Navy has readiness problems
We’ve read how the number of Navy vessels has declined over the last eight years. We’ve also read that much of the Navy’s aircraft is not ready for battle. Now, the Daily Caller says that pregnancy is cutting into manpower issues as well;
A record 16 out of 100 Navy women are reassigned from ships to shore duty due to pregnancy, according to data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group.
That number is up 2 percent from 2015, representing hundreds more who have to cut their deployments short, taxing both their unit’s manpower, military budgets and combat readiness. Further, such increases cast a shadow over the lofty gender integration goals set by former President Barack Obama.
Overall, women unexpectedly leave their stations on Navy ships as much as 50% more frequently to return to land duty, according to documents obtained from the Navy. The statistics were compiled by the Navy Personnel Command at the request of TheDCNF, covering the period from January 2015 to September 2016.
We were alerted for Desert Storm in late October and deployed in early January. In that time, our support platoon’s ambulance platoon had a number of drivers who popped hot on pregnancy tests to avoid deployment. They had to draw from other units to get back to readiness standards. I’m sure that the Navy has to deal with the same manpower problems when a sailor gets herself preggers.
In January 2015, 3,335 women were pregnant aboard military vessels, representing about 14 percent of the 23,735 women then serving such duty, according to the data.
But by August 2016 that number reached nearly 16 percent, an all-time high. The Navy reported 3,840 of the 24,259 women sailors who were aboard Navy ships were pregnant.
According to the Daily Caller, according to the standard last year under Ray Mabus, the Navy was to make 25% of their vessels’ crews female sailors.
Category: Navy
There is one of the issues with women in combat units.
One wonders, in the Navy, how many women come up 2 months pregnant while being out of port for more than 3 months.
I know the Army has had similar problems – so no intentional stones being thrown there.
Hard to prosecute someone(s) for this unless you can pinpoint the exact date of conception.
It rarely happens underway–not to say it doesn’t–but most pregnancies among those trying to get out of deployment happen 2-4 months prior.
And with women on submarines, etc., ANY unplanned loss is a huge one, especially if you have a small division (like mine). Guys don’t get augments for schools, the body isn’t made up, so those left behind are working that much harder to pick up the slack.
True, SEA. Any loss of a cadre member is a problem for those who have to fill the gap(s).
My first thought was that there is the prospect of them not being there actually being a positive, not a negative, but I have met and worked with too many female sailors that were good sailors and that does not do them justice. This is a biological fact that we refused to recognize as we bathed in the Equality glow, hard to plan for the unplanned as it is without introducing a probable, not a possible, into the equation. There are sailors who legitimately want to start a family, do we now extend shore rotations so that can occur and require no pregnancies during shipboard/combat assignments? This is just the NAV, what are the stats for our sister services (no pun intended)?
I knew of a couple of female Sailors that “planned” their pregnancies around their deployments and it didn’t impact unit readiness when they went overseas. One , who had a AD husband, planned her two kids around deployments to Iraq, and it paid off for her professionally – she made Chief in 8 years (very fast for an HM non-IDC type).
I’m with you about the ones that are “team players” – once one in the unit gets “knocked up” to get out of deployment, all of them get tagged as whores or slackers and catch Hell for it.
Concur with Senior Chief. In no way do I think anywhere near a majority of women get pregnant with the intention of avoiding deployment, and of those that do, almost all are very junior sailors unlikely to reenlist anyway.
The problem the Navy has versus other services is the sea/shore rotation. Even with two parents, etc., it can get pretty tough if both parents are serving, and even worse if mom (or dad) is a single parent. Moves, the prospect of a 60/36 rotation (or worse) makes even having a kid on shore duty a pretty rough deal. After all, you gotta go back to sea eventually, or screw someone out of their shore duty time.
Hence one of the reasons there were very few female nukes in the 70’s/early 80’s, and the numbers only picked up about 1996 when women could be stationed on carriers.
And it can be very accurately determined when these women got knocked up. If on a deployment, standard procedure should ALWAYS be court martial with recommendation for bad paper discharge. Then they can really avoid deployments in the future, while the Navy does not have to pay anything out for them.
Kristen Gillinbrand and Elizabeth Warren would scream bloody murder on the floor of the Senate for six months straight (proabbaly joined by some Republicans) and there would be heart tugging profiles of all of the unemployable and benefit-less single* moms and their photogenic offspring on every newscast, with an emphasis on how unfair it all is.
