When you join the U.S Military, Army/ Marnies, how do you get assigned into the Artillary?

Never heard "Top Kick" before. I have always known it as short for Top Sergeant.




When you join as an enlisted soldier, you pick what MOS (Military Occupational Specialty, your job) you want to do and sign a contract for that job, be it tanker, FA cannon crewman, cook, etc. As an officer, you fill out a wish list of branches (FA, Armor, Infantry, MP, etc.)you want when you graduate college and earn a commission as a 2LT. Based on how well you did in school and your military training, and the needs of the Army, you are assigned to a branch. You usually get your first or second choice.

I've heard the expression "Top Kick" but it's really old. (Of course so am I, since I was BORN in an Army Hospital!!) However, I don't ever remember hearing anything but "Top" for about 30 years or so.

The Officer Evaluation system is actually not a bad one. The made some changes right after I went on Active Duty in 1972, and did such a good job that over a 30 year career, with the exception of my first 5 years and my last 4 years, all my evaluations were done on exactly the same form.

The way it works is that your immediate "boss" is called your Rater, and his job is to evaluate primarily your PERFORMANCE, with a small comment on POTENTIAL. From there it goes to someone known as your Senior Rater. In MOST (but not ALL) cases, your Senior Rater is your Rater's boss. Because often a Senior Rater will have so many officers he Senior Rates, he will not often be in a good position to evaluate PERFORMANCE, because he may not get much of a chance to interact with you. But is primary focus is on your POTENTIAL.

For most of my career, this was done by the Senior Rater putting an "X" on the form placing your potential against everyone else he senior rated IN YOUR GRADE, in what was essentially "bell curve" from top 1 % to "middle of the pack" all the way to "bottom 1%"

You REALLY, I mean REALLY had to be a loser to get down into the middle of the pack!!!

To compensate for this, and the fact that each Senior Rater in the Army might take a different approach, the system prepared what was known as a "Senior Rater Profile"

For example, suppose my Senior Rater put me in the "second block" (about top 3%). I look at my evaluation and think, I am dead, because I didn't get a top block, and when the promotion board looks at this I'm finished!

What I DIDN'T see (at least until the report was "profiled") was that for example, MY Senior Rater had filled out 20 other reports on 20 other officers in my grade, and NOBODY got top block and everyone ELSE he Senior Rated was much lower than I was. That means by COMPARISON, I got a great rating.

You can see the obvious flip side. If I get a top block and think "Yee Haaa, I'm Golden!" and find out my SR top blocked ALL his people it's the "Lake Woebegon" syndrome, where "all the children are above average". When the promotion board looks at that, all of a sudden, my "top block" simply puts me in the middle of the pack. In fact my Senior Rater has done me a DIS-service.


So in the late 90's, they went to a much "simpler" approach. A Senior Rating is either made of "Center of Mass" (i.e. "average") or above or below. Putting someone "center of mass" becomes not such a bad thing. AND you had to be careful as a Senior Rater. The system tracked where you put everyone, and the minute you attempted to place more than HALF of your ratings "above center of mass" even by ONE person, they'd get kicked back and you'd have to re-do them. And you'd get a nasty gram for not paying attention!

So , Gino. You guys still using a DA 67-9?

Tom

Yup, still use it. No longer do a SR Profile block on LTs and Non -Command CPTs though, just the writeup. For Command CPTs and above, we are still using the SR profile block. Its a pretty good form and system. Haven't heard of any other changes for it.

I like the idea of not including the LTs and non-Command CPTs. Avoids the case on a 2LT's eval which purports to predict he will eventually become Chief of Staff!!!!

The good old DA 67-8 became effective in 1979, and was used for 20 years. Not too bad.

Tom

When you join as an enlisted soldier, you pick what MOS (Military Occupational Specialty, your job) you want to do and sign a contract for that job, be it tanker, FA cannon crewman, cook, etc. As an officer, you fill out a wish list of branches (FA, Armor, Infantry, MP, etc.).[/quote]
How many choices do they give you? You would think filling the Infantry would be hard during time of war! And who would ever want to pick to be a M.P.?
In the movie "Full Metal Jacket", they all went through basic training together, and were assigned there MOS after basic training before going to Veitnam. So if you where to be in artillary or a tanker, etc are you taken for further training?

