US Navy changes enlisted ratings

[Soontir C'boath]

Here are five things you need to know about this important change.

1) This decision is the result of a comprehensive review of Navy rating titles completed this year by the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy and his leadership mess. In June, the Navy announced that it would develop a new approach to enlisted ratings that would provide greater detailing flexibility, training and credentialing opportunities, and ultimately translate Navy occupations more clearly to the American public. Establishing a new classification system is the first step of a multi-phased approach. This change will benefit all Sailors with greater career flexibility, both in the Navy and after they depart the service, by being able to better translate their skill sets to prospective employers. Additionally, these changes will provide the Navy opportunities to improve Sailor “Fit” – the right Sailors with the right training and experience in the right billets.

2) Effective immediately, Sailors in paygrades E1-E3 will be addressed as “Seaman,” E4-E6 will be called “Petty Officer Third/Second/First Class” as appropriate, and Senior enlisted in paygrades E7-E9 will be “Chief,” “Senior Chief,” or “Master Chief” depending on their paygrade.

For example, a Sailor will no longer be called YN2. Instead, they will be called a “Second Class Petty Officer” or “Petty Officer.”
There will no longer be a distinction between “Airman, Fireman and Seaman.” They will all be “Seaman.”
This cultural change will not happen overnight. It will take a measured approach to make it the norm.
3) The Navy will more accurately identify a Sailors’ skill and training through a “Navy Occupational Specialty” or “NOS” code – a second key component of this change – that will allow greater assignment flexibility for Sailors throughout their career.

Sailors may hold more than one NOS, which will give them a broader range of professional experience and expertise opportunities.
NOS codes will be grouped under career fields that will enable flexibility to move between occupational specialties within each field and will be tied to training and qualifications.
Advances in technical training realized through Ready Relevant Learning and a more comprehensive picture of billet technical requirements afforded through Billet-Based Distribution will provide the ability to much more closely track a Sailor’s training and professional development and match it to billets.
Each NOS will be matched with similar civilian occupations to enable the Navy to identify credentials and certifications recognized and valued within the civilian workforce. For example a hospital corpsman will be matched with the civilian occupation of a medical technician.
The Navy will aggressively pursue opportunities for Sailors to earn credentials recognized and held by their civilian counterparts and incorporate those credentials into Sailors’ professional development.
4) The Navy’s Enlisted Rating Modernization Plan transformation will occur in phases over a multi-year period. A working group was formed in July to identify personnel policies, management programs and information technology systems that may require modifications over the years and months ahead. There will be no immediate changes to recruiting, detailing, advancements, training, and personnel and pay processes. Any follow-on changes that are made will proceed in a deliberate process that will enable transitions to occur seamlessly and transparently to the Fleet. You should expect to get plenty of advance notice prior any changes to these very important career processes.

5) This change is one step in a larger effort to modernize our personnel systems. As the Navy transforms its training to a mobile, modular and more frequent system called Ready Relevant Learning, combined with recent creation of the Billet-Based Distribution system that provides a more comprehensive picture of billet requirements Fleet-wide, this enlisted rating modernization plan will provide the ability to much more closely track a Sailor’s training and professional development and match it to billets.

Editor’s note: This blog will be updated with additional resources as they are released.

[Jub]

Damn, that's some awesome news for all current and future American seamen.

[Tribble]

Sorry, I'm not that familiar with American Navy Rank structure. What exactly does the change do? For example, If you have 2 Chiefs, and one Chief earns more / served longer / is in a specialty, can that chief order the other chief, even though they are technically the same rank?

[Patroklos]

No, seniority is irrelevant to most day to day tasks and is entirely irrelevant to enlisted sailors. For them positional authority is what matters, so if you are in a division with two CPOs one will be designated the Leading Chief Petty Officer for the group. On a large ship you may have a department that has a Department CPO, then several division CPOs, and maybe even workcenter CPOs. They are all the same rank but when working their positional authority dictates the pecking order (in reality the higher levels are probably E8s or E9s). The Department Head is free to insert any CPO he wants in any of those three, for whatever reasons he wants. But when they all go back to the mess they are equal in regards to privileges.

Even for officers non-positional seniority is rarely a thing that matters. Your lineal number determines what year group you are in so when you go up for promotion. If two ships meet randomly and both COs are the same rank, the one with the higher lineal number can take tactical control of the other but since we are always in communication if two ships meet this has already been worked out. Technically if a ship had a disaster and the CO and XO are killed then the next ranking person takes over, and since below XO there are general several officers of the same grade lineal number dictates who takes over.

