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Overhauled rotations to fit career goals

ABOARD THE CRUISER ANZIO — Joe Gonzalez has been onboard this ship for six years, longer than anyone in the crew. Not only did it give him bragging rights, it also netted him an extra $6,000.

“It gave me a bonus and allowed me to take some extra time and think about what I wanted to do in the Navy,” the second class fire controlman said. “Now my goal is college, which I will be able to do while on shore duty in Dahlgren, [Va.]”

Gonzalez took the extra year at sea — his initial tour was supposed to last five years — and it’ll pay off beyond the sea duty incentive pay he earned. He now expects to make first class during his shore tour and wants to become a limited-duty officer.

That’s just one way officials hope the Navy’s proposed sea-shore rotation overhaul will work for sailors. Simply put, it’s a plan that creates predictable sea-tour and shore-tour lengths tailored to every rating, while rewarding those who agree to stay at sea longer with bonuses, choice of home ports and other perks.

As a result, today’s rigid sea-shore rotation scheme — an outmoded structure based on available sea and shore billets and a sailor’s paygrade, which made it unpredictable — is about to go away.

In its place will be rating-specific career paths that are structured enough to provide predictability, yet flexible enough so that the sailor’s desired career path can be matched with the needs of Big Navy. It will be the first major update to sea-shore rotations since the all-volunteer force was created 35 years ago.

These officerlike career paths will allow sailors to plan their lives, both professionally and personally, officials say. Sailors will know from the outset of their careers the expected lengths of their sea tours and know exactly how many months of shore duty will be put in between.

For example, sea tours for a sailor in a select rating could be set at 60 months, followed by 54 and 48 months — with guaranteed 36-month shore tours in between, much longer than normal. Those lengths would be set regardless of paygrade.

Yet if that sailor is willing to extend his time at sea, he’ll be rewarded with cash incentives and a chance to spend two or more tours in the same place, along with a host of other perks aimed at keeping those sailors in uniform.

On the flip side, sailors who agree to give up some perks — such as a stable home port — could be rewarded with shorter sea tours.

Officials hope to have the transition underway as early as the summer, with the first sailors possibly taking advantage of it next year.

A ‘menu of choices’

The move — known as “Sea-Shore Flow” — is the centerpiece retention policy of the post-drawdown Navy. By guaranteeing time at home, the Navy can offer several perks that are in various stages of development, including incentive pays, larger re-enlistment bonuses, sabbaticals, teleworking, enhanced education initiatives and on- and off-ramps between active and reserve duty.

“The goal is to give sailors more career options and allow them to balance the Navy’s needs with that of their career and family,” said Rear Adm. Mike LeFever, head of manpower and personnel policy for the chief of naval personnel.

“We also realize that one size doesn’t fit all, and we need to give our sailors a menu of choices that allows them to make the best decision for their careers.”

When detailers need to talk sailors into spending more time at sea, they’ll be able to use cash bonuses, such as sea duty incentive pay, which began in March 2007.

SDIP pays sailors in selected sea-intensive ratings a lump sum of as much as $18,000 to extend their sea duty past their normal rotation or end their shore duty early to return to sea.

On top of that payout, officials have another bonus program in development: a Differential Selective Re-enlistment Bonus program that would give higher multiples for those who agree to longer sea tours.

A draft Navy-wide message is still in the works, and officials are not disclosing many details.

“The idea is if you re-enlist and head to shore you may get one SRB multiple, but if you agree to stay at sea, you would collect your bonus with a higher multiple,” said Cmdr. Craig Schauppner, who has been coordinating the effort for the chief of naval personnel for the past year.

If approved by Navy leadership, this program could be on the street within the next few months.

More flexibility

Spurred into action by a post-Iraq invasion drawdown that saw the Navy’s shore-billet structure cut for nearly all ratings, which made sea-shore rotations outdated, Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Adm. John Harvey set out in late 2006 to develop the next-generation rotation policy.

The current system is calculated using the existing ratio of sea to shore billets, which take rating, paygrade and sometimes Navy enlisted classification into account. That means more than 790 combinations are now unworkable, officials say, because much of the shore billet structure has been cut without changing sea-shore rotation.

Over the years, sea and shore tour lengths for sailors in their first term generally have been predictable. But after they re-enlist, it’s hard to map out when exactly sailors will hit their tour rotation points, since those tour lengths are based on paygrade. If a sailor doesn’t get advanced by a certain point, he’s facing different tour lengths than someone who has, so predicting the future becomes tricky — and in some cases a sailor actually could get penalized for advancing.

Under Sea-Shore Flow, officials are developing more than 70 new career paths, one for each rating, taking into account sea and shore tours and the potential for six-month individual augmentee billets or other irregular assignments.

Sailors will build their careers based on the rating-specific framework, and detailers will have leeway to help sailors get what they want without ignoring the needs of the Navy.

