The Navy’s active-duty ranks will grow to a force of 347,800 by the end of fiscal year 2021, if lawmakers approve the manpower hikes requested in the president’s fiscal ’21 budget.

If achieved, that would be the highest end strength for the service in the past 14-years and the latest milestone in the service’s climb needed to close manning gaps at sea, today – as well as the projected 355-ship Navy of the future.

To achieve these goals, Vice Adm. John B. Nowell Jr, the Navy’s chief of personnel told Congress March 11, that a continued investment from lawmakers is vital to growing the force, modernizing the fleet, and continuing the critical ongoing transformation of the service’s antiquated personnel policies and support systems into a state of the art human resources organization.

“A commitment to continued investment is necessary to man the fleet,” Nowell said in his written testimony provided to the Personnel Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee.   

“The President’s Budget for FY21 funds growth in Navy’s active end strength by an additional 7,300 Sailors -- above FY20 levels -- and in addition to funding increases in manning and training, the budget request supports growth in special and incentive pays, critical to recruiting and retention.”

It’s the Navy the nation needs, Nowell emphasized to lawmakers, as a resurgent China and Russia have been challenging the U.S. Navy at sea in recent years as peer competitors the nation has not had since the end of the Cold War, three decades ago.

“Our competitive advantage is shrinking,” Nowell said, “However, we will maintain and increase our edge by leveraging our greatest warfighting advantage and asymmetric asset, our people.”

And though the Navy has been doing well in both recruiting new talent and retaining record numbers, the service must continue its efforts to become an employer of choice to compete for the nation’s best and brightest in the future.

“Recruiting and retaining superb talent is not trivial given today’s historically low unemployment rate,” Nowell said. “Given these trends, MyNavy HR must continue to develop and improve recruiting strategies for all demographic groups and find ways to best leverage existing incentives to attract and retain personnel.”

To fill the Navy’s entry-level ranks the service is targeting the Centennial Generation.

Born between 1997 and 2012 this generation is now the main source of new recruits, Nowell said.   

“We must tailor our recruiting tactics and marketing to build our workforce by understanding their motivations and desires,” he said.

As a result, the Navy has left the traditional advertising market of television behind and instead are putting their efforts and money where these potential recruits live – the digital domain.

“We are targeting diverse audiences using digital media on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and Reddit, and we launched a Navy esports team to access a rapidly expanding youth market,” he said. “These changes have increased the total number of new recruiting prospects and are allowing us to reach markets with diverse candidates we previously have not accessed.” 

The Navy’s growth can’t continue on recruiting alone, Nowell said. Retaining skilled mid and senior level Sailors is also necessary to balance the force as it grows.  And despite a strong economy, which traditionally marks rough times for military retention – retention has remained strong.

This critical momentum must not only continue, Nowell said, but must increase, as well.

“Retention of every capable Sailor has remained a vital element of Navy's growth strategy,” Nowell said.  We succeeded in preserving increased retention across all pay grades in FY19 by continuing to apply a range of force management tools to retain proven performers across the Navy, he said.

The end result has been a steady increase in end strength in recent years that is expected to continue. The Navy finished fiscal year 2019 with a total end strength of 337,006 and is expected to finish fiscal year 2020 with 342,323 onboard. By the end of fiscal year 2021, that number is expected to be 347,800 if the budget is approved.

Still, Nowell admits not all is rosy in the war to keep top talent.  

“While overall enlisted retention in FY19 continued to set high marks not seen in years, critical community skill sets are experiencing some challenges in Navy’s current steep growth environment,” he said.

These include the nuclear field, special warfare, advanced electronics, aviation maintenance, information warfare, and the submarine force.   

“These skills are challenging to attract and retain in the current job and education market,” he said.

This means, he said, that the Navy will continue to need special and incentive pays to keep Sailors with high-risk, high-demand, and high-investment skills. However, the service is getting creative in how they use their money, for example, piloting a merit-based kicker to enlisted retention bonuses to reward top performers with extra cash.

It’s not just money that keeps Sailors in the ranks, Nowell said. This has led to a growing number of non-monetary incentives for the Navy’s retention tool kit. For example the service now uses spot advancements and geographic stability, and are actively looking for other enticements that give Sailors more choices and flexibility in their Navy careers.

Also needed are budget resources to continue the Navy’s massive overhaul of its antiquated personnel system, including how we train Sailors throughout their careers as well as a whole new delivery of critical human resources support – such as pay and personnel functions.

“Just as the aging fleet must be modernized to confront these new challenges, we must overhaul our antiquated 20th century, industrial era personnel system,” Nowell said. “Given the rapidly changing strategic landscape, we must manage talent differently.”

Already, the Navy is overhauling how Sailors are trained with “cutting edge technologies” designed to keep training relevant and on “pace with the modernizing Navy.”

The idea is to have to use these technologies to delivery training “at the points of need” at career milestones, Nowell said. Properly timed delivery of knowledge and skills are needed to allow “Sailors to operate and maintain equipment at its technological limits” for the Navy’s “rapidly evolving warfighting requirements.” 

Meanwhile, how the Navy delivers its personnel functions is rapidly changing, too, he said and at a critical point in transformation, too. Resources are needed to finish building a state of the art human resources delivery system on par with private industry.

Started over the past few years, Nowell said, the goal is to deliver to Sailors and their families the same kind tech-driven online and hand-held tools to manage their Navy careers they have come to expect from their civilian banking and shopping providers.

The Navy has already developed many mobile applications to help Sailors and their families manage their careers.  

One example is the MyNavy Family app that was developed by spouses to help them help manage their families better. Another is the MyNavy PCS app, which helps Sailors and their family plan and execute duty station transfers from their mobile devices. It even allows for filing of their travel claims straight from their devices, too.

These apps are secured with industry standard multifactor authentication and don’t require Sailors to be on Navy networks to use.

In the future, the Navy plans to develop similar mobile methods to make it easier to apply their next duty assignments and eventually even conduct performance evaluations, too.

Here, the Navy is working to neck down 55, “non-interoperable” data systems.

This “system of systems,” he said, will be the backbone of the Navy’s future pay and personnel delivery system, including the mobile application efforts.

As Navy navigates the unsteady waters that come with a renewed “Great Power Competition,” Nowell said, transformation of the service’s people programs are “vital to combat current and emerging threats, deliver global lethality, and maintain maritime superiority” with “a more agile, adaptive, and better trained force, ready to meet an increasingly complex mission.”

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