If you're looking to make the Navy a career or just want to stick around for another hitch, you're in the right service at the right time.
While the Army and Marine Corps are still drawing down, the Navy's 60,000 sailor post-9/11 drawdown is a couple of years in the rear view — with the service planning to grow three out of the next four years.
The brass wants you — and your skills — to stay in the service, and they're putting money on the table: More bonus bucks. Boosted tuition assistance dough. Rises in some special and incentive pays.
And what's more, a this plus-up of 5,600 sailors in the next year primarily stems from keeping experienced sailors in the ranks.
For much of the decade between 2003 and 2013, sailors didn't wonder if there would be cuts, but worried how many of them sailors would be sent home as the force "right-sized" from 383,000 to 320,000 personnel, and below.
That's all changed. The and the picture is bright — and could even get brighter in the next few years, with the Navy having secured congressional backing for finally securing funding for an airwing and aircraft carrier that had been on the chopping block, and the chronically undermanned cruisers.
"We will finish up 2015 at about 323,600 [sailors], and about 285 ships," said a personnel official who spoke on background to discuss internal deliberations. "We propose to grow in 2016 to about 329,000, the bulk of that being the carrier, the air wing and the manning for the cruisers."
The only blip on the manning radar: a drop back to 326,500 by Oct. 1, 2017, as the Navy works out its plan to dock cruisers for months or years before their mid-life overhauls.
Officials are hopeful that by the time the fiscal year '17 budget is released a year from now, they may have the details finalized and the service could see end strength projections grow even more.
Navy leaders plan to grow the force to 330,000 in the next five years, as the service moves to man a projected force of 304 ships, flush with reworked cruisers, littoral combat ships and more Virginia-class submarines.
Advancement chances
The Navy's plan to grow the force to 329,200 over the next year and a half will have big impacts on the enlisted workforce.
For the next eight months, the Navy plans to recruit 34,628 new sailors off the street, and will allow 362 prior-service members to return from civilian life. An estimated 33,630 re-enlistments will get approved by the end of fiscal year 2015, in late September, personnel officials say.
In fiscal 2016, the emphasis shifts to keeping even more sailors. New accessions will drop slightly, by 278 to 34,350. But they plan to increase prior-service recruiting to 400 and are planning to increase re-enlistments by 4,346 to 37,976.
Personnel officials say this is an opportunity for sailors to stay in and to advance, as the Navy hopes to boost the petty officer ranks vital to keeping ships and squadrons running, and to man new ships.
The service has recruited more new sailors over the past couple of fiscal years, and many of those sailors are either in the fleet or coming through extended training pipelines. But manpower bosses are acutely aware that they need experienced sailors to lead them.
Keeping those mid-career sailors in is expected to get harder as the economy gathers steam.
Vice Adm. Bill Moran, the Navy's top uniformed personnel officer, has been telling sailors that advancement is expected to be above the historic average and could rise. For that, sailors can thank the end strength plus-up and need to keep petty officers.
Moran says sailors can count on steady advancement that is on the increase, for at least the next fiscal year.
And then there's the cruiser conundrum.
If the cruiser situation gets fixed in the next budget cycle, the Navy is likely to be on a steady end strength incline where advancement rates rise and bonuses are boosted.
Ratings outlook
Roughly a third, or 34, of the Navy's enlisted ratings are deemed "properly manned" at between 98 and 102 percent of their authorized strength, a steady improvement from the 25 properly manned ratings two years ago.
On the other hand, there's are 27 specialties that are over 102 percent manpower, mostly in ratings that are part of force structure changes or are projected to lose billets.
For example, the Seabee ratings are recovering from a one-third cut in the number of active battalions, and naval aircrewman and some other aviation ratings are working through the elimination of hundreds of billets because of Navy Enlisted Classifications that are being eliminated as the service shifts from P-3 Orions to P-8 Poseidons over the next four years.
Sailors in overmanned ratings can help themselves now by looking for new occupations in undermanned ratings, officials say. And there are also still plenty of those right now — 29 in all — which have less than 98 percent overall manning.
Though this might seem like a lot, officials say, it's a lot fewer than the 47 ratings that were undermanned just two years ago.
This is where the opportunity abounds. Yes, the usual suspects are here; nuclear power ratings and special warfare types are nearly always undermanned. And cyber ratings, where the Navy is growing over the next few years, are also in need more people.
This is especially true for cryptologic technicians (networks), the Navy's offensive cyber warriors. So if you fancy yourself as a hacker, and have the test scores and security clearance — or the ability to get one — now is definitely the time to jump.
But there are others, too, for example, cruiser-intensive ratings such as both mechanical and electrical gas turbine specialists; surface sonar technicians; and regular and Aegis fire control technicians are also in needed.
Staff writer David Larter contributed to this report.
Mark D. Faram is a former reporter for Navy Times. He was a senior writer covering personnel, cultural and historical issues. A nine-year active duty Navy veteran, Faram served from 1978 to 1987 as a Navy Diver and photographer.
