All,

I appreciate your feedback. Believe it or not, my unit has been abnormally successful in weeding out the bad. We have been able to chapter/not promote those who do not deserve with more success than any other unit in the squadron. My real beef here is with the development of leaders. I see no reason why the promotion system for NCOs cannot be changed. Please review our concept for WLC again and let me know what you think. I agree that the command has the biggest responsibility to find and reward those who should be promoted, but there are some commands that do not do this well (we are dealing with a past command who was that bad right now). WLC at this point is not needed to make E5. You can make promotion points by getting college credits, and for all of us ROTC grads you know that just by going to college does not make you a leader.

Example: we have E6 section chiefs who new as much about their piece as the soldiers did. Question to the past command: How in the hell can you justify promoting a guy who knows next to nothing about his MOS? You have done him, his soldiers, his unit, and the army a disservice for not preparing him for the section chief position that his rank puts him in.

I feel we can break the cycle by raising the bar, challenging, and instilling a competitive mentality amongst today’s lower enlisted ranks and junior officers for that matter.

I do like the idea of having more challenging assignments, but it is ridiculous that I get these tough jobs and excel in them while my peers are wasting away doing less difficult jobs and doing them poorly and still make rank at the same pace. Part of this stems from the BS that a LTs records are sealed after he makes CPT, why? If an LT makes a big mistake it should affect his future (a PVTs mistakes affect his future, why are LTs so different)