kitty Hawk with close to five million dollars while the vessel was on deployment.[citation needed] Navy Supply Corps officers have also been robbed and murdered for the cash in their custody. Since that time, strict security countermeasures have drastically reduced the number of misappropriation and embezzlement incidents in the U.S. Navy Supply Corps.

Rear Admiral Alan S. Thompson is currently the highest ranking Supply Corps Officer in the U.S. Navy.

As of February 2008, RADM Thompson is the 44th Chief of the Supply Corps. RADM Mark D. Harnitchek is Director of Plans and Policy for U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM). The commanding officer of the Navy Supply Corps School is Captain Brian D. Sheppard, in command since June 2004.

Holding three stars, the highest ranking Supply Corps officer in U.S. Navy history is retired Vice Admiral Justin D. McCarthy. Until February 2007, VADM McCarthy was Director of Material Readiness and Logistics (N4) on the OPNAV Staff at the Pentagon, a position responsible for the strategic planning for all U.S. Navy Fleet readiness and logistics programs.

Notable U.S. Navy Supply Corps Officers

Supply Corps Coat of Arms

Famous Quotes about Logisticians and Supply Officers

File:Henry Eccles.jpg
Henry E. Eccles
Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy

"The tactics, no, amateurs discuss tactics... Professional soldiers study logistics."
Tom Clancy, Author of Red Storm Rising

"You will not find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics."
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. Army

"I don't know what the hell this 'logistics' is that Marshall is always talking about, but I want some of it."
Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, U.S. Navy

"The essence of flexibility is in the mind of the commander; the substance of flexibility is in logistics."
Rear Admiral Henry E. Eccles, U.S. Navy

"Logistics...in the broadest sense, the three big M's of warfare: material, movement, and maintenance. If international politics is 'the art of the possible,' and war is its instrument, logistics is the art of defining and extending the possible. It provides the substance that physically permits an army to live and move and have its being."
James A. Huston, Author of The Sinews of War: Army Logistics 1775-1953

"Logistics: the practical art of moving armies"
Antoine-Henri Jomini, French Army General and Military Theorist

"My logisticians are a humorless lot...they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay."
Alexander the Great

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