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Roughead emphasizes need for volunteer forces

HONOLULU — Outgoing U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Adm. Gary Roughead said the Navy needs to find better ways to keep its highly trained servicemen rather than pursue a draft.

“Without people, we are nothing,” Roughead said Friday. “That to me is the most important initiative we have to take on in the coming years.”

Because the Navy spends so much money and time on training, it should concentrate on recruiting and retaining those sailors it already has, Roughead said in a speech to a regional conference of the Society of Professional Journalists.

“Why should we cap entry into the Navy at a young age?” asked Roughead, who will leave Hawaii next month to become the U.S. Fleet Forces commander in Norfolk, Va.

He suggested that skilled Americans in their 30s and 40s should have more opportunities to join the Navy, if they want to take that career path.

A draft would not provide the Navy with the technology savvy personnel it needs in the modern world, Roughead said.

“It’s a different military today. The technology is very different,” he said. “The all-volunteer force has been successful.”

Roughead, who has led the Pacific Fleet since July 2005, listed some of his most significant accomplishments, including war-fighting drills, humanitarian deployments and policing of the Malacca Strait.

He emphasized the importance of the broad Pacific Region to maintaining peace and commerce throughout the world.

Through international friendships, the economic stability of the region can be sustained into the future, he said.

“The prosperity we see today, there are a lot of folks who do not want to see that disrupted,” he said.

The Pacific Fleet oversees more than 190,000 sailors and Marines and some 30,000 civilians. It includes more than 190 ships and 1,400 aircraft.

President Bush has nominated the current vice chief of naval operations, Navy Adm. Robert F. Willard, to succeed Roughead.