There is always the Devil's Adocates view........
....assuming that the Army ran its redundancy boards in the same manner that the RAF did, then the Sgt's proximity to any pension point would not have been revealed so he would have been selected since the board would have deemed him not upto the required standard or not fit to continue in his current branch.........I had long discussions about this, just as I left on redundancy (with my pension I hasten to add) with the trades sponsor about a Cpl who was destined to miss their 22yr IP by 1 day - thankfully the 18 year rule mentioned above kicked in and they got something.
Aren't there normally loads of posts on here about getting rid of ineffective dead wood or does that only apply VSOs? All a bit of a moot point now, since he has remustered and therefore must have been worth keeping in some capacity!!
My point of view is that some compassion and discretion should be applied for those selected so close to a true IP, on a case by case basis ie Is X a good troop, but unlucky through circumstance (ie medical etc) or is X a scroat worth getting rid of? Unfortunately, as discussed with the trades sponsor et al 18 months ago, that approach was deemed discrimatory so we have the "safe" black line in the sand approach.