Cmdr. Guy Snodgrass: Navy has retention problems
The Washington Times reports that Commander Guy Snodgrass, who until recently worked for the Chief of Naval Operations, told the US Naval Institute that the navy has recruiting and retention problems that they’re not talking about;
He says one troubling sign already has emerged: a drop in applications to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis last year.
“The U.S. Navy has a looming officer retention problem,” Cmdr. Snodgrass writes, adding there is an “erosion of trust in senior leadership.”
He says retention racked up its “worst year in history” for the special warfare community, including Navy SEALs, with a record number of lieutenants declining to stay.
The aviation side had a goal of 45 percent “take rate” on retention bonuses, but got only 36 percent.
Commander Snodgrass is on his way to as assignment as XO for an F-18 unit, so we’ll see how that turns out for him. I’m not taking much stock in the interview with one officer, until I get the chance to see a response from the Navy, of no response would speak volumes, too.
Snodgrass blames the Pentagon’s focus on social issues rather than readiness, and each of the services suffer from that, but no one is talking about the impact on that focus besides the good commander. Of course, none of you are surprised, because you’ve been saying it all along.
Category: Navy
Well, the really good news is that more gays are applying to the USNA than ever before. So, there’s that.
I applaud the man’s integrity. However, he’s just made himself a “marked man”.
I don’t think he’ll be making Captain. I hope I’m wrong.
Hondo, I used to be in the Navy. I’m afraid that you’ve told it like it is. Dare to tell the Emperor that he has no cloths and you’ll pay for it with your career.
I could NOT serve in the Navy today given the changes that have happened over the years. My younger brother almost had a SEAL contract… I talked him into joining the Army instead, had the benefit of being in both branches and knowing what I was talking about.
The Army has its issues as well, but they pale in comparison to the Navy’s.
NOOOOOOO! REALLLLLY? Who’d a thunk it? With all the social experiment PC BS being shoved onto the military branches, any freedom loving youth with more than one brain cell to rub together is thinking long and hard about joining anymore.
Give the Cdr a shot and a cigar. The first rational thought heard from the Perfumed Princes in many a year.
Wait a minute. So. You hand the military over to people who hate it and view it as:
A) bad, wrong, and evil,
B) an opportunity for social experimentation, and
C) a source of funds to raid for vote buying initiatives
And that leads to a decline in interest from those who would otherwise be inclined?
Wow, that truly is bizarre. Who could have seen this coming?
Wait until the other branches start fessing up.
Anyone who is shocked by this hasn’t been paying attention. Why would someone want to join the military these days? You get shit on by the CiC, democrat congresscritters, special interest groups, etc. They make promises that they don’t intend to keep. They make it difficult to want to make the military a career. They demonize you and wht they take from you, they give to someone who has the sole distinction of shitting out 4 kids from 3 different daddies, and you’re supposed to like it.
Nope, I see the draft coming back into the fore, because they won’t be able to get the numbers needed through recruitment.
I have personally seen an anecdote to support this, Jonn. My uncle is a former teams man who now works for an equipment manufacturer. I was with him a while back when he was pitching a piece of kit to some friends in Little Creek.
They wanted the gear, but their account had been closed down by the brass. A few of them were thinking about changing careers.
The obvious question they were struggling with was this: if the navy won’t support you, why not leave and get a job as a contractor for double or quadruple the money?
The “loss of trust in senior leadership” isn’t limited to flag officers and above. Many a ship’s CO and/or CMC has been caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar lately and it shows a general lack of leadership in the officer ranks. Those who are willing to play the game are promoted; those who stick their neck out to do the right thing quickly become disenfranchised with their senior leadership and talk the walk.
“take the walk” not “talk the walk”.
NavCWORet: from what I’ve seen, there’s always been an element of that in all the services. That’s the origin of the famous phrase, “It’s not who you know, but who you . . . . ”
That said: IMO it does seem to have gotten markedly worse over the last decade or two.
Hondo:
Regarding “… markedly worse …” I don’t think that it is worse. FWIW, I think the Internet and easy publishing is the reason that it appears worse. It happened before but knowledge was limited to a small group. These days, worldwide publication is the norm so we all know all about every transgression including the made-up parts.
There is a group in the US who hates the military and perceives that they get undeserved respect so they make sure that every transgression shows up in 112 point headlines.
