what the hell?

[hyuri]

you know what I find most disturbing about US Military Base Pay? look at the third row down: that’s the O‑8 pay grade. note that it starts in the first column—less than two years of service are required for that grade.

you know what rank an O‑8 is? that’s a fucking Major General! you can become a Major General¹—the third highest rank in the US Armed Forces—with less than two years of active duty service.

that’s some scary shit, yo.


1: Navy calls ’em Rear Admirals (upper half).

Comments

[kelston.livejournal.com]

You'd probably need JROTC, SROTC, and a stellar performance at West Point to get that in 2 years. Though that is meaningless if you ever watched that crappy field commander in the assault on Foy in Band of Brothers.

[hyuri.livejournal.com]

Realistically, it’s probably not possible. However, the fact that they even considered it as a possibility, and found it acceptable enough to enable... That’s what scares me.

[kelston.livejournal.com]

You should be one. Cause that would mean you wouldn't be shot at.

[monsieurben.livejournal.com]

Forgive the random stalker-like intrusion, I was reading some old LJ.NET posts and then popped over out of curiosity.

If you check out the time-in-grade requirements for officer promotions, you'll notice that it takes a minimum of 11.5 years to get promoted from O-1 to O-6.

I can't say for sure why the pay chart includes that sort of information, I know it can be used to calculate some other things (allowances, rent, etc.), so there might be instances where a figure is computed based on a different pay grade or time in service. Maybe they use that for visiting foreign officers or certain civilians, I dunno.

It could be (I'd be skeptical, but with the military you never know) just a throwback to older times when people sometimes got commisioned directly to a higher grade. For example, an experienced ship captain might join the Navy as a captain in war time.

[science-vixen.livejournal.com]

This is usually for 'special skills' commissioned officers like surgeons and such. Remember the old MASH series?
Several officers there were drafted into the army with relatively high ranks.

When I was in the military I had my wisdom teeth removed by an army dentist who was Lt.Colonel after being in the army for only 1 year, because he was the most senior jaw surgeon in the Dutch Central Military Hospital (CMH).

Also, in time of war, people can sometimes be field-commissioned into a higher rank.
This can go pretty fast if there is a high attrition among the commissioned officers.

[kelston.livejournal.com]

Well, I did out of curiosity had to ask someone who was in the military how it would be possible to get to O-8 in under 2 years.

Apparently there are only 2 ways. Going through and basically blowing away the officer training stuff and kissing enough ass to make someone consider you their personal project or field promotion.

As far as i'm told, field promotions are removed after war time and you're back to the position you really earned and new officers are put into position to replace the ones that got their ass shot. So field promotions would be out of the question for actually getting Major General when doing nothing but being at the base.

Maybe that's why we have one of our multimillion dollar choppers randomly crash while doing nothing every 5 minutes when a war starts.

[science-vixen.livejournal.com]

I was given to understand that field promotions are theoretically automatically removed after a war finishes. However, if you continue to serve in the armed forces, the fact that you had this field-commission often means that you are marked for training and advancement to earn that rank in the speediest manner possible.
The time serving in this rank as a filed-promotion also counts in your total time served in this rank, giving you another advantage on the stepladder of military careers.

Mind you, policy on this may vary from country to country.

Concerning army recruitement...

[science-vixen.livejournal.com]

I thought you might appreciate these comments (http://www.livejournal.com/users/mikz/203798.html?thread=1191190#t1191190) in one of my (RL) friends journals.