Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
I applied those Links to counter your earlier point that the intellectual capacity might not be present
Once again I think you're misapplying what I said. There's certainly plenty of talented, intelligent, and intellectual OCS officers out there - some of them are even my friends

I was speaking to using an OCS only model as per Wilf's allusion to the IDF, Germany, and Sweden. In increasing the percentage of OCS commissioned officers from 15% to 45% of all officers, we have increased the number of below CAT II commissioned officers.

As a result, the share of OCS-IS candidates with a U.S. Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) score below Category II has increased from 15 percent in 1997 to 35 percent in 2007 (see Figure 5). This is significant because the AFQT score is used to determine basic qualification for enlistment, and to help predict future academic and occupational success in the Armed Forces.
If we were to increase OCS accessions even further, then you'd expect that the increase would have to dig deeper. If we screened harder and encouraged more OCS amongst the enlisted and NCO, then we could be more selective and I'm sure you could reverse this trend to some degree, but at the cost of your NCO corps. The authors make this exact point.

6. NCOs are sergeants. Similar to those found increasingly in professional armies, the U.S. Army’s NCO Corps consists of seasoned enlisted soldiers with increasing levels of rank, responsibility and authority. While subordinate to commissioned officers and not commissioned themselves, they are invaluable to the leadership of troop formations. Their direct leadership of
soldiers and their focus upon building and sustaining individual proficiencies allows commissioned officers to focus upon collective training, as well as the organizational and strategic levels of leadership. Importantly, NCOs are critical not just to the development of soldiers but to the development of junior officers as well, with whom they team in the effective leadership of
formations. Any improvements to an army’s officer corps gained at the expense of its NCO corps will likely have a deleterious effect upon that army.