Thursday, January 1, 2026

Billet Gaps

We noted in a 2022 post that the Navy had a gap of 5,000 – 6,000 unfilled at-sea billets.[1]  Today, that gap has widened to over 20,000.[2]
 
The Navy has a total of 20,683 gaps-at sea as of Dec. 3 … [2]
 
There was an overall fill rate of 88.2 percent for operational sea-duty billets … [2]

In three years the Navy has managed to worsen the billet gap by 14,000 – 15,000.  That’s impressive even by the Navy’s standards for failure!
 
Of course, I could end the billet gap by the end of today.  We have hundreds of thousands of sailors on shore duty.  Here’s a crazy thought … why don’t we put sailors in ships instead of buildings?  You know most of those shore positions are worthless.  Hell, we’ve got at least 200 worthless admirals with a total of a few thousand staff personnel.  Those staff personnel could easily return to sea duty and we wouldn’t lose a thing.  In fact, getting rid of admirals would improve the Navy!  Want to bet there are no gaps in any admiral’s staff?
 
How many tens of thousands of sailors are ashore just pushing papers?  Here’s another wild thought … abolish paperwork!  Who cares if we don’t document stuff?  It’s not like the military cares about passing an audit or anything, right?
 
Billet gaps in ships betrays the Navy’s true priority and it’s not manning the fleet – it’s budget and job security.
  
 
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[1]https://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2022/02/at-sea-billet-gaps.html
 
[2]USNI News website, “Navy Has 20,000 Gaps at Sea Due to Training Backlog, Past Recruiting Shortfall”, Heather Mongilio, 15-Dec-2025,
https://news.usni.org/2025/12/15/navy-has-20000-gaps-at-sea-due-to-training-backlog-past-recruiting-shortfall
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11 comments:

  1. NICOJanuary 1, 2026 at 2:56 PM

    The curious part is from latest I saw, US Army made it's quota so bit strange why USN couldn't get closer. Also, for a service that is struggling then to meet it's quota, I can't recall any TV ads or other ads promoting USN....you think it would make sense to fight to get some new sailors in.....is the USN using more TikTok or Youtube and less TV ads? Don't know.....

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    1. ComNavOpsJanuary 1, 2026 at 3:05 PM

      Couple of points here.

      1. The Navy exceeded its recruiting quote for the year. It does, however, take some time to get people trained and into the fleet and even longer to get more advanced ratings into the fleet.

      2. The Navy does NOT have a recruiting problem or manpower shortage. They have an allocation problem. They have enough sailors to fully man the fleet several times over but their priority is on shore functions, mostly worthless. Similarly, we have more than enough money to buy the ships we need. We're just not spending it wisely. The issue is NOT resources - people or money - but, rather, allocation and priorities. The fleet is NOT the Navy's priority so that's not where the resources are allocated.

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    2. G2milJanuary 3, 2026 at 9:57 AM

      I suggest having the Marines with their surplus manpower retake traditional roles. For example, there are thousands of sailors in the Master at Arms field, which the Navy describes as: "MAs provide commands with force protection and antiterrorism specialists who perform base defense, law enforcement, and physical security duties."

      Delete
  2. G2milJanuary 1, 2026 at 9:22 PM

    One solution is to ask our President to close down worthless naval bases, like Gitmo, as explained in this short vid.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHo8KtRYCsQ

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    1. ExJuniorSailorJanuary 1, 2026 at 10:25 PM

      I agree about closing worthless bases. But closing Gitmo would be exceptionally ignorant. Not because we use it, but because staying there denies it to other nations. Do we want a Chinese outpost in the Gulf?? Russian?? Both?? I'm sure they'd pay a pretty penny to Cuba to rent it!!
      Nevermind that Fleet Training should return there... the idea that it now takes place pierside 0600-1430 is ridiculous... and I'm positive that ships DC training and capabilities are garbage compared to when REFTRAs were a month spent away from home!!!

      Delete
    2. AnonymousJanuary 2, 2026 at 7:01 AM

      Roosevelt Roads wasn't looking like a keeper until a few months ago.

