Re-enlistment getting tougher for Marines - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Re-enlistment getting tougher for Marines

In late December, a former NCO decided to rejoin the Corps.

He told his recruiter he wanted to return to duty as a rifleman, checked in at a military entrance processing station and waited for his shipping date.

A month later, his recruiter told him he was out of luck. His previous 0311 military occupational specialty was full-up, and if he wanted to rejoin the infantry, it’d have to be as an anti-tank missileman, which had about 36 slots left at the time, he said.

“It is still my intention to join back up,” said the former Marine, who served with 7th Marine Regiment in Iraq in 2005 and left the Corps in 2007. “I am not going to stop without somewhat of a fight. … I am trying to just find out why the Corps would do this to [their] own, but like [always], there are higher forces [than] myself at work.”

If his story sounds surprising, it’s time to adjust fire.

After years of trying to reach an end strength of 202,000 Marines, the Corps is nearing a post-202K world where fewer recruiters are on the streets, re-enlistment is tightened and good Marines get shut out if they wait too long to re-enlist or don’t swap jobs.

Re-ups dry up

Sgt. Maj. Carlton Kent, the Corps’ top enlisted adviser, said the service is “approaching 95 percent” of its re-enlistment goal for fiscal 2009, meaning there are few options left for Marines who haven’t re-upped.

For many, that means the options are to take a lateral move into a specialty that is traditionally short on manpower or hang up their cammies.

Additionally, the Corps announced Jan. 28 that it has closed 45 specialties to first-term re-enlistment — a list that includes everything from motor vehicle operator to more than a dozen aviation mechanic and technician specialties. The closed specialties, listed in Marine administrative message 052/09, account for nearly a third of the original options just four months into fiscal 2009. Since then, Marine officials have said that an additional 22 specialties are expected to close by the end of February.

Officials with Manpower & Reserve Affairs also said that for the rest of the year, the Corps will eliminate broken-service selective re-enlistment bonuses in all but 27 MOSs for former Marines looking to re-enlist.

Strikingly, broken service bonuses will be eliminated by the end of February for many perennially undermanned grunt fields, such as rifleman, light-armored vehicle crewman, machine gunner, mortarman, infantry assaultman and anti-tank missleman, Marine officials said. The decision comes as the Corps offers re-enlistment bonuses of between $29,000 and $46,000 to first-term Marines, as well as a $25,000 “kicker” to those who agree to re-up and remain in the operating forces for two years.

Manpower officials said the decisions were made to ensure boatspace caps are met, to encourage qualified Marines to seek lateral moves into short MOSs and to persuade prior-service Marines to pick one of the 27 MOSs with bonuses left, including “critically short” specialties such as reconnaissance, intelligence specialist and jobs related to the MV-22 Osprey.

“I would tell Marines, if they desire to continue to serve and their MOS is not yet closed, to submit for re-enlistment as soon as possible,” Kent said. “For Marines who desire to continue to serve and their MOS is closed, I would recommend they request a lateral move into a short MOS for which they are qualified. There remain a few options, to include several critical MOSs such as 0211 (counter-intelligence), 0321 (reconnaissance) and 0861 (fire support man), for which significant SRBs exist.”

Putting on the brakes

Sweating re-enlistment may be a foreign idea to first-term Marines, but the signs that a re-up wall was coming appeared earlier this year.

Over the past two years, the Corps has jumped dramatically ahead of its initial goal to grow from 180,000 to 202,000 Marines by the end of fiscal 2011. As of Dec. 31, the service stood at 199,196 Marines, nearly 10,000 ahead of its planned pace.

Due in large part to a massive retention effort last year, Marine officials scaled back the total force accession goal from 42,202 in 2008 to 39,296 in 2009, marking the first time it had been cut since the 202K push began.

Marine officials also warned in the spring that boatspace caps — the number of slots open for re-enlistment in a given military occupational specialty — would be enforced in fiscal 2009, a return to business as usual following two years in which virtually any qualified Marine could stay on. The Corps began closing some MOSs to re-enlistment in November, just six weeks into the fiscal year.