You take an ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) test and based on your score, you are offered jobs you qualify for. How many you are offered depends on how well you do. Certain basic training centers are all the same MOS, all FA guys go to Ft Sill, OK at the FA school, etc. Some MOSs are mixed for basic. After basic, you go off to Advanced Individual Training (AIT) to learn your job, then you are sent to your first unit. It doesn't seem like it is too hard to fill most MOSs, even during wartime. Plenty of guys want to be infantrymen.

Y.G.T.B.S.M!




I thought the only guy who WANTED to be in the in-Fan-tree was that guy from "No Time for Sargeants" with Andy Griffin. :-)

If that's the case then you would'nt have had conscription, then would you?
What's the in-fan-tree mean?

US hasn't had the Draft (Conscription) since 1974. We haven't had any problems keeping the Armed Forces manned since that time. No issues now with the war in Iraq either. Draft was really there to get a bunch of guys in uniform quickly, and trained for WWII. It was really used again only in Vietnam when we needed the same thing.

Nope. It's all I wanted at the time. However, choosing it with the recruiter just gets you to Benning. Once there, guys who can connect dots better than others with little sticks in both hands end up getting selected for other training-11G, 11H... I was not one of those guys.

Before the 18 series came out in the 80's, qualified soldiers were given an "S" designator at the end of the MOS.

Strangely, while the minimum GT score for infantry is fairly low compared to other MOS's, studies have shown that soldiers in this MOS tend to have higher scores. I don't know much about the ins and outs of officer advancement or rating, but when I came in,
officers who wanted to advance quickly would go into the infantry branch, and if they could, Special Forces. We called them ticket punchers. Not meant to be derogatory-they were motivated, which is why I believe infantry attracts higher caliber soldiers. Of course any branch will tell you the same thing. By the way, The enlisted dudes who chose infantry and SF were just called suckers.

I may change my signature.
An MOS is kinda like a woman-no matter how many you possess, the only that matters to you is the one you're holding right now.

During the Vietnam era i bet a lot of people where put into infantry, with out chioce, also the U.S hasn't been involved in any thing near the scale of Vietnam, with exception to Iraq, and both wars combined still isn't the same scale.
In Australia there is talk of bring conscription back in because they're having trouble filling numbers, it will never happen here.

Probably true. With a mostly conscripted Army, the turnover is fairly high. That mean's you are constantly having to spend money for the same training over and over on new people.

The Army did a pretty good job an analyzing what went wrong (and the few things that went right!) after the Vietnam war and made a lot of signifcant changes not only to the creation of an all volunteer force, but the entire structure of how the Reserve Components (Army Reserve and Army National Guard which are NOT the same thing) fit into the total force.

A good book to read on this subject if you're interested is "Prodigal Soldiers"


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/157488123X/qid=1143490946/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-5718204-7344049?s=books&v=glance&n=283155


Tom

From the officer perspective, as mentioned, there are plenty of people that want to be infantry and not just that but infantry officers, and even more want to be MPs - at least what I see where I am. Many of the guys in the ROTC battalion here at Ball State are majoring in Criminal Justice as we have a really good CJC department. So they translate what they want to do in the civilian world with what they can get out of the military. Not all MPs are sent to Iraq, not all infantry are sent into combat. That is just one example. Me, personally, I intend to be an MI officer or be an Ordnance officer but that is me. Pretty much of the people in the battalion are not joining combat position when they graduate. Percentages of choices of officer MOS varies by school. I am sure that there is a large number of engineer majors in Purdue's ROTC unit (for those that don't know, Purdue is a major university that is known for its various engineering programs).

In fact, I personally know more than one person that looked forward to the coming of war - not because they wanted to die, not because they loved combat, but a tour overseas REALLY tests a person, mentally, physically, and within your job. A combat deployment even more so. They wanted to take that test.

By the way, the military today, is not the military of Vietnam. As mentioned, we don't have a draft.

Also, know this ratio: 1:10. This is the ratio of infantry to everyone else in the US Army. I personally figure another 2, maybe 3 out of ten are other personnel directly facing combat action - Combat Arms guys such as Armor, Artillary, Aviation and Combat Support people such as MPs, Air Defense Artillery, etc. So at most 20-30% are directly involved in combat on a day-to-day basis. That is relative as many non-combat personnel stationed in - say - Iraq do get mortared at the base they may be quarted at, but the ratio still stands.

