Compass Points -- SPOT ON!
Services missing faces for spaces.
Compass Points -- SPOT ON!
Services missing faces for spaces.
April 3, 2024
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None of the armed services have the people they need. All the services need more faces for spaces.
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The search for more service members is leading to some unusual new efforts.
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The Army needs more soldiers and is calling back retirees.
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The Navy needs more sailors and is making every sailor a recruiter.
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The Marine Corps needs more Marines and is putting more officers on the SPOT.
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How can the armed services get the people they need? It may take new programs.
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For example, the US Army wants retirees and veterans to be all they can be -- again. The Army's Publishing Directorate released ALARACT 017/2024, “Utilization of the Army Retiree Recall Program.” The ALARACT is based on Executive Order 13223. A retiree recall is a “retired Soldier who is ordered to active duty (AD) from the Retired Reserve or the retired list under 10 USC 688/688a, 12301(a), or 12301(d). Per AR 601-10, Recalled retiree Soldiers must be aligned to a valid vacant AC requirement that matches the grade and skill of the retiree before he or she may be recalled to AD,” according to the ALARACT. The Air Force has started a similar program. Can bringing back retirees and veterans help the Army be all it can be? It is worth a try.
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The Navy has its own new program to help increase the number of sailors. The Navy recently announced the new, "every sailor is a recruiter" campaign.
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The Navy is providing new resources to all Navy commands as part of its Every Sailor is a Recruiter initiative, months after the service missed its recruitment goals for the first time ever, and as it joins the other services in attempting to dig out of an historic recruiting crisis.
Commands will have access to the so-called “Every Sailor is a Recruiter Commanding Officers Smartbook” and the Navy recruiting E- toolbox website with the hope of getting the fleet to help bring in additional recruits, according to a new naval administrative message, or NAVADMIN, released this month.
--Navy Times
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The Marine Corps announced a new program of its own called, "SPOT Promotion." No, this is not a program to promote more deserving Marines, "on the spot." Instead, the SPOT boards will temporarily promote some officers.
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10 U.S.C. Section 605 authorizes the temporary promotion of lieutenant colonels and majors to the next higher grade when those officers possess skills in which the Marine Corps is critically short, and the officers serve in designated qualifying billets. Commandant of the Marine Corps (CMC), Manpower Management Officer Assignments (MMOA) manages the list of qualifying billets and will make it available once approved by the Secretary of the Navy. Officers selected for temporary promotion upon reporting to a qualifying billet will wear the insignia and uniform, assume the title of the next higher grade, and receive pay and benefits commensurate with the higher grade.
-- Marine Corps, MMRA
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The selected SPOT officers will wear the uniform and rank of a higher grade but they will not really be promoted to the higher grade. If they transfer out of the SPOT authorized billet, "Temporary appointments terminate the day an officer detaches from a qualifying billet. Upon termination, officers revert to the highest permanent grade held prior to the appointment." That will put the officer on the SPOT when a Marine asks, "But Sir, I thought you were a Colonel yesterday." The release of the ALMAR was authorized by a Brigadier General, the "Director, Manpower Management Division." The ALMAR gives no indication if the General is an actual General or only a temporary, SPOT officer.
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Throughout its history and today, the Marine Corps has a tradition of "next Marine up." If a Marine is not available for a mission, the next Marine up takes charge and accomplishes whatever needs to be done. In meetings with the other armed services, because the Marine Corps is so much smaller, often the Marine representative will be of lower rank. In important meetings with other service senior officers, the Marine rep might be a Sgt or a 1st Lt. At a meeting with other service General officers, the Marine rep is often a Colonel and sometimes a Major. The difference in rank never bothers a Marine. A Marine makes things happen no matter what their rank.
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So why does the Marine Corps need SPOT promotion boards today? None of the SPOT officers or others at Manpower and Reserve Affairs have said, but perhaps it has something to do with the turbulence of the last few years. Force Design has made frequent and abrupt changes as it divested units, equipment, and capabilities. Manpower and Reserve Affairs at Quantico has been running along behind trying to clean up the mess. Units have been re-designated, redesigned, and sometimes deleted with little warning. When schools and school seats are lost and Military Occupational Specialties eliminated, it generates problems. When units stricken from the roles are then brought back a few months later, that becomes a manpower and administrative struggle.
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None of the armed services have the people they need. That includes the Marine Corps. Compass Points salutes the hardworking Marine team at the James Wesley Marsh Center at Quantico who work hard every day putting faces into spaces. If they say the Marine Corps needs SPOT officers, no doubt they are SPOT ON!
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US Army
ALARACT 017/2024
DTG: R 201502Z MAR 24
UNCLAS
SUBJ/ALARACT 017/2024 – UTILIZATION OF THE ARMY RETIREE RECALL PROGRAM
https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN40510-ALARACT_0172024-000-WEB-1.pdf
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Navy Times - 04/02/2024
New materials launched for Every Sailor is a Recruiter program
By Diana Stancy
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Marines.com - 03/29/2024
MARADMIN 162/24
MSGID/GENADMIN/CMC WASHINGTON DC MRA MM//
SUBJ/CONVENING OF THE FY26 U.S. MARINE CORPS COLONEL AND LIEUTENANT COLONEL SPOT PROMOTION SELECTION BOARDS//
I understand the pressure for this. I understand the senior field grade boards have struggled to fill demand. To be frocked, you have to be selected for promotion; this is non-selected pseudo frocking...brevet promotions. It will be interesting to see what MOS's these go to and how many get assigned.
This SPOT issue seems like another paper cut. The macro issue seems to be working at both ends, recruitment of young men and women who wish to make the commitment and sacrifice to join a branch of the US Military. cfrog has posted some detailed discussion of the problems there, particularly the DEP, robbing Peter to pay Paul to maintain and or meet the overall recruiting requirements. At the other end there seems to be a disconnect of such significance at the 04/05/06 level that Manpower has had to resort to the SPOT program. On its face in the post it seems cockeyed. That said, one of the best instructors at IOC in the fall of 1978, was an LDO Captain, who had many years of enlisted ranks infantry experience. “Don’t look at me Lieutenant, it’s your field problem to figure out!”
It does all seem to funnel back to a senior leadership that is either confused, or does not know what the Hell it is doing, so it shouts out orders. We have all been there, “Brown side out! Green side out”, all in the hopes of coming to conclusions that get them out of the mess the Corps is in. A mess partially of their own making, but equally a sign of a more general malaise and skepticism of the American public and their view of civilian and military leadership. There is an unwillingness to make sacrifices for nebulous future outcomes especially when it may mean the blood and treasure of a working poor or middle class family, is lost for eternity, because of failed foreign policy adventures. The past 20 plus years provide a poor fact pattern for recruitment purposes.