Army Watercraft MOS Being Eliminated?
U.S. Army Photo of Landing Craft Utility (LCU).
Many Soldiers like to brag about how the Army “has more ships” than the Navy. That’s according to these Soldier’s definition of what constitutes a boat, of course. This changes when the definition of a boat, or ship, changes.
It may not be long; however, before the Navy regains the title regardless of which definition of “boat” is used.
There’s reportedly a move underway to do away with the Army’s maritime mission… Ending something that the Army has been involved with for decades.
The water craft MOSs are being put on a chopping block, and Soldiers are being informed that they need to be filling other roles within the Army. Plenty of “re-class” opportunities for Army Reserve Soldiers… and Active Guard Reserve Soldiers should be on the line with their career managers to discuss their next moves.
I haven’t found much in collaboration to this article, so we’ll leave this in the “truth or fiction” category. From gCaptain:
There appears to be no discussion on how the US Army plans to support their present maritime operations, and possible future commitments while eliminating nearly 80% of its present force, which resides in the US Army Reserve. Soldiers who are now in the Maritime field, and who have spent their careers training to be Army Mariners, will be “assessed into units where they can best serve the needs of the Army Reserve whiles also being gainfully employed”.
Army officials are also removing Watercraft positions within the assignment system, to ensure Soldiers in the future cannot be assigned to maritime duties, indicating there is no plan by the Army to reconsider their actions, or bring back a watercraft capability should the world situation change. A final line in the Army’s plan to eliminate watercraft is the instruction to “Remove all markings prior to turning in systems and vessels to DRMO”. A sad ending to a capability, which has existed since World War I.
Our questions include asking how the Army now plans to respond to military and humanitarian aid in remote and austere locations, where ports and harbor infrastructure do not exist?
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That’s what makes the Puzzle Palace so entertaining, you never know what the good idea fairies will come up with next.
These good ideas always play out great on paper, and then once in practice a different experience arises. A more practical experience once again indicating that as is so often the case if it ain’t broke why are you trying to fix it again?
This should be interesting as it plays out…
So money and jobs removed from the Army will be shipped to the Navy.
Kind of pork barrelsh
Join the Army and…sail the seas!
Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
My cousin joined the Navy and his first three assignments were Diego Garcia, Norfolk, and Afghanistan 🙂 .
I never really understood why the Army had such a large “fleet”, but brown water ops aren’t the Navy’s main focus. So I can understand why the Army maintains their abilities there, just as I can understand why they have CAS attack helicopters instead of expecting the USAF to do it.
How long before they just try and push us all together and unify the branches like the Canadians did?
I always imagine that there’s some poor schmoe that joined the Army instead of the Navy because they get seasick. Only to be informed that they’re going to be put on a Army ship.
Wasn’t that much in the know about an Army Navy. Did know about the Army/Navy Football game. goarmybeatnavy. We won that one back on 8 Dec ’18 didn’t we?
If we do have an Army Navy that has needed equipment to do a landing in another sh*thole country, with trained personnel, hell might as well keep it. We gonna mount some howitzers on a few of them. Do we get some fast attack subs too. Giving up our airplanes back in the ’40s didn’t work out well for us. We ended up begging the Air Farce for air transport, close in air to ground support and a place to shoot golfs.
Where would we be without armed attack helicopters, Puff and Spectra Gunships, next thing you know we’ll be asking for paratrooper planes…..oh yeah, we already do that.
At least now most Army Posts have golf courses so the highers can go out and shoot them a mess of them golfs.
IMHO a Golf Course is a waste of Real Estate that could have been a Rifle range!
Agree! Forget to turn my /sarc/ light on. I have really got to get back into the habit of proofing before I hit the post button. Been making the little aggravating errors too much lately. I actually should know better. Business Communication perfesser would count of 1 letter grade for each spelling/grammar error. Got slack when I knew that Sister Mary Grace was on a Sabbatical. When she gets back, it’s gonna leave a mark.
Most golf courses were built too close to the center of the post to be good rifle ranges. Besides, we all need that three to five mile run to get warmed up for the range.
So the soldiers running the “boats” won’t be able to “ship” over since they are stationed on boats and not Ships.
Let the Squids..er Navy have the boats. But I think this is a similar issue that the Air Force had with close air support… like trying to give it to the Army until they realized the Army would probably need fixed wing assets (A-10s)
“You can put a boat on a ship, but you can’t put a ship on a boat.”
Mine is a Luders 36, sloop rigged.
Used to crew on one of those on the Wednesday Races from Solomon’s Island, Patuxent River MD. The Naval Base had a couple that were retired from the Annapolis Trade School. Solid boats, even if an idiot at the helm nearly capsized us when we were hit by a micro-burst from a thunder cell, with the spinnaker up. Fortunately the spin detonated itself into shreds, and we righted, but it was an exciting few minutes.
For Army Reserve AGRs, if you’re in an MOS or position that Army Human Resources Command is getting rid of, you’re basically told three things, “You can go to recruiting, retention, or get out.”
They eliminated dozens of 38B (Civil Affairs) AGR positions from Reserve units because of the previous regime’s “reduction of force” because HRC is too f’n lazy to flip a switch to keep the positions on in the “bigger better more well funded Army” of the current administration. (I’d bet my retirement that Army HRC, bureaucracy that it is, didn’t lose one freakin’ pen, let alone a position, from their bloated swamp of a headquarters).
I have several friends who were told that very thing. A couple got out, but the rest have to go deal with recruiting or retention now unless they get promoted back into the 38 CMF along the way.
Once again, someone needs to tell the dumbasses in the bureaucracies that the whole of DoD has gotten a stupidly high increase in their budget and to stop cutting positions, personnel, budgets to lower units, etc. I mean seriously, it’s like they don’t pay attention to any media, any reports, any news at all with this dumb shit. “Well, 4 years ago we were told to cut things, so that’s what we’re still doing….”
Back in ’83 at Fort Davis Panama, we had the “boat people” of the 1097th Boat Company! They drove/piloted/Gilligan’d big Landing Craft that could carry a WHOLE infantry company PLUS vehicles. [not sure if one or 2 Deuce N Halfs fit]
I feel like we all help each other out in different fields at some point or another. When I was IA’ed out to Afghanistan to help support the Army (even wore ACU’s), we got t-shirts that read:
“When Army strong is not enough, Go Navy”