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thedrifter
10-07-07, 05:04 PM
Promotion boards weigh atypical assignments
By John Hoellwarth - jhoellwarth@militarytimes.com
Posted : October 15, 2007

Every promotion board that meets this fiscal year will give leeway to Marines who have served in billets outside of those prescribed by the career “road maps” Marine Corps Training and Education Command maintains for each military occupational specialty, the Corps’ head of enlisted promotions said Oct. 2.

Maj. Ryan Reilly said the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have required the Corps to staff more joint billets for transition teams and individual augmentees “that were traditionally done by other services,” meaning a growing number of Marines tapped for these billets may have missed the traditional billets promotion boards like to see.

For instance, the most competitive officers typically have company command experience as captains and hold battalion executive or operations officer billets as majors, while enlisted Marines do best by progressing through billets such as platoon sergeant, company gunnery sergeant and battalion operations chief, Reilly said.

In the absence of these billets in a Marine’s record, promotion officials will consider assignment to transition teams or as individual augmentees on equal footing, given the operational importance of those assignments, he said.

“We’ve included language to that effect in the precepts governing both officer and staff noncommissioned officer promotion boards” scheduled to take place during the current fiscal year, Reilly said.

However, board members won’t give preference to Marines with individual augmentee or transition team experience as they do with those who have done drill instructor or recruiting duty, for example.

“They’re just weighing the qualification equally to the other key billets,” he said.

Manpower officials decided to address the issue after general officers expressed concern that Marines might be passed over for deviating from the road map during an executive off-site meeting last month, Reilly said.

The first board set to make selections under the new guidance will begin picking master sergeants, master gunnery sergeants, first sergeants and sergeants major when it convenes in mid-October.

Promotion officials forecasted a substantial increase in allocations during the upcoming senior enlisted board because it will be the first for these ranks since the announcement that the active-duty force must grow by 5,000 Marines a year until 2011, when the Corps’ end strength is slated to reach 202,000.

The end-strength increase sped up promotions in the officer ranks throughout the last fiscal year by placing lieutenants in zone for promotion to captain as much as one year earlier than the historical average. On the enlisted side, a 14 percent increase in gunny allocations led to a 43.7 percent increase in the number of sergeants selected Oct. 3 to pin on a rocker.

Though that board let out just as the new guidance kicked in, Reilly said officials “did take the transition team and individual augment members into consideration.”

Ellie