Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

108 • A Traveler’s Perspective on Third and Fourth Generation Waractive-duty Marines might. They know they can always return to collecting theirretirement pay, and they are happy to comply with the law that forbids them foreverfrom working for a defense company.ME: So the RREMF system is really the secret of why you have so few active-dutyofficers above the rank of lieutenant colonel?LORD DORN: Precisely.ME: Why don’t you have the rank of major?LORD DORN: We did, until just a few years ago. We eliminated it because there areno commands for majors. Captains command companies and lieutenant colonels commandbattalions, so all that was left for majors was to push paper around. That drovemany of our most promising commanders to leave the Marine Corps after companycommand, and it created a staff mentality among the majors. We realized that majorsare in fact minor, so we just got rid of the rank.We adopted one other reform at the same time. With the exception of a handful– and I mean handful – of staff positions, we decided that there would be no moreofficers than there were command billets. We did not want a situation where eachcommander had, in effect, a line of officers with the same rank standing outside hisdoor panting for his job. Those officers just gummed up the works. They also pushedfor short command tours, which are always deleterious.ME: How long does an Islandian Marine unit commander hold his command billet?LORD DORN: If he proves competent, five to seven years.ME: How do you determine if he is competent?LORD DORN: Every year, every Islandian Marine unit faces a free-play, force-on-forceexercise against a similar unit. The results tell us what we need to know.ME: The loser is relieved?LORD DORN: Only if he shows clear incompetence. You can have two quite competentunits and leaders go against each other and one is going to lose. But from the resultsof the exercise flow all promotions. For example, the winner gets fifty promotions toshare within the battalion, loser gets five.