Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

70 • Leading the Human Dimensions Out of a Legacy of Failurelose our warrior-leaders and our innovators. Only an up-or-stay, “perform or out,”system based on objective measuring tools can create the type of leaders the Armydeserves. 41In an up-or-stay promotion system, if a leader wants to get promoted, he or shewill ask for it. The patterns for career management will change to support the numberone priority, a unit personnel system. An officer will still enter the officer corps fromone of three commissioning sources, but accessions (entry) will be more selective thanever before with a smaller officer corps, while NCOs will continue to use the systemthey have now for promoting and selecting their leaders.All potential officers will serve a minimum of two years with a National Guard orReserve unit (similar to the Simultaneous Membership Program (SMP) employed inconjunction with ROTC programs now). 42 Officers will then have experience workingwith the Reserves. Next, the mission of the commissioning sources is selecting andstrenuously preparing their candidates to become officers. Filling quotas should notbe a concern of the commissioning sources, only having candidates meet standards,quality not quantity is what the sources should strive for and meet. Prior to becomingcommissioned, officers will have to pass a comprehensive entrance exam. Those whopass examination will then serve their initial four-year tour with a BCT. Branches forofficers will be eliminated and replaced by combined arms, logistics and specialists.An initial tour in a specific area will not determine the officer’s path for the rest ofhis career. Officers may move from one area to another throughout their careers orremain in that one area as long as they perform admirably.At the end of this first tour, which aligns with the four-year/three-phase life of a BCT,accession into the professional corps will occur based on how well the new officers scoredon their second entrance examination, performance in the regiment and a decentralizedselection board examining the above mentioned tools. The board will also determinethe specialty of the officer into one of three tracks: tactical, operational or technical,while serving in one of the three areas of combined arms, logistics or specialist. Underthis system, the Army would be able to spend substantial time on the development,assessment and evaluation of its officers, instead of the “60-second” perusal officerscurrently get on promotion-selection boards for the search for the one “discriminator”in one’s file. Instead, the use of a multitude of evaluation tools and a smaller officercorps will enable the Army to become more objective in its personnel decisions withthe nation, with both the Army and the officer benefiting from the system.SpecialtiesThe following paragraphs briefly touch upon the reorganization of the officer managementbranches and officer specialties. The Army will have to “recode” several militaryoccupational specialties to align with the new, broader fields.