Improving Enlisted Fleet Manning

Abstract : The primary objective of the Navy s Manpower, Personnel, Training & Education (MPT&E) system is to man the fleet with sailors whose skills and experience levels match those of the job (i.e., billet) requirements. Achieving fleet manning levels that are deemed sufficient by Navy leadership, however, has proved to be a perennial challenge. Providing the right number and mix of sailors to the fleet is a complicated process. Many underlying issues combine and interact in complex ways to produce persistent inventory shortfalls and skill/ experience misalignments, which impede the MPT&E system s ability to meet fleet manning goals. Over the past eight years, enlisted sea duty manning levels have steadily dropped (see figure 1). During the first three quarters of FY 2013, aggregate sea manning levels hovered around 90 percent, meaning that about 15,000 funded sea-duty billets were not filled. Furthermore, the primary fleet manning metric Fit, which accounts for how well sailors skills and experience levels match those required by billets showed even lower levels, meaning that even more billets were not filled with the right types of sailors.