Pink Slips for Soldiers
We all knew this was coming. Last week, the Pentagon announced it was becoming reality.
Last Thursday, the VCSA, GEN John Campbell, indicated that 1,100 Army officers had been identified for involuntary separation due to “sequestration”. Now, it appears that the planned overall total planned for involuntary release from active duty is 2,600 officers – predominantly Captains, but with some of other ranks included. Additional cuts are expected at a later time.
No specific figures were made public regarding planned enlisted involuntary separations. However, there are far more enlisted troops than officers. And with the Army planning to draw down from an active duty strength of 520,000 to 450,000, well . . . I think we’ll be hearing about a fair number of enlisted soldiers receiving involuntary separations notices PDQ.
To add insult to injury, some of those identified to receive “pink slips” are currently serving in Afghanistan. Yeah, that’ll be really great for morale.
Hat tip to Fox News for the source article.
Category: Big Army, Military issues
I can hear it now, “Now Captain Johnson, I want your men patrolling this area today, expect resistance according to intelligence reports and oh, by the way, here’s your pink slip. You’ve been selected for involuntary separation. Now all of you, be careful out there. I want eyes and ears on everything. Keep your heads in the game men. That is all”.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
When I was deployed in 2007, I had some contact with a young USAF officer. As I recall, he’d been notified that he was being involuntarily released from active duty within a year.
I suspect he found that fact rather de-motivating.
I wonder if any Colonels or Generals are going to be getting walking papers. I can’t really see that happening because their jobs are too important to the Army.
You forgot to add the “/sarc” tag at the end.
For those who take themselves too seriously.
I’d guess that will also happen, Flagwaver – probably by a combination of quiet conversations (“You’re not competitive; you need to retire”) and SERBs for COLs and generally via quiet conversations for GOs. (“You can forget another star. You need to retire at the end of your current assignment – or sooner.”)
Remember: there are only about 4,000 serving on active duty at the grade of O6 and above in the Army. So the cuts there, even if pro-rata (approx 14%) won’t reach more than about 550 people – with the vast majority being O6s. And since that group is already retirement-eligible, it will be relatively easy to make much of that happen behind the scenes.
No surprise here. This was coming last year, just a matter of time. Handwriting on the wall, y’know.
BOHICA!
We saw the same thing after the wall came down and the Cold War “ended”, although it offered more voluntary releases. With a few notable exceptions here and there, the fairly worthless senior officer corp that we have now is the result of that drawdown.
We’ll see how this plays out for us in another 10-15 years as the current crop of “survivors” make their way up to the major decision making levels…. I don’t think it’ll be pretty.
Out.
A buddy of mine told me that when he graduated from the War College back in 92 or so, some of his class got their diploma and were handed a SERB notice as they walked off the stage. It will probalby get pretty ugly here pretty soon.
I remember that story as well (giving away my age BTW). I also remember that the two had paper in their restricted files which had been unseen by multiple previous boards, but was visible at the SERB, as most of the services made the decision to open all files to SERB inspection.
Does this mean now there will be only four officers standing around giving you orders instead of five?
Stop pretending like you can count and tell the difference.
Well, it looks like we have another visit from dumbcluckulus maximus.
Hey, vwp – my cat has a message for you:
I love your cat, Hondo!
And who says that the pivot-man doesn’t keep track of what goes into his mouth…
Out.
How would you know, Pussy?
Wow – someone standing up for vwp. Impressive.
Good.
I think the one thing we can all agree on is our love for the Constitution, which doesn’t provide for a standing army.
OH, LOOK!! Hussar got it WRONG!!!
The following is quoted directly from the U.S. Constitution.
Section. 8. The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
This comes in after the part about ‘to declare war’:
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
Maybe Hussar the Condescending Smug and Self-Important Twatwaffle should try READING material before he says anything.
Since he doesn’t like rebuttal, he’ll change subject, deflect the discussion, etc., etc., etc.
He is SO predictable.
To raise and support Armies, but NO Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term THAN TWO Years;
And to think you have a vote……shudder
Hussar: this is why Congress passes a Defense Appropriation annually vice every five years, numbnuts. It’s also why the personnel and O&M appropriations are “one year” money, and why the R&D appropriation is for a 2-year period. That sidesteps the “two year” restriction because no individual “appropriation of money to that use” (e.g., salaries, O&M, or R&D) is for longer than two years. (The procurement and construction appropriations are longer, but at least arguably are not for “supporting an army” per se. The argument can be made that those appropriations are instead for buying things to be used by the Federal government that can at least in theory be converted to use by other agencies. It’s IMO a weak argument, but it’s apparently been accepted by the courts.)
