Toward a Superior Promotion System
One often hears that officers leave the Air Force because of the lack of transparency and consistency in the promotion process. In its current form, the officer promotion system has inherent flaws, including the use of arbitrary code words—as opposed to a clear, quantitative process—to describe an officer’s merit. The authors suggest a new method that gives officers not only insight into their career progression but also some degree of control over the pace of ascendance. This system would include numerical points based on specific career fields, geographical desirability, and particular aspects of each job in the officer pool. Although this approach would not result in massive differences in the numbers of officers promoted or passed over, it could boost morale substantially by giving Air Force officers the openness and personal control that they have repeatedly requested.