Liquid I'm with everything you are saying except I would alter the rated vs non-rated promotion board idea. I think that works well for the Navy, but the Air Force is much more unique WRT career fields. In the rated vs. non-rated scheme, you still have non-rated ops competing against support, and within support, very few AFSCs speak the same language. A space ops officer that goes through IQT/MQT, takes evals that result in Q1/Q2/Q3, moves to OSS/OGV and gets a K or Q prefix, and has ops bullets looks a lot more like a pilot on paper than a force support officer. A 61S, 62E, and 63A might look alike, but compared to MSG-type AFSCs, they might as well be in another service.
In my opinion, the solution is to base promotions on career fields. Not all promotion rates need to be the same either. It would be based on sustainment needs for each AFSC. School selection would be sustainment based as well. For example, CROs/STOs might have 97% promotion, and 10% school. But it would be the CRO/STO senior leaders selecting these individuals. It would be sort of like an MLR, except each AFSC, or group of closely related AFSCs, would be responsible for filling the quota they are given by HAF.Pilots compete for promotion and school only against other pilots.
I hear Senior Officers say that they can read any OPR from any AFSC and make an informed assessment. That holds true for the very top and very bottom, but it's complete bullshit for the area that really matters. The gray area is what board members actually need to understand, and that gray area is vastly different across the Air Force. Who better to sort that out than senior leaders from that specific AFSC? We already do this for JAG, MSC, Chaplain...it's time to expand.
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