Quote Originally Posted by soldiernolongeriniraq View Post
The working percentage for active duty US Army personnel who have NOT deployed to either OIF or OEF is 40 percent. There was a USA Today article a few months ago about the phenomenon, but it didn't go below the surface of the factoid to explain why this was so.

For those of us who, after two or more deployments, have met many of our peers -- some of whom were promoted over us -- without combat patches, this figure seems about right.

Perhaps they're all on permanent profile.
A slide from Armor branch on HRC Website (as of Jan 07 - AKO Login Required) indicated that 72% of officers in Ranks CPT-COL in Armor have combat experience. Lowest YG's were 91-94 and 1980-84. That is the demographic that would have been in AC/RC, recruiting, or post command jobs during the first years of OIF. YG's 95 and later are tracking above 90% combat experience - the ranks where officers serve as PL's, XO's, and Commanders since 2003.

The skew of high experience in the 1984-1990 YG's is most likely because Desert Storm experience is counted, and the high density of BN/BDE CDR's, XO's, and S3's in those YG's in the 2003-2007 period. I haven't seen data posted on whether the combat experiencewas OEF, OIF, DS, Panama, or Grenada.

I imagine Armor Branch's trend is typical for other combat branches.