Should Command be "required" for promotion to MAJ / COL / BG??

Depends on the AOC. For medical, O-3 is generally your first rank and you probably won't see a true command position until O-5 or even O-6. O-5's in my area are generally the deputies to commanding O-6's, O-3's are grunt/bench workers.

No... As pointed out, there are staff positions at the various ranks, as well as command positions. I do think that an officer should be required to command at a lower level before allowed to command at the next level.

The current system actually works. I think it would be very rare (if at all) for an officer to be selected for battalion command if they had not commanded a company. Same, same for brigade command for people who had not commanded a battalion.

An officer should be well rounded in his/her career field and that means he/she should have both the requisite command and staff experience, as well any branch-specific experience, before advancing to the next grade or command opportunity.

I think this one is branch dependent. Form maneuver guys this is a no brainer. But for the supporting / enabling troops and staff guys this is virtually impossible since there are not many low density MOS whole units out there.

That said, I would say those branches should top off at COL. just because G level is for command period. COL can still be interpreted as a highly experienced expert.

Great question.

Clearly different for each Service, and clearly different for each branch and functional area in the Army.

For the Navy and Air Force, as best I understand (noting that I only have a couple years of joint experience), successful staff or flying jobs lead to promotion, and command isn't something one even competes for until generally the O-5 level. As I understand, in the Air Force, for example, most officers won't command until their first or second O-5 job; so the gateways for promotion are different. Likewise, in the Navy, as I understand, officers generally don't command until the O-5 level. Would be interesting if my impressions of these two Services are correct. Any feedback?

For the Army, command at the various levels should, I believe, be a requirement for promotion, at least in certain branches. It would be hard to envision an infantry division commander that didn't command a regiment/brigade, battalion, and company prior to division command. That model, though, doesn't work for all branches and functional areas, so making command an across the board requirement for promotion in the Army wouldn't be logical. For example, in FAO land, to the best of my knowledge, there are no true command positions at any rank. The Army has, though, defined key developmental positions to account for this, and I think that the KD concept works well for FAOs.

Another point to consider, though, is that officers spend the majority of their careers in positions other than command positions. For example, an infantry officer will usually spend about 18 months in company command; 2-3 years in battalion command; 2-3 years in regiment/brigade command; 2-3 years in division command; and, depending on the assignment, maybe a couple more 2-3 year tours in command as 3 and 4 star generals. After the typical 35-40 year 4-star career, even if we give the maximum time for each position, an officer would spend only about a third of their career in command, and two-thirds of their career in non-command positions. The point: we need our officers to be good staff officers and good commanders, not just one or the other.

There are a number of comments in this thread about the "general staff" concept used in some foreign countries. Its not apparent that the concept means what a great number of commentators think it means. I'm not an expert on how the general staff concept is applied in all foreign countries; for the ones I'm familiar with, being qualified as a general staff officer doesn't mean that the officer is going to spend the rest of his/her career on staff. In Turkey (and Greece, Cyprus, Germany, Austria, etc, etc), for example, qualification as a general staff officer separates the top performers from the rest of the population; Turkish general staff officers are the best officers in the Turkish military, and most if not all key command and staff billets are coded for Turkish general staff officers. We don't have a similar concept in the U.S. Army; if we tried a bit of mirroring to understand the concept, in our Army, it'd be something akin to a combination of West Point graduate / SAMS graduate / the most successful officers from a given peer group / those consistently promoted below-the-zone. (Note I'm not trying to say West Point and SAMS grads are the best officers, just using these as examples of things that are quite selective and represent only a small portion of the overall officer population.) Because the systems are so different, though, a direct comparison isn't possible.

