Archive for the ‘war’ Category

The Navy removes more benefits

Posted: March 4, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncomfortable Truths, war
Tags: , , , ,

Damn I hate being right.

Remember last week when I spelled out the Navy’s way to stop bleeding people:

  1. Not kicking people out for physical fitness test failures
  2. Waiving darn near everything, from age to non-violent felonies
  3. Asking people to pretty-please stay around a few more years
  4. Opening OCS and other admissions
  5. Raising bonuses
  6. Make life better for officers
  7. Reduce opportunities to leave early
  8. Op-Hold people
From last weeks post

I said the Navy was already doing items 1 through 5. Item 6 won’t happen because the Navy doesn’t actually care about its Sailors. So…we’re now on item 7. From NAVADMIN 064/23:

4.  SkillBridge is intended to provide transition assistance and skill development for Service members leaving the Navy.  However, it is not an entitlement and participation does impact readiness.  As such, the time allowed for program participation is now based on paygrade.  If approved, SkillBridge must occur prior to any terminal leave or permissive temporary duty associated with separation, fleet reserve, or retirement.  The following limits indicate the maximum amount of time prior to the actual separation, fleet reserve, or retirement date that SkillBridge participation can commence. 
    a.  Tier one (enlisted E5 and below) - 180 days or less. 
    b.  Tier two (enlisted E6-E9) - 120 days or less. 
    c.  Tier three (officers O4 and below) - 120 days or less. 
    d.  Tier four (officers O5 and above) - 90 days or less.

In case you don’t know, SkillBridge is a program where military members that are retiring or separating get to spend the last 90-180 days being trained in a civilian job before retirement. This helps military members get a jump on gaining practical skills before transitioning to civilian life. It happens at the end of their service, so theoretically they are already one foot out the door, and the Navy should already be planning to replace them.

As I pointed out before, plenty of Sailors have been denied SkillBridge because the command “can’t afford to lose them.” This is very prevalent at the junior enlisted levels. Now Navy is cutting the benefit for anyone that is retiring (it’s nearly impossible to retire below the rank of E6), and since junior Sailors already struggle to use SkillBridge, the end result is more erosion of the benefit.

I give it 6 months before Navy just starts OPHOLDing people. An Operational Hold (OPHOLD) is permitted in MILPERSMAN 1306-120. Basically, the Navy can keep a Sailor on sea duty for up to 12 months. I’ve seen this happen, and in general, it’s almost always a bad idea. The big problem is that while the Navy can force you to STAY, it can’t force you to WORK, so Sailors on OPHOLD simply do the bare minimum and the command doesn’t get the hard-working Sailor they once had. I’ve told at least one knucklehead in HR that “Your OPHOLD is only good until the Sailor says they are going to hurt themselves,” because saying you will commit suicide is the quickest way off sea duty.

Denying SkillBridge won’t work. You can’t make people work. Workers have to want to work, and unless they are motivated or fear punishment, you can’t make them work. By denying SkillBridge, all that will happen is people will purposely do less work in the time they should have been on SkillBridge. Anyone retiring was ALREADY not doing that much, SkillBridge simply recognized that and let them go early. A better option would have been to declare that SkillBridge participants have vacated their billet, so you can get a replacement in sooner. Denying SkillBridge is also a recruiting loser, because as the word gets out that Navy won’t actually uphold SkillBridge, fewer people will sign up to be in the Navy.

I continue to hate being right.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. Please support the author by purchasing one of his books or donating to DaTechGuy!

Five Three Liners Under the Fedora: Robin Williams East German Women Jokes, Baseball Clocks and Starting pitching, Russia v Ukraine at a year, Catholics Been There Still Doing That, Why Would you Believe the Media on Scott Adams?

Posted: February 28, 2023 by datechguy in baseball, catholic, catholic devotions, culture, in Ukraine, tech, war
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

I seem to remember Robin Williams doing a riff on East German “Women” athletes years ago. For the life of me I can’t find it on Youtube anymore. I suspect two minutes of Williams riffing on “women athletes of East Germany” would make the left’s arguments on men in women’s sports untenable.

Well now we’ve had the first baseball game decided by the game clock. Bases loaded, two outs, bottom of the ninth, tied game, 3 balls two strikes and the next pitch doesn’t come, game over. Since I’m old enough to remember two hours games my suggestion is want faster games, sign pitchers who can pitch 7-8 innings a start.

The first Anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has passed and I’ve noticed an inordinate amount of people seem to have forgot about the events at the time. For weeks before Russia moved in Biden signaled Ukraine had to give in and when the came forward he was ready to evacuate Zelenskyy. Absolutely nobody expected Russia to be on the run with Ukraine still fighting today.

The Asbury revival seems to be spreading among protestants. Baylor is now seeing nightly prayer since February 19th. As a Catholic a church that has been doing 24/7 adoration for centuries my reaction is, that’s a nice start.

Finally just a few days after again getting evidence that the media is deceiving people to push an agenda concerning COVID that same media is declaring the Scott Adams is a racist who must be shunned. My take on this is rather simple: Given the history of the media why would any sane person take their judgement on Adams, a person they hate, seriously? So I followed him on twitter.

