 Welcome to the 2015 CNP All Hands Call. As usual, we're broadcasting live from the Defense Media Activity Studios. I'm Petty Officer Andrew Johnson, and joining me today is Chief of Naval Personnel, Vice-Admiral Bill Moran, and Fleet Master Chief, April Beldow. Thanks for stopping by. Thank you. Well, thanks for having us. Well, we know both of you have a habit of going around the fleet and doing these All Hands Calls. Is there anything that you've heard, any feedback you'd like to share to start the show off? Well, I think, Petters Johnson, we would love to just write the questions. We know that there's ships out there in the fifth fleet AOR that are dialed in. We know that there are folks from fleet concentration areas on both coasts dialed in, and we only have an hour. So, I think what we'd prefer to do is just get to their questions. Yes, sir. Let's get right to it. For our first one, let's head over to social media with MC1, Jen Blake. MC1, what do you have for us? Thanks MC1. Our first question today is from NC1Wetzer on USS America. And he says over the last few years, there have been several force-shaping tools rolled out such as ERB, EETP, and PTS, which is now Seaway. Are there any plans for any future initiatives for manning control? See if you'd like to take this one on. Sure. Thank you. Okay. All right. Well, NC1, thank you so much for the question. And with regards to are there going to be any more changes or initiatives for force-shaping, I will share with you absolutely not. Seaway's came online and it provided us an opportunity to make sure that we were paying attention to the health of all of our ratings. So with regards to any force-shaping, absolutely not. C&O's committed to that. He said no more ERBs, so you don't have to worry about that, shipmate. So we also, in addition to not doing ERBs, which is an involuntary way to ask people to leave the Navy, but there are some measures we're putting in place to make it easier for people to understand what their opportunities are in the Navy. So billet-based detailing, which is a program that's coming out this summer, is going to be an additive measure to what we already do in CMSID. So you have a better insight into what's available for you when your orders come up. That's after you've been through the Seaway process of making sure you can re-enlist. So there are some things coming out, but there's nothing coming out that would indicate that we're going to ask you to leave before you're ready to leave. Thanks for your question. That should make for some happy sailors right there. Yeah. All right. For our first question, let's head out to USS Carl Vincent that is already under way. Carl Vincent, go ahead with your question. Sir, Matthews, NT1 colleagues, HSM 73, deployed on the USS Carl Vincent. So what did you say that you'd like to support operations in their results and engage in the enemy? Sorry. I'm sorry. Good morning, sir. Question for you. Hey, shipmate. I'm sorry. We lost you. I got a little interference. Maybe you could repeat the basis of your question, please. Is there any plan on us receiving imminent danger pay? Got it. Thanks for the question. We got that back in August when we were out there on the ship you relieved on the bush. And the answer is the imminent danger pay areas are defined by the combatant commanders. So we live under their rule set. So right now there is no plan to re-institute imminent danger pay out in fifth fleet. That said, we're not doing anything with combat tax exclusion zones. And we're continuing to look at ways to make sure that we incentivize you out there at sea. That's why you saw a pretty significant bump in career see pay this year, see pay premium and also long deployment allowances that were instituted with Bush and Bataan. So hang in there. There is not going to be, to my knowledge, any change in imminent danger pay in the future. Definitely a popular question. For our next one, let's head out to Everett Washington via Skype. Everett, go ahead with your question. Good morning, sir. My name is O.S. Toohala from Naval Station Everett. And my question is, what are your views on transgenders in the Navy? And where do you see the Navy on the subject in the next couple of years? Yeah, I'll tell you that we are starting to talk to OSD, the Office of Secretary of Defense, and the folks in policy that reviewed all of those policies related to Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which we went through for several years and finally got to a place where all of us were comfortable. Transgender is another issue that we'll have to take a look at as men and women who join the service or once they get in the service decide that they want their personal interest address. So we are looking at that today. We haven't set any policies that are counter to anything that you've read about here in the last few months. So I appreciate the question. We'll continue to look at it. And I think most of us feel that what it is all about for us as sailors is the dignity and respect we show for each other no matter what our backgrounds are. Thank you for that, sir. For our next question, let's go live to Norfolk, Virginia. Norfolk, go ahead with your question. Good afternoon, sir, Master Chief. This is Petty Officer McBride. Do you two foresee any changes to the current physical readiness test in regards to how it's conducted? Thank you, sir. Shipmate, thank you so much for the question. And as we have traveled throughout the area, we continue to get that same question. And we are taking a look at the way that we perform our PFT, but most importantly, we're concerned about the health of all of our sailors. So we've asked for feedback from the fleet. If you have something that you feel that would help us better our culture of health, please do not hesitate to send me an email. Everybody has my email. You can find it on Facebook. So just shoot us a card and let us know what you feel would help us all in gaining a culture of fitness. So this is one of those topics where we have 325,000 sailors in the Navy and 325,000 opinions on the PRT program. So every stop we go, every all hands call, this issue comes up. And so we are addressing it. We've stood up a group that is assessing it from the fleet perspective and also from the policy and medical perspective. And there's two principles that I've asked those teams to look at. One is, whatever we do, it has to make perfectly good common sense to all of us as a Navy. So we know we operate in different environments from the Air Force and the Army and the Marines, so we have to address it from a Navy perspective. And the other one is we just, we have to make sure that whatever we do we're incentivizing better health. And you could argue that the way we administer it today, some of us starve ourselves to get there, some of us dehydrate ourselves to get there. That's not incentivizing good health. So we're looking at ways to make sure that sailors are trying to get to a better place in our own personal health at the end of the day. Thanks for the question. Maybe