Navy Manpower History

This is a companion piece to the previous post, “Naval Budget History”, in which we demonstrated that Navy budgets are at nearly record high levels despite the Navy’s dreaded bogeyman, sequestration.  In other words, the Navy is lying about the lack of money.

Moving on, the Navy whines incessantly about the lack of money, lack of manpower, and lack of money for manpower.  To hear the Navy tell it, we simply can’t afford large crews and that’s why the fleet is gapped to the tune of about 7000 billets.  In fact, one of the contributing causes of the recent collisions involving the Burkes was manpower shortages.  Along the same line, you’ll recall that one of the contributing factors in the Port Royal’s grounding a few years ago was manpower shortages that resulted in the lookouts working in the galley rather than standing lookout watch.

Is the Navy really that short of manpower?  Is it really impossible to pay for adequate numbers of sailors to man the ships?

As with the budget, let’s look at the Navy’s manpower history.  Below is a table of Navy personnel numbers presented by year with the fleet size also shown.  The Avg Crew column is the ratio of personnel to ships – the theoretical average crew size of the fleet.  Yes, it’s not an actual average crew size because not every person in the Navy is assigned to a ship – there are shore positions that have to be filled.  Still, it gives a consistent basis of comparison.  The last column shows some selected basic monthly pay salaries in FY18 dollars for an E-4 with 2+ years experience.  

Year   Manpower      Fleet Size   Avg Crew  Basic Pay

1960    616,987 (1)   812 ships     760

1965    669,985 (1)   880 ships     761       1621 (4)

1970    691,126 (1)   743 ships     930

1975    535,085 (1)   559 ships     957

1980    527,153 (1)   530 ships     994       2029 (4)

1985    570,705 (1)   571 ships     999

1990    579,417 (1)   570 ships    1016       1838 (4)

1995    435,617 (1)   392 ships    1111

2000    373,193 (2)   318 ships    1173       2016 (4)

2005    362,941 (2)   282 ships    1287

2010    328,303 (2)   288 ships    1140       2272 (4)

2015    323,600 (3)   271 ships    1194       2252 (4)

What jumps out is that the theoretical average crew size has actually INCREASED over the years rather than decreased as the Navy would have us believe.  In fact, theoretical average crew size is at nearly record high levels.  Compare the crew size today to the 1960’s, for example.  We have 57% more manpower per ship now than in the ‘60’s and yet we have 7000 gapped billets in the fleet.  Worse, the Navy is cutting crew size to dangerously low levels in an effort to minimally man ships and save some money.

Do I have to spell out what’s going on here?

The Navy has a larger proportion of non-ship-assigned personnel now than ever before.  That’s a manpower management issue, pure and simple, and yet the Navy wants to blame sequestration and budget limits for the lack of manpower instead of their own bloated bureaucracy.

Let’s look at affordability.  The Navy claims they can’t afford larger crews.  Of course, a quick glance at the table shows that Navy manpower levels were twice as high in the ‘60’s and early ‘70’s as now.  How did we afford a Navy with twice the manpower then – and more ships?  Simple – we budgeted for it because it was a priority.  Today, the Navy is sinking more and more of the budget into ship construction because ships cost more – a $15B+ carrier????  No wonder the Navy says they can’t afford manpower – it’s all going to pay for shiny new toys that are breaking the bank!

What about pay rates?  Maybe sailors earned far less in previous decades and today's sailors cost more?  The pay rate data shows that while pay in the '60's was significantly less, pay has been pretty constant since at least the '80's when we had far larger manpower and ship numbers so that's not the reason why we have manpower funding issues today.

Relative to the fleet size, the Navy has more manpower now than they ever have in the last several decades.  There is no excuse for gapped billets in the fleet.  There is also no shortage of money for manpower.  We’ve operated far larger fleets and manpower in the past with no problem.  What’s changed is the incredibly poor manpower management of today’s Navy.  This is just one more reason CNO Richardson needs to be fired.

Note:  This post was updated on 22-Feb-2018 to add a column and paragraph for historical pay rates.

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(1)http://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Stats/US_Mil_Manpower_1789-1997.htm

(2)https://historyinpieces.com/research/us-military-personnel-1954-2014 

(3)Highlights of the Department of the Navy FY 2015 Budget

http://www.finance.hq.navy.mil/fmb/15pres/Highlights_book.pdf

(4)https://www.military.com/benefits/military-pay/2015-pay-charts.html

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