Why are you Leaving?

[e6bflyer]

Tax free to take a shitty set of orders? Bwahahahaha. F that.
There are plenty of "root cause" issues that need to be worked out. Right now they are offering DHs $125,000 to stay in and they are getting out in droves. Money isn't going to solve this one.

Shorter deployments.
Make officers feel their service is more valued and not just a cog in the wheel.
Quality of life even when home sucks. Change that.
Cut out the bullshit "global war on error", TIP, PII, etc etc etc training and all the PME, joint, and other stupid requirement creep.
Treat people like adults.
A no shit path for a professional operator who doesn't want to command.

Just to name a few.

 

[Recovering LSO]

Shorter deployments.
Make officers feel their service is more valued and not just a cog in the wheel.
Quality of life even when home sucks. Change that.
Treat people like adults.
A no shit path for a professional operator who doesn't want to command.

Yes.

training and all the PME, joint, and other stupid requirements

that pesky goldwater-nichols act...

 

[wink]

Cut out the bullshit "global war on error", TIP, PII, etc etc etc training and all the PME, joint, and other stupid requirement creep.

that pesky goldwater-nichols act...

Do the other services approach this the same way as the Navy? I did the joint staff thing for a couple major exercises and dealt with USAFE quite a bit when I was a Reserve staff puke at NAVEUR. The AF guys never seemed as "joint" as the Navy guys. I found them to be pretty clueless about anything that wasn't only USAF but whatever community they came from ie tankers, fighters, Civ Affairs. The Army seemed a bit better. My point is, do we make a bigger deal out of Goldwater Nichols then we have to? Can we handle it differently and still be in compliance with the spirit of intent.

 

[Recovering LSO]

do we make a bigger deal out of Goldwater Nichols then we have to?

I think the soon-to-be-former attorney general is the only one who can selectively enforce/follow laws

Can we handle it differently and still be in compliance with the spirit of intent.

Yes.

 

[NUFO06]

I think the soon-to-be-former attorney general is the only one who can selectively enforce/follow laws

Yes.

Yes. If the attorney general can tell the public that the legal criteria for Drone Strikes are if there is an imminent threat to U.S. persons or interest. But then quietly define imminent threat has not having to have evidence that an attack will take place in the imminent future. Word games can be fun. (Not a statement for or against using drone strikes)

 

[Uncle Fester]

Tax free to take a shitty set of orders? Bwahahahaha. F that.
There are plenty of "root cause" issues that need to be worked out. Right now they are offering DHs $125,000 to stay in and they are getting out in droves. Money isn't going to solve this one.

Shorter deployments.
Make officers feel their service is more valued and not just a cog in the wheel.
Quality of life even when home sucks. Change that.
Cut out the bullshit "global war on error", TIP, PII, etc etc etc training and all the PME, joint, and other stupid requirement creep.
Treat people like adults.
A no shit path for a professional operator who doesn't want to command.

Just to name a few.

I don't disagree with the goals, but most of them require some deep cultural shifts and changes in national defense priorities that'll take decades to fix, if ever. Shorter deployments and better QOL when home? Sure, that'd be great. But the Navy dug itself into this hole by agreeing to decomm Boats and stretch out boat/AC builds in order to make budgets look right. Now there's no way out short of saying we can't meet our operational commitments, and you know damn well Big Navy won't do that.

Money isnt always the answer, but you've seen Deadliest Catch...people will put up with just about anything if they're paid well enough. Tax-free is a significant chunk of change, particularly for the mid-grade officers and NCOs you want to keep around. Spend any time talking to guys in Bahrain or Djibouti and see how many are there for the money. It's not a fix-all, but if the goal is to improve retention and morale, at least it's something. And it's something that can be done legislatively, as opposed to meta cultural changes or major rearrangement of defense policy.

 

[Steve Wilkins]

Getting back to ways to sweeten the deal to entice people to stay in: I know it'd require congressional action, but what if they made all deployed pay tax-free, not just deployments to certain zones? If you're away from home port long enough that you'd normally be eligible for Family Sep, make it tax-free time instead. And yes, for everyone, not just people with dependents. It'd be a significant chunk of pay, and it'd ease the sting of taking sea duty and unaccompanied tours a good bit.

A nice suggestion, but does nothing to address the fundamental underlying problems. Of course, I'm also one to say that income and property taxes should be abolished, the IRS dismantled, and move to a consumption based tax system. There you go. There's your tax free income for all deployed personnel.

A no shit path for a professional operator who doesn't want to command.

I think they call them Warrant Officers and LDO's. Oh wait, you mean for the URL community? Haven't you heard...if you don't want to command, then URL isn't for you.

 

[Uncle Fester]

A nice suggestion, but does nothing to address the fundamental underlying problems...

I know, but I'm not a fan of the "if we can't fix everything, why bother fixing anything?" approach.