next show we could do a live PT session for all of you. Sure. Great idea. Our next question is coming to us from Mayport, Florida. Mayport, go ahead with your question. Good afternoon, sir. How are you? Good afternoon, Master Chief. H-1 Joshua Drew, Independent Duty Corpsman on USS Deseleven's DDG-68. I have a manning question. Do you think it hinders or hurts sailors when they come from A school, C school and they go to shore duty first, vice the fleet? From a healthcare provider view, I see sailors, they go to shore duty first, then they'll go to the fleet and they might not be able to handle the OP tempo, the underweighs, the deployment, the operational commitments when they come from shore duty and maybe they have hours from 07 to 15 or 16 and now they come to the fleet and they need to be at work at 0630 and they're staying until 1830 later at night. Do you think that hinders the sailor by sending him to shore duty first, vice the fleet? H-1, what I would like to share with you first of all, I don't believe that there's any sailor that graduates from their A or C school that does not want to go to sea duty first. However, as you know, we have shore duty billets and we have sea duty billets and we have to man both. So as far as hindering, I don't think it does because I instill and hope that my leadership, like yourself, will make sure that those sailors are getting what they need while they're on shore duty and you are also preparing them for their next duty station when they get to sea. So in a perfect world, everybody that came out of boot camp A and C schools would go right to the waterfront or to an operational unit at sea. But as fleet referred to, we've got several billets or several ratings that are sea-centric and sea-intensive. They do go to sea. Then we have a lot of billets and ratings like the ones that are in this audience today that are not sea-centric, they're shore-centric because of the nature of the work. So they naturally will go to those shore-duty billets. But there just isn't enough room as much as we've filled up the fleet over the last four or five years. There's not as much room out there to put sailors in every rate, in every class, right to sea. So we have to distribute them, but I think fleet's spot on that it's really up to leadership to make sure they're ready when the time comes to go to sea. Definitely another good one. Next question, let's go to a pre-recorded question from USS America. Hello, Master Chief. CS3 Weaver on board USS America. My question is, women have made a lot of strides in STEM, but they still fill a significantly smaller number of jobs than their male counterparts. What are we doing to recruit and retain women in these critical fields? Professor Weaver, thank you so much for the question. And what I will share with you is I've had the wonderful opportunity over the last year to work with the Enlisted Women's and Submarine Task Force. So as you all know, in January, the NAVAD men was released calling for applications for enlisted women and submarines. So I believe as an organization, we are looking to open up every rating and really give every sale the opportunity to participate in any job that they want to that they're qualified to participate in. And I believe in the future, we will continue on that road. Yeah, this is a really important topic for us. And it's a great question that you asked about the numbers of women in our Navy today. The total number for when you put all of our officers and enlisted together is about 17.8% of our forces female. Not enough in my view, and we're trying to bring in more. We actually bring in between 23 and 25% women in the enlisted and the officer communities today. And that's a far better place than we were 10 years ago, but we're still trying to continue to attract the highest quality young women that are coming out of high school and colleges. And perfectly frank with you on the officer's side, more than 50% of our college grads, female grads are STEM majors. And that's a fairly significant change over the last 10 to 20 years. So we have to go after young women in both our officer and enlisted communities if we're going to round out the Navy the way we want to. And then we have to retain that talent as they march through a career after their first enlistment, after their MSR, if you're an officer. And that's been a real challenge for us in our issues that we're addressing holistically and how we deal with the talent that we have in the Navy. Thanks for the question. Absolutely. Let's check back in with MC1 Blake in social media. MC1, what have you got for us? Thanks, MC1. So last week we asked sailors to submit questions for CMP through Twitter at usnpeople, or email usnpeopleatgmail.com. And we have received an overwhelming response. And so moving right along, our next question is for Fleet Master Chief. And it's from OSC Payne, aboard USS America also. And I'm going to paraphrase, but this is a hairstyle question. And I know Master Chief, you knew that there was going to be a hairstyle question coming up soon. But in the nerve admin for female hair regulations, the twists were authorized, but the dreadlocks were not. And Chief Payne was wondering why that is. Well, Chief Payne, thank you so much for the question. And first and foremost, I want to thank the feedback that we received from the fleet when we started down the road of updating our grooming standards for females. I got into the job in March of 13th, and that was one of the things that I received with regards to we need to update our grooming standards. So we went out east coast, west coast, around the globe, enlisted officers, and we asked for their feedback and what they wanted to see change. So as you know with the new at Navadman that came out, we opened up the hairstyles that were going to be authorized. And I will share with you, Chief Payne, I personally took on the job of researching the dreadlocks. And I set in some beauticians that were experts in dreadlocks and they talked to me about the maintenance and maintaining dreadlocks. And when we talk about deployments and having our shipmates out to sea for the length of time, I was concerned that they would not be able to maintain them. I shared that feedback, again, with the fleet. And with regards to, you said, twist. If I have a twist hairstyle and it's not in regulation, I can fix it immediately. That's not the case with dreadlocks. That hair fuses together and the only way to fix that, if it's not within the regulations, would be to cut it. And we did not want to have our sailors have to deal with that. That's why we came to the decision twist, yes, dreadlocks, no, because of the maintenance. Thank you so much, Chief Payne, for the question. All right. I think it's safe to say you saw that one coming, or at least somewhat. Who got it? All right, Master Chief. So let's head back out to sea with Carl Vinson. Carl Vinson, go ahead with your question. Sir, Master Chief, this is A02 Bailey from the USS Carl Vinson. I just had a question concerning POV shipments. Has there been any changes