Reacher was not laid off (IIRC): he was explicitly told that he would never be promoted plus he would spend the rest of his time until mandatory retirement at a desk job (or worse) in Bumfuck, Alaska. So he quit. Before the last straw, Reacher was also demoted from major to captain at least once, though he is a major when he retires (at age 36).
Later it is mentioned that, in addition to his normal duties, he was also an off-the-books assassin and who knows what else. Like Maverick, he is apparently irreplaceable, as evidenced by the fact that at least once or twice the Army tracks him down and has him do a job even though he is at least 15 years out of the service.
Pension is typically based upon last held rank plus time in service but depending upon time in rank and other merits and commendations some officers actually get ‘promoted’ upon retirement to the next highest rank for the purpose of pension and retirement benefits. You can actually end up being a brigadier general or rear admiral (lower half) without ever having held a flag in service.
Alternatively, for an officer that is performing unsatisfactorily or achieved some significant political disfavor, they can be reduced in rank and administratively forced or ‘persuaded’ to retire at lower rank, in which case their pension will be based upon their reduced rank and time in service. I don’t personally know anyone to whom that has happened but I’ve heard enough stories to know that it isn’t a once-in-a-blue-moon rarity.
I’ve been meaning to block out the time to watch that video and give it the attention it deserves but I can just imagine what LegalEagle and a walk-on judge advocate general (JAG) officer could come up with on ‘Maverick’. Aviators are known for being pretty cocky but you can’t be undisciplined or so selfish that you put other aviators at risk and expect to maintain your flight status for longer than it takes a wing commander or CAG to pick up the phone to the commanding general or CNAF and say, “I have a flyer who needs to have his wings permanently clipped today!” Combat aviation is very much a ‘team sport’ and aviators who are unprofessional in the cockpit (or even in the briefing room) are going to find themselves flying an office chair for the rest of their probably-not-very-long career in service.
So I just took a break form reading qualification test reports to watch this video (I watched the Nebula subscriber version which appears to have a few extra minutes of content) and was pretty onboard with the discussion but then they got to the point after talking about “Innocent Passage” through territorial waters (around the 26 minute mark in the Nebula version) and Devin made the observation about the unstated opponent “…who in the Indian Ocean is a hostile power, flying MiG-28s equipped with [French] Exocet missiles…?” and at the same time Spencer was “tak[ing] a stab in the dark about who it could be…/” I yelled out, “Sri Lanka!”
This, of course, must be a reference to the Secret War Against Sri Lanka, which was a little-covered conflict in 1986 in which the Tamil Tigers briefly took over the government of the island nation, purchased the unique and otherwise never-exported MiG-28 jet fighter (which is apparently an unlicensed exact copy of the Northrop F-5 ‘Tiger II’), somehow scraped up funds to purchase Exocet AM39 air-to-ground anti-ship missiles, and waged a brief and unsuccessful war with the United States Navy 7th Fleet. It’s a good thing they shipped out ‘Maverick’ and ‘Iceman’; I don’t think any average Naval aviators would have stood a chance!
Also, why are people in the control tower so shocked about jet aircraft flying by that they repeatedly spill coffee all over themselves? This is like a locomotive engineer who hates steam whistles! If this movie were actually taken as a real representation of the lives of naval aviators, it makes the entire US Navy look like a bunch of Keystone Cops.
Wasn’t Top Gun actually based on some Cold War Indian ocean encounter? People claim it’s actually based on the two encounters of F-14s against the Libyans but a video I watched 5 years ago on YouTube made a convincing case with some incident in the 70s where no aircraft were shot down but it was very similar to the movie.
DesertRoomie loves Top Gun so when it was released in 3D a few years ago we had to see it. After the title sequence with the dawn flight deck ops was finished I said, “Good part’s over – we can leave now.”
A propos, lest we forget, the best F-14 flying ace ever was timsar Jalil Zandi. He was nearly “out” after (thanks to his notorious CO infamously rooting out the “disloyal”, and whose orders he disobeyed on at least one known occasion, like some sort of maverick) being sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment as well as a death sentence from the Mullahs, but by demand of the air force commander and many other pilots was allowed to return to his unit after six months.
11 air-to-air kills during the Iran–Iraq war. Killed in a car accident in 2001, along with his wife.
