 I'm Petty Officer Alec Jacobs and we are here for the All Hands Call with the Chief of Naval Personnel. We'd like to thank everyone watching at home and of course our live studio audience here at Fort Meade, Maryland. Our special guest today are Chief of Naval Personnel, Vice Admiral Bill Moran, and of course Fleet Master Chief, April Belladot. Today we have the CMP and the Fleet and they are here to address your concerns. These are the people who really are going to affect your life in the Navy so make sure you ask them some tough questions. They're 10 feet away, all right? It might not get closer. We're talking about pay, quality of life, duty stations, all that is up for grabs today. And of course we'll be taking your live questions on Facebook and Twitter at the hashtag AskCMP. And if you want to see the behind the scenes look of the production, make sure you check out Periscope, which we're going to hit on a little bit later. We also have live beautiful San Diego in the show, Norfolk and ships at sea. Admiral, Fleet, like we talked about, no softballs today, okay? No softballs. I'm proud of that. Our first prerecorded question is coming to us from the Carl Vinson, which affects all sailors. Good afternoon, sir. Anthony Torielo, Commander of the United States Navy. I'm the Intelligence Officer on USS Carl Vinson, CBN 70. My question to you today, sir, is with all the news in the Department of Defense on restructuring a lot of the personnel issues, what are you doing, sir, to look forward towards restructuring a lot of the 401K and TSP issues that are going on and making sure that we are continuing to be competitive with our corporate peers inside the United States of America? Thank you, sir. Yeah, Commander, thanks a lot for the question. You probably have read quite a bit here lately about the Military Retirement Commission that was formed up over a year ago and came out with a series of recommendations out of their study. One of them included changes to many of our benefits and compensation packages. Key among them, though, was the discussion about what we're going to do differently about retirement for members of the military service. And so they have put forward a series of recommendations. All the services were allowed to participate in working groups to discuss those and what the impacts would be and what we thought about them. And then those recommendations went forward to the Secretary of Defense over to Congress. And Congress, both Houses of Congress have included language in the current authorization bill that's out there. It has not been signed by the President yet, so it's not law yet. But there is a recommendation in there to change our retirement program in the future. It will look very much like, if it holds true to form, it'll look very much like what you described, a 401k type of vehicle that you would see anywhere on the outside in most of corporate America. But it will also continue to provide some of the same functions we have today in terms of a defined benefit after 20 years. So it's a combination of retirement programs that we see across America. I am very confident that if that law gets signed out by the President, I think the language currently shows it will be implemented in 2018. So in about three years, two to three years. And anybody on active duty prior to that point keeps the retirement program we currently have. So we are all grandfathered in on the current retirement program. And then any new sailors who join the Navy after that implementation date in 2018 will be subject to the new retirement program. And if you as a young sailor, especially if you read this new program and say, well, I really kind of like this one better than the one that I have today, there will be an opportunity, we believe, to opt into that program. So you will be, you'll still have choice, but you won't be required to shift to the new program that's defined in the law. So it's a great question. And I think that program, if it is instituted and becomes law, will actually provide all of us a greater degree of flexibility in the future that I think will be attractive to a lot of young sailors. And sir, I think that kind of goes hand in hand with the SEC DEF's force of the future initiative, which has been one of his driving goals since he took office that individuals nowadays want that flexibility. I think that ties right into it. Our next question is coming live from Norfolk. Go ahead with your question. My question is, what can you do to help the communication between command and family liaisons, especially here in Norfolk where that communication is very much so lacking and leaving us families here in the dark, the majority of the time? Well, I'm sorry, who are you? I am Natalie Price. I am a military wife. Okay, Natalie, thanks for the question. You know, frankly, I'm disappointed to hear that you're having trouble getting communications from your command. And so I'll certainly relay that back to the fleet commanders and down to the CEOs to make sure that we're doing a better job of being more effective in our communications. My experience having been around and fleet and I both see a lot of the fleet is that sailors feel pretty good about the communications. But we often forget about the important, as we call it, the 51% of the vote at home who also need to get the information, the same level of information that you all get as sailors. We owe it to our family members to get it too. So from my perspective in N1, we put out very open communications every week and a thing called a weekly wire that we are happy to share with anybody who wants to get that information. All the Command Master Chiefs get it today and then we open it up to anybody who wants to go online and get it directly from us. And we'll post on our webpage how to apply for and subscribe to that weekly wire. And that information will be available to anybody who, family member, spouse, or otherwise. Now, that takes care of the big Navy picture. You're probably focused more on specific command-related information about deployments, about policies that affect you and your spouse. And all I can tell you is that we will make sure that gets shared down the chain of command so that people out there are paying close attention to getting information to their commands and their spouses and families. Thanks for bringing it up. Great information, sir. Next, we're going to check in with our social media center where Petty Officer Gaby has been monitoring Facebook and Twitter all morning long at the