More colonels, lt. colonels selected this year

The Air Force on Wednesday announced it has selected 18 lieutenant colonels to promote to colonel, and 1,350 majors to promote to lieutenant colonel during the 2013A line of the Air Force, and line of the Air Force, judge advocate general selection boards.

About 13.5 percent of the 133 eligible lieutenant colonels were selected for promotion, and 18.5 percent of the 7,288 eligible majors were selected for promotion. The list of officers selected for promotion will be released Thursday.

The 2013 selection rates for O-6 is higher than last year’s 11.3 percent. but the O-5 selection rate is down from 19.1 percent in 2012.

More officers are being promoted this year — in 2012, 14 lieutenant colonels and 1,269 majors were selected for promotion.

The Air Force said that 53.3 percent of eligible lieutenant colonels who were in the promotion zone — 16 out of 30 — were selected to become colonels. One out of 35 was selected from above the promotion zone, and one out of 68 was selected from below the zone, which equated to a 2.9 percent and 1.5 percent selection rate, respectively.

Majors who were in the line of the Air Force promotion zone had a 74.4 percent selection rate, or 1,142 out of 1,535, and majors who were in the line of the Air Force-judge advocate general promotion zone had an 80.8 percent selection rate, or 42 out of 52.

Above-the-zone LAF majors had a 2.4 percent select rate, or 33 out of 1,367, and above-the-zone LAF-J majors had a 7.7 percent select rate, or 2 out of 26. Below-the-zone LAF majors had a 3.1 percent select rate, or 130 out of 4,186, and below-the-zone LAF-J majors had a 0.8 percent select rate, or 1 out of 122.

The list will be released Thursday and posted here.