The U.S. Navy has decided to restore sailors' traditional rating titles after severe public backlash to the service's new "modernized" rating system.
The Navy made the decision to restore the job titles effective immediately after service leaders received feedback from thousands of current and former sailors, according to an official announcement Wednesday morning.
Adm. John Richardson, chief of naval operations, confirmed the rating restoration late Tuesday after a draft of the planned announcement began circulating on social media.
"Our Navy needs to be a fast-learning organization–that includes Navy leadership," Richardson wrote in an announcement Wednesday. "The Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority states that our most junior teammate may have the best idea and that we must be open to capturing that idea. We have learned from you, and so effective immediately, all rating names are restored."
The Navy announced in late September that it would eliminate its 91 enlisted ratings titles, instead subjecting sailors to job classification like the Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force. The decision, part of the Navy's effort to "modernize" the 240-year-old enlisted rating system, was couched by leaders as a way to give sailors more flexibility in training while in the service and also in the workforce after they transition out of the military.
"The [secretary of the Navy], [master chief petty officer of the Navy], and I, along with other Navy leadership, have had the opportunity to speak with thousands of sailors during our travels throughout the fleet," Richardson wrote. "The feedback from current and former sailors has been consistent that there is wide support for the flexibility that the plan offers, but the removal of rating titles was unnecessary and detracted from accomplishing our major goals."
The decision to eliminate the job titles was met with fierce criticism on social media in September, with current and former service members visiting the Navy's Facebook page to express outrage. More than 100,000 individuals signed onto a White House petition asking President Obama to restore the ratings titles.
"Being known by your job title was a sense of pride. A sign of accomplishment. The secretary of the Navy and chief of naval operations just senselessly erased this tradition," the petition stated. "One by one current leadership continues to erode the very things that set the Navy apart from the other services. Mr. President, I and the others signing this petition request you use your authority to restore to our sailors what they have earned."
The White House responded in November, standing by the Navy's decision to eliminate the ratings titles and describing the outrage as "friction" typically caused by cultural changes.
The new system resulted from a January order by outgoing Navy Secretary Ray Mabus to make the job titles in the Marine Corps and Navy gender neutral, after the Pentagon opened up all combat roles to women.
"It's to quit segregating women. We do it by uniforms; women wear different uniforms. Can you imagine if we ask another group to wear a different kind of uniform?" Mabus told an audience at the National Press Club in October, downplaying the decision to scrap the ratings titles.
"Ratings names change all the time, all the time. When I was in, 45 years ago, the people that were in my division were radiomen and signalmen. We don't have any of those anymore. Those ratings have changed. Corpsmen, our medics, that rating came in after World War II," Mabus said. "We change these things all the time, and I thought that it was important to be gender neutral."
Mabus has routinely been criticized on social media for prioritizing what some view as an extremely politicized agenda at the expense of the Navy's combat power. He will soon be replaced by President-elect Donald Trump's choice for Navy secretary, who has not yet been announced.