Didn't think you'd forgotten them, Ken, but this is one of those issues where I don't think total brevity is our friend....

I think you could get around some of the stability issues if you got rid of or modified the "up or out" culture. I've seen too many officers who are more than willing to knife others if it gets them up the ladder. And a touch more stability (I'm not looking at miracles here...just more than two years on station might make a huge difference) might do something to cure the "give him a good rating and slide him on to the next unit" mentality. If you know you're going to be stuck with a dud for more than a few months, you might actually DO something about him or her. Systems that reward (or are seen to reward) incompetence and backstabbing usually produce more of the same.

I'm not naive enough to think that we'll ever get a good regimental system back, and I'm also not naive enough to think that we'll really fix training. In the current climate there's just not enough glory to be had from doing that. And these days that's what it seems to come down to.