48C/48E: We're all 48E's now. Thoughts?

There were several reasons behind this decision and GCC alignment was a minor one. Another reason was personnel distribution and management. After the cold war almost all eastern European country billets moved from echo to charlie. This increase in billets was matched with an increase in promotions at the 06 level in a region that was already above 100%. The army, for some reason, also continued to promote far more echoes than were needed despite the reduction in billets and to the detriment of other regions such as juliets where we needed them. Additionally, as a former 06 assignments officer (6 years removed), I can tell you there were 48E colonels who loved central Asia and only wanted tours there; there were also 48E colonels who preferred eastern Europe and did not want anything to do with central Asia; finally, there were many 48Es who flat out did not want to go to Russia. one more reason I know of Is there were too few 48D Colonel positions for the number of 48D LTC bullets feeding into them. I'm sure proponent has other reasons but those are the ones I remember.

COL (Join to see) Sir: Thanks for the insight and background. On the point of higher 48E promotion rates to O6, I've always wondered if this is a result of the abundance of 2-yr 48E Country Team assignments (vs the abundance of 3-yr 48C Country Team assignments) which results in 48Es having one or two more assignments by the time of the O-6 promotion board, or maybe a result of a prevailing Cold War perspective (ie, boards prefer Russian speakers over other foreign language speakers because of the Cold War legacy).