Are you an officer facing the retirement boards?

In general, by the time someone makes O-5, they've been through the board wringer several times. O-6 is even tougher. That said, there's a topic leadership won't talk about and that's their role in creating RADs (Retired on Active Duty). O-5 and O-6 billets can be divided into two categories; Upper and Lower Half (my take off on our first two flag ranks). Upper Half billets are those that if you do well, you'll get good paper and should be nicely competitive for the next promotion board. Lower Half billets are those which you can do great, but the paper won't compete well against the Upper Half. Easiest example is Staff Job vs. Command Job. Most officers who get double tapped on Lower Half assignments "get the hint" and see or are encouraged to exit the Service on their own terms. The HINT gets bigger when you are pushed into the second lower half job and the subsequent flesh peddler's conversation is where you want to retire to. Make no mistake, Flags ping the Detail Shop (HR for Army) with name selects all the time. Perfectly normal. Just like commercial sector. You don't have the Civil Service protocols in your corner. Service Secretaries do limit the blast perimeter on promotions by having words in the precepts like "a candidate will not be disadvantaged because...". Saw that one for years when I was sitting boards about "Joint". Nowadays, "Joint" is a good bean; not back then.

The article misses a big point by mumbling some platitude about the Navy is growing, hence why do it? The response is just as vague. The better way of saying it is if you are going to grow a Service, you want to get rid of as much near dead wood as reasonable. The "sense" should relate to upping the overall quality across the boards so the inevitable changes have a shorter growing pain period. Leadership will pick a number and convene a board to see who are the bottom feeders. If the number is too small, lots of RADs remain. If the number is too big, then well performing officers get sent home mostly a tour sooner than otherwise. Going too far creates a brain drain gap.

Oh, if you're thinking why not just look for the low gap with a large breakpoint and go with it? You'll have to deal with the over/under shooting when your real objective is to free up some of the progression constipation. Having more fresh O-5s to look at is a good thing. Everyone does a staff tour for sure at O-5 and O-6. The non command Upper Half jobs are out there as well.

Excellent share Tony.