A collection of questions:
[ul]
[li]What percentage of military officers at each rank ever get promoted to the next rank? e.g. how many Majors ever get promoted to Lt. Col.?[/li][li]Is there an age at which you become “too old” for a particular rank? e.g. is 40 years old too old to still be a Major?[/li][li]If you don’t get promoted within a certain amount of time, are you effectively being fired? (Like how academics who aren’t granted tenure are effectively being fired.)[/li][li]What is the average rank of a retiring career military officer?[/li][li]Are the answers to these questions different for the Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Army? (Apart from differences in names of ranks.)[/li][/ul]
This article answers many of your questions.
I’ll take a quick stab at them, though.
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The percentage of officers promoted depends on the needs of the service, and the number of officers qualified for promotion.
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There are no age restrictions for the various ranks. There is a maximum age that you remain in the service. However, you have to keep promoting to remain in the service. See the next question.
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Yes, if you fail to promote, you are effectively being fired. If you have served for less than 20 years, and are unable to snag an early retirement, you are forced out for failure to promote, and you don’t get retirement pay. You do get a hefty severance package, but it’s still nowhere near as good as retirement.
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The average military retiree has served for 20-25 years. Most officers are commissioned right oout of college, so you can do the math.
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The services have very similar rules. The only real difference between the services is that the promotion percentages may vary.
Also, an officer normally get two chances to promote. (Promotion boards meet annually.) After the second failure to select, your number is up, and involuntary separation orders will likely follow.
In one sense, it’s a tougher system than the civilian world. You can be competent in your job, but if you’re not one of the top performers, you’re out.
On the other hand, a merely competent officer won’t be summarily fired, as might happen in the civilian world. They have to be passed over twice, then it takes 6-9 months to process them out.
(However, if an officer is truly negligent in his duties, his/her commanding officer can subject them to nonjudicial punishment for dereliction of duty, and force them out of the service fairly rapidly.)
The Canadian Forces has a similar system, but there are lots of exceptions, particularly for people with specialized TQ (technical qualification) where a promotion might take them out of the job. You don’t want to have too many Chief Warrant Officers crawling under tanks to fix them, but if Sergeant Brisko is the best in the biz at that task, you don’t want to take take him out of the job just because the alternative is to muster him out. I presume the US services have similar provisions.
And enlisted personnel can join right out of High School.
Of course, then there are the non-average retirees who do make it to the top of the scales (generals/admirals, sergeants-major/master chiefs): they will often have long careers that run all the way up to mandatory retirement.
The traditional take on the retirement for many members in the US military was that after 20 years, which meant a guaranteed pension of 50% your pay, you were in fact “working for half a paycheck”. Being that they’d be mostly somewhere between ages 38 and 45, plus at a point up the ranks where promotions would get tighter, it would be a good time for the guy who did not see stars in his future to start his second civilian career.