Marine Officials Focus On Fixing MOS Shortages Post-Drawdown

MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va. — As the Corps' manpower drawdown nears completion, Marine officials say For leaders at the helm of Manpower and Reserve Affairs, 2016 will be defined by efforts to ensure the service shape the Marine Corps, ensuring that it does not become a hollow force now that in the wake of tens of thousands of Marines have been shed from the ranksbeing shed from the ranks. he manpower drawdown.

Service officials are on a mission to confirm make ore specifically, the year will be focused on making sure the service has the right personnel in the right paygrades and correct in the right specialties. After dropping from a wartime high of 202,000 Marines, officials with Manpower and Reserve Affairs want to be certain make sure they can to provide unit leaders not only with troops needed the manpower to meet operational needs, but also with Marines who have leadership skills and unit leadership and technical expertise.

The Corps has nearly reached its 2017 end-strength goal of 182,000 active-duty Marines by 2017 — there are currently about 184,000 in uniform.

For many, that could spell career opportunitywith handsome re-enlistment bonuses in a handful of growth fields and lateral move opportunities. For others, it could limit options outside their primary military occupational specialty. if they reside in a critical, but shorthanded community.

The most opportunity in the years ahead will be in critical, but undermanned jobs including cyber, intelligence, explosive ordnance disposal, critical skills operators and reconnaissance. Also, gGrowth fields also include those in the MV-22 Osprey and F-35B joint strike fighter communities.

Those fields are likely to continue offering handsome re-enlistment bonuses, strong ggod promotion prospects and solid lateral move opportunities that — in some cases — come with instant promotions.

But Mmanpower officials are also focused on fine tuning the rest of the force.

Marine officials will now work to fix those imbalances, but it could take time, Brilakis said. New Marines coming in from leaving boot camp or Officer Candidate School will be assigned to MOSs that are short-staffed, but its understood that they won't instantly have the same level of expertise asof a Marine noncommissioned officer who took an early -out option.

The service offered a menu host of mostly voluntary programs to lure Marines out of uniform during the drawdown, but there's no longer a need for most of them, Brilakis said efforts to reduce the force from 202,000 to 182,000 by the end of 2017.

It will take a few years to fine-tune the service, post-drawdown. But for now, the only early -out incentive that will be offered is the Temporary Early Retirement Authority program, which offers those with more than 15 years of service the chance to leave uniform with a reduced pension. It will be carefully targeted to overpopulated MOSs as part of grade-shaping efforts.

Staff sergeant retention boards will likely still be used to rid the service of non-competitive staff NCOs officers, ensuring upward mobility for more junior Marines.

But but other harsher programs — like Selective Early Retirement Boards, which screened colonels and lieutenant colonels with 20 years of service for retirement — are over.

Brilakis is expecting, by Oct. 30, the results of a force-wide survey by Oct. 30 in which commanders from every community identified Marines in their units deemed critical to readiness. Those are the Marines described as having have the mental and moral maturity to mentor their juniors younger Marines in both life and MOS skills, but also technical job proficiency.

The initiative follows Commandant Gen. Joseph Dunford's efforts to retain experienced squad leaders during the drawdown. That resulted in the Squad Leader Development Program, which officers bonuses, career-boosting assignments and promotions to officers corporals and sergeants re-enlisting in an infantry squad leader MOS bonuses, career-boosting assignments and promotions.

"General Dunford believes that if you find that critical leadership, that enlisted leader in an organization who has direct responsibility for our young Marines, then not only are they well-led in training, not only will they be well-lead in combat, but they will be well-lead and taken care of for all the other things that go on in life," Brilakis said.

Leaders quickly realized that non-infantry communities need to retain similar talent and expertise, but a sergeant or corporal may not be the glue holding together an aviation squadron, for example, unit's glue in an aviation squadron unit, for example, in the same way that he might same way he is in an infantry squad. In technical fields, it can often sometimes like aviation it takes longer to develop and earn important certifications and experience.

While it is too early to say for sure, Marine leaders have said that but identification of critical Marines could result in new bonuses financial incentives and new training programs. Under the Squad Leader Development program, for example, sergeants reenlisting in an Infantry Squad Leader MOS received $20,500.

Leaders will begin marketing the Career Intermission Pilot Program. It is part of a Defense Department-directed initiative to re-vamp military careers, making them more appealing as the services compete with private industry for talent with private industry.

"The program was established to allow a Marines to request the opportunity to freeze in place, go outside the Marine Corps and pursue whatever it is that they want to pursue, whether it is education, family or personal," Brilakis said. "If a Marine wanted to climb Everest and that was his reason, this program is available for him to do that."