These stories are a bit played out at this point, but last month's Washington Monthly spends a couple of thousand words trying to explain why the Army is bleeding junior officers. Some of the criticisms are a bit unfair and outdated (we've gotten a lot better at counter-insurgency in the last 4 years), but the general thrust is pretty spot on.
In case you don't really feel like reading the entire thing, let me summarize:
1) Talented Army captain with impeccable credentials (West Point, Georgetown) left the Army over disillusionment w/ senior leadership and not enough time to spend with his impeccably credentialed (UVA, private equity) young wife
2) 98% promotion rate from Captain to Major, where in the past this jump was used to filter out the lower 25% of the officer corps
3) In the long term the Army's senior leaders will be of a lower quality, in the short term there aren't enough junior officers to staff the proposed expansion of the military
Thursday, January 17, 2008
On a More Serioius Note...
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1 comment:
Interesting article, though they do not mention one of the ways they are making up for senior captain shortage - the IRR - and they feature no little vignettes of those of us affected by that.
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