The reality is that the Army is not designed to keep majoirty of it's enlistees for 20 years. Also, based on the rank struture, if the Army ended up having too many soldiers staying for 20 years, the promotion rate will slow to a crawl.
I have a question.
I know for the AF, they have ratios. Flag to Field, Field to Company, Officer to Enlisted. There is a rank ratio for enlisted too.
So in other words it really can come down to year group and rank. They do what I call a surgical attack. For example:
~ O4 with 14 years may not be offered the VSP, but O4 with 15 may be offered the opportunity to collect a check and bolt.
~ O3 with 9 years may see their O4 board speed up with a lower selection rate than the board before them.
~~ Passed over 2x for O4 = to buh bye.
~ Stop/Loss also played into the equation.
I have seen the promotion boards slow to a crawl, but again it came down to the ratios. Go back to the blood letting in the early 90s.
~ O4s for AF met at the 11 year marker. The rate was @60% selection. The reason why I was told was O4s are Field. They can't move from company to field until enough retire or make flag due to the ratio
~~ This was the same time they hit the O3s with 6-9 years first with the RIF. A year later they hit the O5s with SERB.
In other words they took 3 different approaches...surgical based on rank to get the ratio back for the smaller force.
FFWD 3 years. O4 promotion board was at the 9 year marker with an 80% rate. The AF went OH crap the economy is going great, airlines are hiring at a faster rate than we can replace those experienced fliers that we cut years ago with the RIF and O4 boards. Now we need to throw money hand over fist to keep them. For Bullets year group we had no less than a 10% pay raise every year for 3 years. O5s might have had 5%. It again was a surgical strike.
~ Bullet was lucky. When the blood letting occurred, he was never given the option to walk. The year group in front of him was slaughtered. It all came down to timing regarding his commissioning.
Just saying, if you even look at the class of 13 grads not AD yet/14 AFROTC cadets they were told they could walk. If enough didn't they would do a RIF, but they didn't offer any O1 or 2 to bolt or threaten a RIF. It was a surgical strike that the year group from a ratio aspect was going to be too big.
1,000,000% agree that they have an algorithm regarding how many will bolt, but because of sequestration that algorithm may need to be adjusted, just like when our economy went into the tanks in 07/08 and they didn't leave at the rate they expected.
~ Assume they entered in 01. Re-upped in 05. Economy is in the tank, re-upped again in 09. They are now at 14 years in. Do you not stay for 6 more years and collect your 50% base pay starting at 38 for the rest of your life?
That is the problem they are facing. Their algorithm did not include a long drawn out economic recovery, and now they are on the hook financially for those that will be at a higher rank and pay for many years to come.