I have no way to prove this point either way but I wonder, with the new openness, are the services better than they used to be? It SHOULD work that way. Te best combat leaders take some chances so sometimes they lose. I hope THAT part is not being squeezed out by the zero-tolerance BS.
It has observably gotten worse. When I was going up the ranks, I was held accountable for my actions. If I wanted something, I had to make the necessary sacrifices, on my end, to make it happened. The unit didn’t evolve around me.
During the mid 1990s and on, there was a retention crises, and COs went on a “war to keep bodies.”
Unfortunately, discipline, accountability, and other traits that were beat into us became casualties.
When Joe Knucklehead complains because an operation closes on time, that knucklehead isn’t rimmed for failing to plan his time accordingly. The people that closed their operation on time, as posted for all to see, got vilified and were accused of not caring about the other people.
In many instances, holding someone accountable for failing to do something they were supposed to do would lead to your getting vilified.
The people that came in under these conditions are now in the senior NCO ranks, they’ve also reached the 06 ranks. The results of the erosion of discipline don’t surprise me.
What happened in the ’90s in the Navy, I’m seeing in the Army today.
Yeah, because any security forces/aircraft maintenance/civil engineering/etc, etc specialities can just leave their post at any time to get to finance/admin/chow halls/etc.
Right?
In USAF parlance: “Sounds like a noner…”
The instances that I’m talking about don’t involve situations where people in the above specialties couldn’t leave their stations to get something, of importance to them, completed.
There were times I couldn’t go to finance because of operational/combat mission needs… but these didn’t run on a perpetual schedule. There were times when I wasn’t doing these things, and I was in the Same AO as the company/battalion CP were, where I was able to get things taken care off.
This is the key. Many of the people that I talked about didn’t manage their time this way… they wasted it away doing useless shit, then waited till the last minute when they could’ve came in earlier.
This was applicable in the Navy too, when I did watch rotations. As long as you were responsible, and didn’t horse around, the leadership worked with you and allowed you to take care of things during the watch/shift if the schedule made it impossible for you to make it to the scheduled office hours/events.
This was rare though, most of the time, the schedule worked out to where you were able to take care of your issues during the posted office hours during the break in the scheduling.
Again, you have situations where people abused this or… when OPTEMP was down, didn’t bother to take care of their issues. They either mismanaged their time, or horsed around too much to where their leaders didn’t trust them to take care of their issues.
Then, even when the opportunity opened up to where extra hours were provided to accommodate those that couldn’t take care of their issues because of their work commitment, they still managed to horse around, or do what they’d rather do, instead of taking care of their issues.
I was on both sides of the fence while in the Navy, there was no excuse for piss poor planning that resulted in people not getting their issues taken care of… regardless of the OPTEMPO.
Media exposure also works the other way…when we were able to do wall-to-wall counseling (“fan/engine room counseling” is what we called it in the Navy) it wasn’t splashed across the papers as excessive punishment. You got your ass kicked because you deserved it. Now you can’t raise your voice at a transgressor without worrying about fostering a “bad command climate” and having it show up on the front page of the Washington Post. Seniors are afraid to be “leaders” which entails having to be tough on people who fuck up. They’re so afraid of getting relieved of command that they prefer the path of least resistance for other than the most egregious crimes.
Bingo.
Richard: I was specifically responding to NavyCWORet’s point about “those who ‘play the game’ get promoted, while those who ‘rock the boat’, even with cause, get hammered”.
That “go along to get along, don’t rock the boat, please the boss even if he’s out to lunch” mentality IMO is decidedly worse today than it was 20 years ago.
‘erosion of trust in senior leadership’ – Not something new, but not necessarily inevitable. That can be changed, but the will to change it has to exist.
Old Trooper and Teddy996 are on point.
When you’re words say that you’re people are the most important aspect of your organization but your actions indicate the lie in those words your organization tends to lose good people. That’s true of the military and civilian organizations.
With an RIF and the attendant horseshit that accompanies it to weed out the “undesirables” who until the RIF were quite desirable the guys you want to keep see what you are doing to the guys you don’t want to keep and are smart enough to realize you are a lying sack of shit without integrity. They then realize it is their own self interest to make career decisions on financial grounds because their current organization can’t be trusted with those all important intangibles like integrity and honesty…if you are going to treat me like a fucking mercenary, I might as well consider getting paid like one instead of taking half pay and loads of bullshit.
