Why are you Leaving?

[villanelle]

You're correct - there is no official policy barring female officers from having children. And yes, there are some female officers who have children. However, they are choosing to do so at a substantially lower rate than their male counterparts.

It's one thing to have to work long hours. It's another thing for someone to go through the hassle of rebuilding their family support system and integrating into a new community every 2-3 years so that both spouses can maintain a career. That is something that the vast majority of people in the civilian workforce are not faced with doing, and I have encountered very few officers with children who have a spouse that works full-time.

To the first bolded, is that a true problem, or is it just something that looks uncomfortable and bad on paper?

For the second, that's counter to my experience. I've known many who had wives who worked full time. Granted, I've seen a lot less of that since our exile overseas, but in San Diego, more of our Navy friends had working spouses than not. As kids started to come, those numbers dropped a bit, but the same thing happened with my civilian friends--more of them dropped to one working parent. But I still know plenty of dual income military families with kids.

And is a difficulty having two working parents the same as a difficulty attracting women? Is there are reason husband's can't be the stay-at-home? Sure, it's not common, but that's on society, not the Navy. If a female pilot (or sailor) wants to stay in, she can do so in the same ways her males counterparts do--working spouse and figure out day care, or have the other parent stay home. Does it fall to the Navy to come up with a special program simply to counteract societal norms that dad's aren't usually the primary parent? It's interesting to me that your argument was kind of that the Navy isn't friendly/attractive to women, but to support that you mention how difficult it is to have 2 working parents. That same difficulty applies to men, but they solve it often with a stay at home mom. So the assumption is that somehow women can't do that, too. But they can. If they won't, isn't that on them if they and their spouse choose to toe the line of societal expectation rather than have dad quit his civilian job, if they find they can't make two working parents work?

Also, I'm not sure that a lower percentage of dual income parents shows a problem with the Navy. Heck, it could just as easily be argued that the Navy, with it's steady employment (relatively), decent pay, and solid benefits allows families to choose to be dual income in ways that many civilian jobs don't.

I'm curious what you think might be a solution to this perceived problem. If I concede that a difficulty in having two working parents is a problem with the Navy, what fixes that? Fewer deployments? More personnel which in theory shortens working hours a bit? If that's the kind of thing you are thinking, I'm sure everyone would love that and it would benefit far more than just parents. But I think there's a roughly 0% chance of it happening. And do those things make the Navy more attractive to women specifically, which was the original issue, or to everyone?

 

[lowflier03]

I believe there is an argument which could be made for a cadre of permanent O-3/O-4 "professional aviators." The problem with the Army example is that they didn't keep the system moving so as to keep some influx of fresh blood. If we split the community up into a command track and a flying track, we will still need to fill JO spots as the command track people make DH or get out. We also will still need to fill professional aviator slots as those folks retire. Potentially, we also play with their PRDs and manning numbers so as to utilize them in a RAG/TRACOM role for their shore tours, thus generating a demand to put a few more JO butts in fleet seats as they rotate out. TRACOM manning and student demand would go way down, but I think it would just be a matter of crunching the numbers to ensure the system didn't choke the demand off for new studs completely.

This always comes back up as an argument. The AF operates this way, at least on the helo side. I know a couple of pilots who, at the transition to O-4, were given the option of flying for their full 20 years, but were told they would be a 20 year O-4. The other option was to go on the command track and possibly continue to promote, do career enhancing tours, etc.

 

[webmaster]

Duffel Blog chimes in with some humor on the subject.

http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/04/resigning-commission/

One of the FB comments caught my eye. Stated that the young officer in the photo isn't too happy that her photo is constantly used as a stock news image. I wonder how many people mistakenly have thought she was the author? Would be interesting if she wrote a rebuttal!

 

[squorch2]

I've known many who had wives who worked full time. Granted, I've seen a lot less of that since our exile overseas, but in San Diego, more of our Navy friends had working spouses than not.

Everything else being equal, overseas/FDNF tours are more career-enhancing than CONUS tours.

Lots of luck having a spouse with professional qualifications and career aspirations keep it when you move every 3 years - especially to such bustling metropolises like Norfolk, Lemoore, any location with a TRACOM, etc. etc.

