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From: Major Emery Upton
Date: 24 Jul 2000
Time: 07:25:32
[Note: MAJ Upton is the nom de plume of an Army officer on active duty]
The Army has felt since the end of World War II that to efficiently support the “up-or-out” promotion system, the only way to “entice and retain talent was to rapidly promote.” Institutionally, this gives in to personal fulfillment, instead of selfless service. The Army should reward officers for their contribution to the unit, Army and Nation by giving them a sense of fulfillment, and sense of belonging. The Army can also provide officers with a descent middle-class wage at the captain level, which can be raised in conjunction with their experience and responsibility, as well as rank. This does not mean that a captain will make pay comparable to a general’s, but enticing the “best” to stay is easier when officers are extremely happy, secure, and confident with the experience gained from longer terms in one position. Furthermore, 83 percent of officers are now married, with most spouses working. The Army’s benefits such as medical care, and child care also promote children. Stabilization allows spouses to stay longer and pursue a profession. It also allows families to stay in one area longer decreasing the costs of frequent moves.
The surplus of officers drives the constant rotation of officers from one assignment to another. OPMS forces officers to seek critical jobs for promotions, allowing personnel assignment officers to move officers from job to job, place to place. The timing of an officer’s move becomes more critical than the experience gained, or for that matter, competence.
What these policies did, however, was something probably more subtle than had been anticipated. Officers perceived the policies differently in their quest to be promoted to the rank of general officers. It was believed that an officer should get a command, keep it only as long as necessary to get a good efficiency report, and then avoid further command in that grade because of the risk of a possibly poor efficiency report.
A captain at Fort Hood recently said, “Just when you get to know your job, get confident in it, you’re moved, for no other reason than to be moved. Of all the other officers, above and below, I have talked too, not one has stated they remained in a position long enough to master it. This is frightening, when on one hand we are told that this ‘stuff’ is hard, but on the other hand, we are moved so fast, that it implies it isn’t. When is this craziness going to stop!”
A smaller Officer Corps offers a lot of advantages to the Army that cannot be measured by sliding scales and formulas. A smaller corps contributes to more effective leadership because by limiting the number of officers soldiers interact with and all demonstrate good leadership skills/competence or they would not still be an officer. Officers know one another, and professional peer pressure compels fellow officers to maintain high standards in competence while maintaining values. Selection to command, currently measured by 18 officers looking at several hundred to a few thousand files, can become more decentralized, more personal with a smaller Officer Corps. Officers who have trained under similar tough standards, have served in the same regiment, or specialties and in repetitive assignments will be better able to judge who the best qualified officers are for command.
This new system becomes “fairer” to the Nation, Army and the Officer Corps, because those officers with the qualities needed to successfully lead and command in combat are selected. Officers are known for their competence and character judged through their performance in force-on-force, free play exercises, in front of accession and promotion boards, and in examination.
The Army’s first step in reducing the size of the Officer Corps is to immediately identify assignments that are not essential functions and eliminate them. Three things will condense the number of Army personal without eliminating vital warfighting positions. They are: Reduce bureaucracy and higher headquarters; Ensure a more efficient use of automation, instead of using it to create more work; Classify and amend positions allowing civilians to do the work currently done by officers or eliminate those positions completely.
Whenever possible, the Army needs to fill assignments with officers more junior than those currently assigned. This will also provide junior leaders more practice at making important decisions.
Attracting the “right” individuals to serve in the profession of arms means emphasizing organizational bonds, not economic ones. Money will not attract future leaders from the Nation’s best universities. In recruiting, the Army must change from promoting self with such ads as “join ROTC and climb the corporate ladder” into “service for country,” “we want leaders of character,” and “be part of our professional team.” The only way to attract America’s youth is to instill a sense of service, present a challenge, allow them to belong to a unique organization. Instead, the trend to ”civilianizing” the Army has had:
The most far-reaching consequence of the marketplace AVF [All Volunteer Force] is that it ultimately reduces recruiting an armed forces to a form of consumerism, even hedonism, which is hardly a basis for the kind of commitment required in a military organization. Military Manpower Task Force: A Report to the President on the Status and Prospects of the All-Volunteer Force ... curtly dismissed the notion that any form of national service could have anything to do with military recruitment. God forbid, that manning our armed forces be contaminated by the idea of citizen obligation.
The journey into the Officer Corps begins with all potential individuals at the age of 18 enlisting as soldiers in their local reserve units, or enlisting in the active force. All officers should share the experience of serving in “the ranks” for a minimum of two years. Ties will also be established with the original battalion and its parent regiment. Making all officer cadets serve in the ranks will be beneficial to the Army for many reasons,
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It will select those that are determined to become officers while today’s traditional political correct routes screen those type of personalities out early |
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It will allow officers who have served in the ranks to gain respect for those who serve below them, building trust |
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It will eliminate the tradition of the lieutenant entering active service as the most inexperienced member of units. |
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It will provide officer cadets and candidates with a foundation in Army traditions, discipline, skills, and tasks, allowing ROTC cadre to go beyond required rote syllabuses in current ROTC curriculum |
After service in the ranks, potential officers will “apply” to the regiment to join the regiment. They will be accessed at the regimental level by a board of officers composed of both active and reserve officers, and a CG staff member, and guided by Army policies on leadership. The board will look at periodic examinations, reports written by the chain of command, and a recommendation by the battalion commander. After the individuals are judged as capable candidates, they would then attend an university or West Point between the ages of twenty and twenty-four. A smaller Officer Corps will allow the Army to return some of its savings to investing in its future officers through paying for their education, allowing them to focus on becoming an officer.
