(This will be a two parter folks, consider yourself warned)
One of the things about the military that has long troubled me is the subject of promotion. Today’s modern military force was reorganized some 25 years ago along a modified Corporate model. Along with many positive changes in personnel management, pay resolution, and reductions in economic wastes came the
Up-or-Out! Promotion system.
Under this system a soldier has certain time-frames during which they must be promoted or they will be disallowed from further service. While this may be a great thing for businesses who are concerned with getting the most productivity out of every office monkey they employ it’s use as a tool for the military is debatable at best.
Over the course of 2 decades the character of the Corps of Non-Commissioned Officers has changed radically. Where it was once possible to remain a corporal for 20 years and retire at that humble pay grade it had been changed to a mere 6 years when I joined the Army way back in the day (yes I know it has been changed to 10 years now but I will get into that later… less sniping the work and more reading!). Problems with this system became apparent very quickly (even to the Army).
Whereas before personal ambition did play some role in the drive to become an NCO there were other factors that kept it from being the sole impetus. Even when I joined the Army the policy was that to even attend a promotion candidacy board you must first be recommended thoroughly by your
NCO support channel. If you received this informal blessing you could strut your stuff in front of some senior NCO’s at the promotion board, accumulate promotion points by shooting-running-studying, hope that the your career field had opening’s for which you were competitive, and then attend and pass the Primary Leadership Development Course (PLDC).
That first part about the recommendation of your immediate supervisors was the key bit. Without that you absolutely would NOT even be eligible for promotion. This system’s check was that if you were of the appropriate longevity in the Army to warrant possible promotion and your supervisor did not recommend you they were required to tell you why they were not doing so in writing every month. This helped ensure that simple personality conflicts didn’t drag the system into uselessness.
With this system in place the majority of NCO’s were long term soldiers who had been there, done that, and genuinely understood the military. They were not in it for the money. As a friend once old me, "If you are enlisted in the Army for the money then you are poor at math." This was true because even if you thought that you would rise to the pinnacle of enlisted success to the rank of
Sergeant Major of the Army (E-9) you would not realistically be expected to make it there until 22-26 years of service if ever. This loftiest of enlisted position paid a whopping $44,323 a year ($3,686 a month) when I joined the Army. Keep in mind that this was even after the large military pay raises President Reagan passed. Just over 44K a year to be the top enlisted man in a standing Army of over 500,000! Even today after the "lavish" defense spending that liberals love to drone on about this positions pay has only been raised to just over $77,000 per annum.
(There are other reasons that held people back from seeking self serving promotions but they will be addressed in part 2.)
The Army managed to find a way to force ambition upon it’s soldiers regardless of their desire or ability however. In today’s
Army Of One (or….Yo Soy El Army) a soldier must be promoted or they lose their job. This of course leaves no room for literally hundreds of thousands of soldiers who are fine privates, specialist, corporals etc… but who have no skills for middle management. They are left with a Catch-22 : either they leave the military or they take a promotion that they are completely unsuited for. Of course we have made it easier for you to be promoted in light of this Gordian knot removing the recommendation of your superior and the requirement to graduate PLDC.
I do not mean to say that none of the NCO's serving in today's Army are holding their ranks for the right reasons but these changes coupled with a philosophical shift has resulted in the percentage of NCO’s who wanted the position for the right reasons vice those who wanted it for all the wrong ones to become overbalanced.
These are the "Stripers". I will deal with them and their ilk in Part Two.