Many here on this forum have a false sense of the quality of officers we promote in the top 20% (school selects to Maj), and BPZ to Lt Col. Many argue that only party planners, burger flippers, box checkers and execs get the good paper and strats. The top 20% records I've seen, including hundreds at the last Lt Col MLR, had instructor, evaluator, combat, weapons school, command and DG at FTUs. The exec only, careerist officer is easily spotted and appropriately dinged. Strats are not the most important discriminator.
Most of the criticism rattled off here at BODN describes the great pilot with golden hands, long mustache, high combat time and natural leadership abilities that gets screwed by the shoe commander who values early PME completion and bake sales over skill in the jet or ability to lead a crew. Bullshit. The harsh reality is that there are a large number of ing squared away operators who dominate the top 20% and knock out mediocre, non-conformist crybabies who rationalize their low strats and weak push lines with an overinflated sense of how good they think they are in the jet or with a crew or how effective they think they will be in the joint, staff or senior leader world. From what I've seen at boards, MLRs and thousands of records and PRFs, the bottom 15-20% are the no shit bottom. Nothing personal, I'm sure there are good people below the line, but you have to draw the line somewhere and we tend to get it right much more often than we get it wrong. We value job performance and we document it in the formal record. The biggest challenge is telling the top 20-50% crowd they aren't as talented as they think they are.
Do your ing PME, in time and stop encouraging young officers to blow it off because you think it is stupid.
We should promote by AFSC. LAF grouping doesn't meet our specific leadership requirements. No need I compare a comptroller squadron commander to a flight lead. If we do this, more good pilots will be passed over and will miss the school cutoff, but we will promote experience we need.
Fire away, I appreciate the no holds barred honesty and flight level perspective.
Edit for gramer