Ed. Note: Because a third of our 11,200 members are active-duty Navy men and women, it’s appropriate that The Hook call upon key figures in the Navy Personnel Command to comment upon issues facing the assignment of personnel in view of current events. The Hook is grateful to CAPT Don Quinn, Director of Aviation Personnel Distribution, for his assessment of current opportunities in Naval Aviation.
The Chief of Naval Personnel mentioned three things on his To Do list in his commentary in the Winter 2004 issue of The Hook magazine. I’d like to specifically drill down on one: Fit and Fill.
There are officer, enlisted and civilian aspects to this topic, but I will only discuss our focus in Pers 43: Officer Fit and Fill.
With the backdrop of significant budgetary pressure to reduce our manpower in the coming years, our focus will be to remain as effective as we are today. We do that by getting more out of every aircraft, ship and sailor. In an effort to further improve the productivity of our aviation personnel, we have taken a number of actions in the last two years regarding their accession, training and selection for leadership positions.
What is Fit, What is Fill?
“Fill” is simply raw numbers. If we need 100 officers and provide 100 officers, we have a 100 percent fill. “Fit” is having the right skills for specific fills. If we need 100 officers, 50 Naval Aviators and 50 Naval Flight Officers, but have 60 pilots and 40 NFOs, we have a problem with fit.
Currently we enjoy unprecedented retention of our aviation personnel. Our present retention rate of 54 percent is about 15 percent above the historic average. This has almost eliminated fill problems, but this bountiful inventory has forced us to make some hard choices to reduce our numbers toward our authorized end strength. We have worked hard to temper every corrective action knowing that retention is cyclic and every officer is valuable.
In addition to record retention, we have made a number of force structure changes in 2004 that ultimately cut Naval Aviator and NFO requirements approximately seven percent over the next six years. Included in the changes were accelerated transition from the F-14 to F/A-18E/F, accelerated S-3 “Sundown,” disestablishment of two EA-6B squadrons, transition from the four-seat EA-6B to the EA-18G, reducing carrier-based F/A-18C squadrons from 17 pilots to 15, reducing VP squadron manning from 36 pilots to 30, and eliminating a portion of our ConUS shore-based search-and-rescue capability. These changes have affected the assignment opportunities for officers already in pilot training.
We brought in the correct number of student pilots and NFOs in Fiscal Years ’02, ’03 and ’04 based on requirements known at that time. However, the force structure changes noted have taken us from “on glide slope” to a full “high in the middle” regarding pilots in training. Essentially, we ended up with 50 too many student pilots in Year Groups ’02 and ’03, and about 80 too many in Year Group ’04.
Our first action was to correct FY ’05 accessions to prevent any further overages. We need every officer we access in FY ’05. For those in Year Groups ’02 and ’03, we have worked hard to get return on the investment already made in their training. Sixteen of them are set to fly jets in the Marine Corps via interservice transfer.
With a recently authorized end strength increase, the Marine Corps is now looking for another 60 helicopter pilots to fight the war in the Middle East. Our high retention also significantly slowed Reserve accessions, so we are looking at sending some new aviators directly to Naval Reserve squadrons to serve two years of their service obligation on active duty and the remaining six as Selected Reservists. These actions, in concert with regular Navy active-duty requirements, effectively find a home for every pilot in Year Groups ’02 and ’03.
Reaching Fit, Fill Objectives
YG ’04 was the tough one. We simply cannot afford to train one more pilot than we need. Costs to train and “wing” a single pilot range from $400,000 to $1.5 million. So we “raised the bar” in Aviation Indoctrination to get to the number we need. In round numbers, the top 90 percent of the FY ’04 pilot accessions going through indoctrination will get to stay and fly Navy. The remainder will be offered to other warfare communities and, if there’re no openings, they’ll be sent home. Our purpose was to tell everyone the stakes before they start training, then keep those that perform the best. Through these actions, we have adjusted the fill in the pilot training pipeline to the appropriate number.
