JohnP
12-30-2008, 11:21 AM
Top 12 for 2009 Page 2
Big changes the Navy can expect in the year ahead
7. Better digs
Across the fleet, the Navy continues to renovate or rebuild enlisted barracks for single sailors. More shipboard sailors who call crowded bunks home are getting room to stretch out as the Navy continues its “Homeport Ashore” program, which includes the military’s first public-private ventures for bachelor enlisted quarters.
In March, the Navy will officially bless the opening of a new complex of high-rise buildings at Naval Base San Diego. The 960 furnished two-bedroom, two-bath apartments for E-4 and above were built in a privatization effort with the Navy’s partners, Clark Realty and its management firm Pinnacle. The PPV project includes adjacent Palmer Hall, the existing barracks for unaccompanied junior sailors.
The first handful of residents moved in Dec. 19. All of the more than 1,800 residents will get to enjoy Pacific Beacon’s condo-style living, with amenities including a rooftop pool and patio, fitness center, entertainment room, café and parking garage.
Across the country, a different pilot program under the Navy’s Homeport Ashore is giving a modern flair to Hampton Roads, Va., where crews are close to finishing construction of a townhouse-style complex of two-bedroom, two-bath apartments for 240 single junior sailors at Camp Elmore. Another joint venture project in nearby Camp Allen is making more room for 1,867 single sailors with a combination of new construction and barracks renovations, expected to be completed in 2010.
Still undecided is whether the Navy will pursue a third pilot program for unaccompanied sailors in Mayport, Fla., where officials want to base a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier by 2014, if not sooner.
8. Post-9/11 GI Bill
One of the biggest advances in veterans’ benefits since World War II takes effect on Aug. 1, when the flat-rate GI Bill transforms overnight into a plan that pays full tuition plus stipends for housing and books for most students.
Making the plan even more attractive is the possibility that career service members with at least 10 years of service could be allowed to transfer their unused benefits to their immediate family.
There are many questions about how the new Post-9/11 GI Bill will work, but the most important is whether the Veterans Affairs department will be ready by Aug. 1 to make payments in the face of what could be a landslide of claims.
The new GI Bill, for people who have served 30 days or longer on active duty since Sept. 11, 2001, will provide tuition payments directly to the school that are up to the cost of the most expensive four-year public college or university in the state where the veteran is matriculating.
When private-school tuition exceeds that of the costliest public school, students could get additional help if the school and VA agree to give grants under which the government will match whatever tuition discount a school is willing to make.
The housing stipend will be equal to the Basic Allowance for Housing rate for an E-5 living in the school’s ZIP code. The book allowance will be $1,000 a year.
While rates will vary from state to state for tuition and from school to school for the housing allowance, the average benefit will be worth about $80,000 for four years of college education.
9. Pay & bennies slowdown
A decade of enhancements in military pay and benefits could come to an end in 2009.
As a sagging national economy cuts U.S. tax revenues — and indirectly leads more people to consider joining the military as fewer people rush to get out — big benefits increases are a tougher sell in Congress.
That could include what has become an eight-year tradition of setting the annual military pay raise ahead of private-sector wage growth.
Budget-cutting efforts also lead lawmakers to take another look at some long-discussed proposals, like raising out-of-pocket costs for Tricare users, cutting taxpayer subsidies for commissaries, and consolidating commissaries with military exchanges. Those ideas come up in almost every new administration, and are pushed aside in the face of strong opposition from advocacy groups representing troops, retirees and their families.
Annual military pay raises since Jan. 1, 2000, have been 0.5 percentage points higher than the average private-sector pay hike. This was a congressional pay formula designed to close a gap between military and civilian wages that had grown as high as 13.5 percent by 1999.
Initially, Congress ordered five years of bigger raises, but the formula stuck because lawmakers have insisted on continuing to close the pay gap.
The 3.9 percent basic pay raise for 2009, which the Military Officers Association of America calculates leaves a remaining pay gap of 2.9 percent, could be the last gasp for military raises that outpace the private sector.
Congress may well settle for military raises that keep pace, but do not top, private-sector wage growth.
10. Aviation challenges
Dealing with the Navy’s fleet of aging aircraft will be a focus for sailors from Capitol Hill to the flight lines and maintenance sheds next year.
A key component of the annual budget showdown in Congress will be wrangling over the so-called “fighter gap” — the projected 10-year span beginning in 2015 when Hornets start retiring faster than new F-35C Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters arrive to replace them. The gap is projected to be at its widest — 69 planes — in 2017. The Navy may seek to buy more F/A-18 Super Hornets.
