pbi said:
Not with the level of knowledge current amongst most of our junior officers right now. I spent my last four years in the RegF at CLFCSC (2007-2010), two teaching on AOC and two of them running the training program for deploying operational HQs, OGDs and staff increments. I can assure you that unless we require officers to spend MUCH longer at the rank of Lt, they will not be capable of functioning as staff officers at Bde level as Lts, and I would seriously question their ability at unit level.
Aside from Adjt & Regt/Bn Ops O, no unit staff officer needs to be a Capt. The only other Capt in a unit should be the sub-unit 2ICs (a leadership as opposed to staff position) or maybe a few filling special positions peculiar to some branches. Admin Os, IOs, Trg Os, Asst Adjts, Sqn Ops O and so on can all be Lts. All Pl/Tp Comd can also be Lt.
It may be fair to say that Lt is to junior for the working rank across the board in a brigade HQ. Certainly, there should be a few captains in each of the G3 and G4 shops. However, I am sceptical that (for example) the G1, G2, and G6 shops need more captains than each one's respective "G-man." Properly supervised (and ideally paired with a Sr NCO) Lieutenants can be gainfully/effectively employed throughout the bde HQ, and when they do reach captain they will be better because of it.
As was mentioned above, unprecedented inexperience in many captains does not warrant rank inflation. Merited promotions to Capt would go a long way to elevating ERE Lt and Capt experience to the levels needed. There would be no more captain promotions on Ph IV grad parades - all would do a minimum of three years in rank post training in order to get the depth of PERs to support a promotion (some CFRs might merit a year or two sooner on the strength of pre-commissioning PERs).
Currently, BMOQ + undergraduate degree qualifies an officer to be a 2Lt. Ph IV qualifies an officer to be Lt & Capt. With merited promotions to Captain, we could be smarter about this. The PRes used to have the Militia Officer Staff Course (MOSC) that was prerequisite for promotion to Captain - it covered all the things the Reg F officers were supposed to learn through osmosis (but my observations suggest this does not happen). MOSC is now gone, but AJOSQ roughly emulates the curriculum for both Reg and Res now.
With merited promotions to captain, would could split DP2 into a DP2A for the rank of Lt and DP2B for the rank of capt. In DP2A I would see AJOSQ, the first two OPME (Def Mgmt and Mil Law), maybe ATOC and possibly some branch specific training.
Under this paradigm, lieutenants would have (and start developing upon) knowledge that we currently do not even expect of many captains, and captains arriving at AOC would have at least five years outside the training system (and likely more).
Infanteer said:
... junior officers should see their time as 2Lt/Lt extended and all of this time spent in Battalion.
I am not convinced time as Lt should be limited to Regt/Bn (although, absolutely agree that all 2Lt time should be expended in such locations). Aside from a few staff positions in our lowest level formations, I see the Lt being gainfully employed in many of our training establishments which train NCM DP 1 - 2 or OSS courses.
Infanteer said:
Jobs in Brigade that were done by Captains 50 years ago are now done by Majors. Staffs have gone from a Major and a couple Captains to a LCol, 4-5 Majors and a hockey sock full of Captains.
Pfft. I can point to an Army bde level formation with 5 LCol, 8-10 Maj and dozens of Capt. Officer positions that could be effectively "down-ranked" begin as low as the Capt level.