I can't explain why it makes sense but I can shed a little light on the process of why the AF selects people so early in their career for grooming to O-7. The entire AF officer promotion system is based on a Pole Year to general officer at 24 years. In order for an individual to be realistically competitive for O-7 at 24 years, he or she needs to be a BTZ guy at least once, if not more. If someone isn't BTZ, their chances of O-7 are practically non-existent (I'm sure its theoretically possible but extremely unlikely). The system is biased in such a way to select officers fairly early (in today's environment IDE select off your O-4 board is a big one due to how difficult it is to get a school slot as a candidate) and build on their forward momentum, especially once someone makes BTZ once. A lot of good SQ/CCs and SRs may realize that many (if not most) officers have little or no interest in O-7 but the promotion system currently in place is fairly rigid in what it rewards and recognizes as promotionable/BTZ material (I've seen 2-3 guys that were marginal or poor SQ/CCs that continued to advance within the current system because of already being BTZ/fast track guys). While I don't know Rat personally (thankfully) if he was the SECAF speech writer then there was a good chance he was working for a general officer who had DPs to give and a very small pool of officers to dole them out to; jobs like that are very promotable even though they pretty much are devoid of actual leadership experience. Guys like him are also usually hyper aware of their Pole Year and what they need to progress, generally at the expense of their colleagues and anyone unfortunate enough to be stuck under their command. Cleared Hot or Liquid may be able to explain this more clearly or correct anything I typed above that's incorrect, a lot of guys don't know much about this stuff cause the AF as a whole doesn't explain the promotion system very well or at all to new officers. Hope this helps.