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From the forums

NEW RETIREMENT BOARD EVALUATES CHIEFS

This retirement board is a sham and shows a total disrespect toward the chiefs’ community. I retired in 2008 and am glad I don’t have to deal with this stuff anymore, but it peeves me to think that senior leadership thinks this will work to benefit the Navy. What this will cause is having E-7 and E-8s on ships try and hog up all the command-endorsed programs so they can say they are not expendable instead of letting up-and-coming E-6s run them to show they would be capable future chiefs.

The best way to curb the numbers is to run a program for about two years in which E-7s at 20 [years in] have to retire at 22 years, E-8s at 22 retire at 24 years, and E-9s at 24 retire at 26 years. Anyone at 26 would retire at 28 years. I think this concept would be more fair.

— Unregistered08

Forced retirement for all? Oh yes, because that’s so much better. The 5,000 exempt are likely in critically manned positions or under some contract/deployment that requires them to remain active past the deadline of separation the board is setting up for.

— Seasons

I believe that if we have too many chiefs slacking off, Navy culture could be to blame for not placing enough significance on the rate of senior chief. I’ve seen how, in the Army and Marine Corps, their first sergeants hold a godlike status — one that is completely different and separate from the [status] that their sergeants major hold. In the Army and Marines, E-8 is a paygrade of its own significance. In the Navy, senior chief is merely a rate between chief and master chief.

— Yggdrasil

DDG 1000 LOGS SUCCESSES

I just want to note the inaccuracy of this article [“DDG 1000 program quietly logs successes,” NavyTimes.com, Aug. 17].

[The article says,] “Nearly every discussion of the new DDG 1000 Zumwalt-class destroyers revolves around the Navy’s decision last summer to ‘truncate’ the planned buy from seven ships to three.”

It was not the Navy’s decision to cut Zumwalt to three ships. The Navy moved to cut Zumwalt altogether until a political alliance on Capitol Hill forced the Navy to keep the program.

— CDE