Why have officers in the U.S. Army tended to "top out" at the level of Major?

Though it has been a couple of decades, here is the situation as it was in the U.S. Army (and as described by my several British officer acquaintances) at that time.

To make Major in the U.S. Army, except in a very few specialty professional tracks (doctors, for instance), you NEED to have accomplished a tour as a company commander (or equivalent COMMAND position). It is an unwritten criterion, but a well-established one in the minds of Officer Branch Managers and Promotion Review Board Colonels. In my day, less than 10% of Captains who had not had company command were ever promoted to Major. My daily contacts with serving officers in my DoD job up until my retirement a couple of years ago would indicate that that standard has not changed.

In the U.S. Army, Captains command companies.

All of the British "company grade" officers (lieutenants or capatins) that I knew in my career well enough to compared service cultures (probably 4-5) were looking forward to their opportunity to command a company as Majors, shortly after their next round of military schooling, which they expected to have as late captains.

There IS NO typical/traditional level of command for Major in the U.S. Army (though it does occur by exception occasionally). Captains command Companies; Lt Colonels command Battalions; Colonels command Brigades or equivalent sized forces. Majors jobs are generally as Bn XOs and Staff, as Assistant Staff Officers at Brigades/Groups and above, and as mid-level staff operators in Command and national headquarters. They also go to school a lot, head up various base operating departments, & instruct.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that at least part of it is due to the dual structure of enlisted men and commissioned officers.

The first group is enlisted right out of high school; the second group is drawn from college graduates who have successfully completed an officer's candidate school (or ROTC) program. "Enlistees" can rise to sergeant, but never higher (unless they leave the Army, go to college, and re-join the Army).

Second lieutenants are paired as "platoon leaders" with career (senior) sergeants. Most second lieutenants are soon promoted to first lieutenant (after two year, rather than three, and at a greater rate than posited in my question. So the first "bottleneck" occurs at the company commander level. Up to that point, there a paucity of (short-term serving) college-educated junior officers, because enlisted men that lack a college degree aren't promoted beyond sergeant.

The other factor is that because of U.S. affluence, American officers are sometimes promoted one rank above their responsibility level. If a company is commanded by a Captain in the British army (the "standard"), it might be commanded by a Major in the U.S. army; or a battalion by a Lt. Col. rather than a Major. So the first major "weeding out" occurs at the level of Captain, a second one at Major, and after that it gets "serious."

This was the case in the Korean War (Robert Leckie, "The War in Korea"), when the first batch of troops in Korea was a battalion sent to Osan under the command of Lt. Colonel Charles "Brad" Smith. He was 36 years old, and a favorite of General William Dean, having received promotions at a maximum rate until then. But he barely made it to Brigadier General, and losing the battle of Osan may have had something to do with his not rising higher.

The up or out system is responsible for the broken personnel system in the Army for officers and enlisted. I am a retired Army Reserve Officer and I had a corporate and government career as well. NO corporation or civil service system has the up or out policy. Corporations and civil service retain people who perform well even when there are simply too few positions available for promotion.

It is noted in a very good article that "The services must separate retention from promotion. This is so obvious it’s astounding it hasn’t been done already. Almost no organization other than the military has such a strict up-or-out system. The rest of the world acknowledges that some people excel at leading and managing others in the accomplishment of goals, while others excel at the work itself." Refer to this article at http://taskandpurpose.com/military-needs-abandon-promotion-boards/.

My pay entry basic date goes back to 1975, so I have the life experience to discuss this dumb system. Further the US Military makes the problem worse because it has competition to just get into the resident courses needed for promotion. I made Major right on time and then I was eligible on time for Lieutenant Colonel but I had to delay promotion until I transferred to the reserves due to limitations on the number of positions. There has to be a limitation on the number of higher positions so that is not the issue.

I served on both the active duty and the reserves and my experience taught me that you need to have indians, not just a top heavy organization with lots of chiefs. I was good enough to be recalled after 9/11 but then after two years on active duty I went back to civilian life because retiring at half pay was not worth the risk of losing opportunities as a civilian. Further it is very hard to stay past sixty years of age due to the rules and the whole dumb system.

