The AUXMAN says total service hours are calculated when awarding the Sustained Service Award. But I just had a number of very experienced members tell me that only "99" hours are counted towards the ASSA. The AUXMAN seems to disagree with this. Does anyone know which is correct?
From The Auxiliary Manual:
quote:
A.14.a. (pg 11-11) Sustained Auxiliary Service Award
This award is presented to an Auxiliarist contributing a documented total of 750 volunteer hours of Auxiliary service. Subsequent awards are presented for each additional 750 hours of service . . . Eligibility for this award is documented by the Director, using AUXDATA information, . . .
One of my flotilla members just got his tenth SASA, which is really amazing. AUXMAN mentions a silver hourglass device for 25,000 hours, but are there actually members out there with that many hours? You'd basically have to augment full time for about 12 years to rack up that many hours!
but I just spoke with another Auxiliarist who was misinformed about the SAS Award. (He said to me: "that was how I was trained.") So my question becomes: why am I meeting so many Auxiliarists who are saying that its only "99 hours" that count towards the SAS Award? Could it be the Award criteria was different in the past?
I have an old AUXMAN copy from 1998 (COMDTINST M16790.1E) and its essentially the same as the present AUXMAN. Anyone have an older copy of the AUXMAN?
The reason I brought this up: Im hearing some Auxiliarists are not reporting some mission activity on a 7030 because they will not get hours credited towards the SAS Award. So they instead report on the 7029. But this is reducing the accuracy of AUXDATA regarding activity in those missions.
I had a complete collection of AuxMans except for the very first two which were issued during the war. I did some pretty extensive research on various Aux awards. The Sustained Service Award has always been for total hours (7029 and 7030).
What may be causing the confusion is a now obsolete award - the Operations Service Award. It looked very similar to the Specialty Training Ribbon but had a fifth stripe. It was only awarded for Ops hours. BTW - 'back then' the VE (then called CME) Program was part of Operatons and time spent doing CMEs was considered Ops time and earned time toward the Ops Service Ribbon. The Sustained Service Award was issued for everything - even 'back then'. In a way, Ops members got to double-dip. The Ops hours counted for both the Ops Award and the Sustained Service Award.
This is just one area of confusion related to awards. Some old-timers will refer to the Operations Program ribbon as the Boat Crew Ribbon and tell you that you have to be boat crew qualified before you can put stars on it for anything else. That isn't true and hasn't been true for at least 10 years.
The Operations Program Ribbon is now awarded for any Ops qual. The qual can be air, surface, comms, aton etc. However, at one time the ribbon was the Boat Crew ribbon and there was a similar but slightly different Air Crew ribbon. Back then, you had to be air observer or boat crew qualified before you could put any stars on the respective ribbon. When the ribbons were consolidated circa mid-1990s the name was changed to Operations Program ribbon and any Ops qual earned the ribbon.
Correction : The time for the Sustained Service Award is for all time recorded. We have only been discussing the 7029 and 7030. However, time is also recorded on other forms and that time also counts. Two other forms that also count toward the SSA are 7038 Vessel Examination Activity Report and 7047 RBS Visitation Report.
People get caught up way too much into the forms that they report hours on. The code that the hours are entered under is way more important than the form itself. The IS officer takes the form and puts in the hours the same no matter what form you send it in on. As long as my people send me what they did and when they did it, I can stick it in for them.
