Leadership: Up or Out Curse Continues
17th October 2022
Periodically the problem becomes an issue for Congress and a “reform law” is passed that does not work. Despite that every few years there is a major effort, often involving more than one service, to deal with the problem themselves. None ever succeed. For example, in 2017 the U.S. Air Force joined the Navy by continuing to extend temporary exceptions to the traditional (since 1947) “up or out” policy prevalent throughout the American military. What up or out meant was that if you were not promoted within a certain number of years (of your last promotion), you had to leave. That meant capable, often very capable personnel, especially NCOs and mid-rank officers, with jobs that had little opportunity for promotion were often forced to leave because of this rule. The air force, like the other services, are slowly modifying the “up or out” rule so that it at least becomes tolerable and not counterproductive.
Whenever there were major reductions in military personnel (after World War II, Korea and Vietnam) it was common for a lot of very competent NCOs and officers to be “up or outed so, since the last major round of downsizing in the 1990s, all the services sought more ways to avoid losing skilled personnel who being lost for no other reason than that there were no opportunities for promotion in their military occupation specialties (MOS). After 2001 the navy and air force were hardest hit and both services have implemented temporary adjustments to “up or out” rules to keep people they could not afford to lose and could not easily replace by retraining veteran personnel in other fields or obtaining new recruits with the needed skills and experience.
October 17th, 2022 at 08:38
The article mentions that people leave because their superiors are “incompetent.” But that begs the question: WHY are they incompetent? To a large extent, because of political pressure to select “diverse” candidates over competence, integrity etc.
The rest of the article’s statements seem fairly legitimate, but this one I think is quite wrong: While the article says specifically Air Force and intelligence, this applies to all services, and many job categories: “These jobs often require personnel with high-level security clearances and skills not directly transferable to non-military employment.”
Having both served as active duty and as a Federal contractor much of my life, I know that statemnet is largely false. In many cases, the special clearances and prior training make a high-paying contractor job available. That’s yet another reaso to leave the miitary: for some, the money is simply better in the civilian world.
Sadly, some of the military’s problems are insuperable due to demographic changes. As implied by the article, too, rare will be the civilian who willingly will risk his ass in a combat zone, no matter what pay is offered.