In June, the United States Navy met its fiscal year 2025 (FY25) recruiting goals, three months ahead of the end of the fiscal year. The sea service had also exceeded its FY24 goals, but, as reported last January, the U.S. Navy will need to continue meeting them in the coming years to recover from its current gaps at sea. The gaps occur when more sailors are needed for sea duty than there are billets available. The situation is improving, but even if the U.S. Navy meets the recruiting goals, it won’t go far enough.
USNI News reported this week that the US. The Navy needs to continue bringing in more junior sailors to fully staff the at-sea billets. Officials warned that the problem is being compounded by delays in the training pipelines, which, as of this month, have resulted in more than 20,000 at-sea gaps, with the majority at the apprentice level (E-1 to E-3).
“At the apprentice level, there are 16,369 gaps at sea, followed by 3,301 among journeyman sailors (E-4 to E-6) and 1,013 in the supervisor level, which includes sailors at ranks E-7 and above,” USNI News explained, based on data provided by U.S. Navy spokesperson Stacee McCarroll.
Gaps At-Sea to Decline
In testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee in April, Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Adm. Richard Cheeseman told lawmakers that the service expected to see a decline of gaps at-sea by as many as 2,000 by the end of FY25 on September 30, 2025, and by another 8,000 in Fiscal Year 2026.
According to the most recent reports, the U.S. Navy is likely to see the decline in the gaps at-sea continue for the next two to three years.
It will require continued recruitment efforts, as the U.S. Navy will lose about 10% of its sailors annually.
“The Navy’s gains in recruiting, retaining, and training sailors are about more than just volume; we are laser-focused on fit/fill to get the right people in the right billets at the right time,” Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Adm. Jeffrey Czerewko told USNI News in a November statement. “There is still work to be done, and we will continue to work with Type Commanders and billet resource sponsors to deliver talent to the Fleet, so the Fleet can continue the Navy’s 250-year legacy of protecting our nation.”
Does The Navy Have ‘Subpar’ Recruits?
The situation with gaps at-sea also comes as the Department of Defense Inspector General released a new report finding that both the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy may have incorrectly classified recruits who received low marks on military entry exams. That resulted in both branches of the U.S. Armed Forces accepting “more underachieving enlistees than Congress allows,” Stars & Stripes explained.
To help meet its recruiting goals, the Navy lowered some barriers to entry. Last year, it announced it would no longer require that recruits have a high school diploma or even a GED (General Educational Development) certificate. In addition, the U.S. Navy remains the only service that enlists those considered a “category four” recruit – meaning they scored 30 or less on the qualification test. Such recruits could fill a number of job openings, including cooks and boatswain mates, but will still need to meet those job standards.
However, the OIG found that the service failed to report the original underperforming scores.
“The objective of this evaluation is to determine whether the U.S. Navy’s Future Sailor Preparatory Course effectively prepared participants to meet or exceed minimum DoD enlistment standards,” Bryan T. Clark, assistant inspector general for evaluations, programs, combatant commands, and operations, wrote in an April memorandum. “We may revise the objective as the evaluation proceeds, and we will also consider suggestions from management for additional or revised objectives.”
The IG now recommends that the DoD issue clarifying guidance directing the services to employ the updated scores only if the development programs receive proper oversight and meet legal requirements. That includes the Navy’s congressionally unregulated courses, the Fitness Skills Development program, launched in 2023, and the Academic Skills Development program, introduced a year later.