In any case this whole idea is stupid and I am glad I only have a few years left in this organization. The ratings were a bit restrictive, but at the same time each of these rates has a culture tailored to the particular specialty they perform and with that comes professional and personnel pride. From the Fire Controlmen to the Culinary Specialist to the Damage Controlmen, each community contains an sort of tribal knowledge in how to do things. The fact that this is all predicated on some SJW crusade to purge pronouns from the vernacular lets us know that the wellbeing of sailors and the fighting capabilities of the Navy were not the priority.

This basically screws every current sailor, the more senior the worse it will be. They were following career paths which have all been thrown out the window. It screws the new ones too because these code based systems have always been BS. Officers currently use them and despite the thousands of AQDs and subSPEC codes people take onto their record the only one anyone cares about is your designator which is analogous to enlisted rates

I am at grad school right now chasing a subSPEC code in IT acquisitions. The detailer didn't give a shit, I am being posted to a straight 3100 logistics billet just like last two years never happened.

[Simon_Jester]

I don't see how calling everyone "seamen" is a response to some kind of 'crusade to purge pronouns;' it certainly doesn't make a lot of sense.

It sounds more like they're trying to "rationalize" the training and specialization structure for whatever reasons, and apparently they're trying to think in terms of parallels between Navy specializations and civilian jobs, which seems a bit odd for what's supposed to be a long-service volunteer organization that offers a healthy career in its own right. I mean, do Navy veterans have trouble finding jobs that respect the technical experience they obtain in the Navy? I wouldn't think so.

[Patroklos]

I don't see how calling everyone "seamen" is a response to some kind of 'crusade to purge pronouns;' it certainly doesn't make a lot of sense.

https://www.navytimes.com/articles/navy ... r-shake-up

The huge shift was approved by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson and had been advocated by the now retired Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Mike Stevens, who urged it as way to promote more cross-training and boost sailors’ post-service employment opportunity. It began by a directive from Mabus to find gender-neutral rating titles that stripped them of the word "man," in an effort to be more inclusive to women sailors who make up an increasing size of the force.

Its all about the pronouns. At least it started there anyway.

Its also about an outsiders lack of understanding about culture, something Mabus constantly demonstrates. In the link Navy Times article they mention using rank only instead of specialty when identifying sailors. For those of you who don't understand what he is talking about, enlisted sailors are not called by just their rank but also their specialty. If you ran into Electronic Technician Petty Officer First Class Alvarez you done;t say "Hello there Petty Officer First Class Alvarez" or "hello there Electronic Technician Alvarez ." Instead you would say "Hello there ET1 Alvarez." On small ships, and even larger ones for some rates, there probably are only one or two ET1 on the boat which makes it an honorary. On a DDG being the only MR1 or DC1 or BM1 was prestigious. You were the only person why could do lots of things. Its like naming someone "Badass Expert Bosun mate." It works for Chiefs too, as the LSC (Logistics Specialist Chief) made you a master of your own little fiefdom and if you walked onto a quarterdeck and asked for him by abbreviation everyone knew who you meant. Not unlike the prestige of the title CO and XO.

It the article it makes it clear that they are alluding to some sort of imagined class war within the ranks. That some sailors are somehow marginalized by having their specialty being brought up. Being a Supply Officer myself I own the rates like Culinary Specialist and Ship Servicemen. People like Mabus seem to think there is something derogatory or disgraceful in serving in those capacities. They are JUST the cook, or JUST the barber, or JUST the laundry guy. In the Army you get the REMF stuff. However, these groups generally combat this sort of thing by having the entrenched community and career path of a rating. A special operator can snub his nose at a Quartermaster all he wants, but that Quartermaster has excellent promotion rates because he has a rating organization that protects him and values his skills and contributions.

But screw all that, professionals and can't possibly have pride in their specialty by having a grownups understanding of what a mission needs, so just call everyone the same thing.

It sounds more like they're trying to "rationalize" the training and specialization structure for whatever reasons, and apparently they're trying to think in terms of parallels between Navy specializations and civilian jobs, which seems a bit odd for what's supposed to be a long-service volunteer organization that offers a healthy career in its own right. I mean, do Navy veterans have trouble finding jobs that respect the technical experience they obtain in the Navy? I wouldn't think so.

