Content Manager posted on January 01, 2009 21:49
January 2009 NRA News
MCPON Campa Retiring
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Joe Campa retired 12 Dec. 2008 after 29 years, but he intends to serve somewhere. Whether it is working in government or closely with government, Campa said he wants to help veterans and their families in his next job. “Our nation owes them a debt of gratitude, especially our returning wounded warriors, so if there is something I can do in that realm, I’d be interested in doing that,” he said.
Campa was selected as the Navy’s senior enlisted Sailor in June 2006. At the time, he was command master chief at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As he left the Navy, there were a few initiatives he wished he had seen to completion, such as creating separate evaluations for seamen and petty officers; formalizing a chief’s standards and conduct board as an alternative to captain’s mast; and stressing warfare qualifications.
Campa’s advice to his successor is to remember that he or she is a chief petty officer first.
Gates Stresses Active and Reserve Forces Must Integrate
Defense Secretary Gates took a giant step toward more tightly blending the Active Component and Reserve Component into an “integrated total force,” calling for wide-ranging personnel policy changes, codifying the Reserves’ homeland defense role, and adequately funding oft-overlooked Reserve equipment requirements. In a December memo sent to every senior uniformed and civilian Pentagon leader and copied to three other cabinet secretaries, Gates directed the development of a new Total Force Integration Policy that recognizes the “cultural divide that exists” between the Active and Reserve Components. “All vestiges of the cultural prejudice” that remain in law “should be removed” by Congress. Gates also called upon Congress to “mandate that the National Guard and Reserves have the lead role in and form the backbone of DoD operations in the homeland.”
Congress, the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves it chartered, and the Pentagon, Gates wrote in his 41-page memo, “all recognize that the National Guard and the Reserves are integral to the Total Force and have assumed a greater operational role in today’s force.” Gates endorsed 82 of the 95 recommendations issued by the commission in its final report in January 2008 . . . Some of the 82, he noted, have already been completed or are currently being implemented.
Four P-8 Squadrons Going to Whidbey Island
Indications are that the Navy plans to base 24 new surveillance/antisubmarine aircraft at the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station. The P-8A Poseidon planes will replace aging P-3 Orion turboprops. The Poseidon is a military version of the Boeing 737, scheduled to be introduced in 2012. Additionally, the Navy plans to base five squadrons at Jacksonville, FL, and three squadrons in Hawaii.