Want an organization that has a very low turnover rate? It’s not that hard, don’t fuck your members. Don’t just say you appreciate, show that it’s true. Otherwise expect those members to start fucking you back, after all that’s what you deserve when you fuck them first.
VOV and Old Trooper. If this continues, in ten years or less I too see the restart of the draft. If the military is having these retention problems now and we are only hearing about it now it means it has been in the making for a while. I believe the other services may be suffering from the same problem. If not now, soon we will hear about them as well. All that added together and we will have or rather need a draft to keep a force on the ground. Just MHO.
If they implement the reform of military compensation/retirement that this administration is pushing for, that reality could come sooner.
I don’t see a draft in ten years…by then the civilian-military disconnect will be so wide the solution will be to throw money at the problem via pay. Akin to a lower and middle class mercenary force. Mostly the best and brightest (not counting the service academies) are encouraged to go for Harvard and Stanford, Northwestern, not Benning, Lackland or Great Lakes.
The draft, yes, but a recall to AD of previously discharged people, then retirees, and then the really old farts.
They’ll start with the ready reserves. These groups have the TPU/SELRES, Individual Mobilization Augmentees, and the Individual Ready Reserves. They may also look at the National Guard ranks.
Once they run out of ready reserve, they may dig into the standby reserves, depending on who gives the blessing for it.
Once they run out of the reserves, they’ll look at the retired/fleet reserves and the general reserve populations.
Those who are no longer on contract (discharged), who don’t have any military obligation/affiliation, generally don’t have to worry about being called back.
They’ll start with the ready reserves. These groups have the TPU/SELRES, Individual Mobilization Augmentees, and the Individual Ready Reserves. They may also look at the National Guard ranks.
Once they run out of ready reserve, they may dig into the standby reserves, depending on who gives the blessing for it.
Once they run out of the reserves, they’ll look at the retired/fleet reserves and the general reserve populations.
Those who are no longer on contract (discharged), who don’t have any military obligation/affiliation, generally don’t have to worry about being called back.
Based on what I was told a few years ago by a PN2 while I was at the dealership getting new tires for my car, if you were in a critical rate/MOS, even if you were discharged long ago, you’ll get called back if needed. She had processed people who had been out of the service – discharged – for more than 10 years.
I’m taking her word for it because I’m a bit cynical about all of this.
In recent years, those that received recall orders were still in the IRR, and didn’t realize it. They thought they were completely out, and tried to take it to court.
Yep. How does this simple fact ALWAYS seem to get lost?
probably a somewhat mercenary observation, but in the last 10 years the SEALs have become the ultra-glamour boys of SpecOps, too (like the “Green Berets” were in the late Vietnam era) and probably are being offered the highest financial incentives to join civilian organizations. Retention is always a problem when service pay/morale is radically lower than civilian life has to offer. A lot of “I’ve done my bit, now it’s time to take care of me and my family” comes to the fore.
Maybe they will recall Commander Phil Monkress from his duties at All-Points Logistics to backfill the gap in upper echelon leadership.
And maybe Jason Truitt.
I wonder if the pols and bureaucrats in DC get lobotomized on their dime, or does the Government pay for it? It will be a truly great day in America when the Military has all the money and resources it needs, and B. Hussein 0bama & Company have to hold a car wash/bake sale to raise funds for their next junket or vacation!!
I’m beginning to believe it’s a requirement for election, Proud Infidel. Haven’t definitively decided whether it’s a hard-and-fast requirement to work inside the beltway or not.
When I read of retention problems (not recruitment)… especially in a down economy, it means one thing- POOR LEADERSHIP.
To besig
:
What exactly is a SEAL contract? Is it some type of enlistment guarantee prior to enlistment? BZ
Back in my recruiting days, yes, there were SEAL guarantee contracts, provided you qualified for a source rating, etc.
You failed out of BUD/S, you were sent to the fleet as your source rating.
The Collectivist poser in the White House and the rest of the totalitarian wantabe’s – red diaper doper bottom feeders has done their jobs to bring forth their “Better World” dystopia. Google this man’s Linkedin profile. I would say most impressive! This man may have political aspirations so retireing as an O5 instead of an O6 may not matter. I spent 23 years in the U.S. military reserves. I retired prior to the current commander and chief wanger taking office. Compare Commander Snodgrass’s service to his country to Commrade Obama’s service to himself and ask yourself who would you follow in time of crisis? We have not heard the last of this man!