Steep decline in promotion rates? What does it mean for the Army?

Moon, you are looking at the aggregate number for the promotion board. Depending on your specific branch it could have been as low as 35%.

A MAJ Jäger said, there needs to be more transparency and if we are "trimming the force allowing only the best and brightest to stay" that should apply all the way to the top. No exceptions. If a GOMAR is a kiss of death for a 0-3 then it certainly should be for an 0-5/6/7 etc.
The military needs to publish the board evaluation criteria and ALSO the metrics/ demographics of WHO they pick up to see if the words match the actions. Do certain MOSs, alumni, gender, race, year group, OER scores, disciplinary records etc get differing results with the board. The Major is right, if the issue is the standard and quality apply that to everyone equally and transparently.

Ma'am, can you verify the "no major left behind" at CGSC?

The “no major left behind” phrase was used commonly to refer to the Active Army’s decision to eliminate a boarding process for CGSC (then ILE) attendance. Everybody got to go to the resident school, whereas previously only about 50% were selected, and some only for the “box of books” distance learning program. Both of these acted as a vector check on FGOs’ careers. If you didn’t get selected for CGSC/ILE, it was unlikely that you’d make LTC. When we needed numbers, everyone got to go to the school (which had less demand bc some folks were unavailable due to deployment), thus, like the educational law “No Child Left Behind,” no majors were left behind.

MAJ (Join to see)

I have lived through a few of these and there is no perfect system. If, as you say, the SERB results only got those who voluntarily retired, there will probably be another round to force others out. Until the end strength is where it needs to be and promotion rates are high enough to keep quality personnel in, the Army will continue to mold the force through identification and elimination of under-performers (as compared to their peers). But, as I stated, there is no perfect system and it is certainly not fool proof. Who is considered an under-performer is in the eyes of the beholder. Most are not that clear cut.

For example, I noticed that you are an Infantry officer assigned as an Army Attaché (which, I guess, means you are a FAO). That, at least in my experience, puts you at risk when compared to your peers who served in operational assignments (S3/XO, etc) as majors and who would be considered more "branch qualified" than you. That has been a problem with FAO, Special Operations, Aviation, and other "specialties" in the Army for years. Officers serving in those specialties were being passed over for schools and promotions at a much higher rate than their peers due to the amount of time they spent "outside their branch". That has been partially alleviated by creation of the Aviation Branch, Special Operations Branch and full-time Acquisition assignments, however, to my knowledge, the FAO issue had not been addressed. Maybe it has now... That is the reason I had strings pulled to get me out of FAO (I lived in Paris for 14 years, speak fluent French, etc. and was selected for French Command and Staff College and an assignment to the embassy in Paris). Although that would have been a great assignment (5 years in Paris), I knew it would be the kiss of death and I would never have made it past LTC, if I had gotten that far. As such, I had some folks help get me out of it. Hopefully, that issue has now been resolved. As important as FAOs are to our military and country, they have been getting the short end of the stick in boards.

Unfortunately, things will most likely get worse before they get better and a lot of good officers will suffer because of it (and a lot of officer who are content to just get by will continue to do so).

COL Jean (John) F. B. Sir: thanks for the comment. Two points: 1) FAO I has been single-tracked since the late 90s and now FAOs compete with other operational support types for promotion; recent FAO promotion rates are just slightly higher than the Army average; 2) folks in my year group and those just a bit older and younger aren't at risk for non-select because of our branch, or because of our performance, but because the Army has opted to manage the force structure by cutting younger officers vs. targeting senior officer reductions. This is a choice the Army is making---cut the year groups that have been at war since they commissioned in 99 and later but keep ltcs for 28 years and cols for 30, while continuing to maintain bloated levels of GOs for a force structure reduced by 90,000 Soldiers. The message this sends is not pleasant. It also is likely to leave us with an old officer corps, much like many armies around the world, where promotions stagnate with concomitant negative impact on readiness, retention, and recruitment. On the non-reduction in GO numbers.,..cutting the force structure by 15% would logically lead to a 15% reduction at all ranks. What we've seen is a reduction at the major level and below, including all enlisted ranks, and very extremely limited reductions at ltc and above.

Also, on the performance point, even in the osbs we saw officers with no bad paper and a preponderance of ACOMs cut; with a promotion rate less than 50%, we'll be letting really quality officers go and keeping their slightly older peers who got promoted inboards with rates around 90%. I understand year group management is a legal requirement; I just think the Army isn't doing itself any favors by excluding YG 97 and earlier from a hard look.

