In the trenchesNavy considering allowing sailors temporary leave before returning to active duty
The U.S. Navy is considering allowing sailors to take temporary leave and return to active duty after earning degrees or working in the private sector. The plan would save the Navy money spent on training new sailors, while retaining experienced personnel for the long term.
Sailors man the rails prior to disembarking on leave // Source: commons.wikimedia.org
The U.S. Navy is considering allowing sailors to take temporary leave and return to active duty after earning degrees or working in the private sector, according to Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Adm. William Moran, who spoke at last week’s Defense One summit. The plan would save the Navy money spent on training new sailors, while retaining experienced personnel for the long term. “We want to keep as much of this combat experienced force as we can,” Moran said. The move is especially targeted to sailors in the technical nuclear field, missile defense, and “any field that takes us two to three years to train the person to be ready to operate in that environment.”
While some sailors are committed to long term full-time military careers, others leave after a five-to-eight-year mark of service, after which the Navy typically says: “Thank you for your service and then move(s) on.” “I’m not sure that we can afford to do that in the future,” Moran said. “It costs a lot to bring people in. It costs a lot to train people from the ground up, so I would like to see us move toward a system that allows people to have an off ramp from service.”
In a May 2014 independent Navy Retention Study led by F/A-18 pilot Cmdr. Guy M. Snodgrass, 62 percent of the more than 5,500 officers and enlisted sailors who participated in the survey described the balance between work and home as “not ideal,” adding that deployments were too long. Stars and Stripes reports that Navy leaders generally agree that lengthy deployments are a concern as growing mission requirements combine with maintenance and funding issues to keep ships at sea for longer periods of time. When experienced sailors leave, “They’ll be taking their expertise and lessons learned with them,” Snodgrass wrote back in May.
The proposed temporary leave would allow sailors to earn higher education degrees, start a family, or work in the private sector, and then return to the Navy. Under this plan, the service could have a “more mature, more experienced sailor, when they come back,” Moran said. Naval reservists already operate in a similar fashion, frequently shifting from the Reserves into active-duty. “Small numbers today, but if you could grow that into a bigger rotation, I think we could attract more young men and women who want to make it a longer-term career than just one tour, five years and out,” Moran said.