hashtag AskCMP. Social media, what do you have for us? MC2, things are going great right now. As you said, we've been getting those questions in on Facebook and Twitter at the hashtag AskCMP. Right now, we're also on Periscope. You can follow us behind the scenes at USN People to follow what we're doing around the studio. We have a question from Twitter from YK2Sunshine. She would like to know, can the reserve force expect more ADSW, ADT ops in fiscal year 16 than we had in fiscal year 15? I'll say YK2Sunshine. Okay. Great question. As everybody knows, we are in a pretty tight fiscal environment and we try to balance the needs of the fleet through ADT and ADSW to meet certain needs and capabilities at the staff level in the fleet and other places. So I can't tell you precisely because we're under a continuing resolution. We do not have a budget yet. What that outlook is going to be. But we know and we appreciate the value very much of what the reserves bring in support of the active force and we'll continue to fight for that money every opportunity we get. Our next question is coming to us live from the USS Eisenhower, which is at sea. Eisenhower, go ahead with your question. Good morning, sir. I'm ADT Brandt. I work in the engineering department on the ship. Our question is, in regards to the retirement change, how do we keep new personnel and new civilians interested in joining the military after all these large changes in the retirement plan? Hey, thanks, Ike, for the question. And back to this whole notion about the concern that the new retirement plan might actually be something counter to what we're trying to do, which is continue to attract the best young men and women to join the Navy. I think what we hear from a lot of the millennial generation and other younger generations out there that are considering service in uniform is they want to join an organization that has a greater degree of flexibility and choice and opportunity. And then when you really peel this back on this new retirement program, that was the commission's intent as well, was to try to modernize our retirement program that more closely matches the competition we see on the outside. So I don't think it's going to be something that distracts us from being able to attract young men and women. In fact, most of the audience in here, if I asked you when you were at your recruiter office, if the first question you asked was, hey, tell me about the retirement plan in the United States Navy, that's probably not the first question you asked. When the data is pretty clear that only 15% or so of sailors who join the Navy ever reach 20 years in a retirement. So retirement really isn't on the minds of recruits so much as it is once they get established. And I say, hey, you know, I might want to make this a career or I've got a family and I'm concerned about whether I'm going to be able to have an affordable lifestyle in the future. That becomes much more of a planning factor. But I think when you look at this new retirement program, once it becomes law, you might look at it and say, hey, this is going to give me more flexible options earlier in my career than the current retirement program, which is all or nothing at 20, correct? You got to go to 20 to be able to be to be vested and be able to have an opportunity to retire. The new program will have an opportunity earlier to and then transfer that and make it portable across Navy to other corporate and other industries out there. So I think you're going to find it's pretty attractive to a lot of people. Thanks for the question. Two questions so far about money. I'm surprised that sailors care about money, right? All right, we're going to go a little closer to home where we have a studio audience member waiting by. My question is in regards to the career intermission program. My understanding so far is that 2015 was the last year of the pilot program. And so I'm wondering where we're going with that and if it looks like it's going to be possible to implement that permanently in the fleet. Yeah, another great question. It has been a pilot program for the last six years or so. The Navy is the only service that's taken advantage of it in those six years. And we found it to be a very useful tool to talk to sailors who are struggling with whether to stay in the Navy because they've got a competing personal or professional interest that they want to take care of. Whether it's starting a family, going to school, taking care of a parent, taking care of a child. The career intermission program is an option to delay or put your service in the Navy on hold for a period of time without losing the opportunity to come back. So in the current National Defense Authorization Act that has not been signed in the law yet, there is a provision that the Navy asked to be put in as a legislative change that expands the CIP program much larger than the current pilot program, which in effect takes it from a pilot to an institutionalized program. So we're very optimistic about this, that it will become law and once it does, then we will make that known to everybody in the fleet. Thank you. Fleet, anything to add? I'm sure you're standing up there with a lot of knowledge. Well, you know, just a little. But the only thing I want to add, and I appreciate the question and what I want to make sure that everybody understands that that program is for officer and enlisted and for our all sailors, bottom line. That qualify for the program. So there's not just this one group that we're trying to target. It's for everybody. That's the most important thing. Thank you, Fleet. All right, we're going to go. We have a phone her from HHS. HSC two in Norfolk, Norfolk. Are you there? CQ based in Norfolk, Virginia. My question has to deal with officer retention. Sir, we've already heard from you a lot today about the Navy's changes coming for the retirement program and the flexibility that it can give to people who want to possibly pursue a different career path. So what my question is for you is for those officers who are looking to stay in to actually retain command or to make a decision at that pivotal point, especially with aviators, just what is the Navy's plan to possibly incentivize staying to that 20 year mark to get their first major command, especially in light of poor performance as far as 04 and department head results, especially in comparison with in the aviation community compared to other unrestricted line in the aviation community, sir. So I guess what my question is, do you