Do you think a 20% cut of YG 2009 for the Officer Separation Board is excessive?

I am with you. Nothing derogatory at all. Evals were not perfect but good. Left justified with 5 out of 8 ACOM writeups. Certainly not "bottom" 20%. All my leaders are shaking their head as well. I am angry. I will hit 14 years right after my ETS. I fully believe that they could have reached close to their goals just by offering prorated pensions for anyone past 10 yrs. I would have taken 32% and a severance. They just passed the law for the new retirement system where "everybody can get something" for their service. Yet they made no such effort to do that for those already in service. They still save money. To not waste 14 years of devotion, I have to do Reserves...and I get separation pay. Which is a crock, because assuming I retire from the Reserves I have to pay the separation pay back. It is "advanced retirement pay". I could turn down the money, but what if I do not have a job right away? Have to feed the family. So it is a rock and a hard place. They should offer small pension or not make us pay it back. They should also have to give us a reason when you have nothing derogatory. Too subjective not to do it, when they get 2 minutes per file. I am angry and heartbroken. This was not my job or career, it was my life. 6 years enlisted and almost 8 commissioned when I have to leave. I have been betrayed. I will be fine but I will never get over it completely. Good luck to all of you.

Betrayal and hurt are definitely words that come up when I think about this whole situation. I would really like to see the slide deck of the demographics of the selected officers when it comes out. Our YG was one of the first to not have a 95%+ selection rate for CPT since the war started, so that alone should have sifted out some of the rif raf. My best guess is there's going to be alot of folks like us that were selected. Not rocks stars, and not shit bags, just unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I know what you mean about it being a life and not a career. I enlisted when I was 17 - its been my everything. I could have medically retired after getting wounded in Afghanistan, but I fought to stay - because it was my life. After all we've given to the Army, to be shuffled in and out of the BDE CDRs office to be given a form letter telling us to hit the street, I dont know about you all, but I feel like a horse that is no longer of use to the farmer.
Despite those feelings, I'm going into the reserves - because its my life. What sucks is my wife is still on active duty, and its hard looking for a reserve job,only knowing I'll probably have to move again in a few years. Its also hard seeing AGR jobs open up, only no where near our duty station. Either way, it will all work out.
I wish you all the best....

Sir: That logic seems to go a little bit against DOPMA logic, which suggests goals of retaining more junior officers and less senior officers (ie, decreasing promotion rates from 1LT through col) and highlight the Army's preference of cutting younger year groups in favor of retaining older year groups. Overall, though, spot-on: we grew the Army rapidly, now we're shrinking it rapidly. Cuts have to be made somewhere, and the Army has chosen to cut people instead of equipment or other programs to save money,

We don't cut people, we cut structure (or authorizations). If we cut people, we'd have an empty Army (we'd have BCT's but no people to fill them). If we are authorized X amount of funding by the Congress, we have to make priorities. The size of the Army should be based on the threat. Everyone agrees to that. If we built the Army to the threat right now and kept the assumption that our rotation process is correct (only deploy a unit for one year and then give them two in CONUS to retrain and refit) then we'd need about...well...we'd need a lot more Brigade Combat Teams. The numbers would get into classified information, but I know what that number is. If we have more BCT's, we need more Sustainment Brigades and more MP Brigades and more finance companies, etc, etc, etc. The right Army for the threat is probably well over where we were at the surge. Let's just agree to that. NOW...we can't build that Army because we were only given X amount of money by the Congress. So...we have a few choices. 1) Cut authorizations, 2) Retain authorizations when we can't afford the people, 3) Cut modernization and equipping. We can do either #1 or #2, but not both (they are juxtaposed) AND we can do #3 simultaneously. Or we can just do #3 and keep structure. If we cut authorizations (get rid of units) then we can train the units we have left because we have sized the Army to the budget we have and we have a highly trained and smaller force (this is our current plan). If we keep the authorizations and the structure and don't get rid of units, then we have a larger Army than we can train. We can keep the people, but we can't go to the NTC, we can't buy ammunition or fuel, and we end up on a "Tiered Readiness" plan. This means that the majority of the Army will not train to standard because we cannot afford it. There will be some units who train, but they will be very few. This is not an option for the CSA. We could do it, but we would end up with a hollow Army that can't fight. The effect is much larger though, as you end up with leaders who are in those "have-not" units who have NEVER done a live fire. That's a bad thing. You end up with an entire generation growing up going "bang-bang-bang" during training. That's bad. And then there is #3. We can cut expenditures on modernization and equipping. I don't have the numbers on this, but the most expensive thing we do is pay for Soldiers. Ever work with old equipment? I know we all have. How long does the Army go without replacing those 20 broken fire control systems in the ABCT? This option starts dragging down the readiness of the Army and it makes it harder to catch up when the money turns back on. Long and drawn out...but the reality of it is painful to see from the Pentagon.

As far as the logic of DOPMA, it doesn't work that way necessarily. Each YG is managed separately...and holistically. The YG has primacy though. If a YG is fat...it gets cut. If they cut the higher YG, then you will see more BZ promotions, which is bad.

All that being said, you can't swing a rubber chicken in the Pentagon without upsetting at least 5 Colonels. I'm sure there is room for senior officer cuts in the military...including me.