It is obvious to everyone that we are downsizing and the country is trying to do whatever it can to cut their budget spending. I've seen several posts on cutting troops pay and things of that nature.
I was wondering what would happen if we got rid of certain ranks within the military in order to save money.
In this instance, I will use the rank of major. What would happen, if instead of promoting officer to the rank of major, that position was simply staff time for a Captain. Basically, you are either a CPT in a company command position or similar position that exists today, or you've moved up into commonly held Major positions but kept the rank of Captain. Similar to when Company Commanders are sometimes LTs.
Now, for this example, lets say there are currently 10,000 Majors in the Army (I think that count is a couple thousand higher). Lets also say that the average income for an active duty Major is $100,000 and the average income of a Captain is $75,000.
Paying out an average salary of $100,000 for 10,000 Majors would be $1,000,000,000 of the budget.
Paying out an average salary of $75,000 for these now 10,000 Captains (If Major didn't exist) would be $750,000,000.
The money saved in this example on a yearly basis would be $250,000,000 of the annual budget.
I am not advocating this change be made but it simply crossed my mind and intrigued me a bit. Thought I'd see what others had to say.
Budget
Downsizing
Army
We used to routinely frock E-1 through E-5 to the next paygrade when they made the selection list, although the paycheck (and the authority) might take a few months to catch up. Submarine O-3s in the Engineer billet are also routinely spot-promoted to O-4, although they usually promote to that rank on their own merits a year or two later.
Many years ago we didn't even use the O-7 rank-- we just promoted O-6s to O-8s, although that might have been frocking for the first couple years instead of a paycheck.
So I think all of the services could take a collective deep joint breath and reduce a couple hundred O-7 & O-8 billets to be filled by hot-running O-6s. That would save millions of dollars with the least pain while ending the interservice flag-billet arms race.
I'm a numbers guy, that's why I wrote http://www.WagingWarOnDebt.com.
We could not get rid of ranks. Are you saying you would be at each rank longer? So instead of 6 yrs as a CPT, you would be a CPT for 10 yrs and do more jobs.
Yes, that is effectively what the question would be. If they are trying to align us more with the civiliar sector, this would not be entirely out of context. The military is one of the few models I can think of where you have to or are expected to promote within a certain timeline. There are many people in the civilian sector who stay in similar positions for certain length of time with extra responsibilities and stay at the same or similar salary.
Also, I am aware of issues this would cause and being a CPT for 10 years is certainly one of them. However, I am a solutions guy. If you wish to post an issue with the proposal, I'd like to see a solution along with it. That will help foster the conversation and make it more interesting.
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