How Long In The Military At The Lowest Rank

Factual Questions
41

My first command had an E-6 who refused to take the chief’s exam. He was quite happy being a technician and was very good at it, and had absolutely no desire to be a paper pusher/middle management type. When he hit the magic number (what TIS was for an E-6 in 1992) out he went, and the Navy lost a really good technician.

Sort of, at least. Within six months he was back as a contractor doing the same damn job for at least twice te money - on top of his retirement pay.

I really loved working in military intelligence.

42

In the US and Royal Navies in the late nineteenth centuries, there was no up-or-out poicy, and both navies had serious problems with especially the officer corps. It was not unusual in this era to have 50 year-old LT’s and men stuck at one rank for 20 years. The basic problem was the same in both navies: Admirals and senior Captains had no reason not to stay where they were and did not make room for juniors to move up. The entire officer corps became ossified. In the USN, the great expansion around the turn of the century ended this problem without great wrenching costs, but in the RN and a number of fiascos from the Crimean War to the early days of WWI showed the advisability of up-or-out policies.

43

Thanks for providing the expert perspective. It’s good to know that reality is doing far better than rumor. My personal experience (reserves) also contradicts doom and gloom about new enlistees, but I just figured we were lucky.

44

I’d never heard of an age limit in the Forces, which would be sort of weird when people join at different ages, but certainly if you didn’t reach certain ranks by certain points they started raising a lot of questions about your suitability to be a soldier, and I do know of one person who was mustered out for missing enough promotion opportunities. They pretty much sat him down and said, “Son, this job just isn’t for you, so why don’t we give you a release and let you find a job you’re good at.”

At the lowest ranks, promotion was more or less automatic after a certain number of years in rank providing you’d met certain training criteria - in my trade the only way you WEREN’T promoted to Corporal from Private is if you didn’t accomplish a set of training qualifications. If you couldn’t pass a second level trades course and a driver’s course, you really couldn’t do the job, so why keep you?

The Canadian Forces just assumed a certain level of attrition and so designed the system to keep people either moving up or moving out. There’s no way to design a perfect system but it was as good as you could expect, or else you get the problem paperbackwriter describes, which you begin blocking good talent. It’s much the same reason private companies usually still force employees to retire at 65.

45

Doh! You are correct; that should have been “Army: Sergeant Major”, not Master Sergeant. In any case, although the administrative title of the senior enlisted personnel of a battallion-sized command unit in the United States Army is Command Sergeant Major, the individual will be addressed by rank (or diminutive thereof) not administrative title.

Stranger

46

Bumped.

Looks like the Pentagon is coming around to my way of thinking: Military Introduces Promotion Changes In Attempt To Attract And Keep Better Officers : NPR

47

I didn’t know about this thread until it got bumped. Interesting topic. I too can see problems with the ‘up or out’ promotion philosophy. It does a good job of rewarding folks that are both skilled and ambitious, but fails to recognize that everyone isn’t driven by ambition the same way. So years of institutional knowledge and experience can end up getting jettisoned if an individual is content doing a job they happen to enjoy and don’t necessarily want to leave it simply because the system isn’t designed that way. Plus, ‘up or out’ tends to perpetuate the Peter principle. Why shouldn’t the James Kirks of the universe be allowed to continue to serve as captains of starships, and not have to become paper pushing admirals?

48

This doesn’t only apply to the military. My wife was a nurse, working in a Special Care Baby Unit for nearly 30 years. To move up the pay scale would have meant moving to another department and taking more responsibility and she had no desire to do that. She was (and presumably is) one of many ‘soldiers’ who are very good at what they do but have no wish to be promoted out of their comfort zone.

49

Those guys in Beetle Bailey seem pretty well entrenched in their positions.

50

I recently saw an employment application for somebody who (claims to have?) retired from the National Guard as an E-3. I wasn’t sure if that was realistic or not.

51

Caveat: I was in the Army Reserves, not the National Guard, which uses a different promotion system. Also, I got out about a decade ago, so it may well have changed since then. That being said…

Yes, I think that’s plausible. The “up-or-out” policies discussed upthread are for active duty military personnel. Guard and Reserves are different. I personally knew a Reservist who retired from my unit as a Specialist (E-4), after twenty years of Reserve service.