Finally "Full Metal Jacket" is a fictional story following conscripted Marines 40 years ago, not the US Army, two distinct services...ask a Marine, they'll tell you

Jeff

Don't get me wrong i have nothing against the infantry, my grandfather was a Lt Col in the British Army, ( cavalary,WW2) stationed in India, his father was a Major(Crimean War).
The point with FULL METAL JACKET, early in the movie they're still in basic training and the drill instructor calls out their unit's that they are sent to,some are sent to infantry, Armor, etc, it gives the impression that it wasn't their choice.
I'am just trying to figure out how my son's grandfather ended up in Artillary, he joined the Marnies before he turned 17, late in 64, about 6 months later he was in Vietnam. I remember him telling me that Marnies have at least 2 MOS, his were Artillary and Marksman, in basic training he got stung by a bee, ended up in a comma for 3 or 4 days, could that have any reason he ended up in Artillary and not Infantry?
They used Artillary unit's as bait in vietnam!
I worked with a former U.S. Marnie who was in the first gulf war,( infantry) he also used to do Embassy Duty, another great way to travel. He went back to the states to enlist with the Marnies to go back to Iraq

No idea how the USMC assigned MOSs back in the early '60s. It probably wasn't too much different than it is today though. You are offered an MOS based on how well you do, and needs of the Army (or USMC). If they need artillerymen, they will offer it to you as one of, or your only, option(s). Can you ask him how he got into the artillery? That would be much easier than all of us speculating about it. Him being sick could have had something to do with it, might not have.



Don't know where you heard that, but it is totally false. Artillerymen were used as just that, Artillerymen. The artillery was very active in Vietnam. The guns were seldom silent.

Ok. I could be that the this was a case of the needs of the service. Also, it may just well have been that they had requested their service and it was confirmed after they finished their basic. If I recall you get your orders for your next station after you finish basic, be it going to AIT ('job training') or your to the unit you are assigned to.

Jeff

[(sCan you ask him ). how he got into the artillery?


Don't know where you heard that, but it is totally false. Artillerymen were used as just that, Artillerymen. The artillery was very active in Vietnam. The guns were seldom silent. [/quote]
He passed away 2 years ago.
I heard it from an Artillery man who did 3 tours in Vietnam.

The Arty Brigade I was in (HHB 130 FA) had three Battalions, 1/127 FA (M109A6), 2/230 (M109A6) and 1/161 (MLRS). If I remember correctly, Each BN had three plts. But, that was in 1998. My unit was a 3rd Corps assest
Ch

Sorry to hear that. All the old Soldiers are getting up there and passing on. We are losing some of our finest.




No idea who he served with, but it wasn't standard practice. Guess he pissed somebody off to keep sending him out, or he volunteered for it, like he did for his 2nd and 3rd tour. Only one tour was required, depending on your unit. Some, such as those in Germany, never even went to Vietnam.

There are a little over 200 MOS's in the Army-Gino correct me if I'm wrong. As the Army changes, MOS's are eliminated or combined w/others. I was a 31C-Single Channel Radio Operater and my MOS was phased out immediately after I graduated from AIT. I ended up becoming a 31L-lineman or wire dog. I had planned on changing to an Artillery Surveor but, the slots filled up in my former unit, which by the way is about to sent to Irag for a second tour.
Ch

You got it. Don't know the exact #, but that sounds about right.

Most units are on their second tour to Iraq. We are doing it differently than we did in Vietnam. Vietnam was an individual replacement system where Soldiers were assigned to a permanantly stationed unit in Vietnam for a year and then rotated out. Now, we are rotating units for a year. It keeps stability in the unit and less turbulance than having about 10% of your unit change over every month. Hard to keep training up and know what is going on in your sector with that much change every month. Lessons learned.

My former unit is 130FA KSARNG
Ch

Yup, NG units too. That is the Total Army concept, where NG and Reserves are also deployable in time of crisis. Only 1 NG unit was sent to VN, a LRRP unit out of SC.

Gino, the 69th INF KSARNG was sent to Vietnam but, it was piecemealed out to fill slots in other units
Ch