think that the Navy has an officer retention plan and what is the Navy's plan to possibly help it out? Anyone in the audience have a question? We are up here before, and I know we've got some great ones out there. Good morning, sir. Good morning, Chief. Sir, every year as we go through the processes, first classes are selected for chief. We still have some of those first classes that are been slated for orders. How does the process work to get them out of those first class orders into chief order, sir? Sure. So you want to start there? I will, sir. Well, first of all, and I'm glad you asked that question because we had a sailor at our command that had the same situation. So what we try to do is continue the comms with the detailer and the command that they're going to. Because sometimes that command is like, wow, I have a chief coming to me now, and they still want that sailor to execute those orders. So it's not always about automatically getting that sailor out of those orders just because they have been selected for chief vice first class. There's that open communication between the detailer, the member, and the command that they're going to to make sure that's the right fit, and they have all the qualifications that that new command wants. Because you have to remember that command is counting on that sailor to come on that particular date. So we have to change the process. They might have to wait. So most commands, we're going to continue on with the process of transferring. No, that's good. You know, as you know, when, when that chief's list comes out and we, when we pin on chief around the fleet, our first interest is getting that chief experience back to sea or the operational units where the sea or shore. So that becomes a major consideration on how we redistribute that talent. Great question. We're doing good, sir. We're going to check back into our social media center where Petty Officer Gaby has been monitoring the hashtag AskCMP All Morning Lawn on Facebook and Twitter. Petty Officer, anything trending in there? MC2, right now the hot topic is BCA standards. And just a reminder, we're still on periscope. You can follow us behind the scenes. MC2 Burleson from CNP's office is following very tightly. MC2, what do you see going on? That's right, MC1. Here, we're on Facebook. We're on Twitter. We're on periscope. We have 58 people following on periscope. So keep following on, on a periscope. And here we're on Facebook. We have a question from Mark Batalimu. He asks, why were the BCA standards changed? Great question. Mainly because we, everywhere we went for the last year and a half in the fleet, one of the hot topics we heard from everyone was, when are we going to change the PFA, in particular the BCA standards or the policy on BCA standards? So we've been, we studied that for well over a year, had active participation with the fleet and came up with a different set of metrics and ultimately decided after talking to Bumed and a lot of folks that look at this, the science of what's healthy and what's not healthy is that you really can't, you can't tell precisely what BCA standards define health and non-health. What does define better health is what's your blood pressure, what's your cholesterol level, are you subject or you have a history of diabetes in your family, heart trouble, those sorts of things. We don't pay a lot of attention to that unless you have health problems and you see a professional. And then what the PFA has become over time is a punitive kind of step towards are you, do you look right in uniform? Do you look healthy? And I think all of us would agree that you can tell somebody who doesn't look very healthy if they're extremely overweight. But there are margins in there that we needed to figure out so we could have a better assessment. Last year we threw out over 1,500 sailors in the United States Navy for BCA failures. 1,500 sailors. Some of them enormously talented sailors. Some of them who quit and decided, you know, I'm not going to take care of myself and I'm done with the Navy and didn't care and they left and they should have left. But for those who really wanted to stay but were built differently and maybe had issues that they needed to continue to work on or we didn't give them enough counseling on nutrition and better ways to maintain your weight and your health. We thought we would be more, we would have a wider variance in our BCA standards to get more people to take the PRT and then truly decide whether if you could pass the PRT then certainly you were good enough, healthy enough to be able to assist your shipmates at sea in stressing situations. That ought to be the ultimate test, is whether you can actively participate in physical activity on the ship when you need it the most. And you could argue that big people that are muscular and are heavier than others might be more valuable to you in some combat situations than others. And so the bottom line is when we looked at the BCA standards you look at the Marine Corps, the Army, the Navy and the Air Force are all different. If they're all different, who's right? And you can't really answer that question. So when we look at the science there is a obesity standard out there that the American Medical Association and others use and that's where we took the limit of our BCA. If you're above those limits then you're obese and you must come back down or you will leave the Navy. And that's really what we did on the change to the PFA. We changed nothing on the PRT and there's plenty of argument that we could probably refine that but we're going to do this one step at a time. Start with the BCA, see how we do and then maybe adjust the PRT at some other point. But that's fundamentally it and it gives everybody an opportunity to reset their clocks if you want to stay and you have up until the end of this calendar year to get there. And if you decide that you don't want to do that and you want to leave the Navy, fine. We're going to let you go because you're a BCA failure. But if you really want to stay and you feel like you got a shot we're going to give you that opportunity. Do you want to add anything? The only other thing was we also took into account and I think the MPU said this it's not just about the physical part it's about the Navy investing in making sure that you are eating right. You have the education. We're talking about looking at some of our galleys and some of our food courts on the base things like that where you are going to eat healthier and that's what it's all