For a person of average or greater intellect, less than thirty seconds of thought should have been more than enough to discern the above. In your case, it wasn’t. That’s quite telling.
It’s unfortunate that you are allowed not only to vote, but to walk around in public without adult supervision.
Hondo, didn’t hussar die dummer say he was an 11B?
He’s so damnably prissy that must be a mistake on his part. I’m sure he’s some kind of pogue, more like a 42R9G.
Reason I Love:
Twatwaffle!
Carry on!
‘To raise and support Armies’ – what part of that do YOU not get?
‘no appropriation of money… for longer than two years’ – so you don’t know about taxes and budgets, then? Or the reasoning behind the requirement by the legislature that a budget be submitted to both Houses of Congress?
Then you actually are functionally illiterate, as we all suspected. The langugag is plain and easily understood, despite your blatant attempts to twist it. Nice try. Didn’t work.
Twatwaffle, attention whore, fishmonger and clothhead, all rolled into one.
Mentre mi rivolgo a lei, Ussaro, siete un idiota cui madre sconosciuti perché lei era così brutto, è spaventato il Santo Merda fuori di lei.
And I do meant that in its entirety.
Notice you left out, “to that use”, which is the key portion.
And yes, you can curse. Brilliant. Typical type of female the military attracts.
Disgusting.
Oh! Then you truly are functionally illiterate! You just proved it, numbskull!
A series of three periods in the body of text is an appropriate way TO USE them for the PURPOSE of shortening a long sentence and STILL MAKING THE POINT.
If you actually knew anything at all about writing and editing, you’d know that. But you’re functionally illiterate, so you DON’T know your butt from a hole in the ground about writing… or editing… or much of anything else.
And then there’s that part about trying to draw attention to yourself as some sort of victim, when Hondo referred to Rosenberg and the neo-Nazis and their love of twisting something to their own use. Yes, I’m changing the subject. MY TURN, butthead! The reference provided by Hondo didn’t mention you at all, but you decided to declare that, because he brought it up, it was applied to you.
Well, you’ve proven yourself to be as prejudiced as you are dimwitted. You’ve made sexist remarks repeatedly and yet you never answered either of my direct questions. You’ve let us all know your personal prejudices tgoward people who’ve done nothing to you personally. You’re rude as hell, you like provoking people just because it gets attention, and you have this smarmy undercurrent of pretentiousness in everything you’ve posted here.
If you want attention so badly that you go to this much trouble to get it, find yourself a good shrink and air your hatred of your mother with him.
You never did answer my two direct questions, but at this point I really don’t give a flying fat fart in space what you think. Ypu’re a waste of time and energy.
I have a government job for these people. I just saw on the news small children who have no money to have someone take them across the rio grande are drowning and washing ashore on the banks of the rio grande river. They could be life guards to rescue the children from drowning(except for the navy guys they can’t swim!) or help change the children’s diapers or make formula. That way they don’t lose their jobs!
I say that we send you to the border, so that the first glimpse that those people get of America is the ugliest, smelliest, stupidest, most disgusting creature imaginable and they run screaming back to whence they came.
Considering that they are NOT trying swim across the Rio Grande, but are being brought in by pickup trucks, SUVs, buses, airplanes, small boats, and in some cases simply walking over a bridge (all of that was on the REAL news), it’s highly unlikely that any of them are drowning.
Since when did actual facts get in vwp’s way?
It is all over right blogs about the drowned children washing up on the banks of the rio grande river and how Obama adm. is supposed to have asked the liberal media not to cover it. There is article right now on right wing moonbattery.com on the drowning children. Google children drowning tying to cross rio grande river.
Hey fuck face, what planet do you live on. Pretty sure it isn’t the one the rest of us inhabit. You don’t give a shit about peace or people getting killed. You’ve proven that time and time again. Remember this little gem you posted:
“Hamas is at a tactical disadvantage. Israel a strategic disadvantage. stalemate. During Vietnam war general giap was being interviewed. He was told the american strategy was to kill 10 vietnamese guerrillas for every american draftee lost. General giap “sounds like a fair trade to us! So far over 100 palestinian women and children have been killed by israel with no israili women or children killed. Who does this benefit? If you say israel then that is why you lost in vietnam and iraq and soon afganistan! All hamas has to do to win is survive! Look at the end of the movie we were soldiers who really won? Israel will win every battle but the last one same as in vietnam somethings never change!”
