Promotion in the IRR

[vxc961]

I have a co-worker who would do 35 days of ADSW per year and this get a fitrep for each period. He made 05, but that was also several years ago.

While in the IRR I finished JPME, became a Blue &Gold Officer, did about 30 funerals per year, and a bunch of courses. I updated my pic, started the process to go SELRES, and wrote a letter explaining why I went IRR (new responsibilities/travel). I had the NOSC CO (in chg of funeral honors) and my two BGO bosses (both retired O6s) write me letters of rec. Each letter was pretty focused on tasks, accomplishments, and results. I also had them insert breakouts such as "if this were a fitrep, I would rank him 1 of x and mark him EP".

I think it's an uphill battle, particularly since "the tank" is designed to summarize fitreps, so if you have ZERO fitreps they're kind of at a loss.

That's URL though, it could be a bit different on the staff side. For the merchant Mariners, if you updated your contact info that was enough to get you past the first cut!

 

[lostSeaBee]

Great gouge vxc, you are a hard charger. All I've done are the correspondence courses, so I don't anticipate promotion. Just curious. Thank you.

 

[vxc961]

Nah, I love the military, but selres and MOBs weren't going to work with my family. It's worth a shot to try, but I think if you go IRR you just have to have your ey s open about the costs--and that the rules might change and leave you a bit high and dry!

 

[AQ-AT-NAVCIV]

Interesting local story about a local politician and the IRR. Seems he is under fire for claiming to be an army reservist and believing he was still in the IRR.

http://hamptonroads.com/2015/09/how-could-gary-mccollum-have-misunderstood-his-military-status

 

[lostSeaBee]

vxc I can appreciate your situation. If I am in the IRR and have qualifying years of service as an O-4 but no FITREPS, will I show up at the tank at all? There are so few of us that by just hanging on I may have a chance.

 

[Flash]

Normally I would say no chance of getting promoted to O-5 in the IRR but as VXC says some of the staff/restricted line folks are a whole other animal. I mob'd with a merchant mariner CDR who only had one ribbon and 10 good years out of 22 or so and no active duty time at all. Great guy but hard to believe he was a CDR with such minimal participation. Fun fact, he was ship captain in real life for NASA whose last name was Kirk.

 

[Duc'-guy25]

I mob'd with a merchant mariner CDR who only had one ribbon and 10 good years out of 22 or so and no active duty time at all.

We're a completely different beast. Promotion isn't extremely competitive in the SSRG as it is alone other lines. Honestly the "golden path" for us can easily be do your two weeks of ADT, do your NKO for a good year, and maybe try to cut ADSW orders for a few months once or twice. Wouldn't be unreasonable to make O-6 with that. Not many of our fitreps will be observed, so there isn't too much to compare officers other than "did they do all their ADT's and go to the right commands for them." You might get a soft breakout in the remarks but that is about it. Is it fair that SSO's can make O-6 on a less competitive basis than the URL communities? Not particularly. But if we don't promote some people there isn't going to be much senior leadership in our warfare. I will say its starting to get more competitive, and the rules and participation required is being more closely monitored. 6 years ago there we're people being selected for O-4 that hadn't put on a uniform in 4 or 5 years. Rumor is The Man is actually starting to hunt down the King's Pointers that didn't even remotely fill their service obligations and demand that they pay for the education they received...

 

[nittany03]

I will say its starting to get more competitive, and the rules and participation required is being more closely monitored. 6 years ago there we're people being selected for O-4 that hadn't put on a uniform in 4 or 5 years. Rumor is The Man is actually starting to hunt down the King's Pointers that didn't even remotely fill their service obligations and demand that they pay for the education they received...

I don't know about that specific designator, but senior Reserve leadership (by which I mean RADM Young and VADM Braun) are on the warpath regarding participation. There have been a good amount of SELRES no-loads shown the door recently, and good riddance. Think people who had years go by with no AT and no waiver. It boggled my mind what some had gotten away with, but those individuals are now 100 percent civilians.

 

[vxc961]

I don't know about that specific designator, but senior Reserve leadership (by which I mean RADM Young and VADM Braun) are on the warpath regarding participation. There have been a good amount of SELRES no-loads shown the door recently, and good riddance. Think people who had years go by with no AT and no waiver. It boggled my mind what some had gotten away with, but those individuals are now 100 percent civilians.

Yup, I've heard a from a friend who's an XO of a NOSC--basically, for years (forever?), even though the rules said that you had to have 50pts AND 12 days of AT, nobody ever enforced the AT part. Now (RADM Young, according to my source) is cracking down and separating anyone who's gone two years w/o AT.

