I agree. A Corporal in this matter has been equipped with the tools to lead and their chain of command supports the decision. I think this will further the NCO core and create competent leaders that will get adequate experience while being eased into the major tasks of any NCO.

I was a Prior Enlisted Marine Corps Corporal before joining my Army Reserve unit. I was told I had to lose a rank but after a period of 3 months, I'd regain my E4 rank. When I did receive my Corporal rank, my reserve unit had NEVER dealt with a Corporal in their ranks, all their E4s were Specialists. So the SGTs instead of learning how to work with a Corporal, treated me as a Specialist, to include crap details and bogus non-NCO duties.

After I talked with our Units SGTMAJ, who was also a Prior Marine, he held a formation specifically to tear into the SGTs and SFCs who had no clue on regs, and told them that as a Marine Corporal with 11 years experience, leading infantry troops in combat, that if they had no idea who to deal with me, treat me as a SFC, because I had more command experience than most of them combined.

Needless to say, my time in the Reserve unit got a whole lot better after that, but you are correct, SFC, in saying its not used correctly. Doing those stupid working parties never had me so much more humiliated to be in the Army Reserves than that weekend I went to drill.

On the inverse of this, the Army really, really needs to bring back the SP5, SP6 and SP7 ranks: In every single other large organization on Earth, there are ample avenues for professional growth for people who have no interest in leadership roles at all.

The higher Specialist ranks allowed the Army to keep a soldier resource with very good technical expertise at their disposal, with far less risk of losing that resource to attrition over time. As for the whole pragmatism of an E-7 SP7 being technically subordinate to a E-5 SGT, I don't think this is nearly as big of a problem as soldiers might think it would be: The SP7 would be experienced in the Army long enough to know the scope of what he is supposed to do in the Army, and he chose to stay in the Army knowing what this scope is, and the SGT would also respect the technical expertise of the SP7 enough to give the SP7 a wide berth as a subordinate.

Agreed. The Military loses a lot of expertise because of their “up or out” mentality. The SP ranks were genius. SGT (Join to see)

Thats how they did it in BLC for promotions. I hope that with ACFT 3.0 rolling out the official scoring of these PT tests will be pushed out and i’ll be able to exceed the standard and set an example for my future promotable soldiers.

CPL (Join to see) the APFT is the score for points until at least March 2022 for the time being. You can retake the APFT to increase your score of you choose.

I think that if the Army incentivizes this lateral promotion more the whole way a chain of command works will improve. I alse see Infantry Corporals more than any other MOS’s because the platoon element there is actually done right. From a first line to a NCO to a NCOIC. The non Combat MOs’s seems to have weakened this belief.