What has HQMC done about the shortage?

In July 2016, HQMC attempted to address this shortage of company grade aviators in the inventory.

For the first time, captains who were twice passed over for promotion (when the Corps typically separates a Marine) with less than 15 years of service were included in the Continuation Board process that offers Marines a three year contract extension.

The incentives to continuation were limited to having a guaranteed job for three more years, a larger separations payout at the end of your three years, and getting your choice of orders (provided there are no sudden "needs of the Marine Corps" that the Monitor must fill). There were no bonuses or other financial incentives. Instead, there were early concerns that claimed if you were offered continuation and refused, you were thereby considered a resignation and would no longer be entitled to separations pay.

At the time, the Rotary Wing Monitor kept all company grade officers updated on legal developments to this new inclusion on the Continuation Boards, but it seemed that the Corps was attempting to hold separations pay hostage unless you served three more years. Fortunately, the legal minds at HQMC noticed that sounded a lot like a stop-loss program and corrected it.

Now, if an officer refuses continuation they still receive their normal separations pay. Continuation Boards with these same stipulations continue to this day.

The following year in 2017, HQMC began issuing aviation bonuses of $20,000 per year for two years to entice aviators to stay on active duty.

Although the bonus initially applied only to Fixed Wing and Tiltrotor aviators, in July 2018 it was expanded to all aviators and offered between two to six years at varying dollar amounts per year based on an officer's time in service.

What HQMC failed to account for with these bonuses is the unusually long aviation contract lengths combined with the "up or out" promotion system. Aviation contracts fluctuate between six to eight years — depending on an individual's assigned aircraft type — and it begins on the date an officer receives their wings. By the time an aviator's initial contract is finally complete, it is not uncommon that they are on the promotion board for major that same year. 

Under the past two years' MARADMINs, any aviator who was previously passed for promotion or is on the current year's promotion board was ineligible to apply for the bonus until they were selected for promotion.

This meant that the bonus exclusively targeted those Marines who were already promoting and filling a bloated inventory of field grade inventory. Therefore the bonus did not target the critical captains that may be on the fence about staying in simply because they were never eligible to apply for the bonus because of career and contract timing.

With MARADMIN 360/19, released on 1 July 2019, HQMC has lifted the ban on captains who are on their first promotion board from applying for a bonus but retained the ban on those who have been previously passed over. While this mitigates the timing issue to some degree, it fails to incentivize those critical company grade pilots who aren't selected for promotion but could continue to serve.

To make matters worse, per MARADMIN 234/19 and updates from the Monitor, HQMC has decided to change tactics from pushing ineffective bonuses to restricting any alternate avenues of service. All aviators are now barred from inter-service transfer or lateral moves to Marine Corps Special Operations Command to become Special Operations Officers. Inadvertently, this limits the field of qualified candidates who could serve the Corps in other valuable ways and may serve to further drive company grade aviators, already feeling disenfranchised by the system, out of the Corps even faster.

Between first providing no incentives to continued service then ineffective bonuses and career restrictions on an entire field of MOSs, it is clear the HQMC doesn't know how to entice company grade aviators to stay. Despite this, the system can be fixed and maybe future aviators can be convinced to continue flying for the Corps if HQMC is willing to do so.

What can be done? What should be done?

Ultimately, the Marine Corps finds itself with a majority of company grade aviators who recognize a system built only for WTIs to promote and succeed that doesn't offer any incentives, only restrictions, to anyone who isn't promoting.

Now that we've identified the problem, we can begin to stem the bleeding of aviators and rebuild our combat capacity. Thankfully, there are a few key items that could accomplish this goal in the near and long term.

First and easiest, HQMC needs to re-examine its aviation bonuses. Do we really need to target aviators who are already promoting and or planning on staying on active duty when we're staffed well above 100% of the needed inventory? This is a waste of resources in any community that has a surplus of field grade officers.

Instead, HQMC could lift the bonus prohibition on officers who have been passed over in order to entice captains to stay flying for a few more years. There is already a clause requiring repayment of bonuses if they are unable complete certain years of the bonus contract criteria, so this would prevent any contractual conflict if these officers were to be forced out of the Marine Corps by the "up or out" system.

Another way to adjust the policy is to provide a bonus in conjunction with continuation. This would actually target the exact personnel the Corps needs to retain, while incentivizing continuation rather than depending on an individual's personal situation to drive each decision to accept the contract extension. Either of these bonus options would correctly target those critical officers that the Corps needs and may be willing to add a few more years of service for incentivized compensation.

A second course of action is to break out the aviation MOSs from the existing officer promotion boards in order to better control the window for promotion, as is already done for the Finance MOS.

Currently, all officers, except Finance Marines, are reviewed by the same promotion board at HQMC, but the window for which officers will be eligible for review is dependent on the overall officer population and often driven by other MOSs that may have priority in adjusting their officer inventory.

For example, while H-1s are overstaffed in the field grade levels and could use a delay for when their captains are looked at for promotion, if the Infantry and Logistics MOSs have an imbalance in their inventory, then the window for eligible captains could open up to more junior officers for ALL MOSs that year.

This means that, due to ground MOS demands, we could potentially be forcing company grade aviators out at a more accelerated rate than if we delayed their review on an aviation-specific promotion board a year or two later. This aviation-specific promotion board could work to balance our overpopulation of field grades by slowing the inflow of new majors, delay forcing company grade aviators out at a rate that requires continuation boards, and also afford these captains a chance to properly apply for aviation bonuses since their contracts would not end the same year they are up for promotion.

A third, and certainly more complicated, option that the Marine Corps could correct without major policy or monetary change is to honestly educate and mentor all aviators — not just the WTI-track aviators — about their options, possible career paths, and the importance of qualifications to their future in the Corps.

Currently, most officers are left to their own devices, fighting for promotion with no clear guidance on what kind of future is even available for them as majors. This uncertainty adds fuel to the exodus for those who don't have the WTI boost, but could be mitigated by a combination of the development of alternate career paths and their command leadership actually mentoring these pilots in order to make them successful in non-command track billets. What this looks like and how it is executed is a discussion for the aviation community's leadership, but it is a discussion that should be had nonetheless.

One possible option for such an alternate track could be derived from Army Aviation in how they create a maintenance track and a tactical track for their aviators. Perhaps certain aviators are more apt at maintenance procedures and testing than they are at tactics, and could fill the billets of AMO and Assistant AMO throughout the fleet as subject matter experts.

In this option, qualified captains could meets a basic qualification level and then be slated for a maintenance track and training. These maintenance track captains or majors would still be tactically qualified aircraft commanders, thereby contributing to a squadron's deployment capabilities, but would otherwise focus on streamlining operations of the Maintenance Department which frees up WTIs more effectively to focus on the squadron's tactical training.

At the end of the day, these fixes may stem some of the outflow of officers but can't correct the effect of intrinsic community culture and restrictions.