Sequestration and ROTC: Down to the Wire

Just wondering if anyone had heard about any side-effects of sequestration that would affect ROTC. Obviously, there have already been cuts to scholarships, but after following the topic of sequestration for months now, the one thing I have yet to hear of are any direct or indirect effects on ROTC. Yet, hints of more cuts to summer schools and training have been trickling into our battalion. The primary outcome, if sequestration does happen, is bad enough; I'd hate to see our small (but great) ROTC battalion go down the tubes too.

All opinions welcome on sequestration, the feasibility, the effects, etc, but I was wondering if the cuts specifically deal with ROTC/the Academies. Take care and enjoy the Super Bowl (and outstanding USO commercial) everyone.

Each branch has been informed to get their fiscal house in order, hence what NROTC goes through maybe different than A/AFROTC.

There is no flat answer to cover every branch...sorry.

Pima said:

Each branch has been informed to get their fiscal house in order, hence what NROTC goes through maybe different than A/AFROTC.

There is no flat answer to cover every branch...sorry.

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Right, that makes sense. I guess I should have been specific in asking if anyone had heard if the US Army had made any plans for AROTC. Of course, I welcome if anyone has heard about anything for the other branches as well. It seems that it might still be too early to tell, but figured it was worth asking around.

I've heard various rumors regarding NROTC Marine Option summer training cuts. Everything from cutting Mt. Warfare school for rising juniors to no training at all for rising junior Marine Options. I'm not sure I give them much credence as I would expect the rumors to not be specific to Marine Option but instead refer to Naval ROTC in toto.

Summer school slots are down, obviously. Our brigade commander came and visited my school a few weeks ago and talked about what's ahead for ROTC. He said he had just returned from budget talks at the Pentagon and gave us guidance based on what they discussed. He said the Chief of Staff and the senior leadership will be cutting the operational force a lot more than any leader development programs. He said ROTC and other leader development programs will obviously have to take a hit, but not to the extent of the operational force. He said they chose this route after seeing the results of the last time they cut hard. The Army's leaders were lacking all of the development since those courses/programs were cut.

I think scholarship cuts will look different depending on school. Our brigade commander told us he is raising the number of scholarships my school gets because of the cost efficiency to create a 2LT compared to other expensive schools in the brigade.

That sounds sensible Bull. My own surmise is they will cut back on some privates but provide enough to maintain a minimally viable unit. I would also expect that some of the Ivies might perhaps see some small increase in scholarships until the size of the unit is viable. They aren't going to walk away from the Harvard's of the world after just getting back in... but those that are part of a consortium of schools don't need much to maintain a viable unit across the schools.

But all this is just my surmise and may even be OFF TOPIC!

According to my DS, his Bn normally receives enough slots for all/most MSIIs to attend either AA or Abn school. This year, they've received 1 AA and 1 Abn slot, in addition to his CDQC slot. Slim pickins' for sure.

I am curious, does anyone know the percentage of ROTC scholarships offered to private or public OOS? For example:

AFROTC only offers 5% of all scholarship types a no tuition limit scholarship. 95% of all the scholarships are limited to 18K. Part of that 95% will be awarded a scholarship where they can pay the difference.

All in all 75% will be offered a Type 7, and if the tuition is higher than what the IS public university is they would have to convert to a 3 yr Type 2, because the stipulation of the scholarship is you can't pay the difference.

I ask this because Bull has stated that they will offer more IS scholarships, but do they have that conversion option?

I am not shocked that this is the path the Pentagon is taking because most of the O6's can remember 1992. The problem that occurred from the 92 cuts were not truly realized for many yrs later. There is a golden number they have in mind for ratios between Flag to Field, Field to Company grade. What they didn't think when they slashed the 85/86 commission yr group was later on that pool would be much smaller when they became O4s.

If you look at the big pay increase of 98/99/00 it was targeted to those yr groups, if I recall it was 10%+ whereas, the other yr groups were about 6%. They had to hand out money to retain them. This is also when the pilot bonus doubled, the 1st time CSO bonuses were given, and the invention of 2nd pilot bonuses to stay until they were in for at least 21 yrs.

All because they cut hard a small yr group, by maintaining a steady stream, although smaller this would not repeat the 92 issues.

AFROTC only has 1 summer training, so I don't think that is in jeopardy. What I think you will see is more host units being consolidated.

AF has already shown signs from a training perspective of the cuts. IFS (Initial Flight Screening) can now be waived if you have your PPL. This allows savings not only in the TDY budget, but because they will be flying it will save maintenance costs from wear and tear on the airframe to the fuel to take the plane up.

The thing is in the late 80's, IFS was called FSP aka Fishpod, and you did this as a rising AFROTC C400. They moved it from that to now AD.

