Army Officer cuts Disproportionally Affect Prior Enlisted?

Not the Mustangs! Dedicated leaders who had to crawl through the trenches and up the cliff to get to their commission. Nothing but love and respect for all of them. In today's ultra PC till death approach to.....everything, I look at this fact as coincidental. If Officers are going to be reduced, they go for ones with less promotion potential. If a Mustang has many more years in then someone else, they must figure that less time left means less chances to climb the ranks. If it is something more sinister, I will be one of the first to hold a picket sign and join the cause. Great topic for discussion, by the way.

We (71Bs) got hammered on the MAJ promotion boards last week. 50% promotion rate, down from almost 100% last year and over recent years. I was shocked to see that much of a reduction when you consider it's all soldiers with PhDs.

Here are my thoughts...

1. It is highly likely.
2. The cuts in numbers are normally by year group and based on a population they are trying to get to by year group and what the Army end Strenth is going to be.
3. Right now, what I know of, the year groups that are getting hit hard are the ones the came up during the hardest years of the wars 2005-2009 time frame.
4. During this time frame almost everyone was getting promoted because they had to fill billets.
5. OCS requirements were dropped.
6. Green to Gold and OCS direct selections were being given to Div CDRs to pick soldiers with little to no other screening....we still had trouble finding enough Soldiers that wanted to get their commissions...bottom line: if you said yes, they were sent.I had a great NCO that had a DWI in his background during this time, I told him he would not get selected because of it, but when sent his packet forward and he still make the cut for OCS (pretty much unheard of prior to GWOT).

So, when they make these cuts, if they are reviewing files that included prior enlisted time, anyone who made the cut during these times, that would not have made it in years where there was much more scrutiny are probably being given the "pink slip" because in the big Army it is a numbers game and they have to get to that number no matter what, and if you have any type of negative discriminator in your file then you are going to get selected.