Direct commissioning is for bringing people in as lieutenants (O1). Think a 22 year old college graduate.
Lieutenant colonels are the equivalent of corporate senior directors (O5). This means they could be either a battalion commander, approximate footprint of 300-500 people, or a senior staff officer for a command/division. By that point they are expected to have at least 15 years military experience.
The challenge at that level of management is writing and evaluating plans for their organization that must be able to move across the battlefield and roll up all corresponding metrics. Think of that as moving your entire office staff to a new location 50 miles away as frequently as needed. A 6 week bootcamp won’t get you that. As someone with 28 years military experience and a corporate nerd with almost 20 years experience I promise that corporate management is not the same. That part time job can suddenly feel like a full time responsibility.
The exception to this are licensed doctors and lawyers. They enter the military as captains instead of lieutenants.
> The exception to this are licensed doctors and lawyers. They enter the military as captains instead of lieutenants.
And chaplains, I think. The three professions corresponding to higher faculties in a medieval university. Many weird things in the military make more sense when you recognize them as leftovers from ancient social structures.
Chaplains are complicated. The Army has a dire shortage of chaplains so they may enter as first lieutenants (O2) as they attend their seminary education on condition they must attain a divinity masters and sponsorship from a religious organization. It used to be they would enter as captains just like doctors and lawyers.
Are they doing that now? I was looking at going through as an Army chaplain back in 2018 and I'm not sure if I'd heard about that. But I was just over the age cut off to go back in.
It's rare as hell, but you can commission directly at higher ranks if you have the required experience and credentials and there is sufficient need in the service. The CO of the dental unit at Fort Hood that did my gum grafts 14 years ago direct commissioned at O6.
As there isn't really any civilian equivalent to combat branches of service, however, they won't direct commission anyone into the infrantry at that level, sure, at least not since the civil war era.
The point of commissioning them isn’t for them to take command of a line infantry battalion. It’s to have them have authority to do stuff that requires a Lt col, but is not actually commanding. It’s like how we commissioned a whole bunch of people in WWII to do admin jobs.
I get that. I am a signal officer. Those guys will be signal officers. I have a pretty solid idea of what their level of actual responsibility is. The point is they need some expertise to exercise that level of responsibility. Otherwise they are tiny advisors masquerading as people with real legal authority.
They don’t seem to be. I read their comments as directly calling out that they are “tiny advisors masquerading as people with real legal authority”, strictly because they do not have the requisite experience to be anything else.
Isn't there already a system in place for that sort of thing. I know a couple civilian experts who worked as consultants in iraq (think like water treatment plant engineers) who were given "effective" officer ranks to smooth out interactions with the military members they worked with directly, clarify who they could and couldn't tell what to do. But they didn't wear uniforms, weren't saluted, weren't considered members of the military for most purposes, are not counted as veterans, etc.
If it were simply that, this is a problem the military has run into before and has solutions to it. This is something else: at best weird propaganda at worst I don't really know.
Lieutenant colonels are the equivalent of corporate senior directors (O5). This means they could be either a battalion commander, approximate footprint of 300-500 people, or a senior staff officer for a command/division. By that point they are expected to have at least 15 years military experience.
The challenge at that level of management is writing and evaluating plans for their organization that must be able to move across the battlefield and roll up all corresponding metrics. Think of that as moving your entire office staff to a new location 50 miles away as frequently as needed. A 6 week bootcamp won’t get you that. As someone with 28 years military experience and a corporate nerd with almost 20 years experience I promise that corporate management is not the same. That part time job can suddenly feel like a full time responsibility.
The exception to this are licensed doctors and lawyers. They enter the military as captains instead of lieutenants.