Posts Tagged ‘navy’

Another setback for military mental health

Posted: December 3, 2022 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
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We have been pushing more and more people to seek mental health resources. That is a good thing, and will hopefully reduce the number of suicides and other mental health problems. But there is a stigma associated with seeking mental health services. People are afraid that they will be judged by others for seeking help, and it will have consequences.

Well, they aren’t wrong. And Hawaii recently proved it will absolutely treat you like a second-class citizen if you seek help for depression:

Michael Santucci, a cryptologic warfare officer from Fort Myers, Florida, saw a medical provider at a military hospital for feelings of depression and homesickness a few months after arriving in Hawaii last year, according to his lawsuit, filed in April. He wasn’t diagnosed with any disqualifying behavioral, emotional or mental disorder, the lawsuit said.

He later filled out forms to register his firearms with the Honolulu Police Department and indicated that he had been treated for depression, but noted it was “not serious.” Hawaii law requires registration of all firearms. Prior to acquiring a gun, an applicant must apply for a permit. Santucci needed such a permit even though he legally owned his firearms before arriving Hawaii.

Because Santucci answered “yes” on a form indicating he had sought counseling, the permit process was halted and his firearms were seized, his lawyers said.

Navy Times

Not just halted, but the corrupt police took his weapons.

For those who have never had to deal with the losers that do gun registration in Honolulu, let me illustrate the process. You bring 16 dollars and 50 cents in exact change to the police office. If you bring a 20 dollar bill, the lady behind the counter yells at you like Roz from the Monsters Inc movie. You get fingerprinted. You have a background check run. You get treated better at the DMV.

So, what did LT Santucci learn out of this? Probably to never be honest with the Honolulu PD ever again. That’s what everyone else reading this learned too. Even though Santucci never said he was going to kill himself or hurt anyone else, he was denied his rights. Any gun owner is now incentivized to not seek mental health for exactly this reason, putting them at higher risk of mental health issues.

Maybe that’s the point. Maybe the people that run the system want more gun owners committing suicide. Maybe its a feature, not a bug. We’ve seen a shift where homosexuality and transgenderism are no longer considered mental health problems, and we’ll encourage life-altering treatment when we should be encouraging people to better come to grips with the reality they live in. On the other side, telling a mental health practitioner that you struggle being deployed away from home is immediate grounds to remove your rights as a citizen. This is made all the worse by the fact that LT Santucci is raising his right hand every day to defend these people.

If that doesn’t make you mad, well, maybe you should seek treatment for that.

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 enjoy these articles, why not donate to Da Tech Guy and purchase a book from the author!

Can the Navy get any older???

Posted: November 12, 2022 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
Tags: ,

No, I’m NOT writing about the election results…plenty of other people are doing that.

Besides, the Navy gives me plenty to write about, and this week was no different. In its most recent sign that it can’t recruit enough Sailors, the Navy lifted the age limit on enlistment from 39 to 41. From Military.com:

The Navy, facing an increasingly tough recruiting environment, raised the maximum enlistment age by two years — from 39 to 41 — on Friday in an effort to allow more civilians to join its ranks. “Effective immediately,” recruiters will be able to enlist people who are as old as 41, provided that they don’t hit their 42nd birthday by the time they report to boot camp, a copy of the new policy, provided to Military.com by the Navy, explained. The policy also noted that some service communities like nuclear power, Navy SEALs and divers will continue to be able to set tougher restrictions for their members.

Military.com

Now, if joining the military at age 39 sounds a bit old to you…it is. I knew a few people that enlisted in their early twenties, but once you got past the age of 27…enlistment dropped dramatically. There were some officers that joined later, most of them doctors or other medical specialists, but there were not too many 30-somethings beating down the door to join the military, let alone join as a new Sailor and go to boot camp.

How much do I think this change will make a difference? Somewhere between “not at all” and “nothing.”

I did find a USNI article boasting about how the Navy was reaching out with new advertising to Generation Z. So, I watched their new ad.

Now, the videography is good. It’s a pretty tight commercial, well shot and with a good message, although it should have been titled “Never say never” instead of “Never.” So, how well is it doing?

Now, the Navy channel isn’t exactly something lots of people are going to follow for fun, but at least we can see the video is getting views. What is interesting is looking at the most popular videos on the channel as a whole.