 

[lostSeaBee]

Wow, being a SELRES and not doing an AT blows my mind. Thanks for the information on promotion. I'm a CEC so we'll see how it goes. I would think that a letter to the board and a picture would be the minimum I would need to complete. Again you guys are a real encouragement, thanks.

 

[atmahan]

I remember when I was drilling and managing the service records of the enlisted SELRES guys. Looking over the Bupers instructions I read that one "should perform their AT in support of their Gaining Command" but that was the extent of the AT requirement. 12 days mininum of Active Duty (from the AT) was not required for a SELRES to get a "Good" Year (it could be attained with just Inactive Points, like Drilling). There were also incentives in the Instructions to reward individuals that completed AT's for 3 years in a row (such as a Ribbon - forget what it was called), which we would award during our Awards Ceremonies. So the impression that I got was that an AT was basically unofficially, "officially" required. I also remember that the AT waivers that were submitted did not wind up in the Service Records but essesntially disappeared in some black hole somewhere (along with my monthly participation report!).

 

[Flash]

I remember when I was drilling and managing the service records of the enlisted SELRES guys. Looking over the Bupers instructions I read that one "should perform their AT in support of their Gaining Command" but that was the extent of the AT requirement. 12 days mininum of Active Duty (from the AT) was not required for a SELRES to get a "Good" Year (it could be attained with just Inactive Points, like Drilling). There were also incentives in the Instructions to reward individuals that completed AT's for 3 years in a row (such as a Ribbon - forget what it was called), which we would award during our Awards Ceremonies. So the impression that I got was that an AT was basically unofficially, "officially" required. I also remember that the AT waivers that were submitted did not wind up in the Service Records but essesntially disappeared in some black hole somewhere (along with my monthly participation report!).

The Navy Reserve is starting to crack down on that and if you don't do AT two years in a row as a drilling reservist you will likely have to a good reason why you haven't in order to keep drilling. Implementation will likely vary according to NOSC as usual but that is the big push now.

 

[Gatordev]

The Navy Reserve is starting to crack down on that and if you don't do AT two years in a row as a drilling reservist you will likely have to a good reason why you haven't in order to keep drilling. Implementation will likely vary according to NOSC as usual but that is the big push now.

The latest 1001.5 (or whatever it's called now) does also specify that ADT or ADSW/MOB counts as a good reason. Though due to budgetary considerations, the priority is to do AT first.

 

[Flash]

The latest 1001.5 (or whatever it's called now) does also specify that ADT or ADSW/MOB counts as a good reason. Though due to budgetary considerations, the priority is to do AT first.

Well, duh. Of course that had to be spelled out because some idiot would have not looked at those as a good reason and screwed someone over. Kind of like one of the guys from my unit who may not get paid for the last DWE since he checked out his medical record beyond the allowed 5 days, even though he is moving to a new unit and a new NOSC. The solution will likely be our CO talking to the NOSC CO, why it has to come to that....?

 

[atmahan]

The ADT/ADSW counting as AT was there back even when I was Drilling.

AT is for Annual Training and was paid for by the Gaining Command.

ADT is for Additional Duty/Training (up to 30 days) and ADSW is for Special Work (can be greater than 30 days), and both have to have a Funding Source (which could be the Gaining Command, if they agreed, or someone else altogether, again, as long as they agreed to be the Funding Source).

Moneywise, as soon as the Fiscal Year started, the money was automatically Approved for ATs so that applications for ATs at one's Gaining Command were almost automatically approved.

However, if a Reservist wanted to perform Active Duty somewhere else (like attend a School or participate in an Exercise), if the Reservist found an Approved Funding Source (which would usually be the School or the entity running the Exercise) , the Reservist could perform an ADT or ADSW instead of the AT, and it would be accepted in lieu of the AT.

I even saw this: Reservist performed the AT early in the Fiscal Year, then performed an ADT or ADSW later somewhere else. Then, usually in the last Quarter of the Fiscal Year when Second ATs would be Approved, the Reservist would perform either: a Second AT at the Gaining Command, a Second AT but somewhere else (again, after finding a Funding Source), or an ADT/ADSW (Funding Source again required) somewhere else, racking up 30-50 Points (from Active Duty) in the process!

I even saw people do a 30 Day ADT that started 30 days before the end of the Fiscal Year and on Day 31 (the first day of the Next Fiscal Year), start a new 30 Day ADT, for a total of 60 Days!

Anyone of these would have counted as Active Duty for the Reservist's Anniversary Year.