The Navy deep-sixed all of its 91 enlisted ratings titles Thursday, marking the beginning of an overhaul of the rigid career structure that has existed since the Continental Navy in a radical shift sure to reverberate through the fleet and the veterans community beyond.

Sailors will no longer be identified by their job title, say, Fire Controlman 1st Class Joe Sailor, effective immediately. Instead, that would be Petty Officer 1st Class Joe Sailor.

Officials say the controversial move will improve sailors' lives and ease their transition into the civilian workforce by broadening their skills in this tectonic shift in Navy’s personnel system to redraw the traditional lines between enlisted job specialties — a massive shake-up that is only beginning. Within the next three to four years, earlier if possible, the service plans to allow sailors to retrain in related skills, expanding their worth to the Navy while reaping broader assignment opportunities as well as increased advancement changes and greater access to special pays and bonuses that come with the most critical skills.

“We’re going to immediately do away with rating titles and address each other by just our rank as the other services do,” said Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Adm. Robert Burke in a Sept. 19 interview. “We recognize that’s going to be a large cultural change, it’s not going to happen overnight, but the direction is to start exercising that now.”

To highlight a few: Gunner’s Mate stood up the watch in 1775 in the Contintental Navy. Boatswain’s Mate dropped anchor in 1775, too. Hospital Corpsman rushed to duty in 1948 after being called four other names over the previous 150 years. Operations Specialists started tracking in 1972 an upgrade from the name Radarman before it.

The move also strips the titles airman, fireman, constructionman and hospitalman, titles that will be also replaced by job codes. The title seaman is the sole non-rated rating remaining, for E-3 and below.

The moves leaves the enlisted force's foremost symbols as the petty officer crow and the chief petty officer anchors. It remains unclear what will happen to the ratings badges that feature iconic rating insignia that officials are considering changing. An engineman’s gear. An information systems technician’s sparks. These images were beloved by many and inspired countless tattoos.


The huge shift was approved by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson and had been advocated by the now retired Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Mike Stevens, who urged it as way to promote more cross-training and boost sailors’ post-service employment opportunity. It began by a directive from Mabus to find gender-neutral rating titles that stripped them of the word "man," in an effort to be more inclusive to women sailors who make up an increasing size of the force.

Film at 11... 🤔


Thanks Obama.. 😠

Simplify it even more, everyone could be "navy dude".

Improve their lives? Why not restore pride in their rating and part of the Navy (Ops, Engineering, SEABEES, Aviation, and of course Special Warfare/Operations), treat them like adults, and recruit to be sailors/nautical warriors? Discretion and a little "inside information" limits what I can post-I'll simply say good friends have lost their careers in this new climate, and fortunately many fewer are deploying in harm's way or we'd be paying in blood for this chicanery.

I want my Navy back.

Bur
Auburn U NROTC 1984-1988
US Navy 1988-2010
Surface Warfare
Navy Diving Officer
Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Officer

Not just "officer"

Change is inevitable and nobody likes it. My original rating disappeared in 1996. They no longer make ships with boilers on them so there was no longer a need for boiler technicians.

I switched to Master-at-Arms in 1996 and nobody knows what the hell that is because all the other services call them MP's.

Every rating has an accompanying NEC or Naval Education Code. They're just changing to be more like everyone else, I guess, and go by a number instead of a name.

My NEC as a BT was 4533 (console operator). My NEC as an MA was 0812 (small arms instructor). *shrug*

I'm retired. As long as the checks keep cashin'... whatever. 🇨🇮

"S-e-m-e-n" makes sense...

The sailors were pretty pissed about this at colors this morning. On a high note a colleague of mine's retirement flag was flown after 20 years in the Marine Corps. He's been on terminal for a while but it's official now.

In 1980 I started out as a Signalman NEC 0000

In 84 I switched rates to Master at Arms,in 86 I picked up NEC 0814

In 89 I left the Navy for bigger and what I thought were better things.

