Sailors Leaving Navy over Stress on Social Issues, Top Gun Instructor Says

A Navy F-18 fighter pilot and former Top Gun instructor is publicly warning admirals that retention is beginning to suffer from the military’s relentless social conditioning programs.

Cmdr. Guy Snodgrass, until recently a Pentagon speech writer for the chief of naval operations, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, said sailors are becoming fed-up with the constant emphasis on social issues–an apparent reference to gays in the military, women in combat and ending sexual harassment.

“Sailors continue to cite the over-focus on social issues by senior leadership, above and beyond discussions on war fighting–a fact that demoralizes junior and mid-grade officers alike,” Cmdr. Snodgrass wrote this month on the U.S. Naval Institute website, an independent forum for active and retired sailors and Marines.

It is a remarkably frank assessment from an upwardly mobile fighter pilot who is due to become the executive officer of a F-18 unit in Japan.

He says one troubling sign already has emerged: a drop in applications to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis last year.

“The U.S. Navy has a looming officer retention problem,” Cmdr. Snodgrass writes, adding there is an “erosion of trust in senior leadership.”

He says retention racked up its “worst year in history” for the special warfare community, including Navy SEALs, with a record number of lieutenants declining to stay.

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He also tackles a touchier issue, what some sailors have referred to as “political correctness,” such as the banning of uniform patches that might offend someone.

Cmdr. Snodgrass writes of “a recent shift within the Navy to eradicate behavior that is, by its every nature, ineradicable.”

“Put simply, there is no dollar amount that can be spent, or amount of training that can be conducted, that will completely eradicate complex issues such as suicide, sexual assault, or commanding officer reliefs for cause–yet we continue to expend immense resources in this pursuit,” he says. “Sailors are bombarded with annual online training, general military training, and safety stand-downs–all in an effort to combat problems that will never be defeated.”

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