with vehicle shipments overseas for PCS moves? Well, you know, Shipman, we'll take that back to verify. But to my knowledge, no changes have been made for overseas shipment of POVs. There are a limited number of opportunities for those lifts. It's a very expensive proposition for the Navy to do. And we have seen some changes with respect to PCS changes to Hawaii, but not to other overseas locations. So we'll get an answer back out to your ship and make sure they know. Thank you. Wonderful. Let's head back out to Norfolk, Virginia. Norfolk, go ahead with your question. Good afternoon, sir. Master Chief, this is Pat Osterheim from HSE 5. Sir, sailors take great pride in respecting the history and heritage of their uniforms. My question is, what kind of changes can we anticipate for our current sea bags and how is it going to affect our uniform allowances? We never get a question about uniforms. You want to start? Absolutely. Well, thank you again. All of these questions are great. So with regards to the sea bag, any future changes to the sea bag and the clothing allowance that we receive if we have any changes? So right now, I will share with you, there are no, there aren't any new initiatives for new uniforms to be added to the sea bag. As you know, however, we do have the service dress blue uniform for our males and females that's been updated, and that will be phased in so it won't be like you have to go buy it and take money out of your pocket to replace that. That would be a phased in approach. The other uniform we're talking about for our E6 and below are the light weights. The light weights for the NWUs. We got some feedback from the fleet for those stairs that are serving in areas like Byrain or over in Diego Garcia. So they asked us to look at a light weight NWU. So that's being tested. We're almost complete with that test and that will be an optional item. Again, everybody won't be required to have it so phased into your sea bag and as you replace your uniform with your annual clothing allowance, that would be when you could buy that if you chose to. The other one that's out there that we've gotten a lot of negative feedback on is the fire resistant coveralls for those of you at sea, which are mandatory now. You must wear those. You can't wear the NWU ones when you go to sea. And there's a lot of good reason, a lot of history behind why we went that path. But when we put those out, we didn't do a lot of research. We didn't do as much research and wear testing as we should have done and they showed up very stiff, very heavy, weren't breathable and they discolored when they went through the laundry, lots of issues with it. So we've taken all that feedback from sailors like on the bush who spent nine months at sea with that uniform and others and we've now redesigned that uniform and we're in the process of going out on bids to produce a new FRV that answers a lot of those concerns. That one's probably the biggest change but it's really an update to an existing uniform, not a new one. All right, for our next question let's go out to Everett Washington. Everett, go ahead with your question. Good afternoon sir, Master Chief. I am Petty Officer Chase from Naval Station Everett. And my question is, as a Navy we have taken great strides to bring awareness to topics such as suicide and sapper issues. I was wondering if there's any plans to implement postpartum depression awareness training at shore commands that have higher populations of pregnant sailors. You want to start? Yes sir, that's an outstanding question and I'll be honest with you, that is the first time since we've been traveling CMP that I've heard that question so I'm going to take that on board to see because that makes sense and we do need to look at the overall areas of where our sailors are having some challenges and we can look into that type of training. Good question. All right, let's head back out to Mayport, Florida with a live question. Good afternoon sir, AC-1 Osterberg coming from Naval Station Mayport, Florida. My question is, with everything going on in the world today, can sailors expect to start seeing individual augmented billets start popping up again? Yeah, that's a wonderful question. We get asked that a lot and obviously there's concern because of the pain that we all experienced back in the mid-2000s when our IA accounts were approaching 11-12,000 IAs and that had a big impact on both at-sea commands but also shore commands. Well, that number is all the way down below 2,500 today and we expected to bottom out about 2,000 and at 2,000 IAs we're probably going to see the reserve force carry most of that burden and frankly the reserve force has been carrying the burden for the active force on IAs for a very long time but that number I don't see going up significantly because we're not in large masses outside of Iraq and Afghanistan and most of the deployments over there will be handled by the services and not through an IA process that we experienced 5-10 years ago. So I don't think you have to look forward to another tax on our commands with more IAs in the future. Thanks for the question. Good question. Next question, come up on our studio audience. Go ahead. Good afternoon, sir and Master Chief, thank you for taking my question. My question today is why does the Navy not have a TA waiver if you go over the 16 credit hours per fiscal year, sir? Well, I'm going to let the fleet bellow who is on TA right now getting her degree answer that because she gets this question a lot. Thanks. It is a good question. So what I hear you say is I'm ready to move on to more than 16 credits and I'll share with you we are committed to making sure that we give all of our senators again that are eligible for TA to have the opportunity to use that. So when you talk, that's pretty 16 credits a year is pretty good when you're in regards to taking classes and also doing your work and also needing to study for advancement and also needing to get qualification and I'm just joking. Just joking. So bottom line, we want everybody to have the same opportunity and if somebody is using 18, 23 and 24, that means somebody else is not getting an opportunity to use TA. So that's why we have the cap on that and it's for a year. So that's pretty good, that's a pretty good load that you are handling while you're also doing your Navy job. Oh yeah. You're welcome. So we also want if you're going after TA and you're doing those 16 credit hours, we want it 100% funded. And it's in the budget, TA is 100% funded for the Navy for as far in the future as we can see. So if you're like TA and you want to continue to do it at a cap of 16 credit hours a year, you're going to get funded 100%. Yes sir. Thanks. Wonderful question. Well if I may just kind of follow up, obviously education is important. We know we get advancement credits for bachelors or associates degrees. Have you ever considered doing it for graduate level programs? We get that question quite a bit, but there are other opportunities for graduate education. That's principally what the GI Bill