We can't do anything about the over-tasking and long deployments. We need more boats, more air wings, more trained people to fix that - or less tasking - and that's not going to happen soon, if at all. Many of our other problems come from good ideas poorly executed, or not-so-bad ideas that reacted hypergolicly with each other, or whatever. Also not easy to fix.

At least for right now we can make it worth sailors' while to put up with this bullshit.

 

[wlawr005]

Tell me why Nuke O's don't have to do a disassociated tour? How about SWOs? SEALS? EOD? Could you imagine a SEAL LT checking onto LHD-X in order to further his "professional development"?

I think aviation has been getting boned with the "path" to commanding ships...the party line being command at sea is the end of the rainbow. I don't see (and I could be wrong) how anything to do with a ship makes an O-5 a better squadron CO. Let's dismiss the idea of "professional operator" as someone who is an anomaly and make that the norm. If a guy wants to command a flat top one day, let him make that career choice for himself. I'd rather work for a CO that spent his whole career in a cockpit and has 5,000 hours than one who spent three tours moving jets around on a flight deck and editing power points at the five-sided circus tent.

 

[Steve Wilkins]

It's not a fix-all, but if the goal is to improve retention and morale, at least it's something.

I think the goal is (or should be) to improve the areas that are negatively impacting retention and morale, therefore, improving retention and morale. Anything short of that is laziness and a leadership failure.

And it's something that can be done legislatively, as opposed to meta cultural changes or major rearrangement of defense policy.

Easier said than done, not to mention that I'm pretty confident that something else will get fouled up in that process.

I know, but I'm not a fan of the "if we can't fix everything, why bother fixing anything?" approach.

Nor am I, but I abhor bandaid approaches to solving problems as they rarely actually address the underlying problem. On the contrary, not only do they not resolve the issue(s), they usually compound them and make the problem(s) worse.

We can't do anything about the over-tasking and long deployments. We need more boats, more air wings, more trained people to fix that - or less tasking - and that's not going to happen soon, if at all.

You have more options than you think to fix this long term. Unfortunately for most of you, it would come with a significant sacrfice to your military career. There is no easy fix for any of this.

 

[Uncle Fester]

I think the goal is (or should be) to improve the areas that are negatively impacting retention and morale, therefore, improving retention and morale. Anything short of that is laziness and a leadership failure.

Okay...while the committees and task forces and 'one-stars who need a job' study the Morale And Retention Problem to death for ten years, what do we do in the meantime? People are already voting with their feet, it's only going to get worse as optempo goes up and the economy gets better.

Again, I'm not disagreeing that there are a lot of fundamental cultural, career and operational things that need fixing. But if they were easy fixes they would've been done by now. For fucks sake, the Navy takes five years to field a shorts-and-tshirt PT uniform, and even that got screwed up. You think these issues will get identified and improved in anything like the near-term? Improving pay and offering a monetary incentive to put up with this shit is something that can be done in the near-term. Offering tax-free deployment pay has the advantage of not requiring additional money in the Navy's budget, and it's amending existing legislation instead of creating something from whole cloth.

Easier said than done? Well, no shit. All of this is easier said than done. "Improve areas that are negatively impacting retention and morale" is easier said than done. But some things are easier done than others. Why not at least start by doing those?

 

[Steve Wilkins]

Easier said than done? Well, no shit.

I know this wasn't meant to be funny, but I almost spit my coffee all over my keyboard.

 

[Steve Wilkins]

Tell me why Nuke O's don't have to do a disassociated tour? How about SWOs? SEALS? EOD? Could you imagine a SEAL LT checking onto LHD-X in order to further his "professional development"? I think aviation has been getting boned with the "path" to commanding ships...the party line being command at sea is the end of the rainbow.

I think you're on to something here. Let's leave the ship stuff to the professional mariners.

I don't see (and I could be wrong) how anything to do with a ship makes an O-5 a better squadron CO.

Navy = ships. You don't have to like it, but that's the reality. We are a sea going organization. CO's (ship, squadron, subs, SEAL, etc) need to have a big picture perspective.

 

[wlawr005]

Navy = ships. You don't have to like it, but that's the reality. We are a sea going organization. CO's (ship, squadron, subs, SEAL, etc) need to have a big picture perspective.

That's true. Maybe someone could explain to me why we need a 1310/20 to "handle" the flight deck or press the launch button on the cat? I don't really know enough about all the TAO/ANAV etc. jobs, but why are aviators forced to fill those positions as well? At the very most, I understand a CAG staff position, but those guys generally get to keep flying.

I feel like since there are so many aviators, we are forced to fill these positions that could be filled by anybody...limiting our tactical proficiency in lieu of a "big picture" education.

 

[Brett327]

Now there's no way out short of saying we can't meet our operational commitments, and you know damn well Big Navy won't do that.

The services won't, but the COCOMs sure will (and have been). Very interesting Tank happened here yesterday. Whether that amounts to anything in terms of resourcing remains to be seen.