Quote Originally Posted by Steel31968 View Post
...My father, in 1962 served with SF for 3 years and returned to his basic branch infantry, bringing his experiences with him. It allows officers to choose a career field different from the basic branches.
As you know, Aviators used to do the same thing. This cross fertilization was beneficial to SF, to the aviation community and to the rest of the Army. That process was halted for two reasons -- some but far from all in SF and Aviation wanted to be branches for the advantage that would hold; and then OPM (now HRC) hated the extra work involved in tracking and assigning such folks with multiple skills.

These Personnel Managers, after all, are the folks that said and 11B and an 11M peon -- or, far more dangerously, NCO -- were identical and interchangeable. HRC wants ALL persons of like specialization and rank to be absolutely interchangeable so they can stick round pegs in square holes (they'll fit, but they have to be smaller in diameter or capability...).

That regardless of the dangers to unit effectiveness...

They have also assigned Foreign Area Officers to a nether world.

Desired are as few sub specialties as possible to lessen the workload. In fairness, HRC is not solely to blame, Congress pushes much of the minutia in the personnel field in a misguided and flawed attempt to be 'fair' and to avoid the penalizing of marginal performers -- to the detriment of the Armed forces as a whole.
...This obviously is not in accordance with the prevailing thoughts on officer management by our leadership.
Our leadership is busy and has five thousand irons in the fire; they rely on HRC to best devise personnel policy. Thus, I'm not sure the leadership is fully aware of the flaws, even the dangers, of the current personnel system. They, after all, did well in spite of it.