Navy Struggles to Fill At-Sea Billets as Obama dismantles military
Jul 30, 2012
Stars and Stripes
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by Matthew M. Burke
SASEBO NAVAL BASE, Japan -- The Navy will ship hundreds of
sailors to sea before their projected rotation date to fill undermanned
billets, the Navy has announced.
Over the past six months, the service has instituted measures to
address gaps in critical positions, offering cash and other perks to
compel sailors to head back out to sea. While those measures are still
taking hold, Navy officials said last week that more must be done to
address the at-sea manning issue -- including involuntary measures -- as
nearly one-third of its total enlisted ratings are currently unfilled.
As a result, existing programs are being expanded and new measures
implemented to ensure these billets are staffed properly, according to a
Navy news release.
“As our Navy is in ever-increasing demand around the world, filling
these gap billets at sea has become more critical,” Chief of Naval
Personnel Vice Adm. Scott Van Buskirk said in the release. “These
actions should reduce the short-notice actions to man high-priority
billets, such as cross-decking and diverts.”
The Navy is separating nearly 3,000 midcareer sailors this year in 31 other fields that are overmanned.
The new initiatives include targeting between 200 and 400 sailors
with critical skills over the next few months under Limited Directed
Detailing and sending them back to sea before their projected rotation
date, the release said. This initiative will target sailors who have
completed a minimum of 24 months on shore duty.
Also, the Chief Petty Officer Early Return to Sea program is being
updated and will now curtail shore duty for enlisted sailors between E-7
to E-9 and send them back to sea to fill billets that aren’t being
filled by rotating sailors.
There will also be changes to Career Management System Interactive
Detailing beginning in the August 2012 cycle, the news release said. A
single set of the highest priority sea and shore billets will be
identified, advertised and filled with priority by detailers each cycle.
In addition, the Voluntary Sea Duty Program is being extended for an
additional year and expanded to include high-tenure waivers so sailors
are not compelled to retire if they choose the sea, according to
officials from Personnel Support Activity Detachment Sasebo and the news
release.
Stars and Stripes.
Comment: Here we go again as a Democratic president once more dismantles our military!
Top Opinion
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lonewolf 2012/08/05 01:36:35
Speaking of the BOne, there's a novelist who has written a whole series of great military/action novels about a special B-one squadron, Dale Brown.
Yes, even in the 1970s when I was still in, we had FLIR (Forward Looking Infra Red) systems and they also had doppler-internial guidance systems that allowed aircraft to follow the terrain. Aboard Enterprise we also had the same "smart bombs" as they have today but not as many, and they weren't used nearly as often.
Even in the 1960s we had a signal analyzer and an airborne system called "Jezebel" that could take the sound picked up by a sonobuoy hydrophone, spread it out on a graph across the audio spectrum, and allow us to tell what type of sub was in the area and how many RPM's it was turning. For thier nukes, we could pick up a turbine line at the high end of the spectrum. The U.S. had a network of hydrophones on the ocean floor, in both the Atlantic and Pacific, that could pick up their subs and analyze them the same way. The last I read they either scrapped the system or turned it over to universities to study marine life.
Speaking of turboprops, have you ever seen the Piaggio Avanti, the greatest small private jet going? It's a pusher, with the engines and props well beyond the cabin, so it's the quietest private jet in the air. It cruises at close to 500 knots and has a range of 1800 miles, carrying two crew and seven passengers. It is cleared by the FAA to fly with pilot only - it's used as the corporate aircraft of Ferrari!