Its not an entirely stupid idea, just stupid in the degree they are pursuing it. The ratings are restrictive. Once you are in a rating the chances of you getting any further formal training in anything else is slim to none. In practice there are groups of ratings that are naturally linked. So on a ship just because you are an gas turbine specialist, a damage controlman or an electrician by virtue of them all being in the Engineering Department they will tend to pick up the skills of the other to some degree. If you qualify for any higher up ship watch stations you will be required to do so as the qualifications for standing and watch in the Central Control Station or the Combat Information Center naturally overlaps many specialties This leads to a lack of cross training, but it also means we get a lot of really on point specialists.

We have gone through smaller scale versions of this before with rating disestablishments. When they got rid of the Postal Clerks and distributed those duties between the various supply rates it was disastrous. It still is. The accountability and security requirements for handling post, which includes everything from magazines to registered mail to classified shipments, are justifiably so strict that you can't have amateurs doing it full time. So what happened was that sailors in other rates would get assigned it full time, not then getting experience or time to practice at their own rate. They essentially became full time Postal Clerks in everything but name but without the protection of career path to keep them competitive that was there when it was a full rate. The result is that high performers avoid the duty like the plague. It they do get put there they are at a disadvantage at promotion but at least the post is appropriately handled. But in reality the dregs get the assignment, and post gets screwed up constantly.

The fact is that I have no need for a PO1 who is an alright jack of several trades but a master of none. Its the job of sailors to be the technical experts, who are then managed by generalist officers to achieve the mission.

And no, I don't believe sailors are noteworthy in being unable to get a job post service. There is the saying "choose your rate, choose your fate," which is applicable inside and outside the Navy. Each rate has different demands and different recruiting pressures, hence promotions and bonuses vary widely between rates. For the same reasons employment prospects vary too. If you were a Fire Controlman who worked on air search radars your future is bright. If you were a Ship Serviceman who ran the laundry your options will not be the same.

[Simon_Jester]

Its all about the pronouns. At least it started there anyway.

The shift to specialization codes can't have been all about the pronouns, or about calling all naval enlisted 'men.' The obvious thing to do would simply be to tell everyone to tack on 'woman' instead of 'man,' if that were the only problem. There wouldn't be any point in all these other changes, which are going to take up a lot of time and effort and cause considerable confusion.

This almost has to be something they were planning to do, or considering doing, anyway.

That said, Mabus having started with the pronoun directive was probably stupid unless there was strong evidence of discontent among female enlisted personnel in the Navy over it. Was there? I couldn't say.

[RogueIce]

Its all about the pronouns. At least it started there anyway.

The shift to specialization codes can't have been all about the pronouns, or about calling all naval enlisted 'men.' The obvious thing to do would simply be to tell everyone to tack on 'woman' instead of 'man,' if that were the only problem. There wouldn't be any point in all these other changes, which are going to take up a lot of time and effort and cause considerable confusion.

This almost has to be something they were planning to do, or considering doing, anyway.

That said, Mabus having started with the pronoun directive was probably stupid unless there was strong evidence of discontent among female enlisted personnel in the Navy over it. Was there? I couldn't say.

Bureaucracy in action: it started as "gender neutral" titles and snowballed into, well, this.

Ironically failing in its supposed mission - Seaman still being a thing - but predictably coming up with something nobody in the rank and file was happy with. Bonus points because AFAIK none of the ratings (Corpsman being the only one i can think of offhand) even had -man in their titles, yet those are what's being eliminated.

[Simon_Jester]

Thing is, when bureaucracy actually does snowball like this, it's usually the result of many separate initiatives and agendas merging into one. Everyone takes the new change as an excuse to do whatever it is they really wanted to do, regardless of whether it fits into the context of the original change or not.

In which case it's kind of dishonest to say "It all started with one PC admiral..." when in fact it's the result of one PC admiral plus the agendas of a swarm of Navy bureaucrats who decide to take the opportunity to do something totally unrelated and abolish the traditional rating system in favor of something more like the Army and Marines' MOS system for categorizing specialties.

The whole thing makes a hell of a lot more sense as the Navy unwisely trying to "rationalize" its rank structures (counterproductively) than as some kind of "PC run amok" thing. Because if the impetus behind "PC run amok" were still in the driver's seat at all, then they'd have come up with a title other than "Seaman" for low-ranking enlisted personnel. Something like, let's say... "Sailor."

[Tsyroc]

I want to see them start streamlining the officers like they've been doing with the enlisted. How about they make all officers black shoes? The aviator types have to serve on ships as ships crew at some point if they want to advance so shitcan the brown shoe thing. Everyone will know they are from the aviation side because of the pins showing their qualifications. The Navy at least plans to keep qualification pins around. The other services have those too so they must be okay.

