XBradTC

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XBradTC

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Junior Officer Brain Drain?

As the Army slowly disengages from Afghanistan, and in the wake of Iraq, the Army is struggling to draw down its force levels, while cutting its budget, and maintaining a high state of readiness, all while trying to form a clear strategy and mission for the future. In the midst of that, it is also…

As the Army slowly disengages from Afghanistan, and in the wake of Iraq, the Army is struggling to draw down its force levels, while cutting its budget, and maintaining a high state of readiness, all while trying to form a clear strategy and mission for the future.

In the midst of that, it is also trying to ensure that its best and brightest junior officers don’t seek greener pastures outside the military. One of the problems there is, those very same officers it wishes to retain are  both those most likely to successfully transition to outside employment, and most likely to chafe under the restrictions of a peacetime army.

Darrell Fawley, one of those  junior officers, shares his thoughts:

The debate about the Army losing its best junior officers between LTG (R) Barno and LTG Hodges on ForeignPolicy.com has been followed eagerly by many of my current and former (those that have left the service) peers.  While both have different views on the issue, both regard retaining the top 10-20% of officers as something important for the Army’s future.  As a junior officer who has performed in the top 10% of my peer group and decided to remain in the Army, I’d like to add to this discussion.  While I cannot speak for my entire demographic, I can provide insight.

I don’t believe that the majority of officers that make up this demographic expect the Army to put together some sort of bonus package to retain them.  I’ve never seen statistics on the bonus payments the Army made a few years ago, but I’ve only met one person who took the money that wasn’t already convinced he would stay in the Army.  I believe that most officers that stay in through a captain-level key assignment (generally command positions and primary staff roles) are not motivated by money or tangible benefits.  However, these officers want to feel like they are not just cogs in the wheel.  They have a level of experience way beyond what their superiors had at similar career points.  We are just now seeing battalion commanders who commanded companies in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Further, the complexity of their positions is way beyond that of what it is for their superiors in similar positions in the 1990’s.  These officers want trust, meaningful education and a voice, they want to be able to rise above their peers who perform below them and they want to see the Army progress not regress.

Read the whole thing.

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  1. ultimaratioregis

    Frawley makes some excellent points. I would caution, however, that he sometimes sounds like the very people he is criticizing. The “COIN uber alles” faction of the Army has actively condemned the assertions of some seniors that there also needs to be a return to competence at fire and maneuver full-spectrum operations.

    While we talk endlessly these days about how “complex” COIN can be, I daresay that maneuver operations of a large scale against a near-peer is just as complicated, with more riding on some of it than whether we have a successful jobs program in Anbar.

    But his assertions regarding the breach of trust by seniors is spot-on. I hope someone is listening.

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  2. xbradtc

    I don’t know that a maneuver fight at the company level is more complicated, but it certainly has a higher tempo of operations, and less scope to recover from early mistakes.

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  3. ultimaratioregis

    True, but if you are locking horns with a near-peer at the BDE and higher (which, despite our proclivity otherwise, will be the decisive maneuver elements) it certainly does. Particularly if air and FS are up for grabs.

