President’s Spotlight: Chief-Select Dalton Toebben

Through the end of my time here at the U.S. Naval War College, I’m regularly highlighting someone or something that’s caught my attention over the previous couple of weeks. It might be a person – student, faculty or staff – who deserves recognition, or it might be an occasion I want to draw more attention to. These short ‘President’s Spotlight’ pieces will be posted about once every two weeks.

Chief petty officers are often called the “Backbone of the Fleet.” They have the advanced technical expertise that comes from years of hard work on the deck plates, leading to well-earned positions of leadership and authority on a ship’s crew or at a command.

To become a chief, sailors need to exhibit superior performance for years, not only mastering all aspects of their professional rating, but showing initiative to identify and solve problems before they materialize, as well as the ability to mentor and motivate the people around them.

They need to be just as comfortable guiding junior officers as they are guiding junior enlisted.

It’s a tremendous honor to be chosen to serve as a chief petty officer, and on our team here at the U.S. Naval War College, Operations Specialist Dalton Toebben of our Center for Naval Warfare Studies’ War Gaming Department has been selected for this honor.

By the time this is posted, Chief-select Toebben will still have a little more than two weeks left in Chief Petty Officer Initiation. This is a six-week crucible in which all selectees in the area are physically and mentally challenged by their mentors, through a series of increasingly difficult tasks and activities.

Once they successfully complete this gauntlet, they’re welcomed into the Chiefs Mess, a community steeped in tradition and expected to carry the immense weight of the U.S. Navy, supporting admirals and seaman recruits alike. It’s a responsibility the Mess accepts proudly and executes perfectly.

To fully appreciate Chief-select Toebben, though, it’s worth noting that it wasn’t all that long ago that he was a seaman recruit himself.

It’s not uncommon for a sailor to work for a decade – sometimes almost two – before they’ve built up the expertise, reputation and track record to be selected as a chief petty officer.

Dalton Toebben showed up at U.S. Navy Recruit Training Command in Illinois for boot camp in May of 2019. After completing A School and C School for follow-on operations specialist rate-specific training, he reported to the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Farragut (DDG 99) in Mayport, Florida, and quickly volunteered for a six-month individual augmentee (IA) assignment aboard the Cyclone-class patrol boat USS Thunderbolt (PC 12) operating out of Bahrain.

By 2022, he was back aboard Farragut, deploying the Mediterranean Sea as a Combat Information Center Watch Supervisor and Strike Database Manager, picking up promotion from 3rd Class Petty Officer to 2nd Class Petty Officer.

He was selected for promotion to Petty Officer 1st Class through the Meritorious Advancement Program – what we call “mapped” – in 2024 after a deployment to the Central Caribbean in support of Joint Interagency Task Force South as a Combat Information Watch Officer and completion of another C School, this time for Air Intercept Controller training.

By 2025, he was playing a number of leadership roles – including acting leading chief petty officer – aboard Farragut during the initial phases of its pre-deployment workup training.

And here we are in August of 2026. Toebben has departed the destroyer, reported to the Naval War College and is in the final third of Chief Petty Officer Initiation. If you’re doing the math, that’s a little more than seven years since he started boot camp and less than two since he picked up 1st Class.

That’s about as fast as you can mathematically go from seaman recruit to chief petty officer – it’s a blistering speed, and it speaks to the incredibly high quality of a sailor the war college has in Chief-select Toebben.

I’m excited to have him on the team and I know he’ll make a big difference in our War Gaming Department in the years ahead. If you see Chief-select Toebben around the campus, please welcome and congratulate him on this exceptional achievement.

– Rear Adm. Darryl Walker,
President, U.S. Naval War College