Recruited for Navy SEALs, Many Sailors Wind Up Scraping Paint
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Pre-2006 you’d basically do as you suggested, you’d make it into intelligence/nukes/etc. and then you’d try out for SEALs. Now you play a <1-in-10 lottery where you have to avoid an overzealous training instructor kicking you while lugging a 300lb log amongst other challenges. If you don’t make it you complete a filler job class under SEALs and you’re stuck.
You’re straw-manning this issue & the challenges detailed. SEALs is hands-on work, no one is making an “I’m-too-good” argument because they went to college. There’s people who almost made it through SEALs who would be immense assets elsewhere in armed forces — and prior to 2006 they would have been.
The selection process to get into BUD/S is swim fast, run fast, do lots of pushups and pass a dive physical.
Everybody in the Navy works. I've done plenty of manual labour myself -- even as a Chief, even as a Chief in NSW. Seaman Timmy doesn't get a pass because he rang the bell at BUD/S.
Source: I’m a Marine who went through some very difficult training.
Welcome to the military. It's not about you, it's about serving and fulfilling the needs of your branch. They could definitely improve here but it's not exactly a surprise.
You don't join to be a SEAL, you join to be a Sailor.
The AF is full of Security Police that though they were going to be Para-Rescue, and washed out of the training pipeline.
Don't buy the ticket, you won't have to take the ride.
I imagine the policy was to get enough recruitment into the SEAL pipeline, esp. among candidates that would not otherwise join the Navy, if thats the case and it is effective, than I doubt the primary concern is underutilization of washouts.
If the Navy was facing a dearth of skilled positions than I imagine it would not be too hard to better utilise qualified SEAL washouts.
We had a phrase- "every Marine a janitor" instead of rifleman.
There are some that are tasked more full time with these jobs, but a lot of those are jobs with immense downtime between their missions / training. Think infantry where you have bursts and blocks of training but there are also large blocks of open time where these kinds of maintenance are performed.
Separate. When I ran my last two businesses, both of which were doing mid 8 figures in revenue, I and the rest of management also were in the trenches doing things like cleaning and maintenance. Sure we had services we hired, but that didn't negate the urgency or imperative of fixing / cleaning then and there.
I think whomever wrote this article is someone that has rarely had to do these sorts of normal every day tasks the rest of us need to. Hell i'd argue there are probably a large portion of people in this world of employment that haven't.
I wouldn't say that any of the military's problems are easy to solve, but recruitment itself is a scam.
IIRC I had to pay $100/month for the first year or something along those lines. Probably wrong as that was over 30 years ago and it was the old pre-perpetual war GI Bill.
On the subject of TFA, if you sign up for a job with something like a 98% washout rate I don’t know what to tell you. When I was on active duty to get into Special Forces you had to be on at least your second enlistment and knew if you washed out you would just go back to being a grunt whenever they needed you. Or a medic, think they were a feeder MOS too. Honestly can’t imagine someone coming from a ranger battalion or an 82nd line company washing out though…
[0] my recruiter when I signed up for the reserves told me there were no aviation units (I wanted to be a door gunner) in Arizona and on my first drill there were Blackhawks stationed literally next door to our reserve center. When I called him out on it he’s like “oh, that’s the national guard”. Probably a good thing because they were the most deployed unit because they would get called up for forest fires and such.
—edit—
Just remembered “Captain Cutaway”… This dude passed the Delta Force selection course three times and was never accepted because they’d start with something like 120 people, two or three would pass and there was only one slot. He was just frickin’ crazy which couldn’t have helped — we called him that because he would literally cut away from his parachute about 20 feet above the ground because, well, nobody knew.
That was not my experience at all. I picked my specialty code well before a slot opened up for me to go to basic training. The contract paperwork was extremely specific, and the guy walking me through it spent a lot of time talking about each individual element I was signing. They were picky about who they'd accept, they didn't dangle pararescue as a real possibility (it was more like, give the tryout a shot only if you want to find out how close to drowning you are comfortable with).
Hell, one of the things I liked most about the military was how incredibly specific they were about everything. That and the fact that if you knew how to schmooze the right chief master sergeant you could get a waiver for damn near any rule. Occasionally I still regret not at least staying in the air guard after I left active duty. It's like the best club in the whole world.
I'm not even sure how you'd sign away the GI bill, short of refusing to make the contributions. Otherwise it's just a VA thing and eligibility is very straightforward.
I don't get it. All US submarines are nuclear. Serving on a nuclear sub is an honor granted to few. Sure, you'll get to clean toilets sometimes. So what? If you join the Navy, you want to fight wars. Since WW1 wars were won with machines. Artillery, machine guns, tanks, airplanes, ships, submarines. Submariners in particular pretty much won the war in the Pacific. If the US gets into a war, especially one with China, the subs will make a huge difference. And maybe it's because of them that the US will actually not get into a war with China.
A sailor on a nuclear sub makes as much of a difference to the war fighting capability of the US as a Seal, if not more.
If you were able to reclassify, depending on how your squadron commander felt about you washing out (and with respect to overall USAF manning needs), you might have been given a chance to pick from a short list of jobs that are hard to fill. Or not given a chance to pick. This is how someone who originally signed up to repair aircraft can become an admin or in the security forces.
The unfair part of how the Navy is treating them is that they're doing this to sailors who failed BUD/S because they got injured. It's one of the toughest schools on the planet and getting injured is a distinct possibility[2]. The Navy is wasting talent by having them swab decks. They should identify the ones who rang the bell for reasons beyond their control (like getting injured) and show promise, and let them pick a new rating based on their ASVAB and physical abilities.
If they failed BUD/S because they rang the bell because they'd had enough - then the SEAL culture means you get reclassified to whatever the service needs.[3]
[0] In casual status you will be cutting grass, cleaning windows, picking up trash, etc. It's easy work but you will be closely supervised.
[1] An administrative discharge can be Honorable, General, or Other Than Honorable. Washing out of tech school makes it very unlikely that you'll get an Honorable, meaning you won't get many veterans benefits after you leave.
[2] Even in the USAF trainees can get injured. I met someone who was training to be a linesman when their climbing spike came loose and they fell 30 feet, breaking their leg. After the bone knitted back they were in casual status waiting for their class to begin - but not as a linesman.
[3] USAF Pararescue (PJs) will have you interviewed by the commander to see if you have the right attitude to try the course again. Otherwise you get reclassified. Fun fact - most people fail the PJ Indoc class because their swimming skills aren't good enough.
Some people got lucky, it was always "convenience of the AF", and the list changed every week. You could wash into loadmaster or DLI, if your scores were good and there was an opening. But they wouldn't keep you on casual status very long, only a couple of weeks. Due to numbers, security police was common. Low score required, lots of demand, short tech school.
Now to casual status. We called it "AFI, Awaiting Further Instruction". The NCO supervising was always old and or bitter about the USAF. He was being forced to supervise a bunch of young airman against his will. The goal was to do a little smidgen of work, then hide until 4pm when the duty day was done. Don't get caught so the NCO had to really supervise.