about. Vice just the physical piece. We're doing other things to put out the money where our mouth is. Think about expanding CDC hours on the front end and the back end of the normal CDC hours so that people have single moms, single dads have more opportunity to drop their child or their children off so that they can go work out. That has been a restriction in some places in the past. We all understand we need to increase the capacity of our CDCs to allow for more opportunity to do that. We are piloting expanded gym hours 24-hour gym fitness centers around the world today CNIC is doing some of this to see if there's a greater utilization if you open up the gyms 24 hours a day and so there are modifications being done today to allow us to do that. So those are steps we're taking to Fleece Point to continue to support the culture of fitness in the Navy as opposed to just talking about BCA standards which is the wrong discussion. All right, great stuff, great stuff. We're going to go live to San Diego now where we have a sailor and a family member standing by. San Diego, can you hear us? Yes, good morning. As a Navy spouse, I have supported my husband through several deployments. However, I've also supported several friends through multiple PCS moves. I was wondering what steps, if any, is the Navy planning on taking to limit PCS moves in the future? Yeah, great question. It's really not nice of you to have that backdrop in Washington, D.C. You've got a beautiful backdrop of the break and surf right there in Coronado as my guests. But I appreciate that question and our interest is to try to spend as little money as possible in the PCS accounts so that we can afford to do other things. But what we are lacking in the Navy in some respects, depending on what rate you are and what fleet concentration you have you currently live at is the seashore rotation opportunities that allow you to stay in an area. So we are certainly biased towards fewer moves than more moves. But we've got open up opportunities both seashore at the major fleet concentration areas to a larger degree. In the last two years we've added a lot of billets back into the shore due to opportunities where we would call it operational readiness units like your SIMIS, like your ATGs that we took manpower away years ago and figured out that probably wasn't a good thing for us to do. So we've bought back a lot of those billets and we're starting to fill those up. The more we do that, the more opportunity we'll give sailors to be able to stay in one location and not have to PCS as much as we have in the last five or ten years. Hopefully that answers your question. Flea, you got anything you want to add? No, I just want to say thank you for your support as a family member for your spouse and for other family members. All right, great stuff. We're going to check back in with our social media crew a petty officer, Gaby. How are you guys doing in there? MC2, everything's going great. We keep getting more and more questions on Facebook and Twitter at hashtag askCMP. We just got another one in from Twitter. Mark would like to know if we can find increased numbers of female applicants. What can CMP do to help? You want to start? I'll start. Yes, and I appreciate the question and thank you for what you do as one of our recruiters out there in the field. And we understand that it is sometimes difficult to attract, there you go, to attract the quality personnel that we're trying to get in the Navy whether that's male or female but I know that you're doing hard work out there. One of the things that we talked about is maybe putting more females in those stations so that when those applicants or future sailors come into the stations they will see that role model. That's one of the initiatives that CNRC is working on. Also this interactive recruiting where I don't even have to come into the station. Maybe I can just see somebody or talk to somebody, get on my iPhone and talk to somebody who looks like me, sounds like me, who serves like I want to serve and be able to connect with that. So those are some things that I think that CNRC is working on so that we can increase our percentage and number of female sailors coming into the Navy. One of the challenges we have is we measure propensity, that is your desire to want to serve in uniform in any service or as a policeman or fireman, whatever you want to do. And the propensity of young women to want to serve in the United States Navy is far below what young men is. And so what do we do to change that calculus? Well first of all we got to speak to the police point, we got to speak directly to young women in America to let them know that there's an opportunity for them to serve in the United States Navy. So we have to change our focus on marketing and advertising. We have to be more focused on our social media content. We have to do a lot of things that speak directly to young women out there to see if they are more propensed and to get more of them interested in serving in the Navy. I think once we do that you'll see a larger number of applicants coming forward and being able to sign up to join the Navy. And there are great stories, I'm looking around this audience and a lot of young women in here who have decided to join the Navy and wear the uniform and are probably having some wonderful experiences that you need to communicate to your peers and to young men and women out there to get them to understand your story and maybe they'll connect in that way. So you got to help us as much as we can help ourselves. CMP I was going to add on to that because we are all recruiters not just the folks out in the field with the NEC. I'm sure Fleet, you standing right up in that spot next to the CMP can't hurt recruiting too bad either. There you go. Come join the Navy. There we go. Alright we're going to head back to Norfolk. Norfolk are you there? Yeah this is CS1 Lee. I'm stationed on the USS Jason Dunham here in Norfolk. My question today is regarding the chief selection board once you find out you did not make chief and you weren't selected is there another way just besides CDB's and a regular mentoring that we can actually have something more on paper more concrete to find out exactly what we need to work on to take our leadership to that next level. CS1 let me give Fleet an opportunity to answer that first because she's been part of many boards and been part of a process we instituted last year that continues this year and then I'll follow up when she's done. Well CS1 thank you