The Navy just doesn’t understand SWOs

Posted: February 25, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncomfortable Truths, war
Tags: , , ,
GULF OF OMAN (Feb. 20, 2023) The guided-missile destroyer USS Paul Hamilton (DDG 60) approaches the dry cargo and ammunition ship USNS Alan Shepard (T-AKE 3) in the Gulf of Oman, Feb. 20, 2023. Paul Hamilton is deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations to help ensure maritime security and stability in the Middle East region. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Elliot Schaudt)

Surface Warfare Officers (SWOs) have been a part of the Navy since…always. Our Navy started out on surface ships, and surface warfare continues to be important, no matter what an Aviator, Submariner or SEAL will tell you. Yet increasingly I have to wonder, does the Navy understand why it is so hard to keep SWOs? You would think with hundreds of years of history this would be obvious, but given its latest actions, I’m not so sure, because the US Navy is facing a SWO manpower crisis, and is dealing with it in ways that simply won’t work.

Let’s go back to my original rules for Navy manpower. When times are good and we have too many Naval Officers, the Navy does the following:

  1. Kick people out for failing physical fitness tests, even if they are otherwise good Sailors
  2. Make it hard to get waivers for things like antidepressants and other medical issues
  3. Begin nicely asking older Naval Officers to retire to make space for younger officers
  4. Lower the number of Officer Candidate School admissions
  5. Reduce bonuses
  6. Make life increasingly difficult, so that more people naturally quit
  7. Conduct a Reduction In Force (RIF) and simply remove people

This is a pretty good strategy to reduce numbers, slowly ratcheting up the pressure to ensure we don’t have too many officers hanging around. Naturally, if we have too few officers, the Navy turns this around by:

  1. Not kicking people out for physical fitness test failures
  2. Waiving darn near everything, from age to non-violent felonies
  3. Asking people to pretty-please stay around a few more years
  4. Opening OCS and other admissions
  5. Raising bonuses
  6. Make life better for officers
  7. Reduce opportunities to leave early
  8. Op-Hold people

In the past, the Navy has done everything on the first list to bring down numbers. Now, they are doing…almost everything on the second list, but it’s not working, and it’s becoming glaringly obvious in the SWO community. If you listen to Admirals speak (and I don’t recommend that), you would think we’re doing OK on SWO retention. But a brief glance at the Health of the Force survey shows that disaster looms around the corner:

Future force structure increases outside the future year defense plan (FYDP) require DH billet increases, requiring increased retention. This compares unfavorably with a declining billet base across the FYDP as the Navy divests legacy platforms. Year groups 2015-18 require an average retention rate of at least 37.3%, exceeding the 10-year average. If fleet size projections remain accurate, Surface Warfare requires a retention rate of 44% in YGs 19-22 to meet future afloat DH requirements.

Health of the Force Survey

So we’re not making the retention rate we need now, and we have to increase this by 10 percentage points in the future, but retention is plummeting.

All the Manpower people in the Navy right now…

The Navy is already overlooking physical fitness failures, waiving medical conditions and opening up OCS admissions…which are now having a higher-than-expected failure rate. I would think most people would understand that lowering admission standards will likely lead to more failures in a difficult program, but apparently “most people” doesn’t include Navy HR.

So what to do next? Raise bonuses. And boy did they raise them.

NAVADMIN 045/23 discusses continuation bonuses for SWO Lieutenant Commanders (LCDRs). SWO leave after their first Navy tour at a fairly high rate, and it’s hard to persuade them to stay in long enough to promote to LCDR around their 8-9 year mark. So why not pay them $22K a year IF they stay in after promoting to LCDR? It’s certainly worth a shot.

NAVADMIN 046/23 establishes a payment schedule for SWO Department Head bonuses. If a SWO screens for Department Head and agrees to stay for two Department Head tours, they can get bonuses up to $105K in total over 6 years. Conveniently, that would put them right at the point of getting a continuation bonus as outlined previously.

Now, normally this would work. Throw enough money at people, and you can normally get them to stay. But it’s not going to do that, and the reason is hinted at in the Health of the Force Survey:

Improving retention requires a multi-pronged approach. First, community managers are allowing more individuals to lateral transfer and re-designate. This will divest end strength in year groups with smaller DH requirements, freeing inventory for future accessions. Second, several monetary and non-monetary efforts are underway to improve Surface Warfare retention. Surface Warfare Officers now have a career-long continuum of monetary incentives with the introduction of the SWO Senior Officer Retention Bonus (SWOSORB) in FY22. Third, the community offers improved education opportunities including: postgraduate education opportunities, tours with industry, and fleet-up options for increased geographic stability. Fourth, Surface Warfare recently modified the career path to incorporate multiple family planning opportunities for career-minded SWOs. Finally, SWO released the junior officer survey, senior officer survey, and junior officer exit survey to solicit retention feedback.

Health of the Force Survey

Two things stick out:

  1. Family Planning opportunities? I thought Navy was all about killing babies, or at least circumventing existing laws to do so? Guess that’s not so popular when retention is on the line?
  2. The Junior Officer Exit Survey results.

