Officer Retention
Fred Kaplan writes about what may be the most important issue for the military in the next 10-15 years – getting promotion boards to appoint brigadier generals with experience and competance in counter insurgency and the asymmetrical conflicts we’re likely to be ensnared in for the next generation or so. Since the majors, captians and LTC’s of today are going to be the generals of tommorrow, it’s important that we get our promotions culture on track — so as to avoid another war prosecuted by Tommy Franks and Ricardo Sanchez — but the big problem isn’t so much the quirks and biases of promotion boards, but the fact that the Army is having trouble retaining junior and field level officers at all. Because of the frequent rotations and the frequent combat tours younger officers have to to serve, there’s a 3,000 officer shortfall projected every year through 2013.
The situation is analogous to the Army figuring out some basic COIN tactics and implementing them – there’s a mismatch between good tactics and bad strategy. Sure, we can get promotion boards to value more highly certain types of experience and skills, but as long as we’re fighting in wars with no strategic purpose or viable strategy for winning, attracting and retaining skilled officers is going to be incredibly difficult.
