Not defending him by any stretch. Taking your beef to the press is an unforgivable sin. IMHO. At the same time I can understand why he didn’t want to lose half of his Staff in the next couple of weeks. That would have put the ship into “non mission capable” for a long time. I guess they could fly in new officers but for how long? Standing watch on these duty stations has to be something you train for for years. I imagine the senior NCOs are in their 50s.
I know what I would do but I ain’t saying because it might be too close to “correct”.
How do you imagine that?
The Military uses an "Up or Out" rank and performance system. Even with the more relaxed guidelines changed a few years ago, the Top NCO rank of E7 should be achieved in 26 years. If a recruit enlists at the age of 18 add 26 to that and you get the retirement age of 44. An older NCO would generally have been retired out of service before he reached the age of 50. As there are a limited number of Master Chiefs on the carrier, there would be almost no NCOs over fifty years old.
When I was in service the USAF program was called TOPCAP associated with WAPS.