YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — The modern sailor will be a warrior on land and at sea, with evolving skills transferable to the civilian world and pertinent in the modern combat-ready Navy.

That’s the goal of Sea Warrior, a concept for developing manpower under the modernization strategy the Navy calls Sea Power 21.

Sea Warrior merges the Navy’s personnel, training and human resources offices to make them more efficient and relevant. Its goal is making better and more content sailors, with skills the transforming Navy needs, said Task Force Sea Warrior commander Rear Adm. Robert Conway.

Navy leaders say they created the program to match individuals’ skills with appropriate jobs and help mold those skills through career management. The term has raised a few eyebrows as sailors figure out what it is and how it can serve them. To help them, Navy officials have said, the task force was created to spread the word.

Conway said he guides the program’s evolution and travels to bases to explain what Sea Warrior is shaping up to be.

“We’re trying to demystify what this is,” he said last week while visiting Yokosuka. “It’s not as complex as everybody wants it to be. We’re building a capabilities-based force.”

To fight terrorism globally, he said, more sailors are going into combat or conducting humanitarian and civil-military operations, as happened earlier this year after tsunamis ravaged South Asian coasts.

The Sea Warrior concept seeks to better help sailors meet those missions by training them to be more flexible and agile, Conway said.

For individuals, Sea Warrior refers to how the Navy molds sailors through every phase of their career. Under the program, individuals should evolve through training, guidance and leadership, with a clear picture of what development they need to succeed.

“It really comes down to flexibility and career management,” Conway said. “We’ve got to show them how we’re going to help them grow and develop.”

Part of the strategy is offering sailors better career direction. Through a program called the five-vector model, sailors can see how their skills fit jobs available in the Navy and civilian world.

They also can see what training or experience they need to get the jobs they want in the future.

The Sea Warrior goal, Conway said, is to shape the force to meet its evolving mission and help make the Navy an employer of choice, using “professional growth and development, lifelong learning and covenant leadership.”

Some features of the program have been implemented, including the five-vector model. Sailors also can use Navy Knowledge Online, a tool for training, education and manpower information.

Conway said the Navy plans to offer better access to the Internet and sites such as Navy Knowledge on ships as well as in shore commands.

As Sea Warrior expands, Conway said, he will continue spreading the word to sailors at all levels “to take this complexity and put it into something they can understand and accept.”