I just read this in an article about the new Top Gun movie.
In the three decades-plus since Top Gun , Maverick (Tom Cruise) hasn’t advanced further than Captain in the Navy. It’s implied that it’s down to his fittingly maverick ways…
Due to injuries, my Naval career was ended before I had the chance to start it. I’ve heard that in the military, it’s ‘Up or Out’. That is, if an officer doesn’t continue to advance in grade – passed over to many times, for example – s/he can’t remain in the service. Sort of ‘forced retirement’. Is this true? Or have I mangled something in my memory?
Yes, there are statutory service limits for officers, ranging from 20 to 40 years. As an O-6 Maverick would get the door at 30 years. As I understand it, time must move slower in the Top Gun universe.
Maxing out at O-6 isn’t unusual, fwiw. O-5 could be a sign of not playing well with others, but even then, plenty of good folks don’t make it past that.
As a Navy Captain (O-6) his next rank is Rear Admiral (RDML) which he’s usually get at the 22 year point plus or minus depending on your career path and job. If you have three looks for flag, that takes you to about 25 years. The Navy lets O-6s get to thirty years then they have to retire.
The “pyramid” from O-5 to O-6 to O-7 starts looking pretty arduous; lots more don’t make the next grade than do.
In my era (and I’m told by folks in the right places that this is still true today) in USAF making O-6 is much a matter of excellent positioning as an O-4. In the right place(s) at the right time(s) you’ll get in the pipeline for that all important first command slot as an O-5 that is the gateway make-or-break event to making O-6. Not quite in the right place and you’ll spend your O-5 time as a deputy commander or a staffer, not get a command, and be de facto, though not officially de jure, ineligible for O-6. Or at least uncompetitive for selection most years when the supply of command-seasoned O-5s is already more than enough to fill the many fewer open O-6 slots.
The cut from O-6 to O-7 is far more brutal. And is really where politics shows up.
In the sense of having had the right jobs working for the right people who themselves made it into the General / Admiral upper ranks and since they know you they are now in a position to ensure you get pulled up there too. Though military politics, at least as I saw them, were much more about having demonstrated great competence and leadership / diplomacy to your boss and grandboss, not so much demonstrating great ass-kissing to them.
Yes there is a similar process of the Enlisted ranks.
In the Navy we call in ‘High Year Tenure.’ Currently it’s 20 years for an E-5 I believe. That changes of course every so often due to end strength, recruiting, retention etc.
The lethargic movement of time is about the least of altered physical laws of the the Top Gun universe. It’s application of military disciplinary procedure and duty assignments are even more cartoonish though. It’s portrayal of sweaty, half-naked men playing volleyball while ignoring the women around them is entirely on point, though.
There are only so many slots at each level. I’m more familiar with the Air Force (and to a lesser extend, the Army) where the breakpoints are basically at captain (O-3) to major (O-4), then Lt. Col (O-5) to full ‘bird’ colonel (O-6), and then go general officer (flag rank for navy). Dependent upon MOS there are a certain proportion of promotions allowed at O-5 and below, then at O-6 and general officer ranks it is a matter of open billets, so at this level you are essentially waiting for someone above you to promote, retire, or die.
Technically you can stay in as an O-1 through O-5 until mandatory retirement (varies by rank) but realistically you’ll probably be ‘encouraged’ to muster out after failing to promote a couple of times. There are also a lot of nasty bureaucratic tricks that leadership can use to force out an underperforming or disfavored officer including issuing repeated ‘Unsatisfactory’ evaluations (essentially negating that year of service as credit toward retirement), administrative punishments that reduce opportunity for promotion, or just assignment to a shitty duty station to force retirement.
I don’t think there is any way a pilot as old as ‘Maverick’ would still be flying fighter jets in a frontline or test pilot role. At this point he would be about 40 years into his flying career and presumably somewhere in his early-to-mid sixties. Even if he didn’t medical out, he’s taking up a pilot slot for a younger aviator with a career in front of him. ‘Maverick’ would doubtless be moved to a ‘shore’ (non-flying) assignment or a billet overseeing a Reserve Component command regardless of how awesome a pilot he is. I haven’t seen the movie (nor do I intend to) but even a cursory reading of the plot summary on the Wikipedia page seems wholly incoherent and implausible…which, frankly, is on brand with the original movie. I’m sure people will love it but frankly The Expendables sounds better connected to reality and more entertaining.
Keith Park was flying combat missions during WWII (preferring a Hurricane to a Spitfire) in his fifties. In the old brown-shoe US Army it was common for corporals to be 30-year men. But times changed.
When I was a E-3 in 1986, the navy unloaded all the E-4s in their third enlistment. The ones I’d encountered all seemed to have used the 8+ years mastering the art of dogging off and trading favors, so it was probably a good policy move. But the conventional wisdom was that when you raised your hand for the third time, you’d be reaching for the half-pay retirement after you completed five four-year contracts, since in terms of dollars you’d passed up many bigger civilian paychecks.
