If an officer asked to be dropped from Ranger school is that a career ender ? If so, why?

I know of many that DOR'd from Ranger School and were not affected by the decision.... of course that was during Vietnam when Company Grade Officers life expectancy was about the same as fruit flies....

Teammates, There isn't any official file documentation that shows you dropped from a school, such as Ranger School, kept in your records...other than your orders taking you to that school; orders taking you away from school and the lack of a graduation certificate. Lack of Motivation and other administrative records created at ranger School remain on file at the Ranger Training Brigade. That being said, is as already stated, it is against the Warrior Ethos and the Army Values to quit. So, if you quit you clearly have dug yourself a hole that will be hard to climb out of. The only way to do this is to work hard and convince you current leadership, peers and subordinates to help you out of that hole.

Infantry Officers that don't complete Ranger School end up low on the list to be a PL. Reason for that is Ranger School is the Army's premier leadership school. It shows to Commanders they can lead troops in austere conditions, or at least not quit in those conditions.

SSG(P) (Join to see) I can't speak for today, however, I do know that, in the 70's, if an officer voluntarily quit Ranger School he had to sign a "Non-motivation Statement", which was put in his personnel file. As an Assistant Operations Officer in the Ranger Department, I oversaw the signing of quite a few of those forms by officers who quit. Everybody who went to Ranger School probably knows of at least one officer who hurt himself on a jump or something, so he could get out on a medical/for an injury rather than quit.

On another note, I served on several promotion/command boards in the 90's and never saw a non-motivation statement in an officer's file, however, I did see academic reports indicating an officer had quit one school or another (as well as being dropped for cheating, plagiarism, failure to meet academic requirements, etc.). Bottom line is that, if an officer starts a military course of instruction/school, it would behoove him/her to finish it.

The bigger question is why is/was the officer at Ranger school to begin with? As the school slots become more difficult to get - especially for those of us not Infantry - the pre-Ranger selection process should screen out those who have any reservations or motivational issues. Once there, any candidate - officer or enlisted - should understand that he (or now she) has endured a rigorous qualification process, and should do everything in their power to stay the course, and graduate....short of injury. There is a reason we say, "Ranger's Lead the Way!"

I think the Officer who chooses to LOM (non medical or family emergency drop) out of Ranger School gets a letter sent to his/her future BN CDR. At least that was true about 7 years ago.

There isn’t a black and white answer to this question.

Will it hurt your career if you are going to an Airborne or Light Infantry unit – Absolutely. Those units want officers to be Ranger qualified and while getting hurt or failing isn’t an issue, (because they will just send you back to try again), requesting to drop doesn’t preclude another try, therefore, Airborne and light Infantry units won’t want that officer. They can’t just have the black Chinook come and take them away in the middle of the night, but what they will do is not allow them to have jobs leading soldiers and will stick them in staff positions instead. THAT, will definitely affect an Infantry officers career because they aren’t able to complete the right jobs when they should and will be at a disadvantage come promotional board review when being compared to their peers.

Will it hurt your career if you are going to a non-Airborne or non-Light Infantry unit – Nope. Seeing Ranger qualified Infantry officers in Mechanized units (especially LT's) is somewhat a rarity and officers are not discriminated against for not having their Ranger Tabs. There isn’t an expectation for a mechanized Infantry officer to be Ranger qualified so while in a mechanized unit, it won’t hurt them. However, if the Infantry Branch continues to want Infantry officers rotating between Mech to Lite, Lite to Mech assignments, once that officer moves to a Lite or Airborne assignment, the above discrimination will come into play.

Will it hurt your career if you are a non-Infantry Officer – Nope. There isn’t even an expectation for a non-Infantry Officer to be Ranger qualified in AG, QM, etc. so someone requesting to drop wouldn’t be discriminated against for doing that.

It is never good to quit anything especially as a leader and more importantly as an officer. As what was stated before, quitting goes against our warrior ethos, it demonstrates a weakness of character. It may reflect on a 2-1 or the ORB and that would not be a good thing. Class 9-92 first time go, never quit.

I am not sure the truth on this but at least the urban legend is that it is a career ender because essentially you are quitting a school. So this goes against the Warrior Ethos and that is not what we want to see in our leaders. I do not know how this ultimately gets recorded in a service record. When I went through in 1985-86, I was recycled. I was given the choice to either recycle or quit with what they call a "lack of motivation (LOM)." I chose recycle and got to experience parts of it twice.

I remember a classmate LOM'ing in first phase from R-School. None of us could believe it. He was not going to remain infantry as an officer, as he was branch-detailed anyway to another branch after two or three years. However, can you imagine going to your unit and having to answer that question, again, and again, and again--"hey - what happened to you at R-School? Why no tab?" Not a good way to start any career. None of us ever had a problem with fellow infantry officers who tried and got hurt, or failed, as long as they did everything possible to go back again. But LOMs--no. No officers or NCOs, or the junior enlisted soldiers wanted an LOM in their midst.