We also sought to improve the fit of our accessions by raising the minimum Aviation Selection Test Battery (ASTB) score. The ASTB is what we more mature Naval Aviators remember as the AQT/FAR. It has been refined significantly and is now a computer-based test with high validity based upon industrial psychology standards. As a result, there is a strong correlation between ASTB score and attrition rate. Based upon this, the minimum score for aviation accessions was raised from 3/4 to 4/5. Though this will reduce the number that qualify to begin flight training, it will increase the percentage that make it through, which is our real measure of success. In summary, we have “raised the bar” for aspiring Naval Aviators based upon sound analysis and a proven test.
In round numbers, each officer costs about $100,000 a year in salary and benefits. In addition, each officer we have above the authorized end strength causes us to cut three enlisted accessions. That fiscal reality causes us to drive downward to our funded numbers.
Throughout our Naval Aviator inventory, we manage, screen, detail and train to fill all squadron cockpit seats, ship billets and staff billets with the best possible people. In addition, we provide officers to satisfy Navy “corporate bills,” including billets on Navy and Joint staffs. These requirements become our overall officer manpower fill requirement. By current authorization, our share of the “corporate bill” billets is 40 percent.
However, due to current excesses in aviation and shortfalls in the surface warfare and submarine communities, we are filling 75 percent of the staff billets at the lieutenant commander to captain, or “Control Grade,” level. In short, we are filling all our Naval Aviation requirements and nearly twice our normal tasking with respect to Navy and joint staff billets. This does not mean we have room to bring in more aviators. We cannot afford to train any more than we have cockpit seats for. What it does mean, though, is that for the present we see no need to push out any of our current excesses via Selective Early Retirement based upon overall unrestricted line officer inventory.
Department Head, Command Opportunity Considerations
Regarding fit, we are close to where we want to be in terms of inventory at the lieutenant commander level in most communities. The two communities where we find ourselves the most out of balance are land-based patrol (VP) and strike fighter (VFA). The combination of record retention and force structure reductions has reduced the opportunity rate for department head in these communities to just over 60 percent. These mismatches are what in June 2004 led us to hold our first Department Head Screen Board in eight years. By making the selections in a formal board, we ensure that we select the best officers to lead, based solely upon their official record. Like the reductions we are making in the pilot training pipeline, these actions were not easy. But they ensured that the decisions of who stays and who goes were made in the open, with the focus on retaining the best — a consistent theme throughout all our manpower actions.
There has been some reduction in command opportunities over the last decade, but the real driver in this equation has been the unprecedented denominator, or number of officers we have to choose from. Our focus on each board has been to select the best officers available. Sometimes that means we look across screen groups and even community lines. This is one reason why we are so committed to execution of the S-3 Sundown Plan. It’s in our best interests to offer that community’s best officers the opportunity to lead in other communities. While the selection board choices are hard, they ensure that we are selecting a consistently superb cadre of officers to lead our ships and squadrons. This fact is validated in our 98.1 percent success rate in command. As a counterpoint to recent articles on failure in command, I offer that 487 of 497 aviation commanding officers have been successful in command since January 2002.
Finding the Right Number of the Best Qualified
These comments cover only a few aspects of fit and fill that we have worked on in the last two years. I hope that this discussion gives a sense of the principles behind the decisions and reduces the disinformation so often found on the Internet. Our focus is to recruit, train and advance the best officers in Naval Aviation. This philosophy will be the bedrock of our decisions as we deal with the budgetary challenges forecast in today’s headlines.
There will clearly be some tough choices made in the near future. As you follow the dialogue in the media, remember the words of our CNO, “The thing that makes the U.S. Navy unique is Naval Aviation.”
He has reiterated this fact in speeches around the country. Our leadership clearly understands our value and effectiveness. That understanding will not eliminate the need to make hard choices, but it will ensure that as our leaders weigh the costs, this understanding will go into those tough deliberations.