NAVY RESERVE CENTER WARFIGHTER SUPPORT POLICY

[SynixMan]

@snake020 Did you mean you were in an cross assigned unit drilling somewhere else on IDTT, but the NRC was demanding you come in for admin stuff? Or the other way around where your unit was threatening AdminUs? Because the latter can't happen AFAIK. TRUIC mustering authority and then NRC have final adjudication.

BT BT

Feels like my NRC experience in Great Lakes has been both "mostly good" and also not the norm, which is frustrating. It's always interesting to see new COs (I'm on my 4th now?) come in with big ideas and then get swamped by the ~1500 reservists and all their silly problems. I take my reserve gig quasi seriously and have deployed doing it, although in general I find it's construct in the larger world of aviation kind of dumb.

I've got ~3 years left until 20 and I plan on doing it as painlessly as possible. For me, that meant staying an O-4 and in my JOAPPLY job that I'm qualified for and have MOBed on, once. My unit wants me quarterly but I mostly tell them no because the travel is painful and I like to drive to IDT. I do AT, check all the boxes, and prefer to drive to drill weekends to herd cats with my 20 sailors. We make things as painless as possible and I get to sleep in my own bed.

I'm honest with my CO and get a nice "P" FITREP in reward. He keeps a qualified person who holds down one of his Det sites. Win/Win.

 

[snake020]

@snake020 Did you mean you were in an cross assigned unit drilling somewhere else on IDTT, but the NRC was demanding you come in for admin stuff? Or the other way around where your unit was threatening AdminUs? Because the latter can't happen AFAIK. TRUIC mustering authority and then NRC have final adjudication.

Although most of my sniveling in this thread is about NRCs, that one was entirely done by Reserve units. Only happened to me once (had to travel from Monterey CA to Norfolk VA for a drill weekend and literally sat around in a secure facility with no agenda aside from 30 minutes of discussion of CPE resources). Most of what I observed were my units doing the same to enlisted Sailors because they had allocated IDTT money to spend and seemed to believe in negative optics for not spending it, or what seemed like force wide post-pandemic WFH whiplash and some in leadership insisting that cross assigned out drilling was a thing of the past.

They did indeed award admin Us to Sailors that drilled at their CAO units, regardless of their mobilization readiness status. I don't recall how they were facilitated; probably a call between unit COs or XOs, but if they couldn't get an agreement I'm sure they could have gone direct to the NRCs and they would have adjudicated it their way. If I recall correctly, eval signoffs were supposedly shifting from TRUIC COs to UMUIC COs for cross assigned Sailors as I was on my way out as well, giving further leverage to the latter units.

 

[squorch2]

I think a congressional investigation into NRCs writ large is in order quite honestly. They should all be shut down permanently, in my frank opinion. Have the rando prairie navy people and VTU just go to virtual, reporting to some singular major command directly.

As a VTU ... lead? senior member? whatever you call it, I run it...

I heartily endorse moving VTU/RSU to fully virtual, less maybe 1x DWE/year for PHA and PRT. And gas mask. And whatever else there is coming up.

Biggest challenge to all this is the constantly shifting requirements - CMT, etc.

 

[ChuckMK23]

As a VTU ... lead? senior member? whatever you call it, I run it...

I heartily endorse moving VTU/RSU to fully virtual, less maybe 1x DWE/year for PHA and PRT. And gas mask. And whatever else there is coming up.

Biggest challenge to all this is the constantly shifting requirements - CMT, etc.

How does technology access work for Navy reservists as far as getting official email and access to training platforms and then logging drills and creditable activity, etc?
Do individual reservists rate a government-furnished laptop or is everything web-based or some sort of virtual desktop?
Most AF reserve units punt to a group chat tool for day-to-day admin, like WhatsApp or Slack or something.

 

[squorch2]

How does technology access work for Navy reservists as far as getting official email and access to training platforms and then logging drills and creditable activity, etc?
Do individual reservists rate a government-furnished laptop or is everything web-based or some sort of virtual desktop?
Most AF reserve units punt to a group chat tool for day-to-day admin, like WhatsApp or Slack or something.

For tech-savvy folks, there are lots of options. Most USNR types not in a fleet concentration area are not super tech-savvy.

Everything is BYOD. You can do a fair amount on phones, but at some point, you'll need a cac reader.

My NRC uses whatever group text the CO has set up, but there's not a lot of standardization across the reserves.

Which, really, is kind of the root cause of the problem - navy reserve admin should be much much simpler and understandable no matter what NRC you report in to, but things vary widely from place to place, and even moment to moment.

 

[SynixMan]

Although most of my sniveling in this thread is about NRCs, that one was entirely done by Reserve units. Only happened to me once (had to travel from Monterey CA to Norfolk VA for a drill weekend and literally sat around in a secure facility with no agenda aside from 30 minutes of discussion of CPE resources). Most of what I observed were my units doing the same to enlisted Sailors because they had allocated IDTT money to spend and seemed to believe in negative optics for not spending it, or what seemed like force wide post-pandemic WFH whiplash and some in leadership insisting that cross assigned out drilling was a thing of the past.

They did indeed award admin Us to Sailors that drilled at their CAO units, regardless of their mobilization readiness status. I don't recall how they were facilitated; probably a call between unit COs or XOs, but if they couldn't get an agreement I'm sure they could have gone direct to the NRCs and they would have adjudicated it their way. If I recall correctly, eval signoffs were supposedly shifting from TRUIC COs to UMUIC COs for cross assigned Sailors as I was on my way out as well, giving further leverage to the latter units.

Yeah I guess things are somewhat different. UMUIC COs can’t force you to do IDTT for quarterly DWEs or whatever. They can use other tools like fitrep/eval and even some stronger things to remove you from a billet. But if you physically show up and do what you’re supposed to, the AdminU instruction is pretty clear.