At the end of the day, the bolded part above is the root cause of the pilot/experience retention issues. There's just no way around it... either the Navy changes the system to keep non-command track O-4/O-5's for their flying expertise, or they accept that they will lose a huge number of pilots after their contracts are up. Many, many of us join (or decide along the way) that they really just want to fly, not become Admirals and take constant career-building non-flying detours.Gents, I completely agree with both of you regarding getting utility out of aviators after spending lots of money training them. I also agree there's got to be some kind of happy medium.
My perspective is informed by working for a CNO who had spent his career in the sub nuke silo and was a pretty f-ing poor CNO. I believe that a lot of his issues were caused by his staying in his silo. I think that leadership of aircrew is different from leadership of ABHs is different from leadership of SEALs and the more exposure an officer can get to the different communities, the better prepared they'll be for senior leadership.
And the Navy's system is such that we just don't keep 40-year-olds around to do JO-type flying. Maybe we should in order to maximize the return on the training investment. But we simply don't: no matter how good someone is in the plane, they simply will not be in a squadron as anything but a senior leader after a certain point.
Every year, the Navy gets this information in their surveys of departing pilots, and every year they make the same decision: to accept their loss rather than change the system. If a war comes and they need all the war fighters they can get, they will change their minds, and it will be too late because all the talent will be flying for the civilian competition.