Army Officer Management

Today's blog post will most likely be extraordinarily boring to the vast majority of readers. To those who served or currently serve in the Army, it is a subject that most of you spent countless hours discussing.

In the past 3-5 years there have been several news reports discussing the increasingly grim retention rates among junior officers (as a sample: here, here, here, and here). Three individuals from the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at West Point recently published a series (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6) on officer manning which largely validates some of these concerns.

Their research echoes many of the complaints that I heard among fellow officers. Given their positions, they have access to personnel data which has allowed them to verify what was previously anecdotal evidence passed among lieutenants and captains. Their central premise that the Army focuses on quantity rather than quality certainly rings true and the final solution of an integrated officer management strategy focusing on recruiting, training and retaining talent is far from controversial.

Though I agree with their proposed solution, it seems unlikely that the Army's leadership would replace the current system in which they exercise complete control over each officer's career for a more market based system. In my opinion there are few senior officers who believe that their own intellectual abilities can and will be frequently eclipsed by their subordinates. It is a common problem among military officers to misconstrue experience with talent and therefore ignore future ability. For the proposed solution to occur an entire organization must realize that it has been incorrect for the past 10-15 years. That's no small feat without some outside influence.

The research that they conducted leads to some fairly surprising data:
1. ROTC graduates with 4 year scholarships have the lowest retention rates among officers followed by USMA (West Point). I'd always been told that the lowest retention was West Point but here the data is very clear.
2. OCS now accounts for around 40% of commissioned officers, up from 15% through the late 1990s. Of these OCS graduates, 25% were former E-7s (up from 5%), and percentage of OCS candidates who are below CAT II has increased from 15% to 35%. CAT II refers to a rating which is based on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT). The AFQT ranks individuals based on their potential for future success in the military. CAT II is the top 35% of the pool of test takers. While I can not attest to the validity of the test (that it does accurately predict future military performance), it is still disconcerting to see the quality of the average OCS candidate dropping.