All cadets will receive scholarships which cover tuition, room and board, and a living allowance stipend. The funding for school, either through West Point, or ROTC, is not an economic incentive, but one that allows cadets to focus on the details of becoming an effective officer. Officer cadets will be able to place more time into their military and academic studies. For those who entered the enlisted ranks with a degree, they would still serve a minimum of two years in a unit, and have to pass their regimental entrance board, then compete with others on the extensive professional entrance exam after passing through an CG officer candidate school. Upon passing the first of two comprehensive professional exams (the second one comes after their first four years as an officer), the candidate would then be commissioned, and the Army could compensate the new officer for the costs of his education.
Before taking a comprehensive exam to become a commissioned officer, time and resources must be expended to prepare the candidate for their professional entrance exam and regimental board. Currently, the preparation for cadets is still modeled on assembly-line methods based on the need at the beginning of World War II. In today’s ROTC courses, officer and NCO cadre have four to six hours a week, in a school year of nine months, a two- to three-day field training exercise per semester (two per year) and a six week “Advanced Camp” in the summer between the junior and senior years to educate and train. With the exception of the military colleges, the education and training does not place a lot of stress on the cadets to test their strength of character. Even military colleges, in response to political correctness, have placed less stress on cadets.
With the experience gained from serving as an enlisted soldier in a battalion, cadet education and training can incorporate innovative and interesting approaches to accomplish the building of strong character and make every officer a combat leader first. Cadet education should emphasize a holistic approach to solving a tactical problem. Cadets are taught to conceptualize a solution before they attempt to prepare an operations order. During classroom and outdoor instruction, the process makes extensive use of Tactical Decision Games (TDGs) during classroom instruction by placing the cadets in a tactical scenario and requiring them to devise a solution. From the classroom, the TDGs can be taken outside with cadets walking through a particular environment, while receiving reports from other cadets acting as scouts. The cadets will then be required to make decisions based upon the intelligence picture presented and to accomplish a given mission. These exercises will be incorporated with historical scenarios. From this point cadets are prepared to progress into field training.
All training should revolve, and point toward free-play, force-on-force exercises followed by an extensive After Action Review (AAR). Currently, leadership training in the field involved the use of “canned” Situational Tactical Exercises (STX) lanes. STX lanes allow the cadet to follow a checklist, and apply a formula to accomplish a task against a weak or non-thinking enemy. The checklist approach is also easier on cadre. Free-play, force-on-force exercises*from as small as a squad to up to a company depending on the size of the cadet program*pit cadets against other cadets that are real, thinking opponents, wanting to outwit opponents (team competition is healthy). Force-on-Force exercises is one place the competition should be allowed to flourish, with clear winners and losers. This approach forces leaders to be creative. Each evaluator must know his profession and be able to evaluate holistically, beyond checking in boxes. The culmination of these exercises is conducted over a period of days with continuous small unit missions. This allows the cadre to evaluate cadets on their ability to adapt to stress while still making effective decisions. This approach forces cadets to learn the details and necessity of knowing individual tasks that will allow them an array of tactical choices. This approach can easily be combined with the use of written examinations to determine those who qualify to become officers.
Examinations would provide an objective evaluation tool. In the beginning examinations would consist of simple TDGs at the squad or platoon level that would last less than an hour. Examinations taken as a cadet would prepare the candidate for their first professional examination. This examination would last several days, and would consist of papers written during the exam on tactics and theory, on individual tasks that covering weapons, and military equipment, and on the foreign language taken by the cadet during school. The most difficult part of the first professional examination would use TDGs with cadets solving problems and writing orders at the battalion and brigade level under time constraints. To present objectivity, the final examination would be graded by a board of anonymous officers drawn from different regiments within a respective CG.
Examinations based on a measurable standard restore trust since all cadets must pass the same challenges to become an officer. It also places an additional hurdle before less-educated officers, making the officer corps more professional. During the attendance in officer accession programs, all cadets would be forced into an intensive study program further raising professionalism. Instead of the officers with the “best files” being selected for the Joint Staff, examinations would allow the entire officer corps to become a pool for the Army and National Staff. Finally, these examinations eliminate reliance on the OER system and its dependence on the rater/senior rater dynamic, or pleasing the boss.
The new process of education and training dilutes the dangerous dependence on the OER system to evaluate performance and potential. In the future, by making the first “cut” early in an officer’s career*using objective measures, as well as core values*the Army: restore[s] trust in our officer corps and destroy[s} the cult of micro-management like the scourge it is. These problems are due to a culture that places the individual above the unit and fosters an unhealthy competition among brothers-in-arms for favor, resources, promotion, awards, evaluations, and key jobs.
After their commissioning on, officers have less anxiety about their careers, and can devote his full attention to studying the art of war. Combat will not be treated as incidental to being a soldier.
Obviously, the Army will strive to have a diverse population of ”Americans” but forced diversity*political correctness*only polarizes the armed forces and the society it is sworn to protect. Diversity programs create an atmosphere of unfairness, which in turn undercuts trust. As part of the overall reform, the Army must take a long-range look at diversity. Entrance into the Officer Corps, and selections and promotions within the ranks of the Officer Corps should be based on one standard—strength of character. Selections will be based on the Army’s needs to win in combat.