was designed to do for many of us and so I think the GI Bill is kind of the answer for anybody who wants to go beyond TA past the first degree into a graduate level degree. So no, there's no process in place now to open up grad ed to or graduate degrees inside of TA at this point. Thank you sir. For our next question, let's check in with MC1 Blake. MC1, what do you have for us? Hey, thanks MC1. We've had some really great questions so far. If you have a question for CNP or Fleet Master Chief, it is not too late. You can still reach us at Twitter or at USN People via Twitter. So our next question is from Wyandt-Threame or Sadie's Payne on board USS Baton and she says, sir can you tell me about the military compensation report that is coming out this month? What changes in our benefits do you see from this report? Yeah, first of all I want you to know that I'm wearing my baton belt buckle from when I was down there on your changing command right after you guys got back from deployment in the fall. So for all Batan sellers out there welcome home. You guys had an incredible deployment and Batans had a lot of long deployments over the last 10 years and you guys did your ship name proud. So we like you just saw the report it was released a few days ago and we are digging through the 250 pages of data all the recommendations and looking for things that make sense to us and where we have to provide comment. The Department of Defense owes the White House our view on what the commission said by the middle of March so we have just about a month to really analyze 250 pages worth of data to determine what we want to support and how we want to support it or not. So we're going to continue to look at that we will certainly communicate with the fleet as we look but keep in mind these are recommendations from a commission. These are not things we're going to implement into law or policy any time in the near future and I think the other issue we hear a lot from sailors is is this going to change my current benefits and the answer is absolutely no. One of the premises that went into the commission's report and all their work was that it will do no harm to sailors who exist on active duty today in other words anything that we have in place today will be grandfathered back in. So in other words if the retirement system were to change under this commission recommendation years down the road you would be able to keep the one you're on and have an opportunity to opt into the new one if you thought it was better. So I wouldn't worry too much about the commission report it's going to take us a while to analyze what it says and what it means and we will communicate that to you as we learn going forward. So great question. I know it's on the minds of a lot of sailors out there because you read the headlines like people are going to get rid of your retirement program or your health care. That is absolutely not true. Okay. Thanks for asking a question. Definitely alleviating concerns there. Let's check back in with Carl Vinson. Carl Vinson go ahead with your question. Good afternoon sir. Good afternoon My name is from the department my question is do you think our current sailor program is effective in getting sailors into a rate in a timely manner and also do you see at some point in time the tax sailor program being done away with to allow all sailors to come into the Navy as rated sailor? Sir. That's a great question sir so I'm going to answer it. If I can't. Oh yeah shipmate, thanks a lot and the reason why I started smiling when you were asking the question is because as again these are questions on the minds of all your shipmates out in the fleet so this is not the first time we've heard that and one of our responsibilities is to make sure that as we are looking to make sure that we're giving opportunities like yourself a tax sailor who came in and it can advance at that 24 months time frame and be ready to take an advancement exam to third class petty officer so we are looking at it we are evaluating the program and I heard you ask if we think it's going to be around for a while and the question is jury still out CMP has asked us to get together to make sure that we are providing every opportunity possible for our shipmates so we don't want to hold you back if it's time for you to advance so know that we do understand your frustration and we are in the process of finding out ways that we can give you that opportunity to advance when you're ready to advance so that's an outstanding question thank you. Let me add on that there are a lot of great NC's career counselors out there in the Navy who are trying to get you placed into the rates you want to be placed into but I would ask you don't hold out for that perfect rate perfect match for you because often times what that means is you wait too long and you get boxed into having no choice at the end of the day so make sure you keep your aperture open look at different options and take the one that best matches you and the time frame that allows you to take a test and get a stripe and move on so that's really important listen to your career counselors listen to your chief and your chain of command thank you. Great advice let's head out to USS Arleigh Burke next question. I'm CS3 Harris, Isaiah Harris from the Arleigh Burke and my question for you today is what are the chances of deployments getting shorter? Welcome home first of all CS3 I know you guys just got back this fall as well part of the bush strike group we are on a path right now and CNO is committed to this fleet leadership is committed to this to gradually reduce the lengths of our deployments around the globe and there's a lot of reasons why we've had these extended deployments over the last several years but we are committed now to start drawing that back down to about seven month deployments and we think in the next couple years somewhere in the fiscal year 17 time frame all of our CSGs and ESGs will be down to that seven month deployment so we're gradually getting there it's going to take a little time to work through the backlog and maintenance which drives a lot of these dates but we're slowly gradually working our way back thanks for the question I think you might have made some smiling sailors right there sir alright next question let's head out to Naval Station Everett Everett go ahead with your question Good morning Master Chief, my name is Oost I'm from Naval Station Everett and my question for you is do you feel that changing traditions like CPO 365 and crossing the line are best for the Navy's future? What I will share with you Shipmate is tradition and heritage I believe it's going to stay around for a long time but I do understand that there are some things that we did back in the day that did not really effectively make us a better sailor, a better chief or as we cross the line a different person so I think it's important that we continue to make sure that we ask ourselves the question what value is added as we continue to go through training on heritage and tradition so I believe it is best for