ETA Israeli ace-of-aces Giora “Hawkeye” Epstein was on active flight mission duty until age 59. Of course, instead of being a thorn in anybody’s side (on the Israeli team, at least) he racked up a bunch of medals and retired a brigadier general.
When my brother was in the Air Force (early 1960s) he saw a few ROTC officers with a 19 1/2 years service broken back to E-5 or something so they would only have to pay him a sergeant’s pension.
That’s more than an administrative punishment. What the heck did they do to have commissions revoked?
It is pretty common for NCOs to be sent to a shitty duty assignment on Year 19 or 20 to force them to muster out instead of completing their service to retire on full pension, but if you’ve busted 18+ years in service and made it to E-6 or better most will stick it out for the pension and benefits. Really, the pension is far from the biggest expense that the military owes veterans, and as shitty as the various branches can be it, the post-9/11 GI Bill, housing and retirement benefits are worth toughing it out. I did know a diesel mechanic to mustered out on year 19 rather than do another tour in Afghanistan but his entire life was kind of in the shitter at that point.
I had a cousin in the US Army during the 00’s who got pregnant 3 times during her 6 year enlistment, and the family rumor was that she did it deliberately so she wouldn’t be deployed outside the country.
I read online that the Army might actually discharge you from active service if they suspect you’re doing it deliberately similar to the Up or Out? But my cousin served all 6 years so that didn’t happen for her.
I would take all of it with a grain of salt. I’m not saying no officer ever has reverted back to enlisted rank or that it couldn’t have happened in the 60s, but it’s abnormal. It my have been more common back in the day when temporary commissions were more common, or when there were actually “different” armies. For instance, during WWII (and even into Vietnam), within the United States Army, there was the Regular Army, and there was the Army of the United States (there was and still is also the Army Reserves and the Army National Guard). The AUS was where they tended to put draftees. It was possible, perhaps even the norm, for regular army soldiers to hold different ranks in either army. You might be a Captain in the Regular Army, but then a Lieutenant Colonel in the AUS. Or you might only be in the AUS. Or you might be a sergeant in the army with a temporary commission in the AUS.
Nowadays, there are still temporary commissions (or at least there were 10 years ago in the Navy—I have a sense they might have done away with them in the sense I remember), mostly in the case of Limited Duty Officers who were enlisted, and then selected for an officer’s commission based on their enlisted service/expertise, without the need for a bachelors degree. It was theoretically possible into the 21st century for LDOs, while still under a temporary commission, to revert back to enlisted either by choice, a failure to promote as an officer, or some such other abnormality.
All this to say, barring some very unusual circumstances, officers cannot be demoted. Enlisted can be demoted, but officers with a permanent commission cannot. You can look it up in the Manual for Courts Martial if you want. An officer can be dismissed (the equivalent of a dishonorable discharge) by a general court martial, but cannot be demoted. Except in works of fiction written by people who do not understand the modern US military.
Quick end note: someone mentioned commissioned officers becoming warrant officers. I had heard of such a thing happening involving an army help pilot, but am not sure of the nuances of how it occurred (such as whether the officer in question might have left the regular army and then joined the national guard or vice versa).
An O6 is the rank that the captain of an aircraft carrier and the commander of the carrier air group has. I think, but am not sure, that CAGs are required to stay current on their flight qualifications.
But even at that, Mav wouldn’t be a full-time pilot, he’d basically be in more of an administrative role if he was CAG or captain of an aircraft carrier.
Your first sentence contradicts the rest of that paragraph. At any rate, the military itself disagrees with your assertion that “officers cannot be demoted.”
And even more extreme–
And this article says, “The U.S. military commonly retires officers at the last rank at which they served satisfactorily.”
I just saw the movie tonight and it was done quite well. All in our group really enjoyed it.
As for Maverick being a forever O-6, as a veteran I didn’t worry about it. It didn’t bother me and I did not get all wrapped around the axle about it. It’s Hollywood.
I did notice that the military uniforms and rifle detail and funeral detail and salutes and protocol in the movie looked pretty good. They did a good job with this movie.
I was friends with two helicopter pilots who did that. Both were in the Navy with family commitments [multiple kids and wives not happy with long ship deployments] went/transferred to the Army at a Warrant rank. This was sometime in the mid/later eighties and they probably hit a pilot shortage time to make the transfer a go.