 

[Uncle Fester]

Yes, but being a commissioned officer in the military IS analagous to being in a company's management track. If you want to keep doing the same job for 20+ years, enlisting is an option. If you're speaking of aviation specifically, it sounds like you're advocating that the Navy adopts the Army's way of doing business with warrant officers primarily filling the pilot billets. There are already several 'off-ramp' career options for URL O-4/O-5s within the Navy.

That's a spurious analogy, because even if you do see military officers as "management" there's no company in the world that insists on an up-or-out progression. If you're happy as a lower management type, you can stay there as long as your performance is satisfactory and the position is needed/funded.

I'm not at all for one second saying how corporate America does things is a universally great model that should be copied. Just that there's other ways to manage personnel.

We do need turnover and we do need to bring in fresh blood continually. Deploying and operating is largely a young man/woman's game. However, there really should be a balance between that and retaining experience and knowledge, especially in the aviation community. The real eye opener for me was flying with our Reserve squadron. Having a plane full of guys with several thousand hours each, all mission/aircraft commanders, and with an ass-ton of experience and control time. These guys knew more and had done more than any squadron out there. It was an axiom for years that the VAW with the best non-squawker detection rate at Fallon was always the Reservists, because it takes time and experience to really learn how to optimize the system and read the video. Yet the Navy was making zero use of them as instructors or SMEs anywhere, and then disbanded the squadron and scattered them to the winds.

 

[villanelle]

Everything else being equal, overseas/FDNF tours are more career-enhancing than CONUS tours.

Lots of luck having a spouse with professional qualifications and career aspirations keep it when you move every 3 years - especially to such bustling metropolises like Norfolk, Lemoore, any location with a TRACOM, etc. etc.

I don't disagree with this at all. It is tough for a spouse's career. I didn't argue that it wasn't. There's a reason I'm on the internet at 3:52 in the afternoon. And yet I've known many who made it work. And many, myself included for now at least, who didn't. Point well and truly conceded that military life can be hard on a spouse's career.

And again, I think the real question is, is this an issue that needs fixing, and if it is, what realistic fixes are there?

 

[Recovering LSO]

Duffel Blog chimes in with some humor on the subject.

http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/04/resigning-commission/

One of the FB comments caught my eye. Stated that the young officer in the photo isn't too happy that her photo is constantly used as a stock news image. I wonder how many people mistakenly have thought she was the author? Would be interesting if she wrote a rebuttal!

Would be more interesting to see the misrepresented young woman go after "Anna Granville" and Task and Purpose. Task and Purpose, and by extension"Anna Granville," chose to use a psudonym to protect herself, while at the same time using someome else's image without permission - you know, because it's a stock photo.... That's pretty shitty.

 

[Uncle Fester]

Would be more interesting to see the misrepresented young woman go after "Anna Granville" and Task and Purpose. Task and Purpose, and by extension"Anna Granville," chose to use a psudonym to protect herself, while at the same time using someome else's image without permission - you know, because it's a stock photo.... That's pretty shitty.

I think it was probably the site admin, not the author. And if it's a stock or released for public use photo, then by definition, you do have permission to use it.

 

[Recovering LSO]

I think it was probably the site admin, not the author. And if it's a stock or released for public use photo, then by definition, you do have permission to use it.

All true. Permission to use it and decision to use it are two different things though. As often as "Anna Granville" has written for T&P, she ought to feel empowered to reach out and ask them to remove the photo. It looks like, as webmaster pointed out, that the misrepresented officer has asked for that to occur.

 

[nittany03]

We do need turnover and we do need to bring in fresh blood continually. Deploying and operating is largely a young man/woman's game. However, there really should be a balance between that and retaining experience and knowledge, especially in the aviation community. The real eye opener for me was flying with our Reserve squadron. Having a plane full of guys with several thousand hours each, all mission/aircraft commanders, and with an ass-ton of experience and control time. These guys knew more and had done more than any squadron out there. It was an axiom for years that the VAW with the best non-squawker detection rate at Fallon was always the Reservists, because it takes time and experience to really learn how to optimize the system and read the video. Yet the Navy was making zero use of them as instructors or SMEs anywhere, and then disbanded the squadron and scattered them to the winds.