In another sign that the Corps is putting on the brakes, the service will begin reducing the number of recruiters this year, by not replacing many who complete their three-year billets, said Sgt. Maj. Fenton Reese, sergeant major of Marine Corps Recruiting Command in Quantico, Va.

That marks a departure from the past two years, when the Corps added recruiters to help with the plus-up. Six hundred additional recruiting billets were added in two waves in 2007, resulting in a record 3,150 leathernecks recruiting in fiscal 2008.

The Corps plans to eliminate 48 recruiter billets in fiscal 2009 and 86 in fiscal 2010, Reese said. The cuts will be spread across 48 recruiting stations, resulting in a loss of two or three recruiters per RS, he said. The rest of the recruiter billets added during the plus-up will remain in place.

“We still need to maintain that bigger force,” Reese said. “We still have to maintain momentum.”

One exception to the growth slowdown will come on the officer side. While the plus-up is nearly complete for enlisted Marines, the Corps still needs thousands of new lieutenants, who take more than a year to train in Officer Candidate School, The Basic School and various MOS schools.

Marine officials said they expect officer growth to follow the original 202K plan, with officer accessions increasing to 2,050 in fiscal 2009 and 2,108 in fiscal 2010. That’s in addition to the 1,844 officer candidates in fiscal 2007 and 1,900 in fiscal 2008 who signed contracts.

A look ahead to 2010

Kent warned that, like 2009, fiscal 2010 will be “a traditional retention year, where MOSs close once their boatspace goals are met.”

That means Marines coming up on the end of their contracts next year need to decide “as early as possible” whether they want to continue to serve and submit a package as soon as fiscal 2010 opens.

“Consider all of your options,” Kent advises. “You have skills and experience that the Marine Corps needs.”

For former Marines who missed the boat this year, Kent suggested considering a Selected Marine Corps Reserve unit as another viable option.

There also might be some options in other services. But a look across the Defense Department suggests that re-enlistment in 2010 may get tough across the board.

In the Air Force, a drawdown that began early in the decade impacted the size and number of re-enlistment bonuses offered, resulting in an exodus of airmen. In fiscal 2008, the service registered its lowest re-enlistment rate since fiscal 2001, in part because it planned to draw down its size to 316,000 airmen. That plan was called off in June, and Air Force officials now plan to expand the service to 332,700 airmen by the end of fiscal 2010. As of Dec. 31, the service stood at 329,078 troops.

In the Navy, re-ups are expected to get tough this year as an increasing number of sailors compete for the same number of jobs. The tightening re-enlistment picture is caused by a combination of more sailors choosing to stay in uniform in the face of a slumping economy and Navy officials looking to reduce the number of sailors in popular jobs while also providing about 12,000 individual augmentees for missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Army, however, is continuing to expand, meaning big bonuses and promotion opportunities. The “Grow the Army” plan was launched in January 2007 with the intent of adding 65,000 active-duty soldiers, 8,201 National Guardsmen and 1,010 Army reservists by September 2013. The Army stood at about 543,000 soldiers as of Dec. 31, about 4,000 short of its planned end strength.

Full up specialties

The Corps has closed the following MOSs to first-term re-enlistment for the remainder of fiscal 2009:

• 0121 Personnel clerk

• 0151 Administration clerk

• 0628 EHS satellite communications/ maintainer

• 1341 Engineer equipment mechanic

• 1345 Engineer equipment operator

• 1391 Bulk fuel specialist

• 2111 Small-arms repairer/technician

• 2147 Light-armored vehicle repairer/technician

• 2676 European II (East) cryptological linguist

• 2887 Artillery electronics technician

• 3051 Warehouse clerk

• 3052 Packaging specialist

• 3531 Motor vehicle operator

• 4641 Combat photographer

• 5831 Correctional specialist

• 5942 Aviation radar repairer

• 5948 Aviation radar technician

• 5952 Air traffic control navigational aids technician

• 6046 Aircraft maintenance administration specialist

• 6062 Aircraft intermediate level hydraulic/pneumatic mechanic

• 6072 Aircraft maintenance support equipment hydraulic/pneumatic/structures mechanic