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  4. Esli

    Interesting read. I could respond for an hour, but unfortunately I am too busy reminiscing about the 90s… I would give it about 60% dead-on accuracy and 40% bunk. Bottom line thoughts are as follows:
    -The fact is that the best and brightest have always gotten out of the army; it is not a new phenomenon.
    -I focus on “the 90s” right now because six months ago I had a BN that had no idea how to maneuver at the company or battalion level until we went through several months of training. Those skills are gone across the army, and all of the valuable skills learned in the last decade are often counterintuitive to mounted large-scale maneuver warfare, so the hot young independent officer is not prepared to maneuver his unit above teh platoon. I currently am charged to prepare my battalion to maneuver, and up until six months ago, nobody in it but me had any relevant experience in combined arms maneuver. In an army that is expected to fight either way, you must regenerate the old skills somehow. Ergo, focus on the 90s. Some senior leaders focus on the 90s in order to bring back those maneuver skills; some focus on the 90s because they don’t know what else to do.
    -All of the skills and combat leadership that we generated in the junior officer corps is already waning quickly. Most of my LTs did not deploy, and those that did, were largely sitting on a base in OND, taking rockets and doing not a lot else. My captains have Iraq or Afghanistan experience, but I have tank company commanders that never rode their tanks, and have only recently learned how to maintain them. I had a tanker with 11 years in that did not know basic maintenance. When the army expects me to train tank companies, I fall back on pre-2003 skills.
    -Many of my junior officers are having to be kicked in the butt by their CO CDRs to take the initiative to develop training, contrary to being stifled by the centralized BN. The experiences and mindset of the best are not indicative of all, and I have all kinds of officers. Comes down to experience, mainly. I am now creating officers that can maneuver their units, but have almost no COIN skills as of now. That is a training risk, and I will try to get there later.
    -Some standards have slipped so far that Soldiers, mid-grade NCOs and junior officers have no idea how to come in from the field, recover their gear (vehicles) and get it mission ready again. The 80s/90s mindset of coming in and you have 5 days to get your gear ready to roll out again is gone. Reinstilling it was a shock to the system in a couple of my companies.
    -Last quick thought: having seen people promoted “below the zone” (i.e. faster than their peers) often puts them at a substantial disadvantage, as they miss out on significant developmental opportunities and suddenly find themselves senior to people but have no idea how to deal with situations. I particularly saw it when teaching at CGSC, brand new majors that had been promoted years early, in a service that was already promoting too quickly, and then they are clueless. Smart, but clueless about their jobs. It took the army 18 years of commissioned service, 13 different jobs, and 9 key schools to teach me to be a BN CDR. I wouldn’t cut or shorten any of them, and I didn’t have 2 years to spare to go learn a language or get an extra degree. By the way, reconcile how we are going to promote the best faster, get them out into all of these wonderful extra broadening experiences, and then back into key positions. You can’t have both faster promotions and more broadening jobs, because your future leaders will not have the requisite skills to lead their organizations. Glad I can speak Farsi while I am conducting a pre-combat inspection but don’t know how to check the engine oil. In my opinion, the army already promotes too fast to O2, O3, and O4. If you take them out of the force for extra years, you must access more officers to fill the gap, and we are already cutting end strength, not adding to it.
    All this said, I totally agree that the army is focusing on stats, indicators, and measurable incidents at the expense of combat readiness, and it seriously saps morale at all echelons. The best officers ARE getting out. There ARE a whole lot of junior officers that have taken the ball and run with it, with authority and responsibility unheard of in garrison. We DO do stupid things. And it does chafe to come back to garrison and do garrison things. And we DO focus too much on uniformity sometimes (but when a soldier shows up with his Iraqi “Trunk Monkey” patch on, he does deserve to get snatched up). And the army’s personnel processes are rigid and inflexible. So what? The army is a pyramid. People fall out at all ranks and grades and that is a good thing. Some of the best get out, and right now selection rates are falling and so we can afford to clear out the deadweight, too. That’s the way the army is. I learned long ago that all I can control is my own unit. I pass along what I have to from higher, and I control what I can within my own organization. Funny thing is, when I talk to people I know that used to be in the army, that’s all they talk about because ultimately, as dumb as it was, they will never find the camaraderie, purpose, meaning and ultimate experiences anywhere else in life. Leading a battalion through a live-fire offense, or destroying a BDE worth of OPFOR at NTC will get me through a lot of dumb things.

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  5. Esli

    Having done both, at differering echelons, I will say that the one that is more complex is the one that you haven’t been training on lately. That said, maneuver is much more complicated in both planning and execution due to speeds, ranges, multiple/higher echelons, the tempo and distances, and integrating more supporting enablers as well. Mistakes in maneuver can equate to vastly higher amounts of casualties, too, while COIN tempo is generally slower, the echelon of execution is much lower, and casualties, even on a bad day, are nowhere near that of maneuver warfare. On the back end of the war, I have found it much harder to instill maneuver skills back in the force, than it was to transition to a COIN mindset.

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