Trends in Navy Initial Skills Training: Evidence from Street-to-Fleet Data
Published Date: May 1, 2001
As part of the Navy's Manpower and Personnel Integrated Warfare Architecture (M&P IWAR), N81 asked CNA to examine trends in the training recruits receive before their first fleet assignments. The Navy expects to enlist approximately 55,000 sailors each year in the near future. The Navy's system of training and delivering these recruits to operational billets must be an efficient one. The flow of sailors into the fleet depends on two things: the number of sailors who get there and the amount of time it takes. Accordingly, policy-makers are concerned with both the attrition of recruits during the period of initial training and the lengths of the training pipelines themselves. To examine these trends, we tracked recruits' early career histories from "street-to-fleet." This report updates a 1999 CNA analysis, adding recent accessions and reflecting training reengineering that the Navy has undertaken since then. We also examine initial skills training in more detail, looking at all contract lengths (2-, 3- and 5Yos, as well as 4- and 6YOs) and at ratings.