our future when we ask that question thank you alright let's go back to Norfolk, Virginia with a live feed Norfolk go ahead with your question Good afternoon sir this is Petty Officer Brown my question is concerning advancement the current calculation of advancement has changed twice in four years will there be some type of standardization to look forward to in the future? Yeah there have been some changes and we think they're pretty important changes and all these changes and the recommendations came from the chief's mess up through Mikpon and then to me and I liked the direction that Mikpon wants to take the final multiple score calculation for advancement opportunities and principally the more senior you get the more we should value your performance and less value on the test taking the more junior you are then we have to make sure that you meet a minimum standard of knowledge and skills so the test is weighted about where it was before we're slowly getting rid of P&A points and only allocating P&A points to the top 25% of the sailors who are in zone for being advanced so if you continue to perform real well and you continue to test well enough you're going to like your chances and it doesn't disadvantage junior sailors over those who have been in their rate in their pay grade it puts everybody on an equal footing and competes and I think that's what we heard from sailors as we heard from the chief's mess and that's the direction we're going to go we've decided not to make any changes over the next couple years so we can see how the past changes are affecting the types of folks that are getting advanced and the feedback that we get from the chief's mess and from commands is going to help us determine if we need to continue to move in that direction and how far and can we reverse some of those decisions so that's what we're doing and if you've got some ideas about how you would like to see that change please get it up through the chief's mess because we will listen to them, thank you and the CMP just to make to clarify something about the P&A points so those of us who already are using the P&A points you had two tests to continue using that test we said we're going to go five cycles prior to you not being able to use them so for those of you that are looking at me like three more chances to get advanced using those P&A points and then we start only allowing the top 25% to receive the P&A points and while we're talking about advancements the last two, three cycles we've had advancement opportunity for most ratings in the Navy to be above our 10-year average our projections for this coming March exam cycle is the same so we're going to continue to see good advancement opportunity for most rates and we fully recognize that there are rates out there where we are at or near zero opportunity and we're trying to balance those over time we also recognize that there are rates where it's 100% opportunity I don't think that's any healthier than zero we need to be balanced we need to be roughly in that 40-50% opportunity range for as many sailors as possible and there are reasons for that the CB ratings are at or near zero because we've reduced the size of that force over the last few years but even those rates are starting to stabilize and we'll see improvement there and there are other ratings like that so keep your hopes up and I think we're going to do our job to try to balance rating and opportunity for advancement for as many rates as possible okay let's take another question from our studio audience Petty Officer Stafford go ahead good afternoon sir Master Chief Petty Officer Stafford from NAC Maryland with the fleet transitioning from the P3s to the P8s I was wondering how you think that's going to affect the community since we primarily augment these squadrons and do you see any changes in the training pipeline to include the training for TFO and not just aircrew you're striking at my heart here Petty Officer Stafford, former P3 guy so the long transition plan out of the EP3 which is what you're referring to and some other capability you're familiar with is a plan to spread that capability between not only P8 but also with the Triton program so that master plan is in work it's funded, the teams are working through how we're going to man it, how we're going to equip it and then of course how we're going to operate it which is going to change from the good old days in the EP3 which is a great platform but we are making those transitions and I think in the end we're going to have more data more information available to do the work that you do and I think the CT rate and the folks that have been part of that that community for years have themselves very well employed over time thanks alright for our next question let's go to a pre-recorded one from USS George H.W. Bush Hi I'm M.C. Woodruff from Indian Department onboard the USS George H.W. Bush my question is will the early out option become more available to other races? Will the early out option be more available to more more rates and what I will share with you Shipvate is again our responsibility is to make sure that we keep our rates balanced and what we found at the right balance rate is between 98 and 102 percent and we're good so unless the rate becomes extreme and over that a lot of percentages we probably will not be offering the early out program but we do look at that constantly and make sure that we're keeping everybody balanced and that goes to advancement to CNP that's why we make sure with Seawades we're paying attention to make sure that we don't get any of the ratings either under man or over man so the jury is still out on that okay for our next question we're going out to USS Iwo Jima that is also underway Iwo Jima go ahead with your question yes Bay 1 Laws from the Aircraft Intermediate Maintenance Department here on board USS Iwo Jima is the billet made with blue detailing well I think you broke up in the middle of the question but I think you're asking about BBD or billet based detailing what that's going to do to help and frankly we're going to go live with billet based detailing in August of this year August September this year and that's going to really expand our insights into the specific requirements for every billet in the enlisted force in the Navy much like we do with the officer communities today we know exactly what training is required for every officer we know exactly what billet in the Navy we know exactly what rank what education and what skill sets and experience you bring to be able to qualify for those billets we do not have that level of detail in the enlisted billet cycle today that's what BBD will do for us which means when you jump on a CMS ID and shop for your next job you're going to be have a lot more awareness and knowledge about what that next job requires and whether you will qualify you don't hang on and you don't have hope out there without full knowledge of what the billet requirements are so we're really looking forward to BBD getting out there it will give much greater insight to your career