      Delete
    3. G2milJanuary 3, 2026 at 9:50 AM

      There are two dozens sites in the Caribbean that Russia or China can use it they want a military base. And we have plenty of options in the region. Roosy Roads was "closed" but was still there when we needed it. That's why the US Navy has so much overhead because whenever someone writes we need more sailors on ships and should close something unneeded, people start screaming that it would be "exceptionally ignorant!"

      Delete
  3. SRBJanuary 2, 2026 at 1:04 PM

    How in the sam hell can you continue to have a shortage of sea billets with all the extra bodies sitting on the beach. We have some serious leadership problems with these morons running the Navy. Just out of curiosity, looked to see if we still had any repair ships or destroyer tenders left. None, but we have 19 APL (barrack barge) on active list with 3 more ordered to build. Each one can accommodate 600 personnel, that's 11,400 berths total. Are running out of barracks for all these shore personnel? How bout we convert some of these to repair barges and use some that dead weight sitting ashore to do fleet maintenance.

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  4. AnonymousJanuary 6, 2026 at 11:21 PM

    There's 300 admirals and about a thousand Captains ready to fill those billets! :)


    Andrew

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  5. WJSJanuary 12, 2026 at 10:15 PM

    You can't keep sailors at sea 100% of the time. They have to have shore billets to rotate into. In-port time, including duty days, wears on personnel too.

    Now if you want to conduct analysis comparing numbers of shore billets to ever-diminishing number of ships... I'll look. But the key question is not bodies-ashore or at-sea but time afloat tied to hulls.

    Oh hell, I just looked and here's some numbers from google:

    "Active Duty: The authorized end strength for active duty personnel is 332,300."

    " the Navy has about 145,000 total billets at sea, with recent reports showing shortfalls of 5,000-6,000 sailors, meaning not all commissioned ships are fully manned, and total required billets depend on the desired fleet size (e.g., 381 ships) versus the actual current fleet. "

    The total projected uniformed manning (active duty and reserve "end strength") for the U.S. Navy for Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 is approximately 390,000 personnel.

    So The Navy has about 37% of its billets CURRENTLY AFLOAT. That's a better tooth-to-tail (afloat to shore) ratio than I was expecting. It's even better given not all USNR are on active duty.

    We're seeing a 14% afloat-billet shortfall. I divided your 20,000 deficit by 145,000 billets at-sea.

    If you want to argue moving 20,000 from shore to ship without violating crew-rest (so to speak) I'm with you. But numbers I've provided indicate afloat manning is a personnel management issue not a capacity (number of bodies available) issue. That part I agree with you on-

    I just finished Admiral Stavridis book 'Accidental Admiral' and he spent 10 years out of 37 at-sea. That's at-sea; not aboard. Is 50% an appropriate ratio? Let's have that discussion. Implication, for that ratio, is 10 years out of 20 are at-sea.

    Let's speculate using a surface JO as example:
    - 3 Year Div O tour
    - 3 Year Dept Head
    - 2 Year XO tour
    - 2 Year CO tour

    That's 10 years afloat out of 20 total with 2 years ashore between each ship. Yeah, the math doesn't pencil out exactly but you can see where I'm going. My biggest point is that in a perfect max efficiency world you need as many shore billets as afloat billets. At minimum. Budget some slack capacity, personnel-wise, and your about we are currently.

    We don't have enough bodies to man the fleet several times over but seems we have about enough. There's not as much slack ashore as you indicate.

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    1. ComNavOpsJanuary 13, 2026 at 11:42 AM

      "recent reports showing shortfalls of 5,000-6,000 sailors"

      As noted and documented in the first paragraph of the post, that information is outdated. The current at-sea gap is 20,000 billets, by the Navy's own admission.

      As you go through your "analysis" and attempt to justify the Navy's manning gaps, note that on any given day the Navy has only around 30 ships actually at sea. The rest are in port with many on long term unavailability awaiting maintenance. So, contrary to your claim of 37% billets afloat (a horrendous tooth to tail ratio, by the way) the actual number is on the order of around 7% at-sea billets.

      I would also point out that we fully manned a 600-ship fleet in the 1980s. Subtracting out the long term, unavailable ships we currently have a fleet of, perhaps, 150-200 usable ships. Many submarines, for example, have been waiting months and years for maintenance and have long since lost their dive certifications and whatnot.

      Delete

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