Inventory for aviation officers is 47 percent field grade

via Foreign Policy

One rule of thumb I have is that the more a military specialty is removed from combat, the more obscure its language becomes. And so personnel officers contend with acquisition officers for the most impenetrable prose — “procurement bow wave,” “familiar sinusoidal defense budget pattern.”

I mention this because the May issue of Marine Corps Gazette carries an article that uses phrases I haven’t encountered in 26 years of dealing with the U.S. military. My favorite of this new formulations is “unfavorable rank gradient.” What it means is that there are too many older officers and not enough junior ones in Marine aviation. Indeed, write the authors, “our total actual inventory for aviation officers is 47 percent field grade.”

I hope this is a bad joke by Ricks or else Marine aviation is hopelessly broken.

Is retention of junior grade officers that bad or are they promoting that fast? Either way its unsat.  That's alot of churn and a huge bottleneck at the top...no wonder they've gone zero defect over there!