The most blatantly anti-entrepreneurial aspect of the Army is the strict time-in-service requirement for various ranks. Consider the mandatory delay for becoming a general. Active-duty officers can retire after 20 years of service. But to be considered for promotion to general requires at least 22 years of service, and that applies to even the most talented and inspiring military officer in the nation.
John Nagl might have been that officer. His book, Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife , anticipated the kind of insurgency warfare America was likely to face in the new century, and it proved a prescient warning as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on.
But the surge was more than just the 30, or so additional soldiers and marines who were deployed. In , Nagl hit the year mark, and what happened? He retired. Since he was not yet a full colonel, let alone a general, it was clear that he could be more influential as a civilian.
Had he stayed in the Army, odds are he would have been a career colonel, or a professor at the Army War College. While I assumed the loss of Nagl would be seen as an outrage within the military, most officers I spoke to shrugged it off as typical.
I asked the survey respondents to grade different aspects of the military in terms of fostering entrepreneurial leadership, using a standard Athrough-F scale. Formal training programs and military doctrine also got good marks.
What emerged as the weakest area was personnel. Job assignments got 55 percent failing grades. The promotion system got 61 percent.
Simply put, if the Army hopes to stanch the talent bleed, it needs to embrace an entrepreneurial structure , not just culture. The military has reinvented itself in this manner before. After eight years of committing hundreds of thousands of soldiers to a war that was lost on many levels, the Army returned to a strategic comfort zone, with its leadership thinking about conventional wars instead of the messy counterinsurgency it had just muddled through.
Kitfield chronicles a revolution in that era in how the Army treated, organized, and trained its soldiers. No change was bigger than the adoption of an all-volunteer force in It was a radical idea at the time, so controversial that many in the Army expected it to fail, or even to destroy the military. Instead, the all-volunteer force served as the beginning of a renaissance in the ranks, across all the services, and paved the way for a newly professional military. Instead of staying in for just two years, enlistees now commonly stayed for five years, or 10, or a career.
The Army started paying better and, more important, making investments in its human capital. But make no mistake, moving to a volunteer force was not an incremental reform. It was radical. Radical reform may not sound like much of a blueprint, but the all-volunteer force must be understood in terms of a philosophical shift: the military rejected centrally planned accessions in exchange for a market mechanism. Faced with having to attract and retain volunteers, the military filled its requirements for labor with the right price : better pay, better housing, better treatment, and ultimately a better career opportunity than it had ever offered.
When presented with 10 proposed policy changes, the panel of West Point grads was strongly in favor of five, marginally in favor of three, split on one, and strongly against the last.
Dead last was reauthorizing the draft instead of the all-volunteer force, a proposal that drew support from only 14 percent of respondents. So what did they think would help? The Army should start by breaking down its rigid promotion ladder.
The most strongly recommended policy, which 90 percent agreed with, is to allow greater specialization. Expanding early-promotion opportunities for top performers and eliminating year-group promotions also have strong support 87 and 78 percent, respectively.
All of this might be hard to do while maintaining centralized management of rank and job assignments, but three-quarters of the panel favored ditching that system entirely in favor of an internal job market. Indeed, an internal job market might be the key to revolutionizing military personnel. When an Army unit in Korea rotates out its executive officer, the commander of that unit is assigned a new executive officer. As end-strength fluctuates, force structure and strength projections for the next decade show the uniformed Services maintaining substantial excess capacity at senior ranks.
Although historical numbers are inexact guides and future threats could radically change circumstances, the case for reduction is strong. Coast Guard Academy officer candidate practices navigating using stars and sextant during evening training session aboard U. Comparisons across vastly different eras can be problematic, and it could be unwise to mimic industrial age ratios. In a streamlined modern battlespace, the need for multiple levels of brass is less urgent. Concerns about top-heavy ranks are hardly new.
The regimental staff is too large. I have five staff officers in the battalion and I could get along with less. Anecdotal complaints abound and historical comparisons reflect skewed ratios, but a smoking gun is not apparent in the literature. Yet the overwhelming skew of the numbers suggests there is a great deal of excess brass that could be shed. Defense authorization bill reports are replete with requirements, some requesting assessment of this topic, but rarely producing DOD-wide and vetted study.
The Government Accountability Office thought DOD should articulate that validated requirements be periodically reevaluated. It found DOD wanting in both validating and updating requirements. In , then—Secretary of Defense Robert Gates ordered a widespread reduction in as part of larger reforms.
The Navy has nearly as many admirals as ships when ships are now far more capable seemingly arguing for fewer admirals. An across-the-board assessment is in order. The Marine Corps, which has the lowest percentage of officers among the Services, is not exempt from these concerns. There has been a 38 percent increase in commissioned Marine officers as a percentage of end-strength from to with no obvious justification. They have become an obstacle. Neither has the introduction of nuclear weapons appeared to have had an effect.
Furthermore, Goldwater-Nichols took effect in the final years of the Cold War and subsequent military downsizing, a theoretical opportunity for brass reduction along with the significant force reduction that took place.
The reverse has occurred. This period has shown a continuation of the trend line. In return, the students commit to serving for a set period of time after graduation. ROTC programs are offered at many schools and allow the student to have a traditional college experience while preparing for his or her future as an officer. After completing a four-year degree, graduates may enroll in OCS. It offers college students the opportunity to become commissioned officers in the United States Marine Corps.
In each program, students can expect courses that focus on military subjects, physical training and leadership skills. Direct Commission Officers DCOs are civilians who have special skills needed for military operations. These are usually individuals who have earned professional degrees in fields such as medicine, law, religious studies, engineering or intelligence. Regular age limits and requirements may be waived for some of these positions. This officer-path option is for Soldiers who have completed two years of college and who complete certain college degree requirements in two years.
Another option is offered by the Air Force. Called the General Military Course , it is the first section of Air Force ROTC that is offered as a two-year course to college freshmen and sophomores who meet certain minimum requirements.
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