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The new Noncommissioned Officer Evaluation Reporting system, slated for a fall 2015 fielding, will feature separate forms for soldiers of different ranks, and new responsibilities for raters and senior raters.

It’s a radical overhaul to a decades-old evaluation system.

The NCOER, in use since 1987, “has become outdated and highly inflated,” according to Sgt. Maj. Stephen McDermid, sergeant major of the evaluation systems branch of Human Resources Command.

Problems have arisen when raters and senior raters are too liberal with evaluating soldiers. When everyone is supposedly doing a fantastic job, it’s difficult for selection boards to determine who the true standouts are for promotion.

via View the Army’s tough, new NCOER | Army Times | armytimes.com.

The old NCOER system (that I worked under) wasn’t terrible, just inflated. Everyone knew all the right phrases to use to make SGT Joe Smith sound like Audie Murphy.  Still, tracking, and completing, these and the NCOER support forms and providing counseling to NCOs (in a written format, not just informal conversation) was a pain, particularly for those NCOs who were not literary gifted.

And don’t think a little thing like fighting a war is any excuse for not being on top of this paperwork.  What sucks is, invariably, SSG Jones, busy with patrolling for 14 hours a day in Afghanistan, is probably going to half-ass an NCOER for the two Sergeant team leaders in his squad. And they’ll end up competing against some guy whose squad leader had the time to write a better eval.

At that level, it’s not so bad. But pretty quickly for the senior NCOs, one less than stellar rating is career death.

The average age of Napoleon’s generals was 41, and many of the brightest were even younger. Jean Lannes was named a general at 27, and a field marshal at 35. Andre Masséna was named a general at 35. Louis-Nicolas Davoust was named a general at 23 (really), and a field marshal at 34. Joachim Murat, Napoleon’s legendary cavalry commander, was named a general at 29.

By contrast, in 1939, when France started what would be the most serious debacle in its history, the supreme commander of its armed forces was Maxime Gamelin, age 67. Before the end of the Battle of France, he was replaced by Maxime Weygand, 73. France’s only World War II victories were won by a young general, who had previously written a prophetic book on blitzkrieg tactics, by the name of Charles de Gaulle.

This is a pattern so often repeated in military history that you can’t help but ask, “When will they ever learn?” A military force wins a series of victories. After doing so, it becomes cocky, set in its ways, sure that its tactics will work forever. A hungrier force comes up with new and unexpected tactics. The older force cannot adapt. It is defeated. The phenomenon is so well known that “generals fighting the last war” has become a common expression.

via Why the U.S. military should mandate officer retirement by age 50 – The Week.

Marshall, Bradley, MacArthur, and Patton were not available for comment.

Actually, compared to some points in our history, we’re promoting officers far faster than normal. In between World War I and II, a Lieutenant could expect to make promotion to Captain somewhere around the 17th year of service. Today, that officer would expect to pin on O-5 around then.

The Navy will commission its new missile defense base in southern Romania on Friday, one of two European land-based interceptor sites for a NATO missile shield vehemently opposed by Russia.

The base represents a rare expansion of the U.S. footprint in Europe, and the even rarer construction of a new Navy base from the ground up.

The base in Deveselu will be the first to feature the Aegis Ashore ballistic missile defense system, a land-based version of the sophisticated radar tracking system installed on U.S. warships since 2004. Scheduled to become operational by the end of next year, the base — which is housed within a larger Romanian military installation — will be staffed by several hundred U.S. military, civilian and contract employees. A second site, in Poland, is scheduled to become operational by 2018.

via Navy to commission missile defense base in Romania – News – Stripes.

The young sailors who will be manning this site are too young to remember when Romania was behind the Iron Curtain.

Land based Aegis is one of the smarter things we’ve seen come out of the DoD procurement program.  Relatively cheap, and effective, Aegis/SM-3 is good for intercepting medium range missiles. The potential is there to upgrade to intercept actual ICBMs in the future.

Most of the C-27 transport aircraft given to the Afghanistan military as part of a failed $486 million Defense Department program were locally scrapped for just $32,000, federal auditors said Thursday.

The U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, sent letters to the Pentagon requesting all documents related to the scrapping, reasons why it did not pursue resale, and why it did not seek a refund from the manufacturer of the Italian-made C-27s, also known as G222s, which were grounded last year following chronic maintenance issues.

“It has come to my attention that the 16 G222s at Kabul were recently towed to the far side of the airport and scrapped by the Defense Logistics Agency,” SIGAR head John Sopko wrote in the Oct. 3 letters. “I was also informed that an Afghan construction company paid approximately 6 cents a pound for the scrapped planes, which came to a total of $32,000.”

via US-funded Afghan C-27s scrapped for 6 cents per pound – News – Stripes.

I remember a time when every servicemember was held accountable for being a good steward of the taxpayers dollar.

In 1946, one year after the unleashing of nuclear forces for destruction at Hiroshima, a Navy group, headed by then Captain, now Vice Admiral H.G. Rickover, was sent to Oak Ridge for a year’s study of all available information concerning production of useful power from the atom. The Navy students decided that the first practical application of nuclear power should be made in a United States submarine. They realized that the installation of an atomic power plant would be much more difficult in a submarine than in a surface ship, but they made the decision—the first example of the daring aggressiveness of Rickover’s methods—because the rewards of success would be greater in a submarine than in a surface ship. A nuclear submarine, not requiring air for combustion of fuel in its engines, would be able to divorce itself from the earth’s atmosphere and thus would be a true submarine rather than a surface ship which could submerge only for short periods. It would be an “underwater satellite.” To many in high places, however, the proposal sounded like a trip to the moon.

via Admiral Rickover’s Gamble – Commander E. E. Kintner, U.S.N. – The Atlantic.

We missed the 60th anniversary of the USS Nautilus the other day. Here’s a fascinating 1959 article about the prototype power plant in Idaho that was used to validate the design of the Nautilus’ reactor.

Real content to follow….