I am curious how this is going to work out for the Warrant Officers. They are supposed to be specialist in a particular field, granted those fields might line up better with the changes to the enlisted categories.

I've been out of the USN more than 20 years. They did away with my rating in the 90s and rolled it into one I despised. So for me this is more of the same. I understand somewhat why they are doing it but it would taste better going down if they would stick with NECs instead of showing how hard they are trying to skew the Navy towards how the other services do things by changing it to NOS. One of the articles I read had one of the big whigs saying that eventually there wouldn't be a need for exams for promotions in the Navy, they'd be just like the other services. Except the Navy is not just like the other services. Everything is tech based even if it is centuries old tech it is still tech. One of the plusses for joining the Navy is you could lock into a specific job much more than you could in any other service before joining.

Personally, it is total BS that this is in anyway designed to help people get jobs after they leave the Navy. Even the more skilled and technical jobs don't translate directly to civilian life. Most people who get jobs leaving the Navy based on the ones they did in the Navy usually become civilian tech reps who work on the same equipment they did when they were in the Navy. Granted if you really know electronics because that's what you did in the Navy then that will translate, but that's not how it is going to be for the average sailor in that particular job.

I was an EW (electronics warfare technician). I first trained to operate our equipment, stand watch and do all the other general Navy things (damage control, how to do planned maintenance etc...). I went back to school to learn how to repair the equipment we operated and do more detailed maintenance on it. On my next ship I did all of those things which seems to be the sort of flexibility this new system wants but 20 years later and without the rating badges.

I will say that being a "jack of all trades" makes me a good employee in jobs that have a wide variety of things come up because I've had experience in a wide variety of things because of the Navy. It did not make me overly exceptional at any one thing, just pretty good at a lot. Good for fair to middling employment.

I shouldn't let this aggrivate me because I've long come to the conclusion that leads me to try and dissuade anyone who asked from enlisting in any of the US armed services. That mostly has to do with how I feel those services have been used and misused for a long time now. If people want to serve and help people I tell them to join the Coast Guard. Sure the drug war is bs but they'll also spend a lot of time helping people and keeping them safe. If the country is really in serious trouble the Coast Guard will be there to help too. Anyway, they seem to be less at the whim of asshole politicians and the people behind their interests. It's still there but to a lesser extent.

[Zwinmar]

Told my dad about this, he was an MS1 when he got out. He was cursing about it.

[Lonestar]

Damn, that's some awesome news for all current and future American seamen.

No, it fucking isn't. How stupid are you?

All it is is change for the sake of change.

And you know what? At the CNO/MCPON call someone asked if they were going to change "seaman" to "seaperson" and they had the audacity to say "no seaman has too much tradition in" as if things like Boatswains, gunnersmate, yeoman etc. Didn't have a weight of 200 odd years worth of tradition behind them.

Completely unsurprising that this was the brainchild of a MCPON who had never been ship's company(I am referring to Stevens, I doubt the current one thought this up over the course of three weeks).

[Jub]

Damn, that's some awesome news for all current and future American seamen.

No, it fucking isn't. How stupid are you?

All it is is change for the sake of change.

And you know what? At the CNO/MCPON call someone asked if they were going to change "seaman" to "seaperson" and they had the audacity to say "no seaman has too much tradition in" as if things like Boatswains, gunnersmate, yeoman etc. Didn't have a weight of 200 odd years worth of tradition behind them.

Completely unsurprising that this was the brainchild of a MCPON who had never been ship's company(I am referring to Stevens, I doubt the current one thought this up over the course of three weeks).

Yeah, seeing the posts from people who are or have served puts it in perspective. It sounds like it could be okay, but if it entirely ignores culture and logic in favor or change for change's sake it's never going to go well.

[Patroklos]

Its not even the stupidity of the system that is causing the most backlash, though it is the soundest criticism. Whats really getting to people to the point even those who think its a good idea or are ambivalent are up in arms is that:

1.) There was no warning and no consultation with the fleet. The upper chain does stupid shit all the time like the blue camies. But as superficial as that change was there was years of polling, testing, training and normalizing before it came into effect. I bad idea you have to accept isn't so bad if you have time to prepare and adapt. This was announced with zero comment period or warning. Literally nobody outside the SECNAV office a few select worker bees ad NAVPERS and USFFC had any clue it was coming. Which means the command triad across the fleet were completely blindsided by this very unpopular change and just left to wing it when the predictable response happened. That is not leadership on the part of SECNAV.

