Why our best officers are leaving: a response

Tim Kane of The Atlantic wrote an article about why the best Army officers are leaving the military. According to his survey, 93 percent of West Point veterans and active-duty officers believe half or more of "the best officers leave the military early rather than serving a full career." [Source] As a result, the Army is "losing its vaunted ability to cultivate entrepreneurs in uniform."

The biggest frustration, according to the survey, is with the military bureaucracy. With promotions limited by time-in grade requirements, merit is irrelevant. At best, a captain can get promoted to major one year earlier than his peers, but at best that's still at least eight years into his career.

Ironically, officer promotions are less competitive than enlisted -- you pretty much have to do something criminal not to make captain, and no matter what your evaluations say you're set for at least the next five years.

Yet I wonder how far down the "market forces" road we can go. In 1973 the Army moved to an all-volunteer force, which opened up recruitment and retention to the law of supply and demand. Better pay, better housing, and better treatment followed, and enlistment bonuses are continually adjusted to provide a steady stream of recruits.

Virtually everyone says that has been a good move, but it came with a price: a higher defense budget. What would the Army have to sacrifice in order to move forward?

In the survey, 90 percent agreed that the Army should allow for greater specialization. As the article explains,

Under the current system, company and platoon commanders are often “promoted” to staff jobs—that is, transferred from commanding troops in battle to working behind a desk on a general’s staff—even if they’d prefer to specialize in a lower-ranking position they enjoy. Rather than take an advancement they don’t want, many quit the Army altogether.

"Letting people stay in the positions they want" sounds nice, but think of the consequences. As it is now, everyone wants to be a company commander because command time is valued more highly than staff jobs. So in order to "branch qualify" as many captains as possible, company level leadership is rotated around, giving everyone an equal chance to prove themselves in the various battalion-level positions.

Let's say, in this new system, you have to pick who will be the next battalion commander. Given the choice between a person who sat in his company command and has loads of real leadership experience and someone who got stuck in staff jobs because there wasn't anything available, who would you go with?

Specialization sounds good, but grooming leaders requires a broader experience, and leadership is what officers are supposed to be for. I understand people don't like staff jobs (people don't typically join they Army because they want to work in an office), but I think an internal job market would cause greater turnover in the long run because the more desirable positions would be locked in, and everyone else locked out. Would the Army be willing to give officers retention bonuses for those less-desired jobs?

Bear in mind who the guys pushing for meritocracy are -- West Pointers. They're supposedly the cream of the crop. If there's going to be any bias in hiring, it'd probably be in their favor, so it's no wonder they'd prefer the Army to be more of a meritocracy. As an OCS accession, I'll stick with the more level playing field.

Would the Army work well with the human resource practices of the knowledge-based economy? Perhaps. But there's a character to the Army that comes with the structure, and I don't think that's worth sacrificing.

So, yes. Maybe the Army is an industrial-era bureaucracy where the truly innovative are stifled, but any change to its practices would require sacrifices. Without knowing what those would be beforehand, I can't say I'd endorse bringing the Army into the 21st Century.