Lt. Joseph "Max" Ernest is a Navy Reserve intelligence officer with 11 years of law enforcement experience and two as a counterterrorism analyst for a defense contractor. Yet last April, when Ernest mobilized to Iraq as an individual augmentee, or IA, the Army made him a logistics officer to Iraq's interior ministry.

"I had no experience with logistics, let alone logistics in a combat zone. So I was frustrated," Ernest said. He spent two to three months just learning basic terminology and how logistic systems are run. In early January, he will go home with mixed feelings about his time in Iraq.

"My skills could have been better used," Ernest said. "But I also have to thank the Army because they have given me a new level of confidence. If I can do this here, when I get back to my world, I can pretty much handle anything."

Two days before Christmas, Ernest was among several hundred "sand-box sailors" in Baghdad's Green Zone to appear at "all hands call" with Adm. Michael Mullen, chief of naval operations. The Navy's top officer was on a weeklong trip to visit sailors on ships at sea in the Persian Gulf and on the ground in Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bahrain and Djibouti.

First on the minds of many, Mullen knew, was the Navy's changing role in the war on terrorism, particularly expansion of the its combat support mission for Iraq and Afghanistan, an expansion Mullen vigorously has endorsed.

Sailors, families and parent commands say they are being impacted particularly by assignment of individual augmentees for training and year-long deployments "in lieu of" Army and Marine Corps forces. Mullen tried to reassure sailors that the big challenges tied to these changes can and will be addressed and are far outweighed by what Navy people are bringing to the fight on the ground.

More than 10,400 sailors are serving on the ground in U.S. Central Command and more than 4,300 are assigned to Iraq. About half, Mullen estimated, are IAs filling gaps in combat support billets with solo assignments away from parent commands. Mullen and Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Joe Campa, who joined him on the trip, said commands need to support IAs and their families more aggressively.

Aboard the aircraft carrier Eisenhower, Lt. Julie Cunningham, whose squadron, VAQ-140, flies the EA-6B Prowler electronic attack aircraft, said aviators and crew coming off deployment spend only two to six months on shore duty before their commands "come knocking on the door" needing IAs for Iraq.

"It's very difficult, after being at sea ... to ask our sailors who just go to shore duty to pack up and leave again for a year to 18 months," Cunningham said.

Mullen said he established clear guidelines after his last visit to Iraq that commands are not to tap a sailor for IA until 12 months have passed since their most recent deployment. He will begin auditing commands more closely.

"The pride the sailors have in what they are doing is phenomenal," he said. "We're at war. And when we come knocking at your door to ask you to serve, it's because we need you."