Everything that is really popular is older. Like, significantly older. With the exception of a video made a few months back about a SWCC Sailor (well made video and a very cool story!), most of the videos just aren’t popular. I also tried finding Navy eSports videos on Twitch and other platforms, and their viewer level was…pretty low.

Which tells me one thing: all the money the Navy is pouring into advertising isn’t reaching the desired audience…or much of an audience at all. I’ll venture its because the Navy’s narrative is being told through its news stories, which consist of rampant suicide issues, a forced COVID vaccine, and the increasingly truthful notion that veterans are broken people. All of this turns off Generation Z, and really most young people in general, to the idea that they could have any sort of fruitful career in the Navy. Combine that with a strong job market, and you have the recipe for a recruiting disaster.

So, what is next? Well, forcing people to stay longer is already being discussed at USNI:

A ten-year service requirement would change the motivation of most ensigns who join the submarine force, allowing the community to recruit officers who intend to make the Navy a career. This undoubtedly would cause recruiting challenges, but naval aviation is able every year to recruit hundreds of ensigns who are committing ten years of their lives. Some of the recruitment challenges can be ameliorated by the additional benefits that would come from extending the minimum service requirement.
- From USNI

There is so much wrong with this idea that it would take another article to explain, but I’ll go with the obvious: when a generation of kids are watching their parents hop between jobs to make increasingly more money, why would they be incentivized to lock into a long contract with the Navy? And, when this approach and others like it don’t work, the military will increasingly force people to the paths it needs, which it has done in the past.

Until the actual issues are addressed concerning the Navy’s mission and how it treats its people, it will continue to not inspire young people to join, and will increasingly become more draconian in its retention approach.

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.

We won’t have quotas in the Navy…oh wait…

Posted: October 15, 2022 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
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From Dilbert.

It’s no secret that the Navy, like the other military services, has paid attention to race and gender when it comes to promotions. This is captured through a variety of fields in an officer’s official record, as well as through an official photograph of the officer that is presented at any selection board. The picture requirement was originally removed in 2016 but reinstated in 2018 by NAVADMIN 265/18: 

This NAVADMIN cancels reference (a) and reinstates the requirement 
to display the Official Photograph for all Officer Selection Boards.  This 
policy change is the result of board feedback received since the removal of 
the photograph requirement that the photographs aid the board’s ability to 
assess the Title 10 requirements of an officer’s ability to perform the 
duties of the next higher grade.
NAVADMIN 265/18

If you are skeptical how a photo helps a board member assess whether Naval Officers can execute Title 10 requirements, you’re not alone. Maybe Navy Officers need to double as Instagram models? Maybe Public Affairs got tired of submitting photos of ugly officers that couldn’t measure up to Taylor Kitsch and Rhianna? Or maybe it was a way of weeding out people that checked “Other” on the ethnicity list? I’ll let you decide.

At least the Navy did this in the background. Truth be told, evaluating your selection results to ensure nobody is discriminated against isn’t a bad thing. But its a slippery slope to quotas, and given the number of people lobbying for such a setup, its no surprise that it finally happened.

Courtesy of MyNavyHR, here are the statistics from the O-6 (Captain) promotion board conducted this year:

I’ve only copied the first page here, which covers 1110 (Surface Warfare), 1120 (Submarines), 1130 (SEAL), 1140 (Explosive Ordnance Disposal), and 13XX series (Aviation). Follow the link to get the rest of the 17 pages that cover other specialized communities.

I think the most frustrating part here is that this tells White Males that you have no background that the board cares about. Whether you came from difficult circumstances, are second-generation immigrants from Eastern Europe, or otherwise had some difficulty to overcome, none of that matters. You’re not the right color. Your background and story don’t matter.

I can’t recommend entering the Navy, especially the officer corps, while this nonsense continues. Between reducing the retirement and other benefits, non-stop wars designed to prop-up the military industrial complex paid on the backs of young men and women, or the increasing use of the military for dumb political stunts, its simply not worth it to join. This proves that even if you join with the intention of changing things, you won’t make it to the higher ranks to do so.

The only real chance for change is a change in President and an absolute evisceration of the membership at the top of the Pentagon. You can probably cut the Admiralty it in half without many problems, given the ratio of admirals to ships nowadays. You’ll need to deeply cut and remove a large chunk of the Pentagon and HR staff that pushes these sort of policies. Most importantly, and perhaps the hardest part, will be restoring our nation’s confidence that we select the best officers to place in harm’s way when the nation needs them the most.

