Light, Mobile, and Many: Rethinking the Future of Armor[W:54]

accidental repost

RF667799 said:

Though they were gone by the time I was in, I always kind of liked the idea of higher Specialist ranks. I had a Sp4 in my shop that never shirked, seldom complained, always was prompt, etc. He was even a competent repairman with one caveat. You had to assign him tasks within his capabilities. Honestly, though he was trustworthy and soldiered well, he just wasn't real bright. In one the last formal counseling I had with him, I told him to prepare himself for the E5 board. He told me he wouldn't go. He said, "I can't do the stuff you and the other NCOs do."

Looking back I realize I made a mistake and in this case he was a hell of a lot smarter than me. I was buying into the "up or out" thing but stripes should be more than just a reward for good behavior.

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sp4? you must be talking about way back when specialists could go higher than e4 and it was possible to get higher ranks without becoming an and instead hit spec9. I forget when they stopped that but it was decades before I even joined the army. Some of the oldest in the army would talk about that system,usually vietnam vets or right after vietnam, which in 2010 were in very short supply in active army, infact we had a chief who was a cw5 since vietnam, had numerous breaks in service, served 42 total years with his last deployment at age 67 and needed constant waivers from high level govt. He was the best helicopter pilot I have ever seen, however I could see why congress had to keep signing off on his bypassing rules set to keep people with his age from serving.

Anyways though the old spec-x system would throw people off today as a corporal or a sergeant of e-4 or e-5 would outrank an e-9 as a spec9.

Jredbaron96 said:

The Army is the only organization I know that gets rid of qualified people because they won't get promoted.

Like the "Readiness is our #1 priority", this feels like something that is gonna come back to bite in a bit and it's gonna hurt when it does.

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Exactly. The Army creates a lot of very dumb policies that drive a lot of very good people away. And then ask we hear about is how important Readiness is. If the Army spent half aa much time trying to keep qualified guys in as the do trying to recruit new untrained people we would be a much more effective force


I consistently rate in the top 25% of my peers indicating that I am very good at my job but because I want to stay in my current job the Army sees that as a reason to kick me out.

Only to the Army does that make sense

beerftw said:

sp4? you must be talking about way back when specialists could go higher than e4 and it was possible to get higher ranks without becoming an and instead hit spec9. I forget when they stopped that but it was decades before I even joined the army. Some of the oldest in the army would talk about that system,usually vietnam vets or right after vietnam, which in 2010 were in very short supply in active army, infact we had a chief who was a cw5 since vietnam, had numerous breaks in service, served 42 total years with his last deployment at age 67 and needed constant waivers from high level govt. He was the best helicopter pilot I have ever seen, however I could see why congress had to keep signing off on his bypassing rules set to keep people with his age from serving.

Anyways though the old spec-x system would throw people off today as a corporal or a sergeant of e-4 or e-5 would outrank an e-9 as a spec9.

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I first enlisted in 1981. I never saw any Specialists above E4 so I think the higher rank ones had already been phased out. I'm not sure they ever went as high as E9 or E8. Something tells me it might have only been E6 but I'm not sure.

Rank structures have changed many times over the years. People get used to it. So what a SP6 might make more money than the SGT that is his first line supervisor? I was promoted to SGT at exactly 2 years time in service. I supervised a SP4 that made a little more money than I did by virtue of his longer time in service. Your pay grade isn't your rank.

Command Sergeant Major of the Army Dan Daily* states succinctly the up or out policy for NCO:

Soldiers are “highly qualified, very motivated” and “aggressive seekers of further responsibility,” Dailey said. “That’s exactly what we train them to be,” he said. “If you don’t provide that [upward mobility], you risk losing talent.”

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Daily is referring of course to the high speed junior nco talent who don't want snco ahead of 'em bottlenecking the system up there.

Which leads us to some elaboration of it by the Command Sgt.Maj. of Army Training and Doctrine Command, CSM David Davenport...


Army Charts Plan to Overhaul Noncommissioned Officer Education

The effort began when the service renamed the Non-Commissioned Officer Education System to the Non-Commissioned Officer Professional Development System, Davenport said at a Pentagon roundtable.

"The reason we did that is so the force can understand it's more than the education," he said. "It's the experiences that you get doing various jobs; it's about stepping outside of your comfort zone taking on a broadening assignment, ranging from drill sergeant to recruiter to working with industry. It's changing the entire system."

The Army is developing what's known as structured self-development, a distance learning module for every professional military education class to help soldiers prepare, he said. "They also like the process of reflective time," Davenport said. "We have made sure that we are just not trying to give them so much to memorize for a test -- to actually get time to absorb the material, and we come back together to make sure they have retained it and then we test them."

The Master Leaders Course is not like the old First Sergeant Course at Fort Bliss, Texas, Davenport maintains. "It's much more than that; we are helping them to transition from that tactical level to that to the operational level, and we are actually exposing them to some strategic level thought," he said.

Factors such as grade-point averages and how students performed on writing assignments will be evaluated, he said. "That soldier can see the prerequisite to get that [MOS] opportunity," such as working with industry or academic fellowships.