for the question and you are absolutely right. We have put into effect after each board. Now there's some information in the board that we cannot share but there is some information that those board members can go back to their commands and share with to your point that they have CDB's but what we've also put out is a lessons learned type newsletter that one of our advisors to the president he works out for us and we send that to all of our command master chiefs and I suspect that they're making sure that that's getting down to the deck plates but one of the things that I want to share with you is we I was able to do a video with force mash chief Mitchell this post of the results coming out and one of the things that we talked about is the first classes out there always trying to find out what didn't I do what why wasn't I picked what is wrong with me and shipment I want to tell you sometimes there's absolutely nothing wrong with you you have done everything we bash you to do you have a sustained superior performance but as you know we are limited to the number of selections that we can make in each rate and sometimes that's just the only problem it's not you at all is the process that we have where we selective vacancies and we just didn't have any more vacancies so don't ever think that there's something wrong with you if you didn't make it talk to your chain of command please ask about this some lessons learned that we put out and then continue to do what you're doing continue to do what you're doing and you will get in there yeah so fleet brought up the point I was going to make and that is last year we started putting the senior advisors to the board presidents in their force master chief level and their sole purpose in there is to observe the board from every different rating and making sure that they're being able to figure out and articulate what the trends are what the qualities are that the board valued so that sailors that are in your position get to look at that and say okay there's a weakness in my record based on the feedback I'm getting and the fleet's point was we can't use we can't come back and give you direct feedback about your record those are board proceedings but we can talk about the general values that the board had and they do change from board to board depending on the make up of the board but the fundamental principles of a board process are pretty consistent it's the nuances that I think you're interested in is there anything I can do to strengthen my record to strengthen my package so I'm a better candidate for next time subject to the vacancies that the fleet brought up it would give you a better shot at making chief alright great stuff we're going to check back in our social media center where Petty Officer Godby has been monitoring the hashtag AskCMP All Morning Long on Facebook and Twitter Petty Officer how you guys doing in there MC2 things are going great MC2 Burleson and I have been speaking after monitoring these questions we're getting a lot about Seaway process MC2 Burleson can you tell us about what you're seeing that's right MC1 Facebook and MC1 have a lot of questions about Seaway and this may be a question for you fleet no questions asking what is Seaway and what is the process what is Seaway and what is the process well Seaway is a tool that we use to make sure that we are not over-populating any of our particular rates so for instance I'm an AZ2 I need to re-enlist and at my re-enlistment there's a process and a tool that our career counselors use to sit down with you, counsel you and see what are you qualified and if there is space in your particular rate for you to re-enlist and you'll sit down at the computer with your career counselor you'll put in your application because you're going to request to re-enlist and at the seven month mark that's when we start letting you know you might not want to stay in AZ you might need to be a CS you might need to be an IS or an IT but we give you all that information well in advance so you will be able to make a decision prior to your EAOS and get an option to stay in the Navy if that's what you want to do so the bottom line is is it's a tool that we as a Navy our career counselors are manning uses to manage all of our different ratings to make sure that we don't over-populate them when we see one of them being over-man and then we see a rate that's under-man if you're choosing to re-enlist and stay a part of this great organization we might ask you to convert to one of those rates or if your rate is healthy and you want to re-enlist and there's a quota for you then we allow you to re-enlist a quota so basically it's a tool for us to monitor and make sure that we are managing community health hope that answers your question I didn't make it too complicated alright sir we saw how jealous you were of the San Diego weather so we figured let's get right back there now San Diego go ahead with your question Good morning Admiral, my name is Lieutenant Damon Goodrich-Hauske I'm a warfare tactics instructor with the Navy Service of Mine and Warfighting Development Center Sir Aura, the witty models based off of the successful history of Nordic over the last 40 years of investing in their junior officers to create tactical experts the service warfare community after the four year of service mark what is your perspective on how the service witty program will affect the composition of the force in the future and will investing in the training education of our junior officers be enough to revitalize the service warfare community sir That's a great question I am really proud of what I see out of the service community over the last year, year and a half leadership at the CIRF IV and in PERS 41 have really taken this on in a way that's creative, it's innovative opening up different career opportunities different career choices for young swows that are trying to decide whether they want to make the Navy a career or not and balancing that against personal aspirations across whether it's a different type of work you want to get into or have an opportunity to get postgraduate education and other things so those different career paths are being promoted out there right now by the detailers and others and I'm sure you've heard about that I think the WTI concept has worked enormously well because it's a demonstration of tactical excellence in any community so for the service community to move to that designation and really value young men and women who have a desire to want to be the best warfighters