{"id":41422,"date":"2018-08-09T15:28:18","date_gmt":"2018-08-09T15:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2018\/08\/09\/are-you-an-officer-facing-the-retirement-boards\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T19:37:41","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T19:37:41","slug":"are-you-an-officer-facing-the-retirement-boards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/news\/your-navy\/2018\/08\/09\/are-you-an-officer-facing-the-retirement-boards\/","title":{"rendered":"Are you an officer facing the retirement boards?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Navy will hold selective early retirement boards for specific groups of captains and commanders this fall to force non-performing senior officers into retirement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That raises eyebrows with critics who see a Navy trying to grow by 25,000 sailors in the coming years, but the service\u2019s leaders believe the new boards will make a better officer corps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The twin boards will convene on September 13 in Millington Tennessee<\/a>, one for commanders and the other for captains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both will have community-specific panels that will sift through the senior officer records, officials told Navy Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, a panel of senior officers will scrutinize engineering duty officers in year groups 1989-1995 and will also peek at chaplains commissioned between 1986 and 1992, but the boards won\u2019t be given mandatory numbers to trim, according the Vice Adm. Bob Burke,<\/a> the Navy\u2019s top uniformed personnel officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking during an Aug. 7 media round table, Burke said the entire process really amounts to a quality control check on the senior officer corps. It\u2019s modeled on the Navy\u2019s Senior Enlisted Continuation Boards, which have been held seven out of the last nine years to weed out chiefs, senior chiefs and master chiefs who already are eligible for retirement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The enlisted boards also don\u2019t have mandatory quotas for cuts. They were the brainchild of then-Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy (SS\/SW) Rick West as a method of getting rid of \u201cdeadwood\u201d stacked at the top of the Navy\u2019s enlisted ranks nearly a decade ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, forced retirement can come down on any lackluster senior officer in specific year groups and career fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking for someone who is just outright, plain not performing, here,\u201d Burke said. \u201cIt\u2019s a very valuable tool in helping us maintain the gold standard of what we expect of our senior enlisted leaders \u2014 enforcing the standard with our senior officers sends a good signal and provides the necessary tone across the force in terms of our expectations [of performance].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The boards arise partly because of pending changes to commissioned officer rules crafted in the 2019 Pentagon budget<\/a>. The spending plan frees services to more easily retain officers who are good at their jobs but don\u2019t necessarily rise quickly in the bureaucracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of \u201cup or out,\u201d the military is eyeing the increasing use of \u201cup and stay\u201d to retain talent that doesn\u2019t make higher rank but still brings value to the services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Navy hasn\u2019t held an officer early retirement board since 2012, at the end of the most recent drawdown of personnel. Under the old rules, all early retirement boards were mandated to make cuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Burke said he\u2019s now armed with the legal authority to conduct a highly targeted board in the officer corps along the lines of what he called the \u201chighly successful\u201d senior enlisted version. Instead of trimming ranks, he said the panels will be \u201clooking for quality.\u201d If a board finds no officers to select for retirement, that\u2019s fine, Burke indicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There will be some basic criteria at each pay grade, such as commanders who have been overlooked for promotion twice. And at the captain level, the baseline shifts to three years in grade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf we have people have who are occupying space and not doing their job\u2026this is Congress giving us the latitude, a tool to move people who aren\u2019t carrying their weight, so we\u2019ll take a hard look and make sure we\u2019re doing the right thing,” Burke said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without \u201cup or out,\u201d the Navy needs some tool to identify marginal performers who probably should be prodded into retirement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf promotion isn\u2019t going to be the incentive for them to stay, then you have to look at them along these lines \u2014 an early retirement board like this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Otherwise you\u2019d have to wait for their statutory retirement age, and that\u2019s 28-years for commanders and and 30-years for captains — so if they\u2019re only at the 24-year mark, that\u2019s another four to six years you\u2019d have to carry them on the books.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in the end, he doesn’t expect they’ll be showing many officers the door, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGiven there\u2019s no quotas, my expectation is that the number of officers selected for early retirement at this point will be small,\u201d Burke said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trick here is to write up the instructions to the board \u2014 \u201cprecepts\u201d in Navy lingo \u2015to specify the criteria the Navy needs to send an officer home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The actual orders are still being reviewed by Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer, but Burke suggested commissioned officers worrying about the panels should look at what the senior enlisted boards did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were looking for service records with red flags such as incidents of misconduct or substandard and declining performance over the previous three years. But even those demerits didn\u2019t create automatic tickets home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJust because you have a disciplinary problem, doesn\u2019t mean you will be selected for early retirement,\u201d Burke said. \u201cBut it will be looked at in context of the whole record.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The enlisted boards begin their process by reviewing each officer\u2019s records and creating two stacks of files, those with potentially adverse info in one pile and clean records in another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those with no black marks are voted through as a group by the board and their files are set aside. Flagged files are briefed in greater detail to the board and sailors are voted on individually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEach board will select only those officers whose early retirement, in the opinion of a majority of the board members, is in the best interest of the Navy,\u201d Burke wrote in the NavAdmin message announcing the board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his interview with reporters, Burke insisted that officers who have been passed over but are still \u201cdoing absolutely amazing things for the Navy\u201d have nothing to worry about.<\/p>\n\n\n