Choosing Sailors with the “Right Stuff”
By Commander James H. Ware, U.S. Navy
The U.S. Navy has for too long allowed commanding officers to avoid hard decisions regarding manpower in their assigned units and gained unprecedented control over individual sailors through force-management programs such as Perform-to-Serve (PTS). The resulting unsynchronized and, in some cases, contradictory policies have confused sailors and increased the already significant level of uncertainty and stress among Navy families. Commanding officers must exercise their moral obligation to adequately document sailors’ performance and have the courage not to recommend retention when warranted, to improve the efficiency of our commands, and return some measure of predictability to the lives of sailors and their families left in our charge.
