Originally Posted by
rudestuff
Don't they have a minimum term of service?!
They do, except that in spite of the shortage, the antiquated promotion system forces them to either kick out pilots or offer early separation if any particular year group exceeds a target size.
Part of the solution is to completely throw out the entire concept of promotion "zones", and also quit pre-selecting O-5s and O-6s 10+ years prior based on DP to O-4 and/or in-residence school slots. The air university and AFPC promotion boards already got busted (finally!) for pre-selecting O-5s with the SOS DG designation, but they merely tweaked a few things instead of eliminating the inherent problem in the system that discards 80% of the officers in their first 7-10 years of service as being forever B-team. As if those officers can't possibly offer anything beyond 14 years of service and will never learn anything about leadership after their SOS instructor or third-ever commander decides that they shouldn't do ACSC in residence.
Offer a realistic career growth path for all officers instead of one-shot in the zone make or break points, and I think many more officers would choose to remain in. The reserves will happily promote a qualified 20-year O-4 to fill an open O-5 billet in a flying squadron, so why is the active force so stuck on stupid that they can't do the same thing?
In the same 3 year stretch at Sheppard AFB, I saw retired O-5s get returned to active duty, O-4s get RIFd, and a reserve squadron put 7 23-year O-4s into leadership positions in order to get them promoted to O-5 before they got kicked out at 24 years. There is something very badly wrong/stupid at AFPC when that kind of stupidity not only happened, but is STILL happening while they whine about "shortages". Eliminate the promotion zone and chuck out the year-group waterfall charts that forces RIFs when there are shortages in other year groups, and half the problem goes away without a single dime spent on ineffective bonuses.