The Navy has indefinitely suspended its “high-year tenure” program — a policy that allowed sailors to serve only so long at a certain rank before being involuntarily discharged from the service or pushed into the reserves.
In an administrative message released Monday, the sea service said that it is instead making the program’s successor — “high-year tenure plus” — permanent. The new program halts separations or involuntary transfers for sailors who don’t advance at a fast enough pace.
The effective elimination of the sometimes controversial program, which has been around in various forms for at least a decade and aimed at eliminating low-performing sailors, is yet another policy change the Navy has taken that aims to keep service members in the ranks and at sea.
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Under the previous policy, sailors of any rank could serve at their current level for only a limited time before the Navy would move to discharge them with the presumption that they were not performing well enough to stay in the service. A 2018 document on the policy described it as a tool to “enable the Navy to retain the right number of members.”
For example, under the old rules, a typical E-3 sailor could serve only six years at that rank before the Navy would have separated them. If that same sailor were to be promoted to E-4, they would have been able to serve four more years.
However, in December 2022, the Navy put all of that on pause with the new high-year tenure plus program. Rear Adm. James Waters, the Navy’s director of plans and policies concerning its sailors, said at the time that the move was directly connected to the service’s retention efforts.
“By removing this barrier to retaining career-minded sailors, the Navy is broadening career progression opportunities for sailors and allowing them the opportunity to advance to the next higher paygrade,” Waters said in the release.
The new 2022 program was expected to impact about 1,600 sailors over two years.
While the Navy’s retention efforts have largely been successful, the service continues to struggle with having sailors — especially more senior ones — on ships.
As a result, over the past several years, the Navy has rolled out multiple different policies to keep more sailors in uniform and at sea by either offering more benefits and pay or promotions, or denying them early release.
Last year, Lt. Rachel Maul, then a spokeswoman for the chief of naval personnel, told Military.com that “closing gaps at sea is a chief of naval personnel priority, and teams are using all available options” as part of an announcement of a different policy that would promote sailors to its top enlisted ranks in exchange for orders to ships.
The move to officially abandon the high-year tenure program also comes as the sea service reexamines other aspects of service like its fitness tests.
Earlier this year, the Navy forgave all past fitness test failures and, earlier this month, it extended its policy of only one fitness test per year into a fourth year.
Meanwhile, in October, the Navy announced that it missed its enlistment recruiting goals for the second time in two years — and by more than 7,000 sailors in fiscal 2023 — all despite taking drastic measures. In fact, the Navy missed every active-duty and reserve recruiting goal it set for itself last fiscal year.
— Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on X at @ktoropin.