In the Reserves (and I think this is true of Guard as well), you serve in a specific slot in a particular unit. The slot has a specific pay-grade. You can be up to one pay-grade above what you are slotted for, but beyond that you have to find a new slot, which often means finding a new unit, in order to get promoted. My memory is fuzzy on this, but I think you also only have a limited amount of time you can serve in a slot if you are above its assigned pay grade, after which you have to either find a new slot appropriate to your grade, or accept a demotion back to the slot’s pay grade.

The guy who retired as an E-4 was comfortable in his role and his slot in the unit, and did not want the extra responsibilities of being a non-commissioned officer. He also didn’t want the extra hassle and time on duty.

You may have seen the old recruitment commercials for the Guard and Reserve with the tag line, “One weekend a month, two weeks a year”. Even in peacetime, that’s only sort of true. If you are a junior enlisted (E-4 or below), in a position without any special responsibilities, you may actually get by with just the one weekend a month and two weeks a year. Beyond that, there are all sorts of schools and extra training, and extra duties at the unit.

As a Reservist, in addition to that minimal requirement, I went to foreign language school, foreign language refresher courses, Primary Leadership Development Course, security workshops, and frequently got called into the unit a day early for the one-weekend-a-month “Battle Assemblies”, and got called in during the month between Battle Assemblies on a number of occasions, was scheduled for Airborne School when our unit was reclassified and we lost our Airborne slots, and was scheduled for the Basic NCO course when my enlistment was up. And I was still a relatively junior Soldier, only an E-6 (Staff Sergeant).

52

No It’s not very realistic. At least not in the post 911 Guard. The promote or perish rules are a lot less in the Guard but it would be nearly impossible to stay until retirement as an E-3. Promotion to E-4 is automatic given enough time in grade and time in service. In order to stay at E-3 the soldier would have to do something wrong like be overweight or fail PT tests. But with the actions to flag them against being promoted also comes a bar to re-enlist. With some flagging actions they will allow 6 month extensions at the end of your enlistment period but not forever. Certainly not until retirement. Retiring at E-4 is possible. It was more possible in the past. Retiring as an E-3 is not completely impossible but highly improbable.

53

What does a Battle Assembly entail?

54

So, what about SEALS or MarSOC? Can you stay in SOC for more than 10 years as a private?

I ask because I understood that the British SAS used to have long-service enlisted members (and short service officers).

55

If you don’t have an up or out system you run the risk of having a logjam on promotions. I’m not sure how the other branches do it, but the Air Force only has so many openings per rank.

Lets say the Air Force needs/has 1000 E-5 Button Sorters. So of those 1000, 100 get promoted to E-6.

200 more separate. 100 just because they wanted to get out, the other 100 because they reached high year of tenure and had to get out.

Now the Air Force can promote 300 E-4 Button Sorters to E-5. But if those 100 who were forced out got to stay in, then the Air Force could only promote 200.

Currently HYT for a SSGT E-5 is 15 years. To get to retirement you have to be a TSGT E-6. An E-6 is forced to retire at 20. To go beyond 20 you have to make E-7 or above.

56

What about if you enlist at E-1, commit a crime, and get tried and sentenced to life imprisonment by a military court? Does that mean that you’re stuck at E-1 for the rest of your life? Or do enlisted personnel lose their rank completely upon conviction?

57

Any non-officer who joins the SAS loses their substantive rank and reverts to ‘trooper’. Troops comprise of 16 men, led by a captain and divided into four groups of four, led by a corporal. As I understand it, when they are ‘working’ they do not wear any badges showing rank.

<anecdote> I lived in Hereford for a while, and was told that you can always spot the SAS guy in a pub brawl - he will be the one slipping unobtrusively out of the back door. <anecdote>

58

A “Battle Assembly” is just a weekend drill. It was officially renamed, in the mid-2000s IIRC, as part of the general effort to put the Reserves on a wartime footing. Some of those efforts were substantive (my unit got a lot of new gear), and some were merely cosmetic (like re-naming “weekend drills” to “Battle Assemblies”).

I don’t know if you’re just asking about that specific term, or if you’re looking for more general info, so here goes:

The specifics of what it entails depends on the unit. In general, it will run from early Saturday morning to late Sunday night. During that period, the entire unit (ideally if not in practice) will assemble for formations and briefings, do training (which may involve going to the field, but more often is simply classroom training), do motorpool and other equipment maintenance, and do paperwork. So much paperwork. The U.S. military is a huge, complex bureaucratic organization, with a LOT of paperwork, and since most of us only had one weekend a month to try to get done what a Active Duty unit had all month to do…

59

Thanks for the info, gdave, and for your service to the great republic.

60

I just knew the Air Force didn’t do any real work!