Meanwhile, sailors on the operational level will continue efforts to keep the current fleet in the air. In Florida, sailors are helping to rehabilitate dozens of P-3 Orions that were grounded in December 2007 due to fears the wings would break off in flight. Most of them remain in the depot for massive wing replacements.
For those in the Hornet community, routine inspections may intensify after this year’s problems. In October, the Navy ordered the emergency inspection of nearly 480 Hornets after discovering “fatigue cracks” in the wings. Ten were grounded in November and 20 others placed on flight restrictions while the defects were addressed.
11. Additions to the fleet
The new year will bring several distinctive new ships into the fleet:
• January includes the commissioning of the last Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, the George H.W. Bush, the last U.S. supercarrier designed with steam catapults. The ship still has a few months before it will be finished — it hasn’t even gone to sea trials — but commissioning it in January enables President Bush, while still in office, to preside over a ceremony for the warship named for his father. It also enables the Navy to technically claim it has another active carrier, to make up for the carrier Kitty Hawk, which was mothballed in fall 2008 but won’t be formally decommissioned until Jan. 31.
• In the summer, look for the arrival of the second littoral combat ship, the Independence. Not only does the Independence have all the same novel crewing arrangements as the first LCS, Freedom, LCS 2 is an all-aluminum, triple-hulled design based on a civilian ferry. This ship is well behind schedule, but Navy planners hope it has its sea trials and commissioning by the middle of the year.
• By the end of October, the Navy hopes to commission its first big-deck gator in seven years, the amphibious assault ship Makin Island. Technically, it’s the last ship in the Wasp class, but the Makin Island is much different from its siblings: It’s powered by gas turbines, has all-electric auxiliaries and many other advancements over its predecessors. It also has been delayed almost two years and ran hundreds of millions of dollars overbudget.
12. A New Navy secretary
The department of the Navy will have a new secretary in 2009. Whoever gets the job will inherit a Navy that faces a slew of challenging acquisition programs, from making sure ships are built on cost and on schedule to finally building the new presidential helicopter. Maintaining and repairing the Navy’s relationships with its shipbuilders will be a major task for the new secretary, coming after outgoing secretary Donald Winter’s sometimes frosty dealings with the defense industry. The Navy’s plans had called for it to be much further along especially with its fleet of littoral combat ships, and Winter’s successor must make sure it can catch up.
Staff writers Philip Ewing, Mark D. Faram, Gidget Fuentes, Rick Maze, Andrew Scutro and Andrew Tilghman contributed to this report.
Big changes the Navy can expect in the year ahead
7. Better digs
Across the fleet, the Navy continues to renovate or rebuild enlisted barracks for single sailors. More shipboard sailors who call crowded bunks home are getting room to stretch out as the Navy continues its “Homeport Ashore” program, which includes the military’s first public-private ventures for bachelor enlisted quarters.
In March, the Navy will officially bless the opening of a new complex of high-rise buildings at Naval Base San Diego. The 960 furnished two-bedroom, two-bath apartments for E-4 and above were built in a privatization effort with the Navy’s partners, Clark Realty and its management firm Pinnacle. The PPV project includes adjacent Palmer Hall, the existing barracks for unaccompanied junior sailors.
The first handful of residents moved in Dec. 19. All of the more than 1,800 residents will get to enjoy Pacific Beacon’s condo-style living, with amenities including a rooftop pool and patio, fitness center, entertainment room, café and parking garage.
Across the country, a different pilot program under the Navy’s Homeport Ashore is giving a modern flair to Hampton Roads, Va., where crews are close to finishing construction of a townhouse-style complex of two-bedroom, two-bath apartments for 240 single junior sailors at Camp Elmore. Another joint venture project in nearby Camp Allen is making more room for 1,867 single sailors with a combination of new construction and barracks renovations, expected to be completed in 2010.
Still undecided is whether the Navy will pursue a third pilot program for unaccompanied sailors in Mayport, Fla., where officials want to base a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier by 2014, if not sooner.
8. Post-9/11 GI Bill
One of the biggest advances in veterans’ benefits since World War II takes effect on Aug. 1, when the flat-rate GI Bill transforms overnight into a plan that pays full tuition plus stipends for housing and books for most students.
Making the plan even more attractive is the possibility that career service members with at least 10 years of service could be allowed to transfer their unused benefits to their immediate family.
There are many questions about how the new Post-9/11 GI Bill will work, but the most important is whether the Veterans Affairs department will be ready by Aug. 1 to make payments in the face of what could be a landslide of claims.
The new GI Bill, for people who have served 30 days or longer on active duty since Sept. 11, 2001, will provide tuition payments directly to the school that are up to the cost of the most expensive four-year public college or university in the state where the veteran is matriculating.
