Definitely an interesting concept. I have heard and read many different perspectives on this with most going after changing the pay scale. Something that affects all branches of service, which makes it much more difficult to improve or make any change at all. Your idea, doesn't mess with the current pay scale and makes changes to the Army alone. It makes sense to me. With an organization as big as the Army, you would think changes like this would garner support much faster instead of continually ignored.
The difficulty in getting to an E10 rank has been insurmountable, hmadvocating for E11 and E12 would never go. In my view an in house solution to reduce E9 pay compression is a viable option, and one that should be considered. And once we warrant senior NCOs, we open up new ways to use enlisted leader talent that we cannot today. Glad to see a comment here, and thanks for sharing your thoughts.
This article outlines a lot of issues regarding CSM/SGM’s. I feel it is a start in the right direction and the NCO Corp needs to stop talking about doing something and take action. It is as if we NCO’s want to talk something down until we get the approval of the Officer Corp. This is our Army and our Soldiers, we may make some people upset, but we teach courage to our Soldiers, it is time we as E9’s take an active role in building the future NCO Leadership. It may not happen at once, but take little steps and continue to build a better NCO Force. I really enjoyed reading this article, it gave me hope. As a retired E9, I can only watch and pray.
I’m disappointed to see the term “staff sergeant major” used almost as if it exists in AR 600-20 as a rank or standard of address. Of course — it doesn’t.
Command Sergeant Major and Sergeant Major are the two titles associated with pay grade E-9. The more we add modifiers — SSGM, DCSM, CCSM, etc — the more we collectively water down our influence on the formation.
Mike, you are thinking in current times, but I was talking about the orginal inception. Historically speaking (which is how I was approaching the article) the Army offically labeled the E-9 that was not a CSM or the SMA a "staff" sergeant major. It was the offical title of address, as seen in AR 600-20 begining in Change 2 on April 3, 1968 when the CSM rank first appeared. Those who envisioned the rank was because it was difficult (or so some said) to distinguish the senior sergeant major of a color bearing unit from the sergeants major who served on the staff. So when the CSM "title" was added in AR 600-20, the Army also retitled sergeant major to staff sergenat major. That lasted through three iterations, and would not change back to sergeant major until C5 on Nov 4, 1969. I am just the messenger here, orginally non CSM E-9s were staff sergeants major. Just go to our Archive and search on AR 600-20 and locate the 1967 edition, you can read it for yourself: https://ncohistory.com/?s=ar+600-20
Definitely an interesting concept. I have heard and read many different perspectives on this with most going after changing the pay scale. Something that affects all branches of service, which makes it much more difficult to improve or make any change at all. Your idea, doesn't mess with the current pay scale and makes changes to the Army alone. It makes sense to me. With an organization as big as the Army, you would think changes like this would garner support much faster instead of continually ignored.
The difficulty in getting to an E10 rank has been insurmountable, hmadvocating for E11 and E12 would never go. In my view an in house solution to reduce E9 pay compression is a viable option, and one that should be considered. And once we warrant senior NCOs, we open up new ways to use enlisted leader talent that we cannot today. Glad to see a comment here, and thanks for sharing your thoughts.
This article outlines a lot of issues regarding CSM/SGM’s. I feel it is a start in the right direction and the NCO Corp needs to stop talking about doing something and take action. It is as if we NCO’s want to talk something down until we get the approval of the Officer Corp. This is our Army and our Soldiers, we may make some people upset, but we teach courage to our Soldiers, it is time we as E9’s take an active role in building the future NCO Leadership. It may not happen at once, but take little steps and continue to build a better NCO Force. I really enjoyed reading this article, it gave me hope. As a retired E9, I can only watch and pray.
I’m disappointed to see the term “staff sergeant major” used almost as if it exists in AR 600-20 as a rank or standard of address. Of course — it doesn’t.
Command Sergeant Major and Sergeant Major are the two titles associated with pay grade E-9. The more we add modifiers — SSGM, DCSM, CCSM, etc — the more we collectively water down our influence on the formation.
Mike, you are thinking in current times, but I was talking about the orginal inception. Historically speaking (which is how I was approaching the article) the Army offically labeled the E-9 that was not a CSM or the SMA a "staff" sergeant major. It was the offical title of address, as seen in AR 600-20 begining in Change 2 on April 3, 1968 when the CSM rank first appeared. Those who envisioned the rank was because it was difficult (or so some said) to distinguish the senior sergeant major of a color bearing unit from the sergeants major who served on the staff. So when the CSM "title" was added in AR 600-20, the Army also retitled sergeant major to staff sergenat major. That lasted through three iterations, and would not change back to sergeant major until C5 on Nov 4, 1969. I am just the messenger here, orginally non CSM E-9s were staff sergeants major. Just go to our Archive and search on AR 600-20 and locate the 1967 edition, you can read it for yourself: https://ncohistory.com/?s=ar+600-20