*by which I mean that the single moms would be the ones getting all the media attention, because that would be the moat effective method of pushing the message that the military is a horrible, soulless, mysoginistic institution that hates moms and babies.
Spelling-whatever.
Court martial? Except that pregnancy isn’t a criminal act, it’s a bit of biology and if YOU GUYS kept YOUR pants zipped and YOUR wicks dry, likely wouldn’t happen. Don’t go blaming it all on the women. No one’s forcing you guys to get laid. You’re WA-A-A-AYYY too easy, y’know.
Criminal charges? Court martial? How ’bout the GUY gets whacked, too?? Oh, but it’s ALWAYS THE FAULT OF THE WOMEN.
Sure it is. It takes two to tango, TOOTSIE.
Agreed, Ex, but short of a fetal blood test to prove parentage, which may not be entirely safe for the kid, how do you prove in court which idiot got stupid? Worse yet, what if she was the self-appointed upholder of crew morale banging half the dudes on the ship? No easy answer.
Go ahead and court martial anyone she was banging (or says she was banging), that’ll help improve readiness.
Why not? Happens a lot now.
Yep-and readiness suffers. It’s almost as though combat readiness is taking a backseat to something else, which is not how things are supposed to be.
I’m sure all of you realize that surface ship Sailors have Port visits, and Liberty on a regular basis.
Who’s to say a foreign national didn’t help her kill the rabbit during a Port Visit?
That being said, I talked to a Chief about a year ago that was about to retire. He told me the females on his Destroyer would hang rags out of the back pocket of their coveralls if they were available for some fan room frolics.
EX-PH2, you are assuming (in the cases of the ones who get preggers pre-deployment, that it was a fellow sailor who did the deed.
Rather than blame the female for the pregnancy and pursue punitive and administrative action I would rather the Navy simple have a system in place where a female who is about to deploy sign an agreement where they understand they would take the steps to not get pregnant. This would include being monitored for taking BC and frequent tests before and during deployment.
I foresee there being a lot of issues with this as well. Married women who say the Navy have no right to assume they would cheat on their spouses, Lesbians and females with concerns over the effects of birth control and privacy issues.
Just a thought though.
Not our fault at all. It’s gravity…
Not true, USMC Steve. The method by which fetal age/development is determined is typically by ultrasound examination. Even leaving out various conditions which can retard or accelerate fetal development, it’s still a guesstimate which can be VERY up in the air; it gets gradually more accurate as the baby reaches viability (by which means it may be able to survive outside the womb with relatively minimal medical intervention).
Depending on when the testing is done, results can read up to 10 weeks off. This is part of why due dates are an educated guess and can be adjusted quite frequently throughout the first two trimesters and sometimes even into the third.
I’m just as disgusted as anyone at malingerers and cheats who deliberately try to use pregnancy to get out of their commitments, whatever they may be. But I would have to be against automatic assumptions that this is the case based on tests of gestational age. Due to my own condition, my pregnancy was heavily monitored throughout (I had MANY ultrasounds and blood tests, and we also had a pretty darn exact date of conception) and his gestational age was nonetheless all over the place, usually a week to three weeks ahead of the curve. And he was STILL born 11 days after the final ‘best guess’ due date.
TL;DR: it ain’t an exact science, more of an art.
Yes,I will say it–
I TOLD YOU SO.
You. Me. And anyone with an ounce of sense who is over the age of 10. We had eight years of this bullshit. Women, Moms, Girls ain’t fit for certain duty. Yeah, bring it, chicks and pansies.
See my responses for enlightenment.
And quit blaming WOMEN for what your hormone-pumping brain tells your dick to do.
I’m not blaming women. I love women. I even married one. I blame the social engineers that have been busily wrecking the military by telling us that women, gays, transgenders. midgets, whatever will make our fighting forces stronger.
Amen. If the proggies had their way, the Army would be required to recruit from the mentally and physically handicapped community, because EQUALITY in all things is an absolute, NO exceptions. I am waiting for the first paraplegic trangendered blind whatsit to get his/her/xer Ranger tab. Perhaps a few “service” dogs could hump their gear and weapons for them during the course. The school could certainly be made handicapped friendly with an altered curriculum and standards.
