Officer Shortage Looming in Army
Officer Shortage Looming in Army - USA Today.
Quote:
The Army, forced by five years of war to expand its ranks, faces a critical shortage of midlevel officers, interviews and military records show.
Those officers -- majors and lieutenant colonels -- manage troops at war. The Army estimates it has about 13,900 majors and 8,750 lieutenant colonels this year. It expects to have an annual shortage of 3,000 such officers through 2013 as it increases its ranks by 40,000 soldiers.
Beyond the shortage of midlevel officers looms an impending shortage of entry-level officers -- lieutenants -- from the U.S. Military Academy and university Reserve Officers' Training Corps programs. Last year, 846 cadets graduated from West Point; the goal was 900. There were 25,100 enrolled in ROTC out of a goal of 31,000, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress' investigative agency.
Only an increase in soldiers put through the Army's Officer Candidate School allowed the service to meet its goal for lieutenants, the report said. The school is a 14-week course that obligates graduates to two years in the Army. It is expected to reach capacity this year, the GAO said...
Officer's already too junior
Remember when the Company Commander was the old man? Now he is young enough to be the 1st SGT's son (always was younger than Top, but the age difference now is considerable). We accelerated promotions as a retention tool, instead of promoting on a proven development time line. Albeit we have a lot of exceptional officers that can serve at a higher rank sooner, but we are doing them and the Army a disservice when we promote them too quickly. I wonder what the second order effects of this looming officer shortage will be? Maybe we reduce West Point to a 3 year school? Maybe RTK's scheduled BZ look will be his PZ look, and his BZ look will be a year earlier, like the Army just did with their Warrant Officers to "correct" their Senior Warrant Officer shortage and keep junior WO's in? Do you have an experienced Senior Warrant, or just a junior guy wearing senior rank? This isn't sour grapes, but a realization after watching this for a few years that it takes time to produce a professionally mature Senior Officer or Warrant Officer, and short cuts degrade the force.
The military has made a large investment in training these officers and needs to find ways to retain them, but I hope there are other options rather than excelerated promotions. It takes an act of Congress to get their base pay raised (pay a CPT what a MAJ currently makes, and so forth up the food chain), but I think that is better option for the good of the force. It also seems the article was a little harsh on OCS, and I wonder if that is the class conflict from the self annointed long gray line graduates, but I have seen many fine officers come out of OCS, and if we need to increase input by pushing harder for our Strategic Corporals to become officers, then we should do so.
Times are tough for younger combat leaders, especially if they're married, and there is no proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. These smart, driven, and educated officers have other options. We need cures, not band aides.
Army Rushes to Promote its Officers
More from today's Boston Globe - Army Rushes to Promote its Officers.
Quote:
To fill a growing number of vacancies in the officer corps, the Army is promoting captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels more quickly and at a higher percentage than before the Iraq war, a trend that some military specialists worry is lowering the overall quality of the officer corps.
The Army, already stretched thin from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, attributes the accelerated promotion rates to the pressures of war and the urgent need for field commanders. Another reason for the vacancies, military analysts say: unit leaders are quitting the Army faster than anticipated -- after multiple tours of duty in Iraq. The shortage of captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels is especially pronounced among experienced officers who have between five and 15 years in uniform, according to Army officials.
In 2006, the Army had to promote more officers ahead of its own timetables, according to the most recent statistics. For example, the Army had a goal of promoting about 70 percent of eligible majors to the next rank of lieutenant colonel; instead, it promoted 90 percent of them to fill the vacuum. The same year, the Army advanced nearly all of its captains to majors, roughly 20 percent more than its guidelines call for.
Along with fast-tracked promotions, the Army is keeping underachieving officers instead of forcing them to retire, according to the latest data...
Perhaps more waste than shortage....
After spending some time at a corps level staff to remain unnamed, I would say that we do not have a shortage of mid-level officers so much as we have created too many positions in bloated staffs. We have too many folks working on worthless projects for too many GOs rather than in units. Perhaps if we were to eliminate some of these, in my view unnecessary, HQs, we could man the part of the Army that really matters...