MAJ (Join to see)

Good points, thanks. I was aware of the single-tracking, as it occurred before I retired in 2000, however, it would have been better to establish a FAO branch, like Aviation and Special Operations did. I served on battalion command and LTC promotion boards in the late 90's and I can tell you that FAOs took some hits because of lack of "branch qualification". Although they may be single-tracked, they are still in a branch and that creates an expectation of branch qualification. In a promotion board process, when board members are reviewing thousands of records, only a few minutes are spent with each. As such, when you see a photo and file of an Infantry officer, for example, and do a quick review of OERS, assignments, schools, etc., your brain automatically compares him to other Infantry officers. Hopefully, the system has matured to the point that is no longer an issue. From the info you provided about recent selection rates, it appears that it might have corrected itself.

I understand your comments about the force structure and how the "culling" is being done. Like I said, we have been through this before and we'll get through it. Unfortunately, we will lose some very good officers in the process.

I saw some very good people leave the military as a result of the various drawdowns. Like I have said for years, the military will never be horny, because we are always screwing ourselves.

MAJ Carl Ballinger Carl, this is all public data. All you have to do is know how to use DMDC databases, which are open to the public, to search for what you're looking for. You also would have to know how to read US Code, and know which law (DOPMA) is relevant to this discussion. Its really not that hard. And it is all very public, releasable data (as required, in fact, by several parts of the US Code).

LTC (Join to see) Ma'am: Agreed with your point; you'll note I accounted for this in one of my previous posts; the US Code states that GOs in joint assignments don't count against Service limits, and I used RAND's estimate that the Army is +7 GOs above. One could figure this out, if one could find a list of all the Army generals serving in actual JDAL billets, count them; and then find a list of all the Army generals serving in Army billets, and count them; and then add the two numbers together to see if they surpassed the various limits established by DOPMA and the US Code.

MAJ Carl Ballinger Carl, I care because, like you, I care about the readiness and health of the Army as it relates to national defense. Apparently unlike you, I think this topic negatively impacts the readiness and health of the Army as it relates to national defense. How? By retaining arguably lower quality officers from older year groups while involuntarily separating or retiring higher quality officers from younger year groups, in this specific case (if what we're hearing is correct) by gutting YG99 (by promoting less than half to LTC). My basic logic is that every year group is more or less the same quality, and that those YG99 officers in the, say, the bottom 38th to 51st percentile are higher quality officers than those YG98/97/earlier officers in the bottom 37th/17th/6th percentile (as the previous YG promotion rates were 63%, 83%, and an average of 94% from FY01-FY12), and yet we're keeping the older, lower quality officers. Lower quality officers = bad for the health and readiness of the Army as it relates to national defense.

Two comments:
1) With this action, the Army is implicitly stating that YG99 is lower quality than previous year groups. Yes, this might be a function of the drawdown, but the Army has a huge range of options to execute the drawdown, and is choosing to target YG99 and younger, (YG98 is in here, too, with a promotion rate of 63%) vs. targeting YG97 and older.

2) The Army should be transparent about this, beyond stating the obvious that the Army is going through a drawdown. Explain to the force why YG98-99 and younger are deemed lower quality than YG97 and earlier. Explain why we aren't clearing the nearly 1,000 excess LTC and COL.

MAJ Carl Ballinger You're absolutely right--our poor evaluation system doesn't do much to really identify the best in the first place. It might identify the very, very, very best, those guys that have always gotten ACOMs on every OER (I'm convinced there is a correlation between ACOM and "the best"), but from my experience, stratification on an OER depends more on 1) timing and 2) passion about the rated officer and "standing" of the rater than on actual demonstrated performance or assessed potential. I do think the system we have now (with forced distribution rater profiles) is better than the previous system.

I also agree with you: lower promotion rates at the end of the day are better for the Army, and parity is difficult in a time of rapid force restructuring.

Also, I should mention the bell-curve; each cohort likely has two easily identifiable gropus: a group of "the best officers" that accounts for maybe 10-20% of the population, another group of "the worst officers" that accounts for another 10-20% of the population; the rest of the 60-80% of each cohort is probably just about the same on terms of merit. So as long as promotion rates are below 80%, the Army is probably cutting the "worst" officers; when the rates averaged 94% for 12 years, not so much.