Who promotes a lieutenant colonel?

Answer 1

This question has two answers. I'll give you both.

The actual promotion comes from Department of the Army. They use a centralized board system. The Army has two "zones of consideration"--primary and secondary--and which one you fall into depends on your date of rank and date of service. You assemble a promotion packet. It contains your official military personnel file and your official photograph, which is a full-length photo of you in your dress uniform with all authorized awards and decorations.

The Army decides how many soldiers in each career field are going to be promoted this year--say, twenty field artillery officers, fifteen Signal Corps officers and so on.

When your packet gets to your reviewer, he or she has a very short time to decide on you. The first thing they do is to turn to your DA Form 2, which lists every award you are authorized, and compare it to your uniform. The two better match. They then look at the assignments you'd had. If you're trying to make lieutenant colonel, you should have had a platoon leader slot, battalion staff slot as an assistant whatever, company command, and battalion staff slot--preferably battalion operations officer. If all you've had is staff assignments, that doesn't look good. There's no way you could have only troop leading assignments; there aren't enough of them, and they understand this. They don't want you to have lived your whole career behind a desk, though.

They will put your record into one of three piles: consider promotion, retain in current grade and consider elimination. If you're in the last pile, you might find yourself out of a job. If you go to three boards and don't get promoted they throw you out of the army. If you wind up in the "consider promotion" pile, they have another round where they look at you closer. Eventually, they get down to the point where they have just enough people left to meet the quota DA set, and they give you a promotion sequence number. You then start reading the Army Times. Say you have a promotion sequence number of 425 and you're an air defense artillery major. If the Army Times says ADA officers with promotion sequence numbers up to, or past, 425 are going to be promoted, you're going to pin on your new rank!

As to who actually pins on your rank insignia...normally a commander who will outrank you after your promotion pins the right side and your spouse the left. But in reality you can pick anyone you want--if you want two privates to pin on your general's stars they'll let you do it. (I actually saw this once. The two privates were the general's grandsons.)