MILITARY UPDATE
Navy chief cites soaring commitment to service
Military Update focuses on issues affecting pay, benefits and lifestyle of active and retired servicepeople. Its author, Tom Philpott, is a Virginia-based syndicated columnist and freelance writer. He has covered military issues for almost 25 years, including six years as editor of Navy Times. For 17 years he worked as a writer and senior editor for Army Times Publishing Co. Philpott, 49, enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard in 1973 and served as an information officer from 1974-77.
By Tom Philpott
Good pay raises, gains in housing allowances and sea pay, an improved retirement plan and a soft civilian job market are factors behind Navy re-enlistment rates that are the highest on record, said Adm. Vern Clark, chief of naval operations.
Clark said he also believes sailors embrace a message that he has been sending since becoming the Navy's top officer in July 2000: A sailor's life is one of service, and those who commit to it receive more than a paycheck in return.
Commitment to service, Clark said, trumps earlier retention themes such as "Put people first," and "If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right," one that Clark used before he became CNO.
In truth, he said, the mission comes first. For the Navy that means bringing "credible combat power to the far corners of this globe."
Doing that, Clark said, isn't always fun.
Three months into Clark's tour as CNO, in October 2000, terrorists attacked the USS Cole while it was at anchor in Yemen, killing 17 sailors. Survivors fought to save their ship.
"On the second day, they almost lost it," Clark told NROTC midshipmen at Penn State March 22. "You think they were having fun? They weren't. You think it was rewarding? You bet your life it was."
In an interview while flying back to Washington, D.C., Clark discussed a range of issues, from the war on terror to new Navy initiatives to improve training through technology, establish for every sailor a personal development plan and require personnel detailers to work more closely with sailors and commands.
Clark, 57, a minister's son, was raised in Missouri and Illinois and graduated from Evangel College, in Springfield, Mo. He earned his commission through officer candidate school in 1968.
Midwestern roots are exposed in Clark's folksy descriptions of billion-dollar gaps in past Navy budgets or the whiz-bang characteristics of DDX, the Navy's next-generation warship.
During the 1990s, Clark said, defense budgets understated requirements and then underfinanced the understated requirements.
"We're not doing that anymore."
He described the present state of readiness as "wonderful," citing the performance of U.S. ships and aircraft in the war on terror.
In remarks at Penn State, Clark tried to put air operations over Afghanistan in perspective by asking midshipmen to imagine aircraft launching from a carrier 100 miles off New Orleans, flying to the Great Lakes, orbiting in a search of enemy targets and returning five or six hours later. Pilots don't even get a break to stretch their legs, he said.
If readiness is so high, what about those maintenance problems aboard the carrier John F. Kennedy last December, which led to removal of its captain and more than a month's delay in the battle group's deployment?
Clark declined to open old wounds for the crew. But the JFK's troubles, he said, were not a signal of fleetwide maintenance problems.
The Navy has "its best readiness budget in at least a decade," Clark said.
Aviation accounts are fully financed "for the first time since I've been in the Navy." A gap of unfilled billets aboard deployed ships, which once totaled 14,000, has all but disappeared.
The budget challenge now, said Clark, is finding money to cover the cost of a more senior force, because of the war and soaring re-enlistment rates, highest among the services.
Those are unusual bragging rights for a service that sends so many of its members to sea for six months at a time.
In 1999, only 43 percent of sailors completing their first hitch re-enlisted. The figure climbed to 48 percent in 2000 and 57 percent last year. From last October through February, first-term re-enlistment rates have passed 64 percent.
It can't all be because of a tired economy, rising military compensation or the war, Clark said. Re-enlistment rates were climbing for a few years before Sept. 11.
Sailors see they're making a difference, he said, and that the Navy's future and their own are tied to, and enhanced by, technology.
The DDX, to be built with research dollars starting by 2006, will have a much smaller crew than present destroyers.
Clark said that it will be as quiet as a submarine, will be difficult for the enemy to spot on radar and will have a weapons system that will be accurate at 70 to 100 miles.
"It's going to be unbelievable," he said.
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