And this is what I'm talking about. Instead, we spend gobs of money bringing enough new people in the door to replace virtually everybody every 3 years. Why can't we just replace some people and capture some of that talent? One of the best tactics instructors and teachers I ever had flat out told me he wished he could stay in that job and work as a patch for the rest of his career. I'm sure he's knocking it out of the park as a DH. But if he'd stayed in a permanent PTI billet, I think of the effect he could have had on training a ton more incoming JOs.

 

[Brett327]

We shouldn't overlook the fact that most people will get burned out in some of the scenarios being offered. Even if there's some kind of sea/shore rotation, being in squadron after squadron doing the same thing doing the same deployments gets old, even to the most enthusiastic aviators. Something to think about.

 

[Uncle Fester]

It doesn't really matter because this is never going to happen - Big Navy is way too ingrained with the idea that good officers want to be admirals and therefore, if you don't want to be an admiral you're worthless. They didn't even know what to do with the FWOs. But, if you were going to do it - yes, some guys would get burned out. Guys are getting burned out on the current model, too. But on the other hand, don't underestimate the value of predictability.

I don't know if it's workable as the old FLDO or FWO programs, i.e., X guys per squadron are JOs4Life. As I recall one of the perceived problems with FLDO is those guys were of most use in billets the non-LDO guys needed for their career progression (AOPS, MMCO, etc).

Maybe a more practical construct might be to use fleet-support SAUs or something like them for their Fleet tours. Assign guys to "VFA SAU LANT" or the type wing on paper but farm them out to Fleet squadrons based upon need or manning or whatever metric works. Roll guys with a lot of Paddles time into LSO billets at the schoolhouses, CVWs, VT-Js, etc.

 

[Recovering LSO]

Maybe a more practical construct might be to use fleet-support SAUs or something like them for their Fleet tours. Assign guys to "VFA SAU LANT" or the type wing on paper but farm them out to Fleet squadrons based upon need or manning or whatever metric works. Roll guys with a lot of Paddles time into LSO billets at the schoolhouses, CVWs, VT-Js, etc.

Which would lead to the question, why did the SAU guys get out in the first place? Might be a tough sell trying to get someone who left the AC to essentially go back to the AC-under-another-name, especially the deploying part...

 

[Uncle Fester]

Which would lead to the question, why did the SAU guys get out in the first place? Might be a tough sell trying to get someone who left the AC to essentially go back to the AC-under-another-name, especially the deploying part...

No, I mean put the active duty "permanent O-4" guys in a SAU. Or call it something else, but a similar construct.

 

[nittany03]

Maybe a more practical construct might be to use fleet-support SAUs or something like them for their Fleet tours. Assign guys to "VFA SAU LANT" or the type wing on paper but farm them out to Fleet squadrons based upon need or manning or whatever metric works. Roll guys with a lot of Paddles time into LSO billets at the schoolhouses, CVWs, VT-Js, etc.

Here's a hastily thought-out spitball from the back of the classroom. I wonder if something similar might be worth talking about to solve this DH manning crunch that's allegedly reared its ugly head recently. Offer SELRES who used to be in the community the opportunity to be board-selected for a 3.5 year definite recall to take a Cat III transition back into the cockpit. They'd be in a RESAC6 billet subcategory anyway, so they wouldn't gum up the summary group for the AC folks bucking for command.

I mean, there wouldn't necessarily be a stampede for the doors; the pool of folks most qualified are the guys who just got nut-punched at the O-4 boards and told to kindly fuck off and find a job. And everyone else could very well be ensconced in a civilian career and not interested. And I'm also sure that a reservist wouldn't realistically have any shot at being anything but Safety O/AO, barring rolling into a squadron whose AC O-4s happen to be a total clown show. Over to the more experienced guys as to whether the AC CO could carefully craft an appropriate FITREP to keep that from torpedoing their career. That said, I wonder how many would take an offer for one last shot in the cockpit.