• 6073 Aircraft maintenance support equipment electrician/refrigeration mechanic

• 6124 Helicopter power plants mechanic, T-400/T-700

• 6172 Helicopter crew chief, CH-46

• 6173 Helicopter crew chief, CH-53

• 6212 Fixed-wing aircraft mechanic, AV-8/TAV-8

• 6216 Fixed-wing aircraft mechanic, KC-130

• 6217 Fixed-wing aircraft mechanic, F/A-18

• 6222 Fixed-wing aircraft power plants mechanic, F-402

• 6252 Fixed-wing aircraft frame mechanic, AV-8/TAV-8

• 6282 Fixed-wing aircraft safety equipment mechanic, AV-8/TAV-8

• 6283 Fixed-wing aircraft safety equipment mechanic, EA-6

• 6286 Fixed-wing aircraft safety equipment mechanic, KC-130

• 6314 Unmanned aerial vehicle avionics technician

• 6316 Aircraft communications/navigation systems technician, KC-130

• 6324 Aircraft communications/navigation/electrical/weapon systems technician, U/AH-1

• 6336 Aircraft electrical systems technician, KC-130

• 6423 Aviation electronic microminiature/instrument and cable repair technician, intermediate maintenance activity

• 6432 Aircraft electrical/instrument/flight control systems technician, fixed-wing, IMA

• 6467 Consolidated automatic support system (CASS) technician, IMA

• 6541 Intermediate aviation ordnance technician, intermediate/equipment maintenance level

• 6694 Aviation logistics information and management support specialists

• 7041 Aviation operations specialist

• 7242 Air support operations operator

• 7382 Airborne radio operator/in-flight refueling observer

Closing soon

The following MOSs are expected to be closed to all first-term re-enlistment by the end of February:

• 0627 Super-high frequency satellite communications operator/maintainer

• 1361 Engineer assistant

• 1371 Combat engineer

• 2131 Towed artillery systems technician

• 2141 Assault Amphibious Vehicle repairer/technician

• 2146 Main battle tank repairer/technician

• 2171 Electro-optical ordnance repairer/technician

• 3043 Supply administration and operations clerk

• 3044 Contract specialist

• 3112 Traffic management specialist

• 3521 Automotive organizational mechanic

• 4133 Morale, welfare, recreation specialist

• 4671 Combat videographer

• 5711 Chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defense specialist

• 6092 Aircraft intermediate level structures mechanic

• 6153 Helicopter airframe mechanic, CH-53

• 6154 Helicopter airframe mechanic, UH/AH-1

• 6223 Fixed-wing aircraft power plants mechanic, J-52

• 6332 Aircraft electrical systems technician, AV-8

• 6531 Aviation ordnance technician, (organizational/squadron level)

• 7234 Air control electronics operator

• 7236 Air intercept controller

Broken service, limited options

For the remainder of fiscal ’09, the Corps plans to eliminate broken service re-enlistment bonuses, special pay offered to former service members who rejoin the military, for all specialties except:

• 0211 Counterintelligence/human intelligence specialist

• 0231 Intelligence specialist

• 0241 Imagery analysis specialist

• 0261 Geographic intelligence specialist

• 0321 Reconnaissance man

• 0431 Logistics/embarkation and combat service support (CSS) specialist

• 0451 Parachute rigger

• 0511 Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) planning specialist

• 0656 Tactical network specialist

• 0689 Information assurance technician

• 0842 Field artillery radar operator

• 0861 Fire support man

• 2336 Explosive ordnance disposal technician

• 2671 Middle East cryptologic linguist

• 2673 Asia-Pacific cryptologic linguist

• 2821 Technical controller Marine

• 2834 Satellite communications technician

• 2871 Test measurement and diagnostic equipment technician

• 6114 Helicopter mechanic, UH/AH-1

• 6116 Tiltrotor mechanic, MV-22

• 6156 Tiltrotor airframe mechanic, MV-22

• 6174 Helicopter crew chief, UH-1

• 6176 Tiltrotor crew chief, MV-22

• 6214 Unmanned aerial vehicle mechanic

• 6326 Aircraft communications/navigation/electrical/weapon systems technician, MV-22

• 6842 Meteorological and oceanographic forecaster

• 7257 Air traffic controller