Are we losing the best young officers after 13 years of war?

Sir,

I will tell you that officers do not develop officers well enough, and I don't know why that is.

It is the job of the PSG to mentor a young lieutenant, and I think many captains take that as "well then I don't have to do anything".

Well there are plenty of things that officers do that a senior NCO doesn't do and can't really train on.

So what I've seen is a ton of junior officers that become disillusioned with the Army because of it over the years, to include my time as a 1SG in a RSTA SQDN.

I see a lot of task task task with very poor guidance. And also a serious lack of real counseling. So what that leads to is a ton of LTs that do things like, say, run a range well (maybe because they are lucky, good at it, or have a good NCOIC) and nothing is said. No guidance, no feedback. But something goes wrong like the BN CDR shows up to the range and thinks it's run poorly, and then the CPT destroys the LT (often in front of other people) even though they never gave guidance either.

This is because these same CPTs were in the same boat a few years ago...so they never got proper guidance either. Which leads to I think two trains of thought:

1) They know they "suck" at this particular task (because they didn't get guidance), so they have no guidance to give. (these are the bad officers)

2) The good officers figured it out on their own with initiative and often feel that if they could do it, this crappy new officer should do it as well.

There are few exceptions, like my former CO, that were a blend of both. They didn't get guidance, but they figured it out on their own, so they decided they wouldn't let that happen to their junior officers. Those are the best.

Lastly, and this is prevalent amongst all senior ranks - people are afraid to go against the grain. I'm not talking about constantly arguing with your superior, but being afraid to say "sir, this doesn't make sense". And the young officers and NCOs see that, and it irritates them and leads them to either 1) become determined to fix it or 2) just get out.

As an example. If your company commander tells you as their SQDN CDR that there are no issues and their company/troop needs no support, they are lying or delusional, or afraid to voice their concerns. I doubt it's the latter, because if it was the latter it would mean you don't care, and if you didn't care, you wouldn't be posting here asking. but either way, people see that. An XO or PL sees that they desperately need this SFC billet filled, or more weapons, or more attachments for their weapon, and then they see the CPT say "nothing new to report sir" or "we're good to go sir, ready to fight".

That's just my .02