counselors and your chain of command to understand what billets they have on board the ship how they're described and what the requirements are for each one and CMP would I also add to that is one of the areas that we're looking at now and talking to commands about is from their AMD excuse me and EDVR is to make sure that they post exactly what they want in a sailor so whatever billet they have this sailor, this pay grade with these NECs with this type of experience and training that will also be a part of BBD so therefore the commands will be getting the right fit when they gain that sailor on board it'll also allow us in the detailers when we're cutting your orders what training you need to qualify for that billet now let's say you're going to a billet where you've got NNEC but you don't have the latest version or an update or a new NEC that takes your experience and makes you a better trained sailor to fit into the billet you're going to so we will make sure that we get the training for you in route as opposed to showing up on the ship or into the squadron without the NNEC and then they go well I guess I got to send you off ship and then it's time out of the fleet where you're not getting that experience it doesn't help the sailor, it doesn't help the ship it really is on us in the view purge to make sure we get that done okay for our next question let's go out to Sonny San Diego via Skype San Diego go ahead with your question good afternoon sir and Master Chief my question is as a PS I've seen the service records go away the field service records go away and we've implemented the electronic service record is there a plan to integrate our ESR that we're required to update and keep up to date with the other systems to take the burden off of the sailors and ensuring the accuracy of their service records especially those eligible for board selections I think that means I'm going to answer this question because the Boston say anything but no it's electronic I don't understand outstanding question PS3 we are in the process right now updating a lot of our IT systems and those particular um what's the word I'm looking for the application application that you're talking about like for BOL and you have insips and you have ESR so we have a bunch of different programs that we ask sailors to go and they have to stop get out start all over again so to answer your question yes in the future there is a initiative for us to be able to one stop shop push a button and everything gets populated I think that's what you're talking about we have a lot of advice having to go into update three or four different systems out there so yes absolutely going to take some time so be patient please please we're still in the 1950s when it comes to IT we got a ways to go yet but there is a very delivered planning effort underway right now to modernize the Navy's personnel IT infrastructure but it does take time you can imagine the number of applications we have out there running simultaneously people in this room are all used to networks and things that go on in networks you can only imagine where ours is today in personnel we've got to invest in this and we're setting a course to get there but your ideas like that one about ESR updates are really important so feed those ideas up so that we know we're covering everything we need to cover great let's take another live question from Mayport, Florida Mayport go ahead with your question Good afternoon sir, FC100 from Charles about DDG-80 my question for you is what are some policies and tools that may be implemented in a new personnel program to ensure our top performing sailors are being retained yeah that's a wonderful question and I love that background view of Mayport down there in the harbor I wish I were there right now beautiful place we're doing a lot right now to assess how we can continue to attract great sailors to come into the Navy but more importantly is to retain the best ones for a long career up to 20 years and beyond and my concern is that I don't think because of our the amount of data that we have that is not well understood that we often make mistakes in the personnel business on trying to make sure that we give the right opportunity to the best sailor at the right time and then are we putting in place mechanisms to train and have a continuum of training for the enlisted force in particular which we haven't had we do pretty well in the officer communities so we're looking at that all together at one time to look at policies that we could implement that help retain more talent in multiple aspects of the Navy to include our female population to retain our best technical populations and those are folks that are very expensive to train very expensive to keep we don't want to lose that great talent if we can set policies in place that inspire you to stay for a longer period of time so more to follow we got a lot of initiatives underway right now we're sorting through those we're trying to figure out which ones we can implement in the next year or two and those that will take longer because they just take longer and there are a lot of good initiatives that are being thought of by the folks that run Bupers right now and I think you'll like what you see when we get to them thank you alright let's take another question from our studio audience go ahead good afternoon sir master chief my question for you is what is something that you have in your toolbox of success that you would advise every sailor to have well those are always the hard questions you want to start with that one I will start yes sir one of the things that I think that's in my toolbox is I'm going to share patience patience and we've heard that a lot with regards to advancement and being able to stay in a rate when we're told that we might need to convert but I would share with you being patient and just allowing your leadership to guide you and mentor you and counsel you and not wanting it right now you know we're in this now navy now navy you know microwave I want it now be patient be patient and I guarantee you continue doing those great things be patient and everything that your heart desires will come to you you just got to be patient now coming from somebody who just goes crazy after two seconds of waiting on something but I've learned patience over the last 30 years I would add you know there's lots of things that you can read about the great leaders and great success stories have had in our business I believe that you have to be humble and you have to put sailors and your subordinates ahead of yourself every single time and if you do that you're going to be successful because they will raise you up I think you'll feel that the longer you stay in a navy I think it's evident by every great leader I've come across the people that I try to emulate are those who are always putting their sailors and their juniors ahead of themselves when the opportunity exists and there'll be plenty of opportunity for that great question thank you excellent question alright let's check back in with M-C-1 Blake in