I understand completely what you are saying. The irony is I’m not religious.
As you said, c’est la vie.
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- Thread starter Goodfou
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I understand completely what you are saying. The irony is I’m not religious.
As you said, c’est la vie.
Which Chaplains outside the front gate? Are they going to forge bonds with our sailors and help them thru battle? I don’t remember seeing pictures of Navy Psychs on the flight deck tending to the wounded in WW2?
I’ll echo that many staffs are bloated. I spent the last year on an O-6 staff that didn’t need to exist. NAVCENT proper could be reduced by 50% and would continue to do just fine, but it exists as a place for dead end O4/5/6s and senior Es.
Less Admirals and CAPTs wandering around justifying their existence outside of operational billets would be good too.
While I understand the frustration with the Chaplin corps, I don’t think that’s a big line item.
Less Admirals and CAPTs wandering around justifying their existence outside of operational billets would be good too.
While I understand the frustration with the Chaplin corps, I don’t think that’s a big line item.
This would be difficult to make happen in practice. This may make sense to implement for the active component and maybe retirees, but would likely screw reservists and veterans. If you want to give COLA to the latter two parties, you'll likely not realise the cost savings and end up with unintended consequences (i.e. fraud).
That wasn't condescension, and I've been sparring with Brett on this whole topic. Lighten up, Francis.
Not Chaplains outside the front gate; civilian clergy at the churches they probably already attend and have a relationship with. Clergy that aren't on 2 year orders to NAS XYZ so they can actually form a bond with the members of their congregation.
As I've already suggested, you could still have Chaplains aboard ship for all that spiritual bond-forming, though in today's context, I think you're overselling that aspect a bit.
It’s not unique. A sailor on a ship can’t go “VFR direct” to a doctor. Especially those where the only medical staff onboard is the Independent Duty Corpsman HM1 or HMC. And they are the gatekeeper to higher level medical services ashore.
Quality/ready access to medical care between sea duty on ships and everywhere in the Navy is significantly different.* Even saw the XO hanging outside medical to get a referral ashore.
Chaplains on a CRUDES gets a lot of work. Maybe they shouldn’t be, but I’ve seen them effectively be the Psych-O, simply because they were all that was available.
*A big deck ship where ships company has its own Medical Department staffed by doctors/nurses is a different story.
To which my responses would be:
- Prorate reservists.
- No one entitled retirees to every base having a commissary; they are entitled to base access. Aren't they kind of viewed, for lack of a better word, as "space-A" at the commissary? Isn't that why congress started making us scan the IDs a few years ago so they could start collecting the data because anecdotally, they had heard it was mostly retirees and retiree dependas? It's there for the servicemember, not the retiree, but if one is there, let the retiree use it, but don't keep one open just for retirees. Just remember: every time something is bought at the commissary, money is lost - it's an entirely losing proposition except to fund MWR. That, in and of itself would need to be solved by closing commissaries.
I'm puzzled, because as a SELRES for going on 6 years, and an AC person for 10.5 years prior to that, the commissary was a "nice-to-have," but what does it really get people that you can't get at a Wal-Mart Supercenter?
I can't think of the last time I actually went to a commissary for something I really needed that I could only get there. I hit up Bragg's occasionally when I was MOBed, but only because it was a more convenient stop between work and home than Harris Teeter. And the Class VI (Army talk, I know) was right there, so I could get beer and/or booze. If I was really hurting, I could have (and did from time to time) slummed it and hit up the local Food Lion instead, sans beer or booze.
I can't think of any time since I left active duty that the commissary factored into my life as a reservist. And I never really shopped there while on active duty, either. I'd argue it's a dated benefit held over from when bases were a lot more isolated than they are today.
Edit: Spaetzle. German Spaetzle. As a Pennsylvania Dutch kraut, I do like my occasional sauerbraten or wurst, and Bragg's commissary helped cover part of that craving for like a year of my life, max. I could do the meat and rotkohl myself. But I have Amazon Prime for that, so why does that justify an entire bureaucracy in DoD?
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Then that’s also unique to CRUDES. In any case, regardless of what service are available locally, a Sailor can go VFR direct to their CO or CMC if they have privacy concerns. No CO in their right mind is going to tell that person to just go see the Corpsman in that scenario.
Uh...between that and the SSN/SSBN community, that’s something like 2/3 of the US Battle fleet.
And while you (and most COs) will in fact be willing to listen to sailors with mental health concerns who feel they need treatment, most junior personnel aren’t going to have that sort of access or comfort doing that. A Chaplain on a ship is basically there all day just to let sailors vent...at least that was what I saw.
NMCI is going through a significant overhaul. The Navy operates one of the largest (if not the largest) and most difficult IT networks in the world. Not saying that NMCI nor OneNET (the OCONUS equivalent) are the best but they were the best we could do. With the push to GovCloud and other programs, there will be major changes within the next few years. That's directly from PEO-C4I's and PEO-EIS's mouths.
I have a few friends who are mid-level and senior chaplains and I can tell you that they receive regular counseling training. Even from secular counselors! In fact, one of their primary missions in the modern Navy is to provide Sailors with counseling and mental health services. The current model revolves around the majority of chaplains being assigned to a DESRON or similar organization and then being deployed as necessary to whichever unit needs a chaplain. The chaplains do excellent work in their counseling role; I've never seen a unit who requested a chaplain and got one regret that decision.
It's not just unique to CRUDES or SSBNs/SSNs but also to overseas health clinics, especially in small Fleet support locations. My PCM in Naples was an HM1 and former Independent Duty Corpsman. It's the same for the green side bubbas who have Corpsmen managing their care. I would say that airdales and snake eaters are special due to the extra scrutiny y'all have from the medical community. The quality of care also differs between officer and enlisted. I've seen junior enlisted have to jump through hoops to see specialists while I was able to simply ask.
And for those asking to trim staffs, we must be careful how we do that. Most major staffs are undermanned and wearing multiple hats due to the consolidation of major staffs over the last 20-30 years. From personal experience, COMSIXTFLT staff is doing the job of US Sixth Fleet, Naval Forces Europe, Naval Forces Africa, NATO JFMCC, and Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO, while still being undermanned for a single staff. That being said, we were extremely top heavy with multiple admirals and captains who could easily be trimmed down in favor of more O3s and O4s who actually do the work. As a service we need to push decision-making down from GOFO and O6s to O3s, O4s, and O5s. We have far too many chiefs and not enough indians.
I argue that COC ceremonies are about the ”bride” and not the sailors. If they were about the sailors, the coffee and donuts would be for everyone and they would all be done in flight. Except SWOs—they can wear their whites and have their bunting and pipes and 30-min CDRE speeches.
I'd argue that staffs are just asked to create too many products of little value. I have, at a minimum, 4 daily products due 6 days a week. 2 of those days, I know my superiors at the higher echelon do not check them because they are not at work and they are replaced by the most recent edition I've created by the time they get to work. 1 of the products is something they can gather by literally looking at the COP... and they do because they send us back a V2 with all the corrections daily, that is, the ones that are not 17 hours time late due to the time zone differences we are in... As I mentioned earlier, I have my counterparts at the higher echelon briefing a 4 star Fleet Commander on the exact distance between 2 Growlers and the altitude they will perform a straight-in flyby over their home airport for family members complete with CONOPS and Quad-Slide. Reduce the ridiculous administrative bloat and have them focus on the things they are doctrinally supposed to be focused on: tactics at the unit level, operations at the Numbered Fleet Level, strategy above that. Instead, we churn products over ridiculous minutiae. Staffs can be trimmed if we didn't make them do tasking inappropriate for the level of warfare they are supposed to be at.