Research for Officers

As the Marine Corps continues its growth toward an active-duty endstrength of 202,000, it needs to reduce the rate of separations (including end-of-active-service (EAS) and non-EAS separations) for enlisted Marines and officers. In this document, we examine separation rates over the FY00 to FY07 period and assess their patterns. We find that, despite high operational tempo, average separation rates for enlisted personnel, warrant officers, and commissioned officers were actually lower in FY07 than in FY00. There were, however, small increases in separation rates for some subgroups, including females, retirement-eligible aviators, and ground officers with 7 to 10 years of completed service. Still, the overall pattern of separation rates indicates no worrisome trend.

This study provides analysis in support of development of an education strategy for URL officers. The primarily focus is graduate education, but we also consider undergraduate education. For graduate education, we conclude that the Navy should have a strategic goal of providing advanced education that meets Navy goals and needs, without sacrificing warfare proficiency or officer and family quality of life. We find there are many reasons for graduate education and every officer should have an opportunity for graduate education that is focused on Navy needs. Officer careers are varied and contain little time for graduate education. In addition, career paths inhibit graduate education utilization. So, the Navy should examine the timing of education and expand varied education delivery options, including resident, non-resident, online and short certificate programs, to provide education that fits into officer careers and facilitates education utilization. The Navy should expand PME to broaden officers’ knowledge of the Navy beyond their communities. Finally, the Navy should take steps to remove institutional barriers, such as commands having no incentives to support graduate education.

1000 and 1050 coded billets are Unrestricted Line (URL) billets not assigned to a particular community. Thirty percent of all URL shore, non-student billets are 1000 or 1050 coded billets. The Navy needs the flexibility of 1000/1050 billets for control grade detailing. CNA has identified about 600 1000/1050 billets that do not support URL core competencies and should be realigned. The Navy needs to establish URL core competencies, and the 1000/1050 billet base is dependent on these core competencies. The current distribution of 1000/1050 billets needs to be validated annually. Lastly, the Navy needs to ensure that 1000/1050 billet assignment is based on necessary competencies, skills, as identified in the Navy Officer Billet Classification (NOBC), Additional Qualifying Designators (AQDs), and subspecialty codes.

Abstract:d6693 This report describes the development of CNA's Officer Street-to-Fleet (OSTF) database and reports changes in time-to-train for the aviation, surface warfare, submarine, and supply corps communities. OSTF is a longitudinal database designed for use in descriptive, statistical and evaluative studies of Navy training. It combines the the Defense Manpower Data Center's Officer Master Files with extracts from the Navy Integrated Training Resources Administration System (NITRAS). The result is a complete account of officers' training histories from accession to first operational assignment. OSTF includes all officers who started training between October 1992 and September 2001. For each officer, it reports courses taken, start and end dates of each course, course outcomes, and time-to-train prior to first assignment. It also covers officer characteristics such as race, gender and accession source and records career events such as pipeline completion, attrition, and lateral transfer. In general, there has been a decline in average TTT to first assignment for successive accession cohorts throughout the 1990s for officers who complete training. Where possible, we break down average TTT into average time under instruction (UI), time not under instruction (NUI), and stash time. Changes in average NUI and stash time over the period have been mixed.