Hundreds of shore jobs will no longer count as sea duty

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Hundreds of shore-based jobs in Europe — including nearly all those at Naval Support Activities Gaeta and La Maddalena, Italy — are changing from sea duty to overseas shore duty, according to a Jan. 12 Navy administrative message.

All incoming sailors will have their tours at these bases, and many small activities such as naval attaché offices at various embassies, credited as shore duty. Sailors already at the commands, or who have already received orders to these commands, will have their entire tour credited as sea duty.

Shore-based jobs in Naples and Sigonella have been credited as shore duty for a number of years, but some of the smaller, more isolated locations had been considered sea duty. While the Navy differentiates between shore duty jobs in the U.S. and those overseas, each still is credited as shore duty for sea/shore rotations.

All enlisted jobs, and each individual rank in those fields, have a specific number of months in which a sailor is supposed to serve at sea or on shore before rotating back to the other type of duty. The change will cut the number of sailors available for the overseas shore billets, as those sea duty tour lengths will have to be done at sea.

In the past, sailors could have feasibly served an entire career on sea duty without having set foot on a ship because they were overseas. These changes, according to the Navy administrative message, allow Navy officials to better man those sea-going and deploying units.

“In this case we’re looking at making sure a sailor does sea duty at sea and gets (that) credit for advancement,” Chief of Naval Personnel spokeswoman Sharon Anderson told Stars and Stripes. Sailors who have opted for ships or deployable units for their sea duty generally advance quicker than those who have chosen overseas shore commands to fulfill their sea duty requirements.

These changes, according to the message, will increase the number of sailors available to fill critical billets at sea, help meet manning priorities and help restore the proper balance to sailors’ sea/shore rotations.

But these changes will come at a cost. Some of the overseas shore jobs are now much harder to fill, and Navy officials are offering big bonuses — up to $1,500 extra per month for a senior enlisted computer specialist in Naples, for example — to get people into some overseas shore jobs.

Sailors who want many overseas shore duty jobs make bids, up to a set amount per job and location, when they request orders. This is a market-driven system rather than one-size-fits-all, said Anderson.

For more information, go to: http://www.npc.navy.mil/NR/rdonlyres...0/NAV06015.txt, or http://www.npc.navy.mil/ReferenceLibrary/Messages/.