Research for Enlisted Personnel

Are the most senior enlisted service members adequately compensated? Given the varying levels of responsibility assigned to them, is the compensation sufficient to ensure that we retain the talent we require? Because these senior enlisted personnel are more apt to be retirement-eligible, are the best retiring too early? Are there sufficient incentives to induce the most competitive to remain in service? Service members in grade E-9 usually fall into two categories: the technical or duty expert of a certain occupational field; or the senior enlisted advisor to the commanding officer of a given unit, usually a unit with its own organizational colors. In discussing these issues, this paper starts with a short history of non-commissioned officers, concentrating on the most senior grade. Then we'll present a current overview of the E-9s in each of the services and describe what we see as the challenges facing the E-9 community today. We'll turn then to the current experience distribution of E-9s, promotion timings, and the pattern of retirements. Finally, we'll return to the question of incentives for E-9 retention and a proposal for an E-10grade.

In FY 98, the Navy failed to meet its enlisted recruiting goal by 7,000 recruits, or 12 percent. Early in FY99, it appeared that the recruiting difficulties would continue. All of the military services were facing a tight recruiting market because of such factors as low unemployment, a decreased propensity of youth to enlist, and increasing college enrollments. The Secretary of the Navy responded in February 1999 by increasing the cap on the recruitment of non-high school diploma graduates (NHSDGs) from 5 to 10 percent of enlisted accessions. Although NHSDGs are less costly to recruit than high-school-diploma graduates (HSDGs), both in terms of recruiter time and in marketing, the military services limit the number of NHSDG recruits because they have much higher attrition than high school graduates. Because the Navy was concerned about how the increased numbers of NHSDGs would affect overall recruit survival, it initiated the following two programs: Navy recruiting modified the Compensatory Screening Model (CSM), the screen used to determine NHSG eligibility-the new screen, called the High Performance Predictor Profile (HP3), was implemented with new contacts durine February 1999; and the Commander, Navy Education and Training (CNET) developed a 1-week course for NHSDG recruits called Academic Capacity Enhancement (ACE), which began in March 1999, discontinued during the summer surge, and returned as a fully revised course in October 1999. Commander, Navy Recruiting Command (CNRC) asked CNA to analyze (a) the survival of NHSDGs under these two new policies and (b) the overall cost-effectiveness of the policy to increase the cap on NHSDG accessions. This annotated briefing presents our findings.

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.

CAB D0003425.A1/Final On January 2, 2001, Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Vernon Clark visited the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) to hear a series of briefings on contemporary issues of interest to the Navy. Research Staff members of the Workforce, Education and Training (WET) Team presented three of these briefings on Recruiting Issues, Navy Enlisted Education Policy, and the Quality and Quantity of Attrition. During this session, Admiral Clark received a copy of a paper on Compensation Strategy. Shortly thereafter, he requested a follow-up briefing on this issue. This document provides annotation of these four briefings.