The appropriate Airborne response to the ladies:
“Keep Knees and Feet Together”.
It goes along with “Keep your pecker in your pants.”
It takes two to make a baby.
Sex drive is more primal than discipline. Once upon a time we had policy that recognized that, but that caused too many hurt feelz, so now we have to pretend that mixing men and women together for extended periods of time will not lead to predictable results in order to keep the “you go grrl” faction mollified. .
I fully agree. Just look at how much things have gone down hill since we’ve integrated! We used to have such a cohesive fighting force, back when everyone was the same and we didn’t have to worry about appeasing some little snowflake’s gender, religion, or skin color. Yup, I say: resegregate the forces, bring back all-black, all-female, and, while we’re at it, all-non-christian (including catholics!) Units. No one who joins the military is an adult, so why should we have to learn how to act like one and be professional around people who are different?
Warning: This post was produced in a facility that also processes satire and may contain trace amounts of sarcasm.
I’m sure that strawman took your post as seriously as possible, given that it was him that you were delivering that dreadful rhetorical beating to.
Nobody else did though, son I worries.
“….so no worries.”
Here’s another hint-predictable consequences are not unintended.
“This post was produced in a facility that also processes satire and may contain trace amounts of sarcasm.”
Are you there by involuntary commitment?
Try putting a cork in it once in a while, SNOWBALLS.
I saw a video like that once….
I saw one that had two Girls and one cup…
Apparently there is a significant lag time or overlap between hot racking.
Fantastic!
or an alternative meaning to the term “hot racking”.
Jesus, has no one heard the term “oral” any more?
(I’d joke about whether pregnancy was possible from anal but hey, it’s a family fucking blog and we have Bernath, Lars, etc. for examples.)
LMAO!
Lars would demand a safe space at TAH and then self-identify as a man.
Even though I was Army, I still repeat something I read on this site…
All these gals think the Navy is awesome, until it’s time to do Navy stuff.
Well, really, after perusing your responses to Mother Nature’s meanderings coursing through your veins, I still my idea was the best one.
http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=70137
And the more I hear you guys bitching, the more I want to do this as loud as I can.
https://youtu.be/F-bsf2x-aeE
If your a sailor and rub one out on the ship make sure to clean up after yourself. You don’t want to get stuck being the daddy of a deployment dodger’s baby.
And Gaybeus wanted to make all ship crews 25% female? Saw this shit in the Army the ONE time I was in a mixed unit. Two days before we were to fly to Kosovo, the female Sgt from our mess section came up pregnant. So some Spc from the mess section had about 24 hrs to get his life right and pack for a 6 month deployment he was told he wasn’t going to be part of.
My safe for work Pattaya, Thailand story . . . .
I was a part of Cobra Gold one year, working with a joint command. A San Diego based DDG pull in after the exercise was over. As I looked at all the squids with their bad haircuts I noticed a number of them were with their shipboard squeezes. I thought to myself, what a waste, a place like Pattaya and you got to bring that sweat hog ashore and along for the ride. That’s when I actually knew, deep in my heart, the navy was doomed.
Gee, young men couped up with young women. I’m stunned and thought this would never happen. Actually, yeah I did. One reason women should not be in combat and a very real one at that. Women that get pregnant on active duty should be discharge immediately including the guy that got them there.
I wonder how many of these female sailors are married? Otherwise, isn’t getting pregnant outside of marriage considered adultery?
Don’t have time at present to research the details, JimV. But I believe that the UCMJ crime of adultery requires (a) that the accused be married, and (b) that they have sex with someone other than their spouse.
Pretty sure that sex between unmarried military personnel is in general not prohibited by the UCMJ unless it has an impact on military order and discipline (fraternization) or violates another lawful order or regulation (GO1 in theater is an example).
Perhaps one of our mil/civ lawyers could correct me if I’m wrong?
I just reenlisted for the third time, this time back into the Navy reserves. I’m prior Navy and Army…and wow there’s some real snowflakes in this outfit. Does boot camp even exist anymore? Serious question. I’ve been off active duty since 2004 and I have much more military bearing than these boot fucks.
Thank you for reenlisting. Hopefully you can bring the Warrior Ethos to your unit and they can un-fuck themselves.