Can you give me their names? Because I can tell you that the current Chief of Staff of the AF right now is ROTC Texas A&M. General Mosley. The #1 guy. So something has got to be wrong with your math. Who is the prior enlisted OTS General you're speaking of? I want names!!
Look it up, its easy enough to find. Find the top five officers in the USAF, I think there was even a link on the site I posted yesterday.
You are making some wrong assumptions here and if Brian knows so much about the AF he shoulda corrected them by now.
The top FIVE leaders in the AF are not
all Generals. Just being a General doesn't mean you are leading people. Some literally are paper pushers. There are Generals over labs, hospitals, etc. They lead that specific thing, but they don't affect AF policy like the leaders of the AF do and in fact the AF is starting to give those jobs to civilians.
For example, lots of General slots in labs are now given to civilian SES. They are CIVILIANS with the equivalent rank of General. They certainly aren't making AF policy or getting the golden leadership jobs. And they couldn't care less about what college an officer under them went too. But they STILL WRITE THE EVAL ON THE OFFICER.
Brian walked into a gym with his VMI shirt on and was invited by a Colonel he met at this gym if he'd be interested in a position on the General's Staff. Why? Because the Colonel is VMI. Brian gets stopped all the time from VMI higher rankers. There is a bond there even if they graduated 20 years ahead. My brother told me this stuff happened all the time in the Navy as well.
And? This is nothing special KFC. In fact, a LT gopher gets handed his lunch daily bu the gophers on staff that outrank him. Talk about being a pleb. Are you sure this guy was saying it because he LIKED him?
Being a gopher (an on staff exec) for a General is not exactly a good career move, especially as a LT (and Generals know this). LTs need to be learning their JOB so they can lead in it in a few years. If you want a General to affect your rank because you can't make it on your own merit (maybe the field is stiff competition)..then be his gopher when you want to make LT COl and a General's name will almost guarantee promotion. Now, its just a waste of time. Go to the Pentagon and what do you see? Lots of Majors and Lt Cols being gophers.
Any mentor worth his salt will have told Brian these things.
Tova, really I don't think you understand the bond that these guys have coming out of these Academies. They look out for and protect their own all the way up. Doesn't this make sense? Really? I actually know this up close and personal by spending those times at VMI. The older VMI grads were always there all the time. It's like they never leave. They come and go to all the ceremonies that VMI holds. Jumper was always going back to VMI.
I don't think you are getting it. I don't know how to say it any clearer. Brian went to school and played military with a bunch of guys. They played king of the hill in the mud, slept in cells, went hungry, got it.
Now he's in the military and guess what? THERE IS A WAR going on. You talk like college was the apex of his career, he'll never bond with anyone else like that.
I'm thinking its a pretty novice thing to say. I can't imagine a closer bond than a bunch of guys getting shot at together. And until he's lived on MRE's I won't even go into not eating together.
Do you know how stupid it sounds to hear someone talk about college buddy bonds when real life and death bonds are forged in the military? Not to mention the training he HAS YET to go to and if he thinks VMI was tuff...hahaha....well wait till he gets it AF and Army style (lots of training to go to war is now combined).
Has Brian considered that by the time he comes up for Major all the senior slots will be full of
COMBAT veterans? All this talk of taking care of their own is done by people who have never been to war? Do you honestly believe an entire board of war vets will promote someone because some of them went to the same college over someone they sweat and bled with?
If you believe that, if he believes that...then I have nothing else to say.
An entire board promotes, not one person. What are the chances the entire board will be VMI? I'll tell ya....none.
I don't know what he does exactly, but isn't it lab related? Scientists don't run the AF. Do they even get combat experience? Pilots, for one, do.
By the time promotion goes before a board, anyone with combat experience LEADING combat experience WILL get the slots.
A scientist may make Gen maybe even a two star, and preside over a lab, but they don't make the real leadership roles no matter where they went to school. So unless he plans on cross training....
When Brian was at VMI his senior year they all, but this one kid, had job offers after graduation. THis kid had a 2.2 GPA and when an engineer from some firm came to the school looking to employ a newly graduated Engineer he took this kid with the 2.2 GPA at a salary of 75K. Why? Because the Engineer that came to the school was a VMI grad and he wanted a VMI kid. Happens all the time. He'd rather have this kid than some kid with a 4.0 from Yale. Brian isn't making nearly that and he groaned telling me the story. He couldn't believe it.
THANK YOU for making my point. See VMI is a college with an
ROTC program (which it can lose and still be open). You can go to VMI and never have any intention of serving. Can't say that about OTS and AFA, only about ROTC.
and who rates you if you're on the General's staff? A Colonel or a General? But you know as well as I that not only do politics enter into these things but as humans they can be very subjective in their evaluations. The Academies protect their own. No matter what you think Tova...it's good to have friends in high places
This shows how much you have to learn. Up until Major (and in some fields even then) you are given a promotion rating. A definite promote, promote, or don't promote. The DPs get promoted automatically, even if a little ol 1LT signs their eval...the promotes may or may not depending on slots, the do nots of course don't.
Why waste a General's signature with rank in which it won't matter? That's why waiting until Major or Lt Col is best if you can't make rank any other way. But even then, Brian's not in a rated career field is he? They aren't going to let him lead sections of the AF when its not been his job to do that up to that point. Doesn't work that way. And a General's signature may or may not carry weight with the board...the more war time he's seen the more weight typically. The General of the hospital's signature isn't going to carry the same weight as a Col Wing Commander whose flown various sorties in the war zone.
Now, I started to talk to my hubby about this...and he shut it down. The odds of a LT in a non rated field even being in twenty years from now isn't worth his time right now.
And he's heard it all before so his answer is...Time. He will see.
All Brian has to do is look at his career plan (his mentor can help him find it)...he will get to see in black and white AF leaders aren't coming from his field.
I will take hubby's advice and bow out now because I love ya, even when you're wrong. Remember Brian's been in a whole two years. He has yet to be tested in war. He has yet to be tested in anything. And if he's like every other LT ever right out of ROTC, half of what he thinks he knows is wrong.
Heh.
But I do know you raised a smart cookie, and he'll figure it all out.