I will post my thoughts on this even though the topic thread died out a few weeks ago, but I just joined. I graduated from ROTC back in 2001, a few months before 9/11 (I was at IOBC at the time). Did my IOBC at Benning, deployed to Iraq as part of the 82nd, went to MICCC in 2005, and back to Iraq twice since then. I would have to say I am one of the four ROTC officers left from my commisioning class of 24 still in uniform. About 1/2 of my IOBC and MICCC classmates are already out of the service. In my last tour in Iraq of the 10 MI CPTs in the BDE, four of them departed the Army within 60 days of redeployment. Very few MI CPT's within my YG range took the "blood money" bonus. I took the grad school option (what I am completing right now). It is hard to keep MI CPT's in uniform when they know they can get a better paying job outside of the Army. Lack of command opportunities forced some of them out (1 MI company with 5-6 folks haggling for it), lack of quality mentorship probobly got some others, repeated assignments to tactical units deploying got some as well. With all these CPTs jumping ship you are going to have some bottom barrel officers suddenly rise to the top. Officer retention will not get better until the OPTEMPO balances itself out. I had a great college buddy who commissioned MP and went to Bragg. The nature of MP assignements at Bragg had him deployed 30 out of the 36 months he was stationed at Bragg. It was no wonder he opted out when he could. He was burnt out. Just my two cents worth.