Initial Officer Selection

[JMA]

Hey South Africa,

Change of Command Ceremony, 2nd Battalion - 4th Infantry Regiment, ~ 2007-2009 (youtube, 22 Mar 2009; LTC Watson to LTC Rickard)

Rebalancing Forces In Response to the QDR (Army Mar 2011):

The Officer Core (Letter to Editor - Atlantic Apr 2011) - still LTC.

And finally to vindicate your more than less on target crystal ball - this time (November 17, 2010 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD—SENATE S7993):

Regards

Mike

One wonders if Col Watson's views on this issue have changed over the years?

A paragraph of his Letter to the Editor of April 2011 is worth a quote here:

Much of what combat commanders do can’t be learned in a classroom. Education and innovation, while important, are no substitute for experience. This is a significant difference from the business examples the author relies on. A better comparison is to a surgeon rather than a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Some hotshot officer with fewer years in service and fewer deployments under his belt is probably not going to perform better in combat than an older guy who’s been there before. We’d rather work for the graybeard.

Could not have said it better myself