Very Interesting Piece. A few thoughts came to mind:

1. How do you envision controlling the natural impulse to promote similar people at local boards with the impulse for everything to be merit-based? I see those as two competing priorities. Humans will naturally want to bring their tribe along, so any system with local promotion will have that bias. I'm not saying it's better or worse; I am just saying we will have different problems with this new system I am trying to extrapolate out.

2. Did you look at the percentage of Officers in the Army in the 1930s during the buildup, or did the Army of the 40s feel it was short on officers? I wonder if the 5% number is appropriate during a war when everyone is mobilized, but was slightly larger in the interwar period. How do you deal with the Old Officer issue the corps of the 1930s had, with an average age of around 47?

3. How much larger does the officer corps become with a sabbatical? A 5% officer corps is 5% "on the line," I assume.

The good news is that in one of your previous calls to action on manpower (link in this piece was broken), CGSC spends about 1/3 of its time studying military history, and the coursework was pretty good. The staff work includes force-on-force wargaming to test courses of action like you wanted. So, one positive note is that PME is doing some of the things you requested in your earlier work on the same topic.

-Edited: because I was on my phone and fat-fingered.