Army's Rising Promotion Rate Called Ominous

[jose]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...home-headlines

WASHINGTON — Struggling to retain enough officers to lead its forces, the Army has begun to dramatically increase the number of soldiers it promotes, raising fears within the service that wartime strains are diluting the quality of the officer corps.
....
The higher rates of promotion are part of efforts to fill new slots created by an Army reorganization and to compensate for officers who are resigning from the service, many after multiple rotations to Iraq.

The promotion rates "are much higher than they have been in the past because we need more officers than we did before," said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, an Army spokesman.
....
But the recent trends in promotions have stirred concerns that the Army is being forced to lower its standards to provide leaders for combat units that will be deployed overseas.

"The problem here is that you're not knocking off the bottom 20%," said a high-ranking Army officer at the Pentagon. "Basically, if you haven't been court-martialed, you're going to be promoted to major."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...home-headlines oh dear :eek:

http://www.registerguard.com/news/20...n=nation_world

[Apeman81]

Quote by: jose WASHINGTON — Struggling to retain enough officers to lead its forces, the Army has begun to dramatically increase the number of soldiers it promotes, raising fears within the service that wartime strains are diluting the quality of the officer corps. .... The higher rates of promotion are part of efforts to fill new slots created by an Army reorganization and to compensate for officers who are resigning from the service, many after multiple rotations to Iraq. The promotion rates "are much higher than they have been in the past because we need more officers than we did before," said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, an Army spokesman. .... But the recent trends in promotions have stirred concerns that the Army is being forced to lower its standards to provide leaders for combat units that will be deployed overseas. "The problem here is that you're not knocking off the bottom 20%," said a high-ranking Army officer at the Pentagon. "Basically, if you haven't been court-martialed, you're going to be promoted to major." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-of...

Another desperate attempt to raise the spectre of Viet Nam. Lame

[bishop]

i'm not sure about a draft... bush apparently thinks that the military has too many soldiers (even though he loves sending them to all corners of the world).

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060128/...defense_budget

WASHINGTON - President Bush will use his new budget to propose cutting the size of the Army Reserve to its lowest level in three decades and stripping up to $4 billion from two fighter aircraft programs. <snip> Under the plan, the authorized troop strength of the Army Reserve would drop from 205,000 — the current number of slots it is allowed — to 188,000, the actual number of soldiers it had at the end of 2005. Because of recruiting and other problems, the Army Reserve has been unable to fill its ranks to its authorized level. Army leaders have said they are taking a similar approach to shrinking the National Guard. They are proposing to cut that force from its authorized level of 350,000 soldiers to 333,000, the actual number now on the rolls.

[Apeman81]

Quote by: bishop i'm not sure about a draft... bush apparently thinks that the military has too many soldiers (even though he loves sending them to all corners of the world). http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060128/...defense_budget

You DO know that the overall plan calls for a larger active duty force?

[jose]

Quote by: Apeman81 You DO know that the overall plan calls for a larger active duty force?

do you have a link for that statement?

[bishop]

even if bush wants a larger active duty force, the REALITY is that the army and marines have been missing recruitment goals. sure seems absolutely retarded to go and cut the reserves when you don't even have sufficient recruits to replace them with. but hey, since when was any sort of intelligence deemed useful in bush's world?

[Apeman81]

Quote by: bishop even if bush wants a larger active duty force, the REALITY is that the army and marines have been missing recruitment goals...

And exceeding re-enlistment goals

[bishop]

the re-enlistment number is not high enough to compensate for the low recruitment numbers. the overall picture is that the military is losing personnel.

maybe they need to up their bribes (aka. bonuses) to $50k...

[grandpa]

Quote by: bishop the re-enlistment number is not high enough to compensate for the low recruitment numbers. the overall picture is that the military is losing personnel. maybe they need to up their bribes (aka. bonuses) to $50k...

Or tell them they'll have a guaranteed place in heaven. That's not a joke. I remember some time ago reading about military prayer sessions for President Bush. That kind of loyalty could serve any military well. So maybe if they tap the religious vein they'll feed their recruitment fix.

Grandpa h.

[SteveA]

Quote by: bishop i'm not sure about a draft... bush apparently thinks that the military has too many soldiers (even though he loves sending them to all corners of the world). http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060128/...defense_budget WASHINGTON - President Bush will use his new budget to propose cutting the size of the Army Reserve to its lowest level in three decades and stripping up to $4 billion from two fighter aircraft programs. <snip> Under the plan, the authorized troop strength of the Army Reserve would drop from 205,000 — the current number of slots it is allowed — to 188,000, the actual number of soldiers it had at the end of 2005. Because of recruiting and other problems, the Army Reserve has been unable to fill its ranks to its authorized level. Army leaders have said they are taking a similar approach to shrinking the National Guard. They are proposing to cut that force from its authorized level of 350,000 soldiers to 333,000, the actual number now on the rolls.

Truly Bush and even Congress to some extent have little control over this. You can't ignore market pressures for long and even a draft would have large indirect costs. The truth is that "democratic forces" outside the ballot box are making it difficult to maintain the current state of affairs. Then again a large (terrorist?) attack on the U.S. could do the trick ... :(

[jose]

"Stop-loss," a policy used by the Army to keep US soldiers and reservists in the military beyond the date when their service was supposed to end, has been used on more than 50,000 members of the armed forces since the war in Iraq began.

"As the war in Iraq drags on, the Army is accumulating a collection of problems that cumulatively could call into question the viability of an all-volunteer force," said defense analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute think tank. "When a service has to repeatedly resort to compelling the retention of people who want to leave, you're edging away from the whole notion of volunteerism."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0131/dailyUpdate.html

[Logjam]

Quote by: bishop the re-enlistment number is not high enough to compensate for the low recruitment numbers. the overall picture is that the military is losing personnel. maybe they need to up their bribes (aka. bonuses) to $50k...

