Navy Secretary Ray Mabus wants to radically overhaul the way Marines and sailors climb the ranks — including a push for more meritorious promotions and a tailored bonus system to help the Corps remain an attractive career option.
The ambitious plan, unveiled during a mid-May speech at the U.S. Naval Academy, in Annapolis before a crowd including future Marine officers, called for larger re-up bonus budgets; individualized tailored retention incentives bonuses calculated based on a Marine’s individual skills and education over military occupational specialty; rather than across-the-board bonuses based simply on occupation; and a new promotion system scheme that focuses more on merit than seniority.
“A golden path of inflexible career wickets, year-groups and promotion zones will no longer determine your success,” Mabus told the crowd of midshipmen. he told midshipmen. “Your performance will decide your timeline for promotion and leadership assignments.”
He aims to make the military a more appealing place for the nation’s most promising youth and allow the Marine Corps and Navy to compete with private industry for talent, he said.
Here’s how his plan would work.
Promotion overhaul
For most Marines, cClimbing the military rank structure is somewhat straightforward process that and follows a fixed timeline. But Mabus hopes to change that as early as That will all change if Mabus is able to institute his plan which he hopes to have partially in place by 2016.
For sailors, Mabus proposed replacing the Command Advancement Program — which awards top performers with units afloat with unplanned promotions — with a new Meritorious Advancement Program, which will be unveiled this year and includes sailors in shore-based units.
For Marines, he wants to make performance rather than time served the requisite for lynchpin of promotion. That would apply to enlisted personnel as well as includes officers, who under the current system can get promoted even if they are not among the most accomplished of their peers so long as they hit the appropriate milestones and stay out of trouble keep their nose clean.
Mabus’ plan would alter the system to more closely reflects performance-based advancement in the corporate world. Though short on specifics, he Mabus wants to foster competition among officers and plans to solicit from Congress by fiscal 2017 legislation eliminating officer management by year group. It would do away with zones based on time in service and date of rank, which heavily favors seniority.
Sgt. Arthur Krenzel III, a field radio operator, is meritoriously promoted to his current rank.
Photo Credit: Cpl. Charles Santamaria/Marine Corps
Under the new system, officers ready to advance will, while those who do so; those that need more time in grade will remain behind. The best and brightest will rise steadily to the top, he says.
Today, Marines serve a prescribed amount of time in grade, working to boost composite scores by taking advantage of educational opportunities and outperforming peers on day-to-day tasks. Only once they are “in-zone” can they be selected for promotion by a board.
Earning a meritorious promotion, though, is one way to quicken the pace, and under and under Mabus’ new plan could become more common. It’s currently a less-than-common honor sometimes bestowed on the battlefield and reserved for commander’s top performers, effectively serving as a waiver for the Corps’ time in grade requirements. In his speech at the Academy, Mabus advocated for advancing Marines and sailors based on talent and performance rather than time in uniform and a series of bureaucratic milestones.
“Leaders who consistently outperform their peers should be advanced at faster rates, not held back by tests or zones,” Mabus said.
Mabus’ press office did not failed to respond to questions from Marine Corps Times about as of press time regarding how many Marines and sailors he’d they would like to see meritoriously promoted meritoriously each year.
The Corps meritoriously promoted about 13,000 Marines between Between fiscal years 2010 and fiscal 2014, a little more than 13,000 Marines earned meritorious advancements, said Col. William Tosick, head of the Plans, Programs and Budget branch of Manpower and Reserve Affairs. They comprised just 6 percent of all promotions in that same time period, he said.
Mabus’ press office failed to respond to questions from Marine Corps Times as of press time regarding how many Marines and sailors they would like to see promoted meritoriously each year.
“A golden path of inflexible career wickets, year groups and promotion zones will no longer determine your success,” Mabus said. “Your performance will decide your timeline for promotion and leadership assignments.”
Custom bonuses
Mabus is also working to overhaul the Navy Department’s of the Navy’s retention incentives to better compete against the draw of private industry, which has robbed the sea services of some of their most essential needed personnel in fields like cyber and intelligence.
“We’re asking Congress to amend our current broad-based bonus system to make it look more like those used in the private sector,” Mabus said. told graduating Naval Academy Midshipmen. “By granting department leaders the flexibility to match pay incentives with individual skill sets and talent levels, we can better compensate and retain officers and enlisted.”
For decades, most of the past half century, the Corps service has given out bonuses in what personnel officials now call a “one-size-fits-all” model system that doesn’t take into account the total individual Marines’ skills or education. It is heavily based on their current MOS military occupational specialty, and factors in rank and years of service, offering more money to senior Marines in in-demand jobs.
Marine officials have worked to target bonuses to the most in-demand fields as the Corps’ overall incentives The Marine Corps has worked hard to target bonuses as their overall incentives budget has plummeted from $150 million in 2011 to $56 million this year. Many jobs that used to receive bonuses during the height of a two-front war now receive nothing.
Of the remaining total, money about 80 percent is awarded to those re-enlisting in five high-demand, low-density occupations including 0211 counterintelligence/human intelligence specialist; 0321 reconnaissance man; 0372 critical skills operator; 0689 cyber security technician, and 2336 explosive ordnance disposal technician.
“The bottom line is that we would love to have bigger budgets, but we have to weigh the needs of the Marine Corps with the budget we have,” Tosick said.
If Mabus gets his way, Navy Department of Navy bonuses coffers will grow. And they way they’re handed out would be tailored for every Marine as officials would take into account military and non-military skills, including training and civilian education.
Such a system could help retain Marines and sailors, as some are lured to the private industry where they can make six-figure salaries.
In the Navy, Chief of Naval Personnel, Vice Adm. Bill Moran said he’d like to be able to constantly tweak payout levels in real-time instead of the relying annual updates the service is offering now. The Marine Corps currently uses an annual model.
In his speech, Mabus in his speech did not give a timetable for such reform, but sees both new legislation and more funding as critical steps toward reform.
“Some changes will take place at the speed of my pen, others at the speed of Congress,” Mabus said at the Academy.
Staff writer Mark D. Faram contributed to this report.
