Officer Shortage Looming in Army

[Bill Moore]

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.