they can possibly be is a very positive step for the service community and recognizing that in a formal way through a formal training program and then bringing back the best of those WTIs to the school houses where they can impart their knowledge and experience on the next generation of young swows coming up I think it'll have a very positive effect we're already seeing it in retention rates across the service community when I first got in the job two years ago the data was pretty clear that we were down in the low to mid 30s of retention rate to department head in the service community today we're broaching over 40% which is a significant improvement in just a two year period I attribute that again to some of the leadership decisions that have been made by Admiral Rodin and his predecessor and the folks down in Purse 41 who are doing a terrific job that along with some tools that we've given our CO's out there and the bureau and the detailers to incentivize young men and women in the service community to stay is making a difference but we're also targeting frankly we're going after young women especially in the service community because most of our female population the officer community is in the service community and their retention is just as important as the larger picture so all of those efforts combined I think we will start to see continued improvement in the surface retention thanks for the question all right we're going to go a little closer to home now sir and fleet we have a studio audience question good morning sir MC 1 Catherine from here at DMA when I was at my first command a few years ago I authored a proposal that was rejected at the command triad level for making the ship less accommodating for tobacco use for example you would have to have past PFA's and have a chip to purchase tobacco in the store or to make it out on to the smoking areas I was told that now is not the time to address smoking in the Navy now that we have this renewed focus on making our war fighters healthier and longer lasting do you think we're getting close to the time to start making the Navy less accommodating to tobacco use which is not only dangerous but also takes a lot of time from our workforce and I would answer it this way if it's not intuitively obvious to every human being that smoking is bad for you then we've missed the point all together and we should never make it easy for people to want to pick up the habit and then continue it for a life you're going to have health issues there's no question about the data is undeniable so we should continue to try to educate our sailors if they started to have it to figure out how to kick the habit and then try to prevent those who are considering it from doing it we do make it easier than we should I mean it would be perfectly frank here alcohol sales and tobacco sales have supported our MWR programs for years and it's kind of backward from our message about the culture of health isn't it so I think the Secretary of the Navy and other leadership in the Navy are very interested in curbing that the smoking in the Navy over time but there's never a bad time to talk about reducing the amount of tobacco use that occurs among sailors and so I would continue to put that message out there and ultimately someday maybe we will be in a smoke free Navy but we're not there yet and you also have to consider that these are DOD-wide policies that we have that were faced with in the Marine Corps and the Air Force everybody needs to be part of that discussion so I do think the time is coming for that discussion but it isn't, we're not having it right now with all of the other things we've got going on that one's not at the top of our list thank you sir it's time to go underway now to the USS Keir Sarge Keir Sarge, go ahead with your question sir, my name is Agent Two Ruins from the USS Keir Sarge Medical Department my question to you is right now on Fifth Fleet we have the highest security force in all of the Navy yet how did this duty pay was taken away and if we're seeable future for Fifth Fleet we'll pay coming back okay I can answer that real simply with one word no so hazardous duty pay is governed by the combatant commander through the Secretary of Defense and it governs all services that are operating in a zone in an area that hazardous duty pay zone for Fifth Fleet encompassed the waterways of the Arabian Gulf a couple years ago I think and that was done at the request of the combatant commander and approved by the Secretary of Defense for it to come back the combatant commander would have to request it to come back and then up through the Secretary of Defense it is not a Navy policy and I think we all would agree that when you look at a young 19, 20 year old operating on a flight deck at night in the Arabian Gulf that's pretty hazardous duty now we try to compensate folks for that in terms of sea duty pay and other pays but hazardous duty pay is one of those that is governed by DoD and not the Navy thanks for the question thank you sir it's time to check back in with our social media guru Patty Officer Gaby Patty Officer what do you have for us MC2 we just got another question from Twitter Desiree would like to know how will the elimination of above below zones impact promotions okay Desiree at the so let me make sure you understand what we're talking about with below zones in zone and above zones by law we have to track officers through promotion by year group in zones so the zones until the law is changed will stay the way they are but what we are trying to do is to not make that influence board members decisions about promotability before an officer selection board what I mean by that is we don't have to visibly stamp records to tell the board members what zone you're in the fact that you're in before a board tells the board enough and you should just be voting the record and nothing else and that's what I mean by what I term blurring the lines a little bit so that it is not a very obvious statement of someone's ability based solely on year group so we are promoting the idea of eliminating year groups over time but until the law is changed which is probably several years away we are just going to deal with it inside the promotion boards by not visibly stamping records by what zone you're in hopefully that answers your question alright thank you sir it's time to go to Bob Rainer we have a pre-recorded question good afternoon sir this is Petty Officer Anderson from Naval Security Force by Rain my question is when the new