Why US army swore in tech executives as lieutenant colonels | Snopes.com
Apparently four tech execs got sworn in as lieutenant colonels and jumped 16 ranks despite zero military training, just so they could serve part-time in the Army Reserve as senior advisers.
Is this something that has been done before? Were there even background checks done on these people?
Are there any rules/laws about this at all?
Professionals who end up in the military often end up starting fairly high on the commissioned-officer ladder. I know it’s fiction, but think of M*A*S*H, where the surgeons were captains and majors.
I’m not sure it’s often but it happens. A friend of a friend in the 90s was some kind of logistics expert in early middle age and was commissioned at a Lt Col.
So this has happened before to non-medical professionals in peace time? And, as far as I know, even those medical professionals went through military training first, so what sort of training did these guys get?
Or Malachi Constant from The Sirens of Titan…
Yeah-there’s going to be a lot of fictional examples I would really like to skip in this thread, thank you.
Lawyers start at 1st Lt and doctors start at Captain but that doesn’t really count for the purposes of this OP.
The example that I gave upthread is the only real life one I know
I don’t know how it works in the Army, but in the U.S. Navy, any type of professional like this (including medical personnel, lawyers, civil engineers, etc.) are not sworn in as line officers. They are instead sworn in as staff corps officers and are thus ineligible for any command role for a ship, submarine, aircraft, or any other operational, tactical or combat unit.
They can only command units made up of medical personnel, legal personnel, or construction personnel (i.e. Seebees), respectively.
I suspect the Army works similarly. I know they also have non-combat medical officers, lawyers, and other professionals.
P.S. In the Navy, prospective staff corps officers go through a shortened version of initial training called Officer Indoctrination School (OIS), aka how-to-salute school. Once training is finished, they typically get jumped up a few ranks, like O-3 for physicians (and O-4 a year later). Nurses might start off as O-2. Not sure about lawyers, etc.
These guys started at Lieutenant Colonel, with absolutely no training, just to be part-time advisors. If this is at all out of the ordinary, please let me know.
Historically, this happened a lot. George Washington was originally commissioned directly as a Major in the Virginia militia. Way back centuries ago, you just needed a bunch of money or connections and bam, you’re a general. Direct commissions have always existed.
It’s not like they jumped “16 ranks” as in the OP. Any such commission is going to start the person off at O-1 at the very least.
What rank a commission grants will depend on the professional. That they don’t start at O-1 and rather at O-5 is not automatically damning or suspicious.
I believe it’s very rare but in a vacuum they aren’t any different than my example. That guy started as LtCol too because of age and experience.
He also had a part time advisory position, and no military training?
No military training. I think he was a reservist but not positive.
Edit: Because of his access and what they did, they had to give him a commission for some reason.
Keep in mind that the original novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors was based on author Richard Hornberger’s real life experience as a Korean War surgeon.
I mean, the Army has Congressional approval for direct commissioning in needed fields up to the rank of Colonel (depends on need, experience, age, etc) - here’s the website. How appropriate or usual this might be can be debated, but it’s something they thought might need to happen in some cases.
It is…unusual…to say the least. They were almost certainly appointed to the Reserve component of the Army because commissioning above O-3 in the Regular Army or other military branch would require “advise and consent” of the US Senate per 10 USC § 531, and also reporting, grooming, and other standards to be applied. They aren’t command link ranks but are in staff officer roles (I assume), making them ineligible for promotion through the normal process of time-in-rank and time-in-service requirements. Presumably this was done to grant special access to programs without going through the normal vetting process, and perhaps also to give the military more authority over executive decisions within these companies. Elevating civilian business leaders to military ranks is also a hallmark of authoritarian regimes and was normal practice in Nazi Germany where the government of the Third Reich co-opted corporations in this way instead of outright nationalizing them.
Male college students of that era had compulsory ROTC enlistment, and physicians were elevated to O-3 (captain in the Army/Air Force/Marines, lieutenant in the Navy) so they would be superior in rank to the nurses working with them (all 2nd or 1st lieutenants in Army ranks). So, they weren’t literally plucked out of the ranks of civilians and at least notionally had military training and some version of OCS.
Stranger
Keep in mind that, while real examples are wanted here, fictional examples very loosely based on them are not, please.
The military has long had a problem that except for recognized specialties like doctors and lawyers, pay = rank and rank = pay. There is simply no way to approve a higher salary for someone based on them being special in some way.
So attracting someone into the military with needed skills that also pay well outside is difficult. I know of at least a few cyber types who entered the military as Lt. Col O-5’s exactly to get their pay up from “no fucking way!” to “merely insulting” compared to the same job outside.
So does it happen that civilian specialists come in at a higher rank for a specialized purpose? Yes.
Is the OP’s case anything but trumply criminality? I don’t know, but I certainly have my suspicions.
Aside:
The OP apparently misunderstands the military rank system. There are enlisted and there are officers and they are completely different things. Think “workers” and “suits” and you’ll have an idea of the divide.
The vast majority of officers start as officers. They never were, and never will be, enlisted. They start out as an O-1. Imagine your basic civilian junior exec hired fresh out of MBA school and you’ll have the idea of an O-1.
If their career goes well, after 4 promotions (and typically ~15 years) they’ll be an O-5 as the OP’s suspicious people were appointed to.
So claiming they jumped 16 ranks is factually wrong. They jumped 4.
Or more precisely, there is, and that way is to give them a higher rank.
The military pay structure is much flatter than in most of the civilian world, though. The highest-ranking officers only make around eight times as much as the lowest-ranking enlisted, and that’s not even counting things like food and housing, which are the same for everyone. So you’re not going to be able to pay someone remotely as much as they could make as a CEO of a big company, no matter how much you want to recruit them.
The Cdn Minister of Militia & Defence, Gen. Sir Sam Hughes, appointed a number of Cdn businessmen Honorary Colonels with instructions to cut red tape and expedite the procurement of urgently needed military supplies. A number of these individuals promptly misused their new positions to enrich themselves at public expense.