I'm old school........I hate change and IMHO this schit is going to **** up a good Navy.

#7 Whistlebritches

+1
I totally agree.
I never served in any ARMED forces but
Worked right along side them a multitude of times.

I can hear the sailors from the 1800's saying the same thing about steam ships... "We've always used the wind! A steam engine? You're going to put fire ON the ship? On purpose? It's never going to work! Woe is me!"

Fast forward to WWI and WWII... steel hulled ships. Fast forward again... ships using gas turbine engines. Now we have nuclear powered air craft carriers.

The one thing the Navy is consistent with is change. It isn't what they call the sailors... the Navy IS the sailors. And it'll be fine. Relax.

It is what it is.

I was active duty when the powers that be decided that because of nuclear,biological and chemical warfare that all beards must go due to the NBC mask fit.Now that stirred some schit Brother..........Officers,Chief's and Petty Officer's 3rd thru 1st banded together to save their beards.I was pissed myself.......although I had only been allowed a beard(E-4's and up)a couple years at that time some hadn't shaved in twenty years.We had an LCDR submit his resignation over this.........of course he come up enlisted and made officer through the Mustang program,had about 35 years service under his belt and according to him the beard had been around that long as well.

So yes this is but a blip on the radar screen.........I still hate change,just glad I personally do not have to deal with it.

I'm with Ron. This is ridiculous horse****. I'm absolutely certain that the only reason this came about is in the last sentence. They decided that Firecontrolperson would be really silly, so "Let's just scrap the whole **** lot of them (ratings.). I'll also bet there weren't two women in the entire Navy that complained about the ratings. Maybe one who got her arm twisted by somebat**** crazy liberal from ACLU or NOW or something who wanted to make a federal case out of it.

My service was Army and Air Force, but I think taking away the ratings seriously stinks! When I was in the Philippines (Clark AB 1973-74) I worked part-time at the AFRTS network with airmen, sailors and Marines. The Navy broadcasters proudly announced their rating as "Navy Journalist", and the electronic technicians were equally proud of their ratings.

The nearest comparison in the other services would be the corps to which soldiers belong. The uniforms are different today, more's the shame; but in my day the combat arms had distinctive shoulder ropes and/or scarves with their Class A uniforms, and every corps/service had distinctive collar-brass that told you instantly what area their skills were in -- Infantry, Finance, Medical, Quartermaster, etc. Those of us who weren't in one of those corps wore the "unassigned" eagle-emblem instead; we were mostly coffice clerks of one sort or another, but anyone whose specialty didn't fit neatly into a particular corps. (I was a journalist; we could be assigned to any unit at battalion level or higher and wore our unit's shoulder patch, but we were usually "pooled" in an office at the post/base level.)

The babbling baby boy blunder Obama said he was going to transform America.


Only we did not know he meant screw up the United States Navy as well.

Shalom[-x

WASHINGTON – The Navy is scrapping its decision to eliminate dozens of enlisted sailors' job titles, including many that end in "man," after hitting an onslaught of opposition from the force.

The decision to drop long-held traditional titles and instead refer to sailors by their rank was announced in September and signaled a sharp cultural shift for the Navy. Three months later, after hearing persistent complaints and questions from sailors around the world, Navy leaders are going back to the drawing board.

Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, said in a memo that modernizing the job ratings or titles was designed to give sailors more flexibility in training and assignments. Switching to names more understandable to the civilian world, Navy leaders argued, would make it easier to get jobs once sailors left the service.

But after hearing angry feedback from thousands of sailors, Richardson said Navy leaders believe they can find a way to provide better job flexibility without dropping the titles.

"We have learned from you, and so effective immediately, all rating names are restored," he said.

The memo will be publicly released at 8 a.m. Eastern time Wednesday, and sailors can expect to see correspondence from Navy leaders.


Film at 11.... 😟

A bitchin' sailor is a happy sailor.

🤣

shalom.