I heard the Secretary of the Army (a civilain) interviewed earlier this week. He said that the Army is not "broke" and that retention is very high. Retention, he said, is a better way to grade morale than is recruitment. He also said that recruitment was at about 74,000 annually, which is about what it was last year. He also said that they've raised their reruitment goal to 80,000, so the parcentage of recruits is indeed less than it was last year, but the numbers are about the same.

As for officer promotions: When I was a junior officer (commissioned on 1 Jan. 68) I made first lieutenant in six months and captain a year after that. During peace time it can take ten years or so go get to captain. During war time however, promotions always come faster.

Moral of the story? Join up during a war.

[Logjam]

Quote by: jose "Stop-loss," a policy used by the Army to keep US soldiers and reservists in the military beyond the date when their service was supposed to end, has been used on more than 50,000 members of the armed forces since the war in Iraq began.

They will tell you when you join the army (or any service) that "Your heart may belong to mommy, but your ass belongs to me."

They have every right to keep you if they need you. The contract that you have If they need you, you stay. If you don't want agree with that concept, then don't join. During WWII people not only had to stay until the war was over, they also stayed overseas until the war was over.

You join the military to serve. And serve you will, at the behest of Uncle Sam.

[G. Adams]

Quote by: bishop even if bush wants a larger active duty force, the REALITY is that the army and marines have been missing recruitment goals. sure seems absolutely retarded to go and cut the reserves when you don't even have sufficient recruits to replace them with. but hey, since when was any sort of intelligence deemed useful in bush's world?

It looks to me the logic behind this is so they can claim in the coming years they are at full strength. PR bullshit rules the world.

[Sonart]

Quote by: Apeman Another desperate attempt to raise the spectre of Viet Nam. Lame

Nothing lame about it, Apeman. Even the military acknowledges that the extended operations in Iraq -- which, of course, the blitheringly incompetent architects of this war predicted would never happen -- is threatening to break our armed forces.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Stars & Stripes --"Soldiers and especially those in reserve units could start to feel the pinch from the Army’s recruiting shortfalls this year, according to military experts.

The Department of Defense this week announced the Army missed its fiscal 2005 recruiting goal by more than 6,600 soldiers, bringing in 73,373 new troops over the last year.

TIME "... a new report—paid for by the Pentagon—echoes the recent private grumblings of some top military brass that the rapid deployment of troops to Iraq is in danger of crippling the fighting force that the nation has steadily rebuilt since the shaky post-Vietnam Army of a generation ago. Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer and West Point graduate who wrote the 136-page report assessing the military's Iraq strategy, warns that the Army cannot maintain its current pace of operations in Iraq without leaving permanent damage."

Iraq has stretched Army too thin, ex-officer says --"He (Krepinevich) also suggested that the Pentagon's decision, announced in December, to begin reducing the force in Iraq this year was driven in part by a realization that the Army was overextended."--

Deployments strain Army, Marine Corps --"The Army and Marine Corps ground units are stretched to the breaking point by the prolonged commitment of troops to Iraq and Afghanistan and cannot sustain the current pace of deployments "without doing real damage to their forces," a report sponsored by congressional Democrats charged yesterday.The report follows by a day the release of a Pentagon-funded study that drew similar conclusions."--

Gen. Barry McCaffrey --"Well, I think one thing that is going to happen is, we are going to run out of military muscle to continue operating at this rate by next summer (2006). We are going to have to draw down. We have got 17 combat brigades there now. I would be astonished if we can sustain probably more than 10. So, we'd better be doing pretty well next summer, because I think we are going to start encountering significant challenges in the Army and the Marine Corps within 12 months."--

------------------------------------------------------------------

Hmmm... "Next summer". That's, what, 5 months away?


.

[fushigi]

Decreasing recruitment numbers is missing the point entirely for the U.S. military's problems. It's the fact that vetted soldiers don't have the type of training they need for their current mission in Iraq: anti-insurgency. IMO the military needs to change its training methods to create a new kind of soldier - more akin to a French gendarme, part soldier and part beat cop, multi-lingual and trained as much in psychology and intercultural communication as tactics.

[bugsbunny04]

Everytime I fail my MEPS physical, I think "DOH! they fuck me out of another drill check!" (about $151 that I would get for monthly national guard drills until I ship to basic and job training in the summer). Then at the drill I didnt get to go to, my roommate (a 2LT at the battalion Ive already been assigned to, but wont be ordered to report to until I pass BFP) finds out the bonus for either him recruiting me or for me signing up for my MOS (11B-Infantry) has gone up by multiple thousands of dollars.

If I had passed the first time, my total drill checks on the year would have totalled something on the order of $1200 and my total bonus would have been about $1000. Now my drill checks on the year will be about $800 and my bonus will be over $22,000. Who do they think they are trying to fuck over? Whoever is shelling this money out is probably gonna be there this month to say "Goddamn it, his sign on bonus goes up again tommorow, just clear the kid already ferkrisake!"

[PatrickHenry]

bb04, all that whiskey you drink has fucked you up...
Military volunteer = overseas target

[bugsbunny04]

Quote by: PatrickHenry bb04, all that whiskey you drink has fucked you up... Military volunteer = overseas target

I dont even drink anymore, it slows the metabolism and Im losing weight like mad now that I quit drinking.

And besides, I know the risks, Im one of these hooah-hooah characters that wants to jump out of planes and shit.

[PatrickHenry]

Good luck, brother. I hope you dodge all those bogeys.