Towards a U.S. Army Officer Corps Strategy for Success

[Shek]

Years of service + OCS + branch training + degree = most costly. That's their metric.

Pat,

Close. Branch training is a cost for every officer, so that's a wash. The degree will almost always be cheaper for OCS-IS, but chances are that many of those degrees were paid for with tuition assistance, so while it's a cost advantage to OCS-IS, it's not free. I also suspect that the overhead for OCS isn't a factor, as much of that infrastructure has to exist to allow OCS to be a viable source of high throughput expansion in the event of a major war that requires the # of commissions to skyrocket.

Instead, the opportunity cost is that for every OCS-IS commissionee, you have to recruit and bring in the pyramid of guys to get that OCS-IS candidate. Here is the pertinent quote from page 9:

At the same time, the U.S. Army has increasingly drawn senior NCOs into OCS. In 1997, only 15 percent of OCS-IS candidates had more than 10 years of enlisted service. By 2007 that percentage had tripled to 45 percent, and a full quarter of these were Sergeants First Class.

To create these E-6s and E-7s, you had to bring in several privates. Some left after their first term as E-4s (or lower if they were chaptered). Some spent a second term and made E-5 or possibly E-6. Then some of these stuck around for another enlistment and became career, and then the Army accepted them into OCS-IS. Thus, the cost of developing this NCO is the cost of pyramid of folks that we had to enlist and screen and weed out or simply got out. Given the reality that we are drawing nearly half of our OCS-IS candidates from the E-6 and E-7 ranks, this cost is great. Now, I'd agree that you have to discount this some because the Army is getting a service from these other potential future E-6/E-7s, but you simply cannot just dismiss these costs. Also, if you want to use this model, you have to over-acess to allow your E-6/E-7 ranks to be overstrength, or else you would also have to account for the cost of decreasing the quality of your E-6/E-7 ranks by having your better performers go to OCS.

Of course, this cost decreases if you select them earlier in their enlisted careers, but then you would see decreasing continuation rates compared to now by OCS-IS.

[Ken White]

...Now, I'd agree that you have to discount this some because the Army is getting a service from these other potential future E-6/E-7s, but you simply cannot just dismiss these costs. Also, if you want to use this model, you have to over-acess to allow your E-6/E-7 ranks to be overstrength, or else you would also have to account for the cost of decreasing the quality of your E-6/E-7 ranks by having your better performers go to OCS.

Three points:

- I spent over six years as a PSG -- over three of them as a brand new SSG. Rank is not the issue, competence is -- and competence is absolutely and positively not totally experience or time dependent. It is also noteworthy that was during a time (early 60s) of Officer shortages Army - wide when many rifle Companies in the 82d had only two or three Officers. I had one or another of six platoon leaders for a total of less than two of those almost seven years. That includes six months running a Recon Platoon in Viet Nam. That, incidentally, in an Abn Inf Bn that was less than about 60% strength on Officers. At one point, almost half the Platoons in the Bn had NCOs as acting Platoon leaders and not all of them were PSG E7 types. We also had a 105 By in the Bde with an E5 First Sergeant...

- Any overstrength should be avoided as it leads to make work and underemployment (and thus morale destroying) problems.

- In my observation over many years, those NCOs who elected to go to OCS were not the better performers in most cases -- a few certainly were but the majority were only average or even below average performers. Most NCOs were driven to opt for OCS for one of three reasons -- Ambition; Officers live better / increased social status; A true desire to be able to do more and better for the troops (in that order). Obviously there were and are other factors but those were the big three. Many really good and intelligent NCOs did not opt for OCS due to the social issue and the conformity required of officers. Many offered direct commissions turned them down for those reasons and due to the fact they knew they'd most likely get only three years commissioned and that would be it. As an aside, change the rule on 10 years commissioned service and retirement and see what that does.

As I said, IMO the issue is sheer competence, not competiveness. As Schmedlap said, there's a distinct and obvious need for some high intellectual power and education for some (and I'd add definitely for higher rank) but most Officers are significantly over qualified for the jobs they do. Think about it...

That may have a lot to do with departures at eight years...