You can see now how they are already prepping for the cuts.

Although many of you are concerned about ROTC and rightfully so, the problem is sequestration if it does happen won't be like 92, just a few yrs. The plan is for a decade of 10% cuts. You all will be in AD during this time, and those operational cuts will have a big impact on your life.

You can only cut fat by so much, sooner or later you have to cut the muscle too.

In 92 they had the ability to trim the O'clubs, golf courses, base pools, movie theaters, etc by making them NAF (non-appropriated funding), in other words, if they couldn't balance their budget they folded...this is when Tri-Clubs arrived.

Back in 92, they use to even give out mulch and flowers to base housing. Needed a light bulb...you went to self help. That was the type of fat they had. That is long gone.

Base housing has even been re-structured to privatization. ERs on base/posts have closed down. Dependents are being sent off base at a very high rate now.

They are known to cannibalize air frames now. Red Flag, Green Flag, Maple Flag, Cope Thunder are going by the wayside. AF fliers world is this is when they play war for a few weeks at various bases (Nellis, Elmendorf, etc). That fat is gone too.

Pay increases, are tied to COLA so there really isn't money to be found there either.

Thus, what fat is left from an AD perspective? The only thing I can think of is new hardware like the F35. The problem is the Pentagon to save costs, allows these manufacturers to sell to our allies. The 35 is being purchased by countries from UK to Italy to Korea. They are not about to cancel the 35 program because if they do those countries will still be going forward anyway, and now we lose our air superiority.

That's the thing the Pentagon has to deal with when it comes to sequestration, everywhere they turn one thing will impact another aspect.

Think of sequestration like the govt cutting 10% from Welfare budget for 10 yrs. Cut head start for pre-schoolers, impacts the education system. Cut medicaid and it impacts health care. Cut Section 8 they can be homeless.

It is not easy to cut ROTC without impacting the future. It is not easy to cut AD without impacting current operational standards. IOTW they have to answer now which came first the chicken or the egg?

Jcc123 said:

According to my DS, his Bn normally receives enough slots for all/most MSIIs to attend either AA or Abn school. This year, they've received 1 AA and 1 Abn slot, in addition to his CDQC slot. Slim pickins' for sure.

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He must go to a small school because our class size was an average of 30-35 cadets and never had more than 2-3 AAS/ABN slots.

You are correct - I think there are maybe 6-7 contracted MSIIs at the moment - many more who will contract junior year, but for schools, obviously it only matters if you're contracted.

Jcc123 said:

According to my DS, his Bn normally receives enough slots for all/most MSIIs to attend either AA or Abn school. This year, they've received 1 AA and 1 Abn slot, in addition to his CDQC slot. Slim pickins' for sure.

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I have two questions:
What is CDQC?

If a MSII (1st Brigade) has been selected for CULP, will that decrease his chance of getting Airborne or Air Assault slot this summer too?

philmont said:

Jcc123, What is CDQC?
Bull, If a MSII (1st Brigade) has been selected for CULP, will that decrease his chance of getting Airborne or Air Assault slot this summer?

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It will depend on his battalion. Some battalions will try and spread the wealth so to speak, meaning if a cadet already has a slot like CULP for the summer they will try and give the remaining summer slots to other cadets. Other battalions may work strictly off the class OML and give slots accordingly, even if they are already going to CULP. Of course the timing of the training will come into play since CULP takes up at least 4 weeks.

CDQC = Special Forces Combat Diver Qualification Course

As far as I understand, Culp selections are made on a Brigade level based on applications submitted in the fall. Airborne and Air Assault slots are given to each school, and the PMS/Cadre make the decision regarding who goes - I'm guessing based on an internal OML.

That is basically how it works at my son's school and I assume elsewhere.

PIMA, not necessarily in state. My brigade covers roughly 8 states. They would be taking scholarships from expensive schools (regardless of state) and giving them to more affordable schools.

Thanks Bull.

Sooooo now for my next question. Does each brigade have the same amount of scholarships from AROTCHQ, or does one have more than the other?

How do they break it down? Just a curious mind.

Thanks for all of the insight everyone, especially you, Pima. This kind of information is what I am interested in and not too many people here in our battalion can comment on such things because they only know as much as I do.

Pima said:

Thanks Bull.

Sooooo now for my next question. Does each brigade have the same amount of scholarships from AROTCHQ, or does one have more than the other?

How do they break it down? Just a curious mind.

