Military - Orders and Advancement.

From: Derek Lyons (fairwater_at_gmail.com)
Date: 06/23/04 

Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 21:39:09 GMT

hpywife927@yahoo.com (LaDonna Wyss) wrote:
>As for fantasy land, if you think people under orders are
>supposed to "use initiative", then you don't know the first
>blinking thing about the military. NOTHING.

Right. Which is why the literature of the Cold War (especially in the
1980's) went to great lengths to tout that our great strength was the
initiative of our junior officers and enlisted, and the robotic
structure of the USSR's armed forces was described as a great
weakness.

>The only time you can be "punished for blindly
>following orders" is if the order in question was unlawful.
>Otherwise, you will be breaking rocks for 20 years if you DON'T follow
>orders.

Absolutely incorrect.

>TO DEREK: Someone gave me an advanced copy of your post via email.

Liar. You cannot receive an 'advance' copy of anything I post,
because if it's 'advance', it hasn't left my machine yet. Once again
you display your vast ignorance of how the internet works.

>You were an E-5 after ten years in the service? Wow, you made the
>fast track. I don't know when you were active duty, but when I was in,
>E-1 was an automatic upgrade to E-2 at six months; E-3 at one year; so
>who did you pi** off that in nine years you only made it two more pay
>grades?

Actually I was unusual in that I made E-5 'honestly' as opposed to
re-enlisting for it. (I made E-3 at the end of boot camp, and E-4 six
months later at the end of 'A' school.)

Navy advancement works quite differently than the other services. You
compete only within your community, not across your paygrade. My
community (Strategic Weapons Fire Control) was very small (<1,000
people) and the retention rate for E-5's and above was very high. (We
are only authorized so many -5's -6's etc for the entire FTB rate.)

(Rate = MOS (roughly) for you non Navy types. In actuality you could
have multiple NEC's (Naval Enlisted Codes) within a single rate. I
was a 3305 (Trident-I and Trident-I Backfit Strategic Missile Fire
Control), but the FTB rate also included 3304 (Posiedon Fleet
Ballistic Missle Fire Control).)

That meant that few E-5 slots opened up each testing cycle and that
most of those slots were filled by people who reenlisted under the
STAR program (reenlist for six years as a 3rd class (E-4) with at
least 4 years in and get automatic promotion to E-5). Typically only
2 people were advanced via the test each cycle for a total of 4 E-5's
off the test each year.

I made it on my 4th test cycle. (The one test where I was certain I
wouldn't make it because of the circumstances under which I took the
test. It's an amusing story.)

>I would guess it was because of your attitude regarding orders...

Nope. It was because of the unique circumstances of where and when I
was in. If you have the balls drop over the sci.military.naval and
raise both the issues of obeying orders and the issue of advancement
in the SWS rates in the 1980's.

D. 

-- 
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

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