US Army Enlisted Ranks & Length of Service

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by jester

What is/was sad, that was the norm in my organization. One gentlemen had been overpaid for a while, he was called in, asked to sit down and told he had been overpaid for X time, so he could expect a NO PAY DUE for about a year.

It was a not funny joke that whenever you PCSed (were transferred to another duty station), you could expect not to get paid for 1-4 months. And god help you if you attended any schools in between duty stations! They used to tell you that you should have at least four months worth of pay saved up for such an emergency -- most troops didn't get paid enough to have that kind of pad!

[HorseSoldier]

They had a kid when I was at Stewart who arrived there for his first duty station and somehow got his pay screwed up along the way. After six months with no paycheck (and, at least according to him, numerous complaints to his chain of command) he went AWOL and got a job at Walmart to pay the bills. I never heard the other side of the story, but he was in the process of getting discharged when I met him (his chain of command was farming hit out to any work detail they could find that needed bodies).

[Raellus]

How much army paperwork is digitized, nowadays? It seems like "your paperwork was misplaced" wouldn't fly anymore.

How much of that kind of stuff was digitized in the mid-to-late '90s? Once the nukes start flying, EMP and power outages would make most, if not all, computerized records innaccessible. Paper records would have a renaissance. But, how much of the army beuacracy would remain after the TDM?

I wonder how much paperwork would be done (or done properly) after the war went nuclear.

[Eddie]

Originally Posted by Raellus

How much army paperwork is digitized, nowadays? It seems like "your paperwork was misplaced" wouldn't fly anymore.

Almost everything is digital now. Now you get excuses like "it must have bounced from my mail box" or "Spam Blocker got it" or "this word isn't capitalized, redo it." It's ridiculous the games that people play.

How much of that kind of stuff was digitized in the mid-to-late '90s?

Lots of it was digitized, but there was also an abundance of hardcopy back ups on your person and in appropriate storage facilities. The microfiche was still very popular in this timeframe.

But, how much of the army beuacracy would remain after the TDM?

I wonder how much paperwork would be done (or done properly) after the war went nuclear.

I'd say not much to both of these.

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by Raellus

How much army paperwork is digitized, nowadays? It seems like "your paperwork was misplaced" wouldn't fly anymore.

They'd probably just say "the electrons got misplaced" or "computer problems."

[jester]

Another one is, "the system is down." That is a common one today. At my old work it was down for about a month or a bit longer. Or, "the system is locked" Or, "we can't access today. The bandwidth has been exceeded." Those are all common ones used today.

[Webstral]

For a somewhat modern example of how things might go, we could look at the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. I'm not especially well-versed on the subject, but the reading I've done suggests that the Germans promoted by responsibility without necessarily adding rank. When the regiment is down to 200 men, there's a logic to this. Therefore, it makes sense that the NCOs would get used for a slew of things that the officers used to do.

It's difficult to say how much normalcy would last until 2000. The US Army (and armies in general) is rather dichotomous regarding change. In some ways, the Army resists change as hard as possible. In other ways, the Army embraces change very readily. SACEUR in 1998 may feel that holding on to the pre-nuke traditions is good for morale, orderliness, etc. On the other hand, his commanders and sergeants major might be telling him that things have to change if we're going to make it, sir. Certainly, the Pact offensive that summer should teach the NATO types that the war isn't over just because the basis of mechanized warfare has been dismembered by the nuclear exchange. A great deal of change will be needed quickly. There will be strong pressures to keep things that don't obviously need to be changed the same, and there will be strong pressures to make dramatic changes in anticipation of the next round of fighting. How all that plays out depends a good deal on SACEUR's personality, it seems to me.

Webstral

[Abbott Shaull]

Well by 2000, the US Army would be acting much like the US Army WWII and like almost every other war the US Army had been in. The age of waiting for time in rank and automatic promotion regardless of enlisted and officers will be a thing of the past. Granted for officers, you will raise up the ladder at much faster than your rank would recognize, sometimes 2nd Lt would hold billets held by Captains, and doing the jobs held by Captains or higher ranks.

The US Army since the creation of the National Guard out of the various local militia has done away with Brevet type promotions. So they weren't too far off when they had Brigades and Regiments commanded by Lt and Captains. Also with moving personnel from Air Force and Naval to combat forces, lot of the officers will be in positions treated as 2nd Lt and work their way back up on how well they are able to handle the transfer...