When private-school tuition exceeds that of the costliest public school, students could get additional help if the school and VA agree to give grants under which the government will match whatever tuition discount a school is willing to make.
The housing stipend will be equal to the Basic Allowance for Housing rate for an E-5 living in the school’s ZIP code. The book allowance will be $1,000 a year.
While rates will vary from state to state for tuition and from school to school for the housing allowance, the average benefit will be worth about $80,000 for four years of college education.
9. Pay & bennies slowdown
A decade of enhancements in military pay and benefits could come to an end in 2009.
As a sagging national economy cuts U.S. tax revenues — and indirectly leads more people to consider joining the military as fewer people rush to get out — big benefits increases are a tougher sell in Congress.
That could include what has become an eight-year tradition of setting the annual military pay raise ahead of private-sector wage growth.
Budget-cutting efforts also lead lawmakers to take another look at some long-discussed proposals, like raising out-of-pocket costs for Tricare users, cutting taxpayer subsidies for commissaries, and consolidating commissaries with military exchanges. Those ideas come up in almost every new administration, and are pushed aside in the face of strong opposition from advocacy groups representing troops, retirees and their families.
Annual military pay raises since Jan. 1, 2000, have been 0.5 percentage points higher than the average private-sector pay hike. This was a congressional pay formula designed to close a gap between military and civilian wages that had grown as high as 13.5 percent by 1999.
Initially, Congress ordered five years of bigger raises, but the formula stuck because lawmakers have insisted on continuing to close the pay gap.
The 3.9 percent basic pay raise for 2009, which the Military Officers Association of America calculates leaves a remaining pay gap of 2.9 percent, could be the last gasp for military raises that outpace the private sector.
Congress may well settle for military raises that keep pace, but do not top, private-sector wage growth.
10. Aviation challenges
Dealing with the Navy’s fleet of aging aircraft will be a focus for sailors from Capitol Hill to the flight lines and maintenance sheds next year.
A key component of the annual budget showdown in Congress will be wrangling over the so-called “fighter gap” — the projected 10-year span beginning in 2015 when Hornets start retiring faster than new F-35C Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters arrive to replace them. The gap is projected to be at its widest — 69 planes — in 2017. The Navy may seek to buy more F/A-18 Super Hornets.
Meanwhile, sailors on the operational level will continue efforts to keep the current fleet in the air. In Florida, sailors are helping to rehabilitate dozens of P-3 Orions that were grounded in December 2007 due to fears the wings would break off in flight. Most of them remain in the depot for massive wing replacements.
For those in the Hornet community, routine inspections may intensify after this year’s problems. In October, the Navy ordered the emergency inspection of nearly 480 Hornets after discovering “fatigue cracks” in the wings. Ten were grounded in November and 20 others placed on flight restrictions while the defects were addressed.
11. Additions to the fleet
The new year will bring several distinctive new ships into the fleet:
• January includes the commissioning of the last Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, the George H.W. Bush, the last U.S. supercarrier designed with steam catapults. The ship still has a few months before it will be finished — it hasn’t even gone to sea trials — but commissioning it in January enables President Bush, while still in office, to preside over a ceremony for the warship named for his father. It also enables the Navy to technically claim it has another active carrier, to make up for the carrier Kitty Hawk, which was mothballed in fall 2008 but won’t be formally decommissioned until Jan. 31.
• In the summer, look for the arrival of the second littoral combat ship, the Independence. Not only does the Independence have all the same novel crewing arrangements as the first LCS, Freedom, LCS 2 is an all-aluminum, triple-hulled design based on a civilian ferry. This ship is well behind schedule, but Navy planners hope it has its sea trials and commissioning by the middle of the year.
• By the end of October, the Navy hopes to commission its first big-deck gator in seven years, the amphibious assault ship Makin Island. Technically, it’s the last ship in the Wasp class, but the Makin Island is much different from its siblings: It’s powered by gas turbines, has all-electric auxiliaries and many other advancements over its predecessors. It also has been delayed almost two years and ran hundreds of millions of dollars overbudget.
12. A New Navy secretary
The department of the Navy will have a new secretary in 2009. Whoever gets the job will inherit a Navy that faces a slew of challenging acquisition programs, from making sure ships are built on cost and on schedule to finally building the new presidential helicopter. Maintaining and repairing the Navy’s relationships with its shipbuilders will be a major task for the new secretary, coming after outgoing secretary Donald Winter’s sometimes frosty dealings with the defense industry. The Navy’s plans had called for it to be much further along especially with its fleet of littoral combat ships, and Winter’s successor must make sure it can catch up.
Staff writers Philip Ewing, Mark D. Faram, Gidget Fuentes, Rick Maze, Andrew Scutro and Andrew Tilghman contributed to this report.