Here is the MILITARY FOR DUMMIES when it comes to how they determine who needs to leave.
1. They look at the Officer to Enlisted Ratio
In this case they have determined that they need to get rid of X amt of Officers.
2. They look at Flag(Generals) to Field(O4 -6) to Company (O1-3).
This is where it gets tricky.
If Field is too heavy they will than do a SERB (forcibly retire them through a board) for O5 and O6s, and speed up O5 boards for the O4s to O5s.
If Company is too heavy they can either do a RIF or speed up promotion boards to O4 while decrease the rate promoted...2 boards passed over for O4 and they can cut you loose. The rule is 16 yrs in and you can stay until 20, There is no guarantee for under 16 yrs AD.
If the Company grade is too young for promotion, their only option is Voluntary Separation or RIF.
3. NOW here's the problem for ROTC. SA grads receive a different commission than ROTC or OTC, the reg. at least for the AF, is that you cannot RIF a SA grad unless you have gone through ROTC and OTC.
Thus, if they come out in 15 and say that yr group 11-14 is up for a RIF. The WP grads are safe until they cut through the other 2 based solely on their commission.
The Army is already acknowledging that they need to get rid of officers in FY 15 (which is really Oct 2014 -Sept 2015).
So what you will see is a mixture of all of these things because they have so much time to get it right or at least that is how they have always done it historically.
Dollars for donuts you may see the Army be like the AF was last yr and offer less scholarships for ROTC compared to previous yrs, just because they would be FY 15 when they go on the AD rolls...they will graduate before Sept 2015.
You also may see that if they have too many O1s in the pipeline that they will offer ROTC cadets the opportunity to walk away from their time owed, or even tell them that their services are not needed.
The economy really is going to play a big issue on how the dust settles. If it ticks up as we withdraw from Afghanistan than you will see soldiers do the dive, which will reduce the need for VSA, RIF or SERB, but if it stays at 9% they will stay because a paycheck is a paycheck.
That will create problems because than it will become a RIF or SERB issue depending on the yr groups.
Go back to point number 2 because now they are going to target specific yr groups and specific career fields.
Use the RIF of 92 as an example, they targeted only 86/87 grads. We know a guy who had a Silver Star for his actions in Storm, but he was handed his walking papers because he was an ROTC commission and they cut 95% of them.
The AF also targeted 81/82 yr group, but because they all were "regular" commission the way to get rid of them was to reduce promotion rate for O4 from 80 to 65% and speed up the boards from 1 a yr to 2.
Finally, they did a SERB for 71 grads, because now they did their 20 they could separate them for early retirement.
92-94 were very painful yrs, and it didn't matter how good you were at your job, it was all about timing and when you entered.
I remember Bullet's DO telling us, well at least this time they gave these guys 6-9 months warning, after Nam ended my crew mate was called in after we debriefed the flight to the CC's office. He was given his 30 day notice walking papers.
I would not go APE CRAP over this, but I would understand that it is probably going to get hairy for certain yr groups and fields...not every yr group, or every field, but certain ones. Again come 2014 if we are in a good economy they will lose this just by attrition and none of what I just stated will ever come to fruition.
And no, at this time you will not be able to figure out which ones...you have to wait until they announce which groups will be targeted.
Best case it will be O5/6...worst case O1/O2 for FY 15.
I hope that this long post gave you the cliff notes on how it works when the military determines that they need to reduce their forces.