You don’t care about peace. You are a leftist fuckwad cunt racist. In closing, eat shit and kill yourself.
We have taken a big hit from this & we’ve got the Sword of Damocles hanging over us as we wait for the majors list to come out.
We have one captain who is the model citizen through all of this- notified of her imminent separation while downrange and her 1st question was to ask how long she could stay to further help the team & set conditions until a replacement officer can come forward. I suspect more will be like her than not, but it still sucks nonetheless.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I’m an Active Duty Army Captain serving in Afghanistan. I had to put a packet before the separation board along with the rest of the Captains in my year group. It’s important for everyone to understand that only the bottom 3-12% (depending on branch) of officers were selected for involuntary separation. In my branch (Armor) it was the bottom 5% in my year group. The officers selected generally had a major infraction such as a DUI, General Officer Letter of Reprimand etc. or they had amassed a history of substandard performance. These officers had many years to prove that they were in the top 88-97% of the Officers in the Army and they did not seize that opportunity. In my deployed brigade, seven Captains (of various branches) were selected for forced separation. One that I know personally is an abysmal performer and has no business serving as an Officer in any branch of the U.S. Military. As I’ve read various media outlets report on the recent Officer separations, they have painted a picture of America’s best and brightest, faithfully serving multiple combat tours and then being unceremoniously kicked to the curb. That picture is inaccurate and inflammatory. The truth is that the Officers selected largely have themselves to thank for their exit from the military, and the Army and its Officer Corps will be more professional entities without them. After years of reduced personnel standards in order to meet the manning demands of the wars, the Army is finally starting to get back on track. It’s a good thing.
CPT – I sincerely hope that’s the deal this time around. I remember when the last “downsize” occurred in the 90’s it had options for “voluntary” separation and we lost a lot of good junior officers. The good ones who knew they could make it on the outside left and the “others” seemed to stay in, if given a choice. A lot of our senior leadership that have been in place during the last few years came from that time frame. Funny how during these last few years we’ve read about scandal after scandal involving this crop of senior officers. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen again in 15-20 years. I don’t think the Army could survive another drastic failure in leadership.
And sir – my sincere thanks and appreciation for your service. Keep leading from the front, keep your head down and get yourself and your troops home safely.
I just don’t think it’s a good idea to ramp down at this point in time. If it’s taken too far, where does that leave us, in regard to real national defense?
I mentioned somewhere that Putin wrote off $30 billions in Soviet-era Cuban debt before he paid a visit to Havana this month. That was really nice of him, wasn’t it? Now he can revive those old missile silos and haul in some STUFF to leave there. Actually, he’s probably more interested in just having room to park in the western hemisphere. But then, why are Bears flying around off the US West Coast?
We’re so distracted by what’s going on in the Middle East that these lesser items are easily missed.
I know this topic is near and dear to many of you, but is it possible that “Pink Slips for Soldiers” has been entirely misinterpreted?
Have you ever thought that it might be a procurement statement, given the inferred intention of the US Military to actively recruit the transgendered?
The other anonoymus can fuck himself. I had no derogitory acts, bad OERs, or flags and I got roasted. I’m still serving because I’m proud of my soldiers, but the green weenie cares not. The fat fucks, the DUIs, OSB missed them here at least.
Same goes across the board. When we got our super personal “you’re still part of the army family,but gtfo” counseling en masse, none of us had half a clue why we were picked.
I still have no idea. My dudes are shocked, boss is shocked, I got married believing my chain of command, that I had a future in uniform an could provide for my family.
I can and will make it on the outside. I have savings and separation pay (small miracles). And I’m already talking with the Guard because I still believe in this country and that its something worth protecting and serving.
But you better believe that this shit did a lot of people raw who unlike captain fancypants don’t have the luxury of being able to trust the Army.
Hope you miss the next wave of cuts! Because let me tell you, you will neither know they’re coming for you, or why you are gone and the landwhale below mass guy next to you is staying.
CPT results came out last month and we have a few that are deployed… MAJ results are expected to be released this week… I should add I’m a MAJ and got looked at, so there is some anxiety, but on a good note, I’m not deployed
Just read two of the anonymous posts, and I have to agree with anonymous #2. I think for the most part the Army is getting the cuts right, but there are a few good officers who got the axe and they didn’t have any derogatory, such as with anon #2… Hence the anxiety on my part.