THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 30, 1994 TAG: 9410300054
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 110 lines
His career began as the sixth officer on a five-officer ship - excess baggage, he suggests - and he didn't even apply for a regular naval commission until about six or seven years into his career.
Luck had as much to do with his successes as anything - luck at being chosen to command his first ship at an early age during the ``Mod Squad'' days of Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, when junior officers were given a chance to get ahead fast.
``You had to roll the dice a few times and they had to come up the right way,'' said Adm. Paul David Miller who, at 52, will trade in his Navy uniform for a business suit on Monday as he retires after 29 years and 8 months of naval service.
He is being succeeded by Marine Corps Gen. John J. Sheehan as commander-in-chief of U.S. Atlantic Command and NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic - the first time in 50 years that the post has been held by a non-Navy officer.
Among the 2,000 invited guests to the 10 a.m. ceremony aboard the carrier Enterprise will be the nation's top military officers and defense leaders. Defense Secretary William J. Perry, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, and NATO Military Committee Chairman Field Marshal Sir Richard Vincent of the United Kingdom, are scheduled to address the audience.
Miller was raised by a Navy chief warrant officer who adopted him and who also served 30 years in the service - ``He was an old, crusty, mean, wild, boatswain,'' said Miller, with a broad smile, not really meaning the entire description.
He is a native of Roanoke, but moved to Norfolk with his parents where he graduated from Norfolk Catholic High School in 1959. He was commissioned at the Officer Candidate School at Newport, R.I., in December 1964 after graduating from Florida State University. Later, Miller earned a master's degree from the University of Georgia. He is a graduate of the Naval War College and the Harvard Business School Executive Management Program.
He is leaving the Navy, saying, simply: ``It's time to slip and proceed.''
He'll be moving to Charlottesville to become president of Sperry Marine Inc., joining friend and former Navy Secretary John F. Lehman, who is Sperry's board chairman.
He doesn't believe he has a legacy to leave.
``I just don't have one,'' the four-star admiral said last week in an interview from his headquarters in Norfolk.
If not a legacy, others have already said that Paul David Miller at least leaves his reputation as one of the first military leaders to successfully push for true joint service training and combat operations.
Recent operations in Haiti, where Navy aircraft carriers moved Army troops to the Caribbean island, were unprecedented in modern warfare.
Miller has moved the Army's and Marine Corps' green and the Air Force's and Navy's blue toward the often described purple blend of service cooperation better than anyone else, his mentors have said.
Thursday, at his former deputy's change of command ceremony at Fort Monroe, Miller wore Army camouflage fatigues to the ceremony.
``They are real Army BDUs (Battle Dress Uniforms) too,'' said Gen. William W. Hartzog, who left USACOM Oct. 21 to become commander of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command.
Miller's interest in joint operations didn't suddenly appear two years ago when he took his present command, he said.
``I have been after the most effective use of our forces as long as I have been in command positions,'' he said.
``When I was battle group commander on Enterprise we did work first in the North Arabian Sea, then in the Med working for Adm. (Frank) Kelso when he had the 6th fleet. Then, after Libya, the joint picture began to come together operationally.''
It had come together from his Washington vantage point during the decade of the 1980s when everybody was trying to get force structure renewed, he said.
``But then I went to the 7th fleet and had my first opportunity to work with the Air Force from Okinawa and in the Philippines and the Army in Korea, to leverage the capability we had forward-positioned there,'' he said.
Miller went back to the Pentagon to become deputy chief of naval operations for naval warfare and again looked at how joint operations could really come about.
``I became the (Atlantic) fleet commander here and had the latitude with Adm. (Leon A.) Edney (his predecessor) to continue to work that. But it wasn't until I got into the CINCs desk that I could say, `Let's do something,' because I didn't have to get permission from somebody.
``So that is when I put the Marines on the carrier; then we were able to get some things on the street. I didn't have to ask permission. But I worked very, very hard to get everybody's concurrence . . . because we really broke some china back then.''
Miller acknowledges that not everyone within the military industry was thrilled with the expanded roles USACOM was going to have.
``It was established against some tide of resistance,'' he said. ``It wasn't all, `Hey, we want to give all the troops to one commander and give him joint training responsibilities.'
``They were just a bit skeptical about how this would work out.''
But each time Miller and his staff designed a new wrinkle for a joint task force it tended to break another chunk of ice.
``Each time we did it, it wasn't a set piece for its own sake. It was a stepping stone. We've gone through a lot of stepping stones since we put those 600 Marines aboard the (carrier) Theodore Roosevelt two years ago.''
Today, those stepping stones have begun to make people think in evolutionary terms, he said.
For tomorrow, Miller's advice is for the military's leaders to keep an eye on maintaining the capability that it needs to always have the competitive advantage in combat.
``That is where it all rests,'' he said, ``to make sure the boots get on the ground or the airmen have that advantage.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Adm. Paul David Miller retires on Monday in a ceremony aboard the
carrier Enterprise after 29 years of service.
by CNB