The Inside Story of How the Navy’s Top Brass Eliminated Ratings
11th October 2016
The Navy’s overwhelmingly unpopular decision to eliminate its time-honored job titles was conceived and advocated by its former top enlisted sailor who, with the backing of its top two admirals, pushed for the controversial change despite having gathered very little input from the rank-and-file personnel principally affected, Navy Times has learned.
Ultimately, the decision was made by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, whom multiple sources described as eager to announce the new policy before his impending departure after more than seven years atop the the sea service. Mabus, the first to broadcast this new policy Sept. 29, was motivated by a fervent desire to promote gender neutrality across the Navy and the Marine Corps, which he also oversees. He was presented with four options for removing the word “man” from nearly two dozen job titles — what the Navy calls ratings — and opted for the most extreme option.
Disgraceful. I remember suffering under the uniform changes made by Admiral Zumwalt, all of which were eventually reversed. The same process gave us the recent change from the traditional working uniforms to a form of ‘blue-toned’ camouflage, which is worse than useless if somebody is lost overboard at sea. The problem is that all it takes is one very highly placed individual to propagate a stupid decision across hundreds of thousand of people at a cost of tens of millions of dollars.