Going back to the OP and the buzz-phrase “up or out” …
That’s certainly the term commonly used both inside and outside the services. But it’s a bit too telegraphic for folks not embedded in that world. A better moniker would be “Up eventually or out awhile later.”
In general, officer promotion runs on the idea there’s an expected year of seniority in your career where you’ll be considered for the next rank. E.g. back in my now-ancient era it was O-3 to O-4 at 12 years, O-4 to O-5 at 15 years, O-5 to O-6 at 18 years. The exact expected year adjusts from time to time and is probably different today. But the concept remains constant. The zones shift younger when the service is expanding and get delayed when the service is shrinking.
In general, officers are considered for promotion a year before the expected year called “below the zone”, in the expected year called “in the zone” and again for one or sometimes 2 more years thereafter called “above the zone”. Only a small percentage of promotees (~5-10%) come from below the zone; you need to be a real superstar to make that promotion. Most folks (90-95%) who make promotion do so in their zone, and a (very) few stragglers get promoted late, usually after some kind of appeal for an administrative error last year or when there’s a sudden need for more bodies in the next rank.
Just sticking with in-zone promotions for simplicity, one can expect to try for O-6 at e.g. 18 years. But if you fail, you’ll try again at 19 & 20 years, and if you fail those too, you’ll be forced out (ref @steronz cite) after 28 years. So the “out” comes 12 years after the first time you failed at the expected “up”, and 10 years after your last chance above the zone.
The situation for O-4 to O-5 is a little more draconian: after your two above the zone attempts in years e.g. 16 & 17, you’re probably on the way out the door soon. But if you just had a bit more time in service from the Academy or prior enlisted, you can hang out until 20 and keep your pension. So the “out” comes 5 years after the first time you failed at the expected “up”, and 3 years after you blew the seond above the zone chance.
Failing at O-3 to O-4 really is “up or out”; real quickly after your last up, you’re out, abarring a very strange history as a servicemenber.
So, for someone who knows nothing about the military process down in the USA - what does “out” mean?
I get the impression from the posts, all enlistments are essentially term positions, you sign up for, say, 5 years; when that expires, the force may decline to accept you signing up for another term? (I.e. explicit “thanks but no thanks”?) Or is the onus on the force to make the move to offer someone a chance to sign up for another term? (Or else waiting for the offer that never comes?)
“Out” means separation or retirement. Officers don’t operate on set enlistment terms (which are reserve for Enlisted ranks, as the name suggests).
When someone enlists, they’re required to complete the term of that enlistment. When that term is up, they can get out or sign up for a new enlistment term. The decision on whether to get out only comes around however many years those terms last.
When an officer gets a commission, they’re just in the service. They can resign their commission at any time, with some caveats. One is the upper statutory service limits that we’re talking about in this thread. The other is any service commitments that the officer may incur. For example, officers commissioned via the ROTC program usually have a 4 year service commitment. If they resign their commission prior to that, they’re on the hook for the cost of their college. Officers can incur service commitments for all kinds of things, but the most common ones are education related. If the military is going to pay you to attend some school or training, they want to make sure you’re not going to punch out immediately afterwards.
But barring those service commitments, officers are pretty much just “in” until they decide not to be.
‘Before you get to join United Airlines and sell them what we teach, you gotta give the Navy six years of your life!’ - Sgt. Emil Goley, An Officer And A Gentleman
I was wondering the same thing about Maverick. I know captain is a pretty senior rank in the Navy, just below the various admiral ranks (as opposed to being a middling rank in the Army). Probably closer to a colonel in the Army or Air Force.
And I assume even most career officers don’t become admirals.
It seems unsurprising to me that someone like Pete “Maverick” Mitchell who has little interest in politics or really anything else in the Navy besides flying a fighter plane would be content to stay a captain his entire career.
There are natural bottlenecks between two transitions, from company grade officer (O-1, O-2, O-3) to field grade officer (O-4, O-5, O-6), and from there to general grade (O-7 and above).
So if you are an O-3 and you make it to O-4, you’ve made it through some stringent requirements. Many good O-3s do not make it to O-4. Then, as an O-4, if you keep doing a decently good job and you keep your nose clean, then generally you will make it to O-5, then to O-6. But from there to O-7, that’s a big step, and again there are many good O-6s who never make it to O-7.
By the way, because I was enlisted I use the avatar I have. Officers in the Marine Corps have a different EGA (Eagle, Globe, and Anchor), a much nicer one if I might add, and here it is.
I have heard from former officers that making it to O5 doesn’t require superhuman abilities or luck, just reasonable competence; but that the O5-O6 step is very tough, and then the O6-O7 step is even harder, and both require a good dose of luck/right place,right time as well as very good performance.
As far as Maverick goes, there are articles about it. Basically there are 3 paths- either prior enlisted experience (which doesn’t jibe with his timeline), having done a stretch in the Naval Reserves, or being retired, but retained in service, which is some sort of weird situation where someone’s technically retired but still working and wearing the uniform.