Army Charts Plan to Overhaul Noncommissioned Officer Education | Military.com


One thing Army is marching away from is the foregone choice that when nco or lower enlisted member have the choice of formal education paid for by the Army or a straight out bonus, the bonus gets sucked up virtually every time. For one thing, many nco are not comfortable with spending a year or two at a civilian college in the way officers are.

So now SNCO professional development, aka, education, reading and writing, reflection and discussion, are mandatory to SNCO advancement and Army retention priorities. SNCO are being developed to think strategically in addition to their tactical expertise. That is, while it's always been true it's every soldier's right to bitch ha, there needs to be more than anecdote and personal vicissitudes to their work product as professionals.



*SGM Daily retired last month.

RF667799 said:

I first enlisted in 1981. I never saw any Specialists above E4 so I think the higher rank ones had already been phased out. I'm not sure they ever went as high as E9 or E8. Something tells me it might have only been E6 but I'm not sure.

Rank structures have changed many times over the years. People get used to it. So what a SP6 might make more money than the SGT that is his first line supervisor? I was promoted to SGT at exactly 2 years time in service. I supervised a SP4 that made a little more money than I did by virtue of his longer time in service. Your pay grade isn't your rank.

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This may help

Military Pay Bill of 1958 through Today
In 1958 the DoD added two additional pay grades to give enlisted soldiers more opportunities to progress to a full career with additional opportunities for promotion. This included an addition of two specialist ranks at E-8 and E-9 and proficiency pay was incorporated into the pay scales. In 1968 when the Army added the rank of Command Sergeant Major, the specialist ranks at E-8 and E-9 were abolished without anyone ever being promoted to those levels. In 1978 the specialist rank at E-7 was discontinued and in 1985, the specialist ranks at E-5 and E-6 were discontinued. Today’s current rank structure only includes one specialist rank, that at pay grade E-4. The Specialist is in the normal career progression for enlisted soldiers in between the career path of going from an apprentice enlisted soldier to the journeymen role associated with noncommissioned officers. Today there is no current method to identify senior enlisted specialists from those NCOs in a leadership position.
Short History of the Specialist Rank - NCO Historical Society

Fledermaus said:

This may help

Military Pay Bill of 1958 through Today
In 1958 the DoD added two additional pay grades to give enlisted soldiers more opportunities to progress to a full career with additional opportunities for promotion. This included an addition of two specialist ranks at E-8 and E-9 and proficiency pay was incorporated into the pay scales. In 1968 when the Army added the rank of Command Sergeant Major, the specialist ranks at E-8 and E-9 were abolished without anyone ever being promoted to those levels. In 1978 the specialist rank at E-7 was discontinued and in 1985, the specialist ranks at E-5 and E-6 were discontinued. Today’s current rank structure only includes one specialist rank, that at pay grade E-4. The Specialist is in the normal career progression for enlisted soldiers in between the career path of going from an apprentice enlisted soldier to the journeymen role associated with noncommissioned officers. Today there is no current method to identify senior enlisted specialists from those NCOs in a leadership position.
Short History of the Specialist Rank - NCO Historical Society

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Thanks. Apparently the E5 and E6 Specialist ranks were still in effect during the early part of my enlistment, but like I said I never saw one.

RF667799 said:

Though they were gone by the time I was in, I always kind of liked the idea of higher Specialist ranks. I had a Sp4 in my shop that never shirked, seldom complained, always was prompt, etc. He was even a competent repairman with one caveat. You had to assign him tasks within his capabilities. Honestly, though he was trustworthy and soldiered well, he just wasn't real bright. In one the last formal counseling I had with him, I told him to prepare himself for the E5 board. He told me he wouldn't go. He said, "I can't do the stuff you and the other NCOs do."

Looking back I realize I made a mistake and in this case he was a hell of a lot smarter than me. I was buying into the "up or out" thing but stripes should be more than just a reward for good behavior.

Click to expand...

Ultimately, the Specialist ranks were holding back good soldiers.

For those that do not know, the ranks that were used (Specialist 4 through 7, 8 and 9 were created but never issued) were in the paygrades E-4 though E-7. But these individuals were NOT NCOs, and if you wanted to move to the NCO branch, you actually had to move back from say Specialist 6 or 7 all the way to E-5 Sergeant. A lot of soldiers later wanted to move to First Sergeant or Sergeant Major, but were essentially locked in place.

The Army finally realized this, and by 1985 they were all killed other than Specialist 4. Those that held those ranks were moved directly from their Specialist rank to the NCO rank of that pay grade with no loss. Today, the Specialist only lives on, essentially as a way to allow more to stay in at the E-4 Corporal pay grade,without having to worry about points and billet positions prior to promotion.

From 1981 through 1985 I met many in those positions, and it was always kind of strange. Here is somebody that on paper is on the rank table in the same place I was, but was being paid as much as the Company Gunny. And the reason it was started was actually a good one at the time (1955). The military was having a high turnover as people got trained in the "new specialties" of jet engines, computers, and RADAR. And creating new pay grades that were not as competitive was a way to keep some in longer, without having to resort to some other kind of special incentive pay. But by the late 1970's, it was becoming a problem as those past 15 years were finding themselves locked, as their peers who were not technicians were then passing them by.