coveralls are unveiled will they be fleet wide or will they only be used during under ways we'll start good question thank you sir and I hope I got to meet you a couple of months ago or a couple of weeks ago sir when we were in by Rain but right now I think you're talking about the improved FRV if that's what you're talking about right now we're there's still organizational clothing therefore our sailors that are shore duty excuse me sea duty physically on sea duty I think you've probably heard some rumors down the road we're probably trying to go to a coverall type uniform of the day that's still being talked about that's still being discussed so a couple of years on whether or not we're going to get their shipmate CMP you want to add yeah so Curesarge which is just on a line hopefully we can get them back because the shipmate that asked the question was wearing I think the new improved FRV which we're testing on at least two ships one of them is Curesarge and the other one is Carni both on their way to fifth fleet and the improved FRV was to deal with a lot of the complaints that we heard from the fleet last year and the year before about they're too hot they don't wear well they don't wash well they look awful after a few cycles through the ship's laundry so I'm interested in Curesarge I know you've only had them maybe a week or two or three if you can give us some feedback on what you're seeing with the new improved FRVs but that is a wear test that's going on to see how they hold up and get feedback from sailors on Curesarge and Carni and then plow that back into an adjustment and a redesign of the FRV as we go down the road like fleet said whether we turn that into a working uniform or not is going to be largely based on the feedback we get from fleet sailors Curesarge can you give me any feedback Good morning sir I'm AS1 Callaway at AIMD department on U.S. at Curesarge I'm currently one of the test platforms we're actually wearing the coveralls some of us here are wearing the coveralls right now a lot of the feedback that a lot of the sailors are having is there's too many pockets too many zippers which especially for females like myself I have a problem with the seam it's a little thick at the bottom at the bottom seam that the material is rather like we like it to kind of breathe a little bit especially I'm wearing the tight D so it does breathe better it's just way too many zippers too many pockets for sailors to put things in in my opinion Okay we're going to get a lot more feedback on this so it's you know fleet and I love being in the uniform business but one of the complaints we had on the original FRV was not enough zippers not enough pockets so maybe we over corrected and we'll take that feedback if there are others out there like that we're certainly very interested in hearing from you especially when you get to the Arabian Gulf where it is a lot warmer than where you are right now probably so keep that feedback coming we really need to hear from you thank you Thank you so much sir and thank you Curesarge for coming back with us next we're going to go live to Norfolk Norfolk go ahead with your question Hi good afternoon my name is PS1 Matt Montgomery from ComNAF Surflent here in Norfolk Virginia my question is in regards to the thrift savings plan or otherwise known as TSP currently active duty members are only allowed to contribute into the TSP program in the future would it be possible for a retiree to contribute a portion of a pension if you will into the program Well PS1 that is a great question that I don't have an answer for and I'll if you will either text us or send us your email we'll get an answer back or we'll post the answer to your question to the larger audience when we're done here there's probably a provision in the law that either does or does not allow it and we would have to take that on if that's of something of great interest alright thank you so much Norfolk we're going to go back with social media for the very last time where Petty Officer Gaby has been standing by all morning long monitoring facebook and twitter at the hashtag AskCMP Petty Officer how you doing in there MC2 things have been going great hashtag AskCMP is trending right now we've been getting questions on facebook and twitter but right now I want to make sure we loop back around to what we got on a phone call from HSC2 down in Norfolk he would like to know about aviation promotion for officers and how do we retain good leaders yeah I'm sure that the premise of the question has to do with the 04 board results the last two years in aviation which were below historical averages there are a lot of reasons for it I've blogged about it I've written about it the air bosses talked about it quite a bit just talked at length about it at tail hook just a few weeks ago so we continue to try to understand what's driving it and to make sure that we can adjust our pool of folks that are eligible for 04 in the future so that we don't disadvantage anybody and there are several aspects to it all I can tell you is that the air boss and myself and several other folks in my organization are very keenly aware of the promotion opportunities for young aviators to 04 and we'll continue to work through this we took a turn on it in this last board we saw significant improvement in the board results this last year and my hope is in the years to come we'll continue to make improvement so keep the faith don't quit on us we're trying to do everything we can do within our power to make sure that the opportunities are closer to board average than we've seen in the last two years I'm sure you'll know what exactly you're trending on twitter now I'm sure that was a career goal once you joined the Navy once we started talking about Unifang the expert had out live to beautiful San Diego go ahead with your question hey sir, CM2 Hicks at ACB1 good morning, it's a pleasure to be here my question for you is since we're nearly at the end of our one third uh cut in CBs both active duty and reserve component what's your perspective on both short and long term advancement opportunities and duty stations, thank you yeah, you know, everywhere we've been we've met with CBs we were out at Wainimi about six or eight months ago and heard a lot from the CB force about this and it is, as you say, we're at the bottom we have bottomed out in four structure cuts on the CB force and so naturally you would expect that it's going to take some time for advancement rates to start to come back to somewhat normal levels