2.) The justifications are stupid. Its supposed to make the fleet more flexible, but in does no such thing. Its supposed to address the SJW gendering BS but they still kept "Seaman." There is some bullshit about making you more employable after the Navy (which is stupid, we should care about making you employable IN the Navy) but the coding is even more esoteric than the rat names. If I tell you someone is a Culinary Specialist or Logistics Specialist or Electronics Technician is that less obvious than some randon string of numbers?

[Q99]

So basically, someone wanted to make gender-neutral names- makes sense, good in long-term by making it a more welcoming environment, and it's a single fairly small change- and other people hijacked it so bad that it became a much greater change that didn't even address the initial suggestion? That is an impressive form of fail.

Someone didn't earn a gold star in class today.

This is my best guess about where this post should have gone (instead of the Colombians reject peace deal with FARC thread). If my guess is wrong, please point this out. - SCRawl

[Q99]

Yes, consultation is critical. How's anything large-scale supposed to work well without feedback? Just throw it in and hope it works? That's not how one plans for success.

Gendered language is not 'bs' (one can argue about whether it's worth the effort to make the switch, but there's a legit reason there at least), but it *doesn't even do that*.

[Simon_Jester]

I still say that it's quite obvious that most of this change-up is NOT just a response to removing gendered language from the fleet... At most, the gendered language thing is a very bad pretext for them doing something they wanted to do anyway. That's fairly common; "PC" gets blamed for a lot of stuff that isn't connected to it.

But I can tell a lot of people in the Navy are likely to assume it's all because of that, even though it doesn't make sense.

[Tsyroc]

I still say that it's quite obvious that most of this change-up is NOT just a response to removing gendered language from the fleet... At most, the gendered language thing is a very bad pretext for them doing something they wanted to do anyway. That's fairly common; "PC" gets blamed for a lot of stuff that isn't connected to it.

But I can tell a lot of people in the Navy are likely to assume it's all because of that, even though it doesn't make sense.

Essentially it seems like they are mainly doing this to bring the Navy more in line with how the other 3 services deal with their enlisted. Going so far as to change NEC to NOS, which is essentially the same thing with only a name and number system change. It'll be interesting to see what they do with the Coast Guard since they are supposed to be able to be rolled into the Navy during time of war. I'm also curious if the NOS numbers will be synced up with the MOS to continue making things easier for the brass.

It makes it look like there were a bunch of brass, civilian and otherwise, who thought it was too complicated having all of these rates, and from their end they are probably correct. I was an EW and even people in the Navy didn't know what that was when I told them. It usually didn't help in the long form (Electronic Warfare Technician) either, but then it isn't the easiest job to explain to people who don't know anything about radars and the propagation of signals. Besides the consolidation of the command lines I can kind of see why it got rolled in the CT (Cryptographic Technician) rate.

That being said, there are a lot of rates that everyone in the Navy knows. Personally I always found it kind of cool meeting someone in a rate that I didn't know about but I was on aircraft carriers. People on smaller ships likely knew everyone in the crew so would have a pretty good idea what everyone did. On the really small ships everyone was definitely a sailor first and their rate second. Still, there can be some shorthand that can work fairly well if the ship only has one BM1, or EW2 etc...

I'm assuming that getting rid of Airman and Fireman are more about simplifying things than they are for fixing any super bad blood between the various categories. People are still going to be considered airedales and snipes so all they did was ditch the red and green stripes of the E2s and E3s. Presumably the blue of the constructionman has also gone away but they'll still be Seabees.

There's a bit of a fuss about them keeping Seaman and Midshipman after all their BS about gender issues driving the changes. Those they are keeping because of tradition. Recruit Sailor, Apprentice Sailor, and then Sailor, would have all worked in place of Seaman Recruit, Apprentice ect... Midshipman should just be Cadet like in the other services. They can still refer to them as "Middies" as a group and just expect that someone who cares will look up the history behind the term.

[Simon_Jester]

I still say that it's quite obvious that most of this change-up is NOT just a response to removing gendered language from the fleet... At most, the gendered language thing is a very bad pretext for them doing something they wanted to do anyway. That's fairly common; "PC" gets blamed for a lot of stuff that isn't connected to it.

But I can tell a lot of people in the Navy are likely to assume it's all because of that, even though it doesn't make sense.