I’ve read the JO Exit Surveys. They’ve existed for years, and they say the same things over and over:

  • We don’t train people enough
  • The job is thankless and people treat JOs like dirt
  • JOs find Navy life is incompatible with having any outside life or family time

That’s every survey, ever. Pay doesn’t make the top three retention issues in almost any survey. In the past though, enough money would make people overlook how bad the job is. But when truck drivers make over $100K a year, or companies pay project managers $150K or more a year, that $105K spread out over 6 years starts to look really small. The Navy caps officer bonuses at $330K over a career. Civilian companies don’t. Pay isn’t going to fix this crisis.

The ONLY hope for retaining SWOs is to increase quality of life. This would mean closing the sea duty billet gap, addressing the shipyard maintenance problems, and make driving a warship fun again. These are all inside the Navy’s wheelhouse, but it seems increasingly incapable of taking these actions. I suspect that the top SWOs are looking down thinking “You young officers are pathetic, back in my day we worked 16 hour days on shore duty and we BEGGED FOR MORE!!!”

Given that pay won’t fix it, and Navy won’t address quality of life issues, I predict we get operational holds on people leaving in the next 6-12 months. I’d like to be wrong, and maybe next year you can repost this and laugh at me, but I have a bad feeling I’m right about this.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. If you like this post, why not donate to DaTechGuy, or purchase one of the authors books?

We Interrupt Our Trump Series to note others are starting to feel a Draft coming our way

Posted: February 21, 2023 by datechguy in war
Tags:

For quite a while I’ve been the voice crying out in the wilderness suggesting the days of the draft were getting closer

Now others are not only seeing it but calling for it as well:

The Department of Defense in 2022 found that only 23% of people in prime military age (ages 17 to 24) qualify for service. Why so low? Obesity, drugs, mental/physical health, or a combination of these. Obesity is the largest single factor. 

To combat this trend, in 2022 the U.S. Army created two “prep-courses” that recruits can attend prior to Basic Training. One 90-day prep-course helps recruits meet body fat standards. The other course helps recruits achieve higher scores on the Armed Forces Qualifications Test. The U.S. Navy recently announced that it has raised its age limit to 41 years, the oldest of any service (thus far).  

This is sounding alarm bells. The recruiting pool is getting shallower.

There has been much discussion recently in how to fix this problem within the framework of the all-volunteer military. Perhaps it is time to put into action an old saying, “If you want a new idea, look in an old book.” 

Bring back the peace time draft. 

It’s interesting to note that Professor Szalma did not mention the really key thing that is hurting recruiting, the war on military members both from the forced jab and the forced wokeness to the point where you get this from military families:

Listening to friends, other vets, and fellow Marines, that has to be happening more often than not. When I pose that question, “Would you tell a kid today to go in/enlist?” the first exclamation out of their mouths rhymes with “duck” and is followed by an emphatic “NO!”

It is so toxic.

this of course wouldn’t be a problem if the military has a large pool of potential volunteers but as I wrote way back in 2006 commenting at Instapundit two years before I started blogging myself:

Since the 60′s two unifying forces, for good or ill, were removed from the country: the removal of Judeo/Christian values as the semi-official moral code of the public schools) and the death of the draft/aka Vietnam. (actually ending in the 70′s). These two changes had one thing in common, it took two generations for them to have the following effect:

It is now unlikely that a student going to school today, had a teacher or parent who 1. Served in the military or 2. Was taught that moral code in school. To a whole generation now being born these are things that belong to outsiders. This makes the military and religious people outsiders and strange to one group and vice versa. Since the military draws predominantly from those two groups it will become more isolated from the rest of the public as time goes by.

This is not healthy for our country. What is worse is that one group has slowly vilified the military assuming them to be all dupes or thugs. A lot of this was political rhetoric but it has grown as a matter of faith.

And remember that was written 17 years ago.

Bottom line if you have a small pool of volunteers that you counted on and after decades of vilifying them said pool finally tells their kids to avoid service what do you get?

A Draft to make sure those officers who towed the woke line their superiors have pushed since the days of Obama have someone to command.

On the question of the need for a draft Glenn Reynolds answers: “Well, No, but if he keep wrecking military recruitment through lousy management we may get one.” I disagree.

Unless by some miracle we get a GOP president willing to clean house both in the DOD and among woke officers from Major on up a draft is coming. Folks are now talking about it openly and I suspect we’ll see it happen before this decade is over.

I can’t wait to see the reaction of Portland Oregon & Seattle. It will soften the blow.

Closing thought #1 Since the congress never got around to making women eligible for the draft watch a bunch of blue state boys suddenly start defining themselves as women when it comes. Alas they’ll be surprised at how fast even Justice Brown figures out what a woman is and isn’t once the deep state decides they need the manpower.

Closing thought #2 If you thing Social Security is a budget buster wait a few decades after the return of the draft and 10-20% of the population rather than two is eligible for veterans benefits.

Older Entries
Newer Entries