social media M-C-1 what do you have for us hey thanks M-C-1 we just received a bunch of brand new questions from sailors across the fleet and this next one is from twitter at usnpeople are the SRB levels going to change to give educated sailors and technical rates an incentive to stay in yeah SRB's we look at SRB's a couple times a year and we adjust them based on the retention behavior by every rate that we have the rate starts to look like we're losing sailors that we would rather keep because that rate's so important to our navy mission you'll start to see SRB's roll in and opportunity to apply for those SRB's on the other hand there are rates that we're starting to see retention behavior be so good that there's no longer a reason to continue to incentivize people to stay in those rates so we'll start trimming those back so it's an ebb and flow it comes and goes much like advancement opportunities that are influenced by that same process SRB's are looked at a couple times a year so that we can at the end of the day at the end of the year we've got the right skill sets and the right numbers of folks at every rate that we have in the navy alright for our next question let's check back in with USS Iwo Jima Iwo Jima go ahead with your question good afternoon sir YN25 and with Takron 22 sir the fiscal year 15 passed your state to the armed service committee support pay and benefits have any insight as to if this would affect education programs such as A or NC pay yeah first of all I'm impressed that you're reading the posture statement for fiscal year 15 but good on you and I'm glad you're paying attention to the challenges and tough choices that we're all having to make in a declining budget environment that said we're not cutting back on those educational opportunities I mentioned earlier if you weren't able to be up when the earlier question on tuition assistance came up we're funding tuition assistance at 100% we're not taking any we're not applying a tax to that program at all to pay for other things so we're fully committed to the best we can to continue to provide opportunities for sailors at every level to be able to improve their professional and personal lives and education is an essential part of that alright Admiral we're going back to where you said you'd rather be Mayport Florida coming to us live Mayport go ahead with your question hello I'm B.M. Tumor from the USS Carney DDG-64 and my question is concerning these ship spaces and equipment I've noticed our degrading because of the outsources of jobs to contractors why aren't we training our own sailors to do the job to take more responsibility of their space and their equipment wow that's a really good question and it's one of those balance equations frankly that you know we have sailors that are brought into Navy for very specific reasons fewer and fewer pack sailors that are generalists in particular so the work that we're bringing you in to do is work we need you to do is to some of the base upkeep and building upkeep that you're referring to so we have contracted that out and if those contractors aren't doing their job then we need to make sure that they understand their requirement and their loyalty to the Navy is as important as those are wearing uniform and those base commanders should be made aware of areas where you're not happy or you see an opportunity to improve that let's get that word up through the chain of command to make sure everybody's aware of it okay let's take another prerecorded question this one coming to us from USS Fort McHenry good morning sir I'm OS 2 Rodney Daniels on board USS Fort McHenry a lot of my shipmates were wondering if there's going to be a special incentive paid for people who do back to back deployments in one year go ahead back to back deployment in one year I want to be that person wow well first of all I seen you out there and I wish I was where you are that was a wonderful picture and you had something in the background I'm not going to call it a carrier but I think that's what it was but with regards to incentive pay for back to back sea duty excuse me deployments I don't know if you were able to listen to CMP earlier but we talked about the initiative that's already being worked with regards to those type of deployments getting down to seventh month deployment and I know you've heard about optimized fleet readiness program we're working that so I think for you OS 2 the days of you seeing a a seven or eight month deployment coming home for four months then going back out for seven eight months I think that we are committed to that not for that not to happen so if that doesn't happen then guess what's going to be with the pay CMP yeah so I think what OS 2 might be referring to as well though is we do have sailors that go from sea to sea and they might find themselves coming off a platform that just got off a deployment onto a platform that's going on deployment and whether that was Fort McHenry or somebody else we understand that and it's there are ways that we can incentivize sailors to do those sorts of things but we would prefer not to ask you to do that for obvious reasons there are other sailors I've run into who love going to sea and want to go on deployment and so they they volunteer for those sorts of jobs where they can go from one platform to another and go on deployment so it depends but there is no pay incentive today that accounts for what you describe that said I will tell you that the four to four naval forces in both pack fleet and in Rota are asking hey we are out there a lot more than the average ship doing deployments where are we in this high deployment allowance that's been that's been allocated to folks that have deployed for greater than 220 days and the answer is you got to deploy for greater than 220 days right now are you not eligible for that for that pay but we are aware that there are folks in FDNF that frankly are out there quite a bit when you total it up on an annual basis but you also get to come back home periodically and not be deployed so it's a balance that we have to address and we can only afford so much right now we are willing to compensate those sailors who have gone on deployment and then extended well beyond normal six month deployment into 220 days and beyond which happened to Bush it happened to her entire striker but happened to Baton and the ships associated with Baton and it's happened to a few other units out there and those folks have been compensated for those longer deployments all right let's take another question from Skype this one from Naval Base San Diego San Diego go ahead with your question good afternoon sir Master Chief MC1 Chang from ComNAP surf pack and my question is what type of impact do you see the current CG modernization plan having on fleet readiness that's a CNP question okay I'll take that one on yeah as you know where we there's a plan underway your current boss was the architect of that plan so you might want to ask him he's he's been the guy who's really pushed this this this idea as an innovative way to continue