More Than Ever, Navy Must Be Manpower Vigilant

Navy Stabilizes Force

March 19th, 2009

First comment is, Add the American Forces Press Service with the Navy Times that should capitalize Sailor!

Prologue: When retention and recruiting do well it has been the manpower gurus natural response to pull billets from recruiting duty, reducing the workforce by as much as 25% or more. Then when times get tough the knee jerks the other way and those same manpower gurus pump the force, seemingly over night, back to the numbers we see today. Often times the increase in the size of the force is too late. One example is 1997 and there are many others.

Hopefully we have learned our lessons of the past.

Onward.

At the end of the current Navy force reduction, manning of ratings should start to level off. I would expect recruiting accession mission to increase slightly over the next couple of years, depending of course that retention numbers keep around where they are now but I don’t think that will be the case.

I believe we will overshoot our projected losses, especially nukes.

Navy Stabilizes Force as it Nears End-strength Goal, Admiral Says
By Gerry J. Gilmore
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, March 19, 2009 – After years of downsizing, the U.S. Navy has nearly achieved its end-strength goal of 329,000 sailors, a senior naval officer said here today.
“For the Navy, force stabilization marks a transitional period, where we are now finished downsizing,” Rear Adm. Daniel P. Holloway, director of the Navy’s military personnel, plans and policy division, told Pentagon Channel and American Forces Press Service reporters.

The Navy has been reducing its ranks by 8,000 to 10,000 servicemembers a year for the past six to seven years, Holloway said, noting his service now is close to reaching its designed end-strength goal of about 329,000 sailors.

“We’re currently halfway through the fiscal year within 1 percent of that goal in stabilizing the force,” the two-star admiral said.

And, as the Navy stabilizes its force, Holloway said, it wants to recruit and retain only the best and brightest sailors to support the nation’s maritime strategy and the joint warfighter.

Holloway said he hears positive feedback about today’s “excellent” sailors. The Navy’s Perform-to-Serve program that’s been in place for years, he said, evaluates sailors’ duty performance to ascertain their capability for continued service.

Qualified sailors also may have the opportunity to switch to high-demand jobs at re-enlistment time, Holloway said. Today’s sailors are serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, he said, as members of provincial reconstruction teams and improvised explosive device suppression crews, with civil affairs groups, and in security and detention operations.

“We’re getting a record number of volunteers now” to fill such billets, Holloway said, adding that he’s hearing “that the Army and Marine Corps” appreciate the sailors’ contributions.

The Navy employs two types of assignment categories while providing sailors to serve in overseas slots, Holloway said. The individual augmentee process, he said, is used to fill positions on a very short notice.

Global war on terrorism support assignments are known by the acronym GSA, Holloway said. They involve “predictable” overseas assignments of a year’s duration, he said, that would be repetitively filled.

“We can, in advance, look at that requirement,” Holloway said of GSA-system sourced assignments, while in the meantime, assignment managers scan the force to see who’d be ready to deploy after completion of their present assignment.

Career managers don’t pull sailors out of their present duty assignments when filling GSA billets, he noted, which results in less disruption to sailors’ lives.

Meanwhile, Holloway said, the Navy continues to attract high-quality recruits.

“We are a world-class outfit and we do require world-class performance,” Holloway said. “So, the standards are high.”

With the recent SRB reductions it stands that retention numbers over the near term will start to fall as part of this planned reduction. Couple that with a need for high tech, Navy trained nukes and others to enter the civilian workforce due to the increase in construction of nuclear power plants and other projects requiring the talent of today’s Sailor. A handful of permits have already been issued – there is a shortage of qualified/experienced personnel and companies are willing to pay more than the military can pay.

I know N1 has to have this down to a science by now and I am sure they are scouting the civilian employment potential of our Sailors – I just hope N1 isn’t producing forecasts based strictly on 5 year old data.

Don’t let the nations employment figures throw you into a false sense of security – today’s Sailor will continue to be desired and sought after!

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