In the modern era, the up or out policy along with the current age restrictions is a dumb way to ensure quality in the force. If enlisted or officers are performing well, as judged by an independent board using relatively objective factors on an annual basis, then they should be retained and all promotions should be based on persons applying for the promotion when they are ready. People mature at different rates and people need time to gather experience in various jobs that they need to get this experience. Getting rid of up or out will save the governments billions of dollars since you would eliminate the churn and recruiting costs.

A forty year old sergeant who is competent as proven by years of validated performance is going to be an order of magnitude more competent than a twenty year old sergeant with little experience or years of being honestly evaluated. The same goes for a lieutenant. The worlds police forces do not use such a bizarre systems. I found that old soldiers who loved the Army were much more reliable then young and less mature sergeants. The same was true of my more mature lieutenants.

It is time to ditch the twenty year retirements and the up or out system so that you save billions of dollars every year and get much better results with less churn by retaining mature, competent and healthy officers and enlisted. You will have much lower recruiting goals and costs with less churn. The laws and all the entire mentality that stereotypes older workers needs to be thrown out. Hard facts using physical exams by doctors, physical tests administered by professionals and independent evaluation of performance that avoids the possibility of a toxic leader ending a good performer's career needs to be put in place. It is the twenty-first century and the technology to do this exists now, time to ditch the 20th Century mentality and system.

MAJ is the sweet spot by design. Officers either reach 20 years and a pension of about one third their pay or they bail at about 12 years service and pursue safer, better opportunities for self/family. Children are generally old enough to need stability when officers hit MAJ. Staying past MAJ for most officers effectively commits them to 20+ years service.

I think the main reason is simply that the grades from that level onward are designed to create a lot of personnel churn for all but the top (some would say most well-connected) officers. Mostly what I think you are observing is an effect of how difficult it is to get promotions past that level (O-4 in US military code parlance).

Promotions in the US military are governed by US law as to how long the person has to have been in the military, and in their current position, before they are eligable. This is implemented via DOD Instructions 1320.13 and 1320.14. Getting to O-4 only requires a collective 10 years of service, and nearly every officer (80% by law) are allowed the promotion.

However, to get past that point requires a three year further commitment at your current level, and 16 years service (then 3 more and 22 years for O-6). To make matters worse, nearly a third of O-4's will never make it (30% by law), and only half of O-5's can make it to O-6.

You get three opportunties for this promotion. When you become eligable due to years of service is called being "in-the-zone". You can get a "below-the-zone" early promotion one year before that, an "in-the-zone" promotion, or a (apparently very rare) "above-the-zone" promotion a year after that.

If you don't get promoted after that, you are expected to retire. So once you get to O-4 and above, there is going to be a constant yearly stream of retirements, both of people forced out, and of people who don't want to wait 3-6 more years for a crack at a promotion.

Up or out.

@choster has the core of the response, but the succinct answer is that if you are passed over for promotion twice, then the Army has no need of you. There are multiple papers written on why this is a suboptimal solution - a quick review of any military professional journal should reveal some.

Why are qualified officer's passed over for promotion? Even in today's top heavy military, there are fewer and fewer positions as you rise. We don't need as many Major Generals as we do Majors.

Why does the pyramid's shape change at Major? That is slightly tougher, and here I veer a bit more towards opinion, but there are two reasons.

1) When I was a junior officer we were painfully aware that until we got to the rank of O-3, we were on probation. It takes time to build an officer. O-1 through O-3 are really probationary training stages. (to put it another way, a senior military man of my acquaintance once urged his Lieutenants to take more risks by pointing out that they couldn't get into trouble that he couldn't fix. He probably couldn't say that for his Captains ).

2) The military needs more field grade officers than they do strategists. (I'm going to leave it to a green suit to explain why).

I work for a company that provides services specifically for the military, and because of that, they tend to hire a lot of former officers. Many of them left the military after reaching Captain because they could make more money in the private sector (plus the added benefit of nobody shooting at you). Those who stay on to reach the rank of Major often do so only because they want to acquire that half pay retirement benefit before jumping to the private sector.

Another factor that is less relevant now is that a lot of the military support in places like Iraq and Afghanistan was provided by privatized security companies, and they were hiring large numbers of former military officers at wages much higher than they could have obtained in the private sector back home.

Lastly, there are only so many command positions available, and most of those don't have a lot of turnover. If an officer stays in long enough to reach the upper ranks, he is much less likely to retire early, which means the number of vacancies is going to be limited.