Every officer needs to experience company command. It's the building block of our force. Unless you have the basic understanding of training management, command supply discipline, administrative procedures, counseling, command maintenance, tactical logistics, and every other "rubber meets the road" level execution conducted by a company, you'll never be a great staff officer. You simply won't have the understanding. You might think you do...but you don't. You would never know because you never lived it. You can read books about it, but that's like reading books about sex and saying you're an expert and then writing instruction manuals about how to fornicate properly. Even if you career field into something like FAO or Strategic Intelligence, you still have to have that basic understanding of the military. Battalion level isn't as necessary if you career field into something other than operations, but you need to be in a niche specialty. I don't want the G3 of the 82d Airborne to be a guy who never served at the Battalion Command level...I don't care how great of a staff officer he is. Unless you've jumped in these boots, you can't possibly understand what it takes to make a battalion level element do what it needs to do and then build a division level (let alone a Corps or higher) training cycle to support that. Am I as concerned about the Division PAO...nope. As long as that Soldier has had Company Command somewhere, I don't think I'm worried about it. That's a specialty field and as long as they have gone to PAQC, I don't have an issue. General...absolutely not. I don't want great staff officer generals. I want generals who know how to lead.

It is my feeling that an Officer that can not handle command cannot handle the higher rank. I believe it is a valid requirement and should continue to exist. The virtues of the American Officer Corp is that they are a well rounded generalist capable of critical thought and command decision, and I don't feel that a staff officer can appreciate that in their commander unless they have walked that road in at least a junior capacity as a company or detachment commander.

A related to question: Is the type of unit commanded looked at differently? I imagine that an AIT company would be a lot of work in terms of soldier issues but maybe less work in terms of the training plan. Is a commander of 'gentlemen's' course a coveted spot due to having a TRADOC set training plan and 'adult' students that mostly keep out of trouble or is such a posting deemed less challenging thus less developmental for later assignments.

I think this is very branch dependent. For special staff (JAG, Chaplains, etc) and medical types (excluding the ops MSC guys), we are here primarily to function as our specialty, and secondarily as leaders. The majority of us will never have the opportunity to command. However, there are key developmental positions (ie OIC jobs) that provide leadership learning/development opportunities that are somewhat comparable to lower level commands.

As for promotion, performance and professional development (military/civilian ed, developmental roles, etc) are the keys. I don't think command experience should be an absolute qualifier for promotions, but it SHOULD be a discriminator for senior command candidates. You really can't command at the higher levels if you haven't successfully commanded at lower levels. This way you can still promote good performers who may not be suited for the command track.

Should command be required for promotion to MAJ/LTC/COL/BG?
- Historical. The Germans had a dual system of command and general staff officer. It could be argued that the general staff officer was more highly prized.
- Requirement Reasoning. I think the Army thought process on requiring command for promotion is that the Army does not hire from outside like private industry does and we therefore must grow our own. Command is viewed as a necessary key/developmental step in that process of growing our own.
- Alternate routes to promotion. The Army in the early 2000's identified this as an issue and worked to create alternate routes for promotion but the predominate route remained/remains command at most levels.
- To answer your question specifically:
- MAJ. Yes, CO CMD should be a prerequisite requirement for promotion to MAJ.
- LTC. Not identified in your initial question but no since there generally are no or very few MAJ level commands on which to base promotion to LTC.
- COL. Maybe but predominate route should be via command. The question then becomes what experiences outside of BN CMD are critical for the Army and should therefore be recognized as an indicator of potential that should result in promotion to COL if manner of performance is high?
- BG. Maybe. Same question as for COL above. What is needed by the Army at BG level that should be developed at COL level and viewed as key and developmental?

Company-level command is not required for promotion to MAJ, even in MFE branches, as far as I know. I'm open to education on the subject.

I'm not convinced that command should be a "requirement," read very strictly, for promotion. While it certainly should be a requirement for higher levels of command, there is still much good that can be done by someone too risk averse or weak of heart to hazard taking the guidon.

On the other hand, I am quite convinced that staff officers who don't have the benefit of previous command are much more likely than prior commanders to make poor plans and decisions that make commanders' jobs much more difficult. Commanders and Command NCOs are the dirty hands of the military, and all reasonable things should be done by staffs to alleviate the burdens placed on them. How can staff officers do right by commanders if they don't know what it's like? They can't.

Do Soldiers a favor, listen to a green-tabber.