Essentially it seems like they are mainly doing this to bring the Navy more in line with how the other 3 services deal with their enlisted. Going so far as to change NEC to NOS, which is essentially the same thing with only a name and number system change. It'll be interesting to see what they do with the Coast Guard since they are supposed to be able to be rolled into the Navy during time of war. I'm also curious if the NOS numbers will be synced up with the MOS to continue making things easier for the brass.

Exactly. It's a dumb administrative change designed to increase the unification of the services. Even if the specific 'push' from the top level began with "get rid of job descriptions with 'man' in the title," that's not what it became over time.

If that were it, we'd have gotten, some time ago, an announcement that "damage controlmen" were going to be "damage controlpeople" or "damage controlcrew" or something like that. And everyone would grouse a little, but no one's very identity as a naval enlisted would be at stake.

There's a bit of a fuss about them keeping Seaman and Midshipman after all their BS about gender issues driving the changes. Those they are keeping because of tradition. Recruit Sailor, Apprentice Sailor, and then Sailor, would have all worked in place of Seaman Recruit, Apprentice ect... Midshipman should just be Cadet like in the other services. They can still refer to them as "Middies" as a group and just expect that someone who cares will look up the history behind the term.

Or just... would it be that bad to call them Seawomen and agree on a plural?

[Patroklos]

Exactly. It's a dumb administrative change designed to increase the unification of the services. Even if the specific 'push' from the top level began with "get rid of job descriptions with 'man' in the title," that's not what it became over time.

If that were it, we'd have gotten, some time ago, an announcement that "damage controlmen" were going to be "damage controlpeople" or "damage controlcrew" or something like that. And everyone would grouse a little, but no one's very identity as a naval enlisted would be at stake.

Or just... would it be that bad to call them Seawomen and agree on a plural?

I have a feeling that is exactly what happened, and even they knew that sounded stupid. And it does sound stupid. They outright say that with retaining seaman, that basically they couldn't come up with something that didn't sound stupid but since seaman is rank and not rate title they didn't want to chuck that entirely. I actually don't think they can change rank titles without the approval of Congress (fireman/airman were just flavors of seaman, their rank was still seaman). That might just be officers though.

Since they couldn't make the SECNAV happy without making everything sound stupid, they just went with the nuclear option. And yes there are some parties that capitalized on that obviously, though since nobody knew about it I lay the blame at a select few the leadership (namely the recently retired POS MCPON as Lonestar alluded to) rather than some inexorable bureaucratic creep.

If anyone can find evidence that a significant number of current woman sailors or potential recruits were crying over having to be a firecontralMAN that may add some weight to the decision. I know of none. I expect that this will quietly die in November when lame duck Mabus is gone, along with his disastrous green fleet boondoggle. I expect this regardless of who is elected.

[Simon_Jester]

Except that none of this even remotely explains why they'd create the NOS system, or the "align with civilian jobs" thing. It just doesn't fit.

Even if this is all the brainchild of a few dozen people at headquarters, it can't be that simple. Someone decided this was a good time to 'reform' the Navy's specialization and rating structure in order to 'rationalize' it. If they'd only wanted to fix one thing, they would have fixed that one thing. They didn't, which suggests that there is more to the picture.

[Tsyroc]

The more recent stuff I've seen makes it look like they were in full clusterfuck mode trying to decide on new ratings, and new gender neutral ratings and just said, "fuck it!" and decided to shit can 240 years of US Navy tradition, more if you count that we got it from the Royal Navy.

They barely have a plan on how to implement this. It's essentially an outline and dumps a bunch of shit on other people to figure it out.

[Patroklos]

There is no plan which is why everyone heard about it via NAVADMIN instead of socializing it. You wake up one morning to read a regulation change that is "effective immediately" but which in the next line tells you will be rolled out over ten years? What's that ten year plan? Who knows, not a clue of a plan has been shared even now. The re authorization of reenlistment bonuses came out and it was still organized via the old rates. This was technically done in direct violation of orders, but since there was no plan there is no way to carry out business without doing so.

[RogueIce]

Well, maybe that gives hope of whoever replaces Mabus come January can be persuaded to change course on this, before it has a chance to be too far along to go back?

[Tsyroc]

Well, maybe that gives hope of whoever replaces Mabus come January can be persuaded to change course on this, before it has a chance to be too far along to go back?

It's certainly my hope, but I do see some of the basis for how this problem kicked off. Trying to keep some of the rates current, or coming up with name for new rates, as things modernize can be a challenge. More so if someone is obsessed with being PC at the same time.