William S. Lind :collection (merged thread)

[former_0302]

ROTC or academy, but mostly through ROTC.

The German path for reserve (2 or 3 years active service) officers: link
Active service officer candidates have a more comprehensive path.

I don't know how true that is of the other services, but it is largely not true of the Marine Corps. You can google the Marine Corps Almanac and check for yourself, but the breakdown for 2013 officer accessions (which one assumes is a garden-variety year) is this:

MECEP/ECP/MCP: 218
Naval ROTC: 212
Officer Candidate Course: 344
Platoon Leader Course: 591
Academy: 267

The MECEP/ECP/MCP are competitive enlisted to officer programs, in which enrollees wind up joining an ROTC unit, so they technically enter the service through ROTC. However, they need to have some minimum enlisted service time before they're eligible for the program, and they need to have been pretty good Marines to get into the program. It should also be noted that a significant portion of the OCC/PLC accessions are prior enlisted personnel.

In any event, no argument that we could do better, but the timeline in the link you provided is not too different from the path that Marine officers take through OCS/TBS/follow-on MOS school. All of that takes a minimum of one year, before a lieutenant is ever in a position to lead anyone, following their graduation from whatever college they came from. Your first job as a lieutenant is effectively a sort of internship anyway; a not-insignificant number of lieutenants are relieved for cause. I guess I'm not seeing an enormous difference.

Edited to add: I think our philosophy is that the best way to learn how to be an officer is to actually go be an officer. While there are certainly some who are not ready when they get there, I'd say most are ready enough.