Schlag wrote:Can completely understand why CO's do that though - with only 83 milestone billets out there and with close to 65-70 officers getting screened for milestone every year, the numbers just don't add up. Since most MS tours are 2 yrs., that means you notionally are going to have 41.5 MS openings per year. But if you screen 65-70 officers per year for MS eligibility, it means your bank is going to grow at a rate of around 20 officers per year. Understand some people are going to decline MS, retire prior to going to MS, and other things; however, it would seem that we have significant excess inventory in our banks. In my opinion, we need to either a) allow CO's to rotate people through to provide MS opportunity to those who are screened or b) reduce the MS screening rate to keep the bank under control.
If we do have sufficient retirements and/or those declining/refusing MS that we NEED to build excess bank capacity of 25-30 officers per year (or 25-33% of those who are screened for MS), then I would say that we have significant community health issue; perhaps on par with the struggles the URL has been having with their mid-career screening processes (aka, the Dept. Head board).
Similar argument can be said for XO. For the most recent board we screened 30 officers for 10 notional opportunities (METOC/IP/Intel XO + CW OIC). Why are we building such a bank capacity?
I would argue we are rapidly making our screening process meaningless by creating so many billets that are so called "milestone."
I would also argue that as long as we continue to have a screening requirement for all LCDR/CDR/CAPT afloat billets, we give an automatic out to those seeking to avoid sea duty. By the way, we are the only community that does that...