Armed Forces News

Sailors now will have fewer shipboard collateral duties to perform. The Navy announced July 11 that more such jobs may go the way of bread-and-water meals while in the brig and other anachronistic practices that have disappeared.

Gone are:

* Athletics Officer

* Library Officer

* Health Benefits Advisor

* Community Relations Project Officer

* Enlisted Safety Committee (to be combined with the Enlisted Safety Council)

* Knowledge Management Officer

* Voting Officer

These tasks were eliminated after Navy leadership conducted a review of fleet units. Their demise should have little or no effect on mission requirements. Once considered as necessary benchmarks for advancement, some collateral duties are now considered as distractions.

“There’s this idea that without a bunch of collaterals, you’re just not going to be competitive for advancement, and what it does is water down our mission focus,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said.

Instead, boards that consider sailors for advancement will focus upon “core warfighting,” the Navy announced. Performance in primary duties will play the major role in determining which sailors would flourish in leadership positions.

Under the eyes of Vice Chief of Staff Adm. Bill Moran and Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Steven Giordano, the Navy will continue to seek out other collateral duties that are “trivial, outlived their usefulness, are implicit in primary billet descriptions, or should be temporary only,” the Navy announced. Giordano who will lead the working group charged with reviewing all collateral duties, plans to report the group’s conclusions through the chain of command to Adm. Richardson sometime later this summer.