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 share this story with your friends, especially those considering joining the military, and consider donating to DaTechGuy. If you liked this article, consider purchasing the author’s book to support his writing endeavors.

MORE Navy manpower woes!!

Posted: August 27, 2022 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,

I mean seriously, Navy manpower woes are the gift that keeps on giving. There are three (!!!) more NAVADMINs that show the Navy is really struggling to keep its people, especially its technical people, from leaving.

The first is NAVADMIN 186/22, which concerns Special Duty Assignment Pay (SDAP). SDAP is an additional monthly pay for Sailors that are in hard-to-fill jobs or qualify in difficult assignments. The Navy uses SDAP to help incentivize Sailors taking the hard duty assignments, because a few hundred dollars extra a month might motivate someone to fill that position.SDAP has been changed for nuclear-qualified Sailors in the following manner:

Billet / NEC            Level    Pay              Change  RDMC/EDMC/CVN DLCPO     7        525.00           +75.00  N33Z NEC                6        450.00           New  NPTU W/SUPERVISOR NEC   6        450.00           No change  SEA W/SUPERVISOR NEC    5        375.00           No change  SHORE W/SUPERVISOR NEC  3        225.00           -75.00  SEA W/OPERATOR NEC      2        150.00           No change  SHORE W/OPERATOR NEC    1         75.00           -75.00
NAVADMIN 186/22

So what does that mean? In a nutshell, shore assignment SDAP was lowered, while at-sea SDAP was either added or increased. The N33Z NEC refers to an at-sea Sailor that qualifies as an Engineering Watch Supervisor (EWS), which is the senior most enlisted watchstander on a nuclear power plant.Since SDAP is an incentive pay, this is yet more proof that the Navy is trying to push Sailors towards at-sea assignment and to qualify as an EWS at-sea. They wouldn’t bother increasing SDAP if Sailors were already filling those roles without issue.What about technically-savvy officers? Well, NAVADMIN 188/22 changes the accession rules for the Baccalaureate Degree Completion Program (BDCP), which is a program where civilians or enlisted Sailors that have at least 60 credit hours can apply to get a commission, where they get paid while they finish their degree. It’s not as great a deal because it doesn’t pay for tuition, however it does land you a job as an officer afterwards, with the catch of requiring an 8 year commitment. If that sounds a bit long, it is, because a normal ROTC commitment used to be only 4 years…which was increased to 5 years, and for aviators, to 5 years AFTER you qualified to fly (which ends up becoming 8-10 years).BDCP eligibility was extended to…you guessed it…the technical fields of cryptology, cyber, intelligence, networks and oceanography. The only reason to extend this program to those fields is because the normal methods of obtaining officers are not working.The last odd NAVADMIN is 184/22, which simply says that the O-6 continuation board will immediately follow the O-7 selection board. For those not in the know, an O-6 in the Navy is a Captain and an O-7 is a Rear Admiral.Now, normally this board is one of many that are on a routine schedule without any real attention paid to it. Remember that Captains eligible to be reviewed for selection to admiral are well past the 20 years needed to retire, and are allowed to hang out until 30 years of service. They can hang out longer if a continuation board allows it. Since the board already meets on a schedule, why would someone need a NAVADMIN to change when the board meets, and inform the rest of the Navy?Simply put, there was a significant uptick in O-6 retirements after the last O-7 selection board. I asked a few people in the know (who asked to remain nameless) and the word was that the Navy Personnel Office apparently didn’t bother to communicate with a lot of O-6s that were not selected for O-7, and a lot of them submitted retirement requests in response to this poor treatment. While nobody is entitled to be selected for O-7, its not hard to communicate with officers to let them know they weren’t picked. Especially for someone that has given over 20 years to the Navy, you would think the Navy could reciprocate and treat them with respect. The number of retirements stung Navy manpower, hence the short NAVADMIN to try and prevent this from happening again this year.Now, that’s all speculation, but given all the other things happening…is anyone surprised? I sure wasn’t. I am surprised at just how bad recruitment and retention are getting. I had predicted that 2023 would be the breaking point, but that was before the vaccine mandate and terrible withdrawal from Afghanistan. I think those events have accelerated a process that was underway long before this year. I see more and more servicemembers that would otherwise happily stay on a few extra years because they enjoyed the job instead decide to leave for greener pastures. When you go all out to make the Navy a miserable place to work, why would anyone be surprised that you have to increasingly bribe people to stay in?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.

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