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That I honestly do not know. I don't know how cadet command breaks down scholarships between brigades. Some of it has to do with schools that have issues recruiting. They tend to get more scholarships proportionally than schools that don't have a recruiting problem. The same can be said sometimes for summer schools. My battalion is large. It covers 6 schools in 2 states. Between those 6 schools (of the 6, only 1 is very large, a few of the others only have a handful of cadets), my school got 6 summer slots last year to be spread between 6 schools and 3 MS levels. Tough competition, but my school pumps out more LT's than needed and our ROO takes a lot of vacation time. They don't have to through summer slots our way to get cadets to join. And our school tends to commission cadets into branches that make it easier for getting to those schools.

But also, schools like to secure scholarships to reward cadets (obviously). My school easily meets its recruiting mission and gets quite a few scholarships (My MS class has about 20 4-year scholarship cadets alone), but is always looking to get more. This is where the redistribution will play in. It won't neccesarily be schools that need more scholarships getting them, but cheaper schools versus more expensive schools.

They have announced the ouch for Navy
http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/5/navy-clip-blue-angels-wings-if-sequester-hits/

It is an ouch.

The memo and an accompanying slide show, sent out by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert last week, show plans to cut all funding for the Blue Angels, the Navy’s flight demonstration squadron and the country’s oldest flying aerobatic team.

Canceling the 30 shows scheduled for that time frame would produce a meager savings of $20 million, but it would also shut down one of its top recruiting tools. The Blue Angels website estimates that 11 million people attend their shows each year.

If Congress can’t reach a deal in the next few weeks, the Navy is prepared to stop deployments to the Caribbean and South American, limit European deployments to only those supporting ballistic missile defense missions, reduce the number of ships and aircraft deployed and reduce the number of days at sea and flying hours across the entire force, according to the memo.

In addition, the Navy would stop training, flying and other operations for the majority of ships and aircraft preparing to deploy, “unless funded by Fleet Commander’s proposed offsets.” Adm. Greenert said the Navy also would consider the possibility of civilian furloughs of up to 22 days.

Because of spending cuts already in place, beginning Feb. 15, the Navy canceled all private sector ship and aircraft maintenance contracts, has frozen the hiring of civilians, and has ordered base support personnel to be reduced by 10 percent and stopped dozens of construction and maintenance projects for piers, runways, buildings, barracks and other facilities.

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The Army has also sent out their slide show too. http://defense.aol.com/2013/02/05/army-sequester-cr-mean-78-of-brigades-must-skip-training/

Training: The Army will have money to fully train only a fraction of its total force: The 82nd Airborne's Global Response Force paratrooper brigade, units in Korea, and troops headed for Afghanistan. Everyone else will cancel everything more elaborate than "squad-level training."

As a result, the documents say, "In 1st quarter [of] FY 2014 , 78% of non-deploying, non-forward deployed brigade combat teams (BCTs) are not ready for contingencies without significant preparation."

Even individual training will suffer in some areas. Helicopter pilots won't be able to fly enough to meet proficiency requirements. Cutbacks at flight schools will leave the Army short about 500 aircrew for its fleet of helicopters. Cancellation of other specialized courses will create a shortfall of about 4,000 military intelligence specialists.

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I guess the AF will be releasing theirs soon too.

I had the poor luck to enter active duty under the Carter administration. Pilots were not getting enough hours to stay current. Training was essentially stopped. It was a terrible time for the military and our readiness suffered.

I had the good fortune to stay in long enough to see the Reagan years. 180 degree turnaround in every aspect of military life. Money was spent on upgrading, training, pay raises, etc. In my opinion, the U.S. military became a world leader once again.

My point is that it is sad to see this cycle starting to repeat. Unfortunately the pendulum always swings too far one way and then has to swing far the other way to balance things over the course of time. Ideally, we would manage through these times with less drastic variation but I fear that history will repeat itself here.

A lot of this is very hard to fathom, especially in the flying world as it was stated for both the Navy and the Army.

They have to do specific types of sorties to maintain their MQ status. If they cut and the Army is correct regarding creating pilot shortage than what if G forbid another Kuwait invasion or 9 11 occurs? We won't be able to react as fast as we did back than, because now they will have to spin up training.

Plus, if they start cannibalizing equipment it will not be ready either.

I would think cadets in ROTC can expect summer training that is not considered essential to commission will also go by the wayside. I would think AFROTC will keep SFT because of their system, but than again, they might totally change it and make it more like ADAF promotion boards...either you are promoted to a POC or you are cut.

That would not be a surprise either, because they could push back to after commissioning, and this way it would give them a couple of yrs to defer the costs. Let's be honest sending 2K cadets to SFT for @30 days at 35 bucks a day, and that does not include the transportation costs to and from, or the food, laundry, etc. I would bet from start to finish it is about 2 grand per cadet.

It will be interesting to see what happens with SFT because the board is meeting now, and the list will drop around the same time as the sword for sequestration drops.