WASHINGTON — In an interview with the Naval Institute’s web site last month, Vice Adm. Bill Moran, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Manpower, Personnel, Training and Education, suggested the Navy is puzzled and worried by the current exodus of sailors, particularly senior NCOs and field-grade officers.

“They are leaving faster than we can fire them, “ Moran told USNI. “It's creating a real gap in leadership for us. We can’t lose confidence in them, and shove them into an indefinite purgatory of indecision before ignominiously cashiering them as a warning to junior sailors if they are getting out while they still have clean records.”

Moran said that this “puzzling” trend is different from previous times senior leaders left the Navy in droves. In the early 1990s, for instance, the so-called “peace dividend” that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union coincided with what Moran called “a tremendous witch hunt” led by California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi in 1992. Pelosi's efforts came in response to allegations of sexual impropriety and assault at the 1991 Tailhook Convention, held by Naval aviators in Las Vegas.