to keep important assets in our fleet that we need into the future those cruisers play an important role in our CSGs and so but we also recognize that we've got to modernize them we've got to update them we got to keep them well maintained and and to do that you got to bring them through these rather extensive maintenance periods and and if you're going to put them through extensive maintenance periods you could argue that you don't need to keep them manned fully during all of that time so so Admiral Rodin and Admiral Fanta now in the Pentagon have designed a plan it's been put in the budget and I think in at the end of the day it's going to vastly it's at least going to sustain if not improve our overall fleet readiness because the capability that they provide to our strike groups is not going to go away because we decommission those ships they're going to stay on active duty for a long time into the future all right let's take another live question from Norfolk Virginia Norfolk go ahead with your question afternoon sir is everyone staying from HCC5 I was wondering if what are these if there's any statistics on the effectiveness on the NKOs and GMTs boy NKO so my informal poll of arrays of hands of how effective NKO is almost always turns out to be it's really really bad so we know we've got a lot of work to do on NKO and the effectiveness of NKO with respect to GMT therefore is not going to be very good if the environment's not good and the media that delivers that GMT is not very good you're not going to have a good experience and the effect is not going to be very good so we have metrics to test to see how well that GMT is being received either through NKO or otherwise no we don't have that and I'd like to have that ability but the general feedback I get from sailors if I were to ask you I'm sure you would probably tell me that you don't think it's very effective in many cases so what we are trying to do is consolidate the numbers of GMT requirements into smaller numbers to effectively use our core values training to teach the fundamentals of GMT whatever the topic is and when you do that you find out that you thematically hit things over and over again and it starts to sink in as opposed to one topic at a time at different periods in time it's not as effective so we're doing a lot of work Admiral White down in Netsie is taking this bear on we owe it to our fleet COs to try to reduce the amount of time that they have to spend training their crews and not be relying on a system that doesn't seem to be as robust as it certainly needs to be and that's in NKO alright thank you sir let's go back under way with USS Iwo Jima Iwo Jima go ahead with your question good afternoon sir HM2 Claypool Fleet Surgical Team 8 in regards to the 1% BAA what is the proportion accounting for the differences of living in higher versus lower areas yeah so BAA rates are assessed by region and by community several times during the course of a fit up cycle so they're adjusted based on what the the rental market and the market indicators are and that's done by a different agency outside of the Navy control and so those rates are done by an independent source and they are supposed to adjust for the cost of living the rental market and all of those things that factor in the 1% reduction that you're reading about is just that it's a 1% reduction from 100% of BAH when I was a young guy in the Navy we were at 75% and we thought that was pretty good we've gotten used to 100% which is very good all we're doing now is trying to arrest the growth which we all know that in some communities especially where you've got a large fleet population that landlords tend to look at those BAH rates and that's what they're going to charge because they know they can get that so we've got to be careful about not just growing BAH because we can we've got to put some controls in there and the start of that is just this initial step of 1% we don't have to go any further in that just to keep the inflation of rental markets to a level we can afford in the future absolutely, well we've got some great questions so far and the show is sadly coming to an end but we're going to take another one from our studio audience go ahead good afternoon sir, master chief, seaman knight, ceremonial guard I read recently that the fleet or fleet marine force corpsman might be going away and being replaced with enlisted marines what opportunities or options might we're already in that rate or hope to be in that rate in the next few years have, sir I'm not aware of that one first time I've heard that one it was on military.com I believe we're going to look at it and I know where you live so we'll get you an answer thanks for the question but to my knowledge we're being asked to provide more corpsman to the marine corps not less you bet we've got some time to take another social media question MC1 do you have one for us? absolutely MC1 this next one is from petty officer Taylor Farish who sent one to usm people at gmail and he asks did we lose cap quotas when the new cap instruction went into effect outstanding question and everybody pay attention absolutely not all we did was change it from two times a year to once a year between 1 july and 30 september this year so this fiscal year no command lost any quotas cmp was very specific in making sure when he gave us direction that we didn't take any cap quotas from any of those commands that are eligible to receive cap so one more time because I know I stuttered the first time absolutely not shipmate all right we've got about 90 seconds left do you have anything we missed? we covered a lot of ground and really appreciate the questions I'm sure there's several more out there that are unanswered and if we get a hold of those questions we will respond to you just because we didn't get to them doesn't mean we won't answer them there is a website out there an email address called usnpeople at gmail.com where you can get subscribed to our weekly update that comes out every week that we send out to the fleet but you can also send your question to that email address and we'll respond to you on that email so feel free to get in touch with us that way hey I would just say that there's a lot of churn out there in the media today about this military compensation report that's out and I would I would only ask you to all breathe through your noses don't hyperventilate over this as if the world's going to change in your pocketbook tomorrow it's not going to happen these are recommendations these are things that we're going to take on leave it to the folks in Washington guys like me and fleet mashief beldo we've got your interest at heart and we'll represent you to make sure that no harm is done to your quality of service in this navy because you can see by the number of folks that are out there dialing in from Iwo Jima and Vincent out in fifth fleet and sailors that are on both coasts doing great work for us all over this world we're out of time I apologize everyone thank you for our studio audience thank you Admiral thanks for joining us