“Sailors will get predictable career paths, more meaningful work and geographic stability, and those who choose to stay longer at sea will get more incentives to do so,” Schauppner said.

What the Navy gets, he said, is a better system to ensure the fleet is manned with the right experience levels, a new system of determining the right mix of sea and shore billets in fleet concentration areas and a more accurate way to determine force structure for the Navy.

As a result of the move, some sea-intensive ratings such as gunner’s mate could see some initial sea tours shortened with no effect on their shore tours, giving first-term sailors an earlier shot at shore duty and rewarding others who choose to stay at sea with extra pay and incentives.

“This doesn’t mean sailors will go to sea any less, it’s just spread out better over a nominal career path,” Schauppner said.

“In the aggregate, it will work out more or less to the same amount of sea duty over a whole career.”

Harvey provided a glimpse of the plan last June, when he told the Navy’s career counselors that the service would create a “fleet standard” of five years at sea followed by a guaranteed three years at home as the worst-case scenario.

“Sailors should recognize that we are becoming a more sea-centric force,” Harvey told the counselors. “As the number of Navy missions and operations increases, even some shore-intensive ratings will move in the direction of 5/3 in the future.”

By setting an upper limit for sea-shore rotation, sailors should have more manageable and predictable tours. Still, the new plan doesn’t mean every sailor will serve as long as five years at sea, Harvey said. But it does mean that everyone will get three years ashore unless they choose not to.

How it would work

In explaining the plan to Navy Times, personnel officials gave examples of three sea-intensive ratings, in which available billets at sea far outweigh billet offerings ashore.

Under the current system, sailors in the aviation boatswain’s mate (launching and recovery equipment) rating initially go to sea for as long as five years up to E-4 — then roll to shore for just two years.

But as the sailor advanced, it got trickier.

“From a predictability standpoint, we can’t tell him what his next three to five years are going to look like unless we know what his paygrade is going to be in two or three years,” Schauppner said. “If he goes back to sea as a second class, he’s got a 54-month second sea tour by the current policy. If he makes first class, he goes back for 60 months — and if he’s a real hot runner and makes chief, his tour is 45 months.”

Under the new system, the tours are much more predictable, with sea tours lasting 60, 54, then 48 months, regardless of the sailor’s paygrade.

All with guaranteed 36 months ashore in between.

“It’s much easier to plan for a life that way,” he said.

In the new gunner’s mate model, both the Navy and the sailor benefit, officials say. That’s because officials believe that the Navy’s afloat billets need to become more senior than they are today.

That’s a big change from today’s GM force, where about 86 percent of all gunner’s mates at sea are first-termers.

Officials say that’s far too junior a force to shoulder all the new and complex force protection missions needed in today’s Navy.

“What you really want is more gunner’s mates out there with experience,” Schauppner said.

The plan is to get the percentage of first-termers at sea down to 72 percent and increase those on their second tours to a little more than 14 percent. The remaining 14 percent would be the more-senior sailors on their third and fourth tours.

“By decreasing their initial sea tour to 42 months” — it’s 60 months now — “and making their second through fourth tours 36 months, you get more senior folks back to the fleet, raising the percentage of senior gunner’s mates filling sea billets,” he said.

GMs, too, would be guaranteed 36 months between sea tours.

Those months could be used along the way for college degrees and other Navy schools that don’t fit in the current sea-shore rotation for gunner’s mates. The same will be true for most ratings.

Another sea-intensive rating is Aegis-qualified fire controlman. For this rating, there’s not much change, since the maximum sea tour is still 60 months for first and second sea tours, and all shore tours are now 36 months. That’s a change only for E-4s who will get a boost from 24 months at home.

Creating a career path for this community had a side benefit. In the process, officials discovered that the rating was 163 shore billets short of the necessary amount to pull off a desired rotation.

“So, the decision was made to buy back instructor and maintenance billets so they could have more meaningful billets ashore,” Schauppner said.

Officials are also studying whether there are enough billets in each rating in fleet concentration areas to offer sailors some semblance of geographic stability — the sought-after ability to stay in a given area for multiple tours.

What’s next?

Next stop is Navy Personnel Command in Millington, Tenn., where, Schauppner said, he and his team will meet with community managers and detailers for each community to go over the plans with a fine-tooth comb.

“We’ve developed the plans for ... what the sea-shore career path should be for each community,” Schauppner said.

“It is up to the community managers and detailers to make sure what we think is the right answer is indeed executable and help develop the business rules on how best to make the shift from sea-shore rotation to sea-shore flow.”

How the shift is made will be as important as the decision to implement the new system, Schauppner said, though he hopes to have the “way ahead” decided by this summer, if Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead approves the plan.

“It’s a paradigm shift, so we have to do this very carefully and methodically,” he said. “We have to be absolutely sure in bringing in something new we don’t break something else — all in the name if fixing things.”