and we're starting to see that I'll have a much better insight for you to share with you after this September advancement cycle results get to me, I'll see them in the next two to three weeks so that we can issue advancement results prior to Thanksgiving so you all will have that in that time and that will be the next series of data that we get on CB on the CB force we're trying to do some things that are creative like bees to badgers from CBs to the MA force because we are growing the MA force and we're looking at opportunities there for CBs but every CB we come across they just want to be CBs and they don't want to change I understand that, it's a great community it's a tight-knit community and I think if you hang in there if you can tolerate the lack of advancement opportunity that we've had over the last few years and look forward down the road here two to three cycles from now I think you'll start to see them come back to normal people have to leave in order for people to advance and when you're in a downsizing market it makes it very, very difficult to have both Flee, anything to add to that? No, thank you very much And sir you mentioned the bees to badgers which we have recently featured on AH.mil so of course all you sailors out there for your Navy information make sure to head to AH.mil Next we're going to go live to Norfolk I apologize Norfolk are you there? Good morning, I'm Ellis I'm at M-Pace Norfolk, my question this morning is in regards to dual military BAH I'm wondering if you can provide some insight in regards to the possible changes that may be coming up for dual military BAH Yeah, great question we've heard a lot about this from sailors when it became known that it was being considered by Congress to eliminate dual BAH it went through both houses of Congress there was a debate and our understanding of reading the current proposed law for fiscal year 16 it is not included in there so for at least fiscal year 16 this year dual BAH remains as it is today I do think we're going to continue to have this conversation and debate though with Congress because in their view the American taxpayer gives us an allowance for a house not for each individual in a house we're going to have to figure out how to get past that conversation and into the real discussion which is dual military couples incur other costs that are not accounted for in other ways so we have to have that discussion and I can assure you we will have this debate over the next year when the law is passed here in the near future you will see that that cut in dual BAH was not included in the bill all right great thank you so much sir now it's time the time of the show that everyone loves and which is why I think the studio audience was under the impression that they could not go to work today come here meet the CMP and the fleet master chief and not have to talk at all sorry so if you want to step up to the mic and here's your chance to ask the CMP you're good to go one area that we haven't hit on that I would like to talk about is the meritorious advancement program I see a master chief was about to ask me so maybe I beat you to it you want to hit master chief go ahead we just finished our first iteration of the map C if you could give us an update on that and when do you see the map shore being implemented out today I took a brief from our team to get an update on where we were we're finally done with the first map season and we advanced almost 2,300 sailors in the meritorious advancement program 99.0% of all the quotas were used this year that's an enormous improvement for where we were under the cap program and what I really liked about what I heard was that commanding officers out there really paid attention to the intent of the map as opposed to cap which is to pick your best sailors and advance them meritoriously don't wait for the advancement cycle or the test if they're good enough in your eyes to be at the next pay grade and you've got an opportunity to advance them use that opportunity then don't wait on the test and what we saw from commanding officers out there was doing exactly that and then also turning back quotas to the Navy where they didn't have an opportunity they didn't see a sailor in a pay grade that they wanted to advance meritoriously to the next pay grade and then we redistributed over 300 quotas back to the fleet in units where CO said hey I need another quota for this rate because I've got or this pay grade because I've got a sailor who deserves it and we redistributed those and we've used almost all those up so back to the point 99.8% of all the quotas have been used that's a really good start to the program and I want to thank the COs out there who are listening to the intent of this program and understanding the difference between what CAP was and what MAP is and then we are going to expand this next year into the shore community we're going to take it slow we'll open up the valve a little bit and see how we do because we got to be very careful that we don't overpopulate certain rates at certain pay grades so that we stifle opportunity down the road off the advancement exam but even at the levels we're at today we're down below 10% of all advancements that are done annually are done through the MAP program I'm comfortable with that level and the secretary has challenged us to do more and we are and I also think there are sailors in this room for the fleet out there there are sailors in this room who are in rates that are largely shore centric who never really get an opportunity to see MAP opportunities out at sea so we think it's only fair that we include the shore commands and eliminate the timing aspects of advancement opportunities under this program and build some equity across sea and shore but the focus will remain at sea for the foreseeable future but we'll start opening up the valve MASH chief to your question on the shore side it's a good story thanks for the question alright so we have a special message now from the USS NITSY I am ET1 Rhymes from Philadelphia Pennsylvania onboard the USS NITSY all I want to say is happy birthday Navy alright Roger that shipmate I'd like to thank everyone for joining us here on this edition of the All Hands Call with the chief of naval personnel and fleet master chief Beldo if you missed any portion of the show make sure to head to navy.mil to catch this awesome information anything to add? no happy birthday 240 years you're looking young thanks everybody ruin have a great day and thanks for joining us thank you