Involuntary soldier separations are a far cry from stop loss

My last 16 months in the Army were involuntarily served. My unit deployed to Iraq the same month I was to begin my final leave before becoming a civilian and I was stop-lossed and deployed with them. After a 13-month tour of duty I returned home, did the required transition classes and briefings, and left the Army for the civilian world. I was not happy about this extra year of service at the time - I had major life plans that were completely upended. In spite of this, I was a supporter of the stop-loss system. Service is about something more than yourself - losing people on the eve of a deployment would have been destructive to the unit since the Army personnel manning program couldn't figure out how to manage its people so that stop-loss was not necessary. That doesn't mean that being stop-lossed didn't suck. Because it did. It became a political issue, inaccurately referred to as a "back-door draft" by its opponents (usually those subjected to the policy), and President Obama ordered the end of the policy last year.

Oh my, have we come a long way from that. On Friday, the Department of Defense issued a release titled, "Changes Coming as the Army Expands Use of Early Discharge Authority of Regular Army Enlisted Members" (and you thought Ink Spots' titles were long...). Details are to follow, but the crux of the message was to say that enlisted soldiers between 3 and 6 years of active service who did not deploy with their units can be involuntarily separated 3 to 12 months before the contractual separation date. In a few years the Army has gone from involuntary extension of contracts because of deployments to don't deploy these soldiers because they don't have enough time to complete the deployment to all you guys who didn't have enough time are getting pushed off the books.

This shouldn't be a surprise. The Army is going to have to cull its force significantly as it shrinks and the operational tempo is slowing down. These soldiers are perfect candidates for separation as I can't imagine they're all gainfully employed on their unit rear detachments. I find the shift in policy, so significant and so quick, quite amazing. The Army personnel system is going to get much more interesting before it gets boring - here's hoping it's moving in the right direction. This is a good indicator that it is.

Junior officer cage matches: blocking returns

Who's ready to talk Army officer evaluation policy? Because there was a big change announced on Friday that was brought to my attention on Twitter (James Joyner, Mike Lyons, Jimmy Sky, Crispin Burke, and RB Stalin). And it all stems from this media release from the Army's Human Resources Command. Firstly, I think it's funny that HRC would put out a "media release" on this topic - they might as well just fax a copy to the Army Times as I don't imagine anyone else will be covering this story (What? You're not interested NY Times? Why ever not?).

So here are the two major changes from this release:

1. Junior Officer check boxes. Back in the day all officers were "blocked" against each other (rated as above center of mass, center of mass upper half, center of mass lower half, below center of mass) and senior raters could only allocate so many officers to the top block as a percentage of the number of officers he senior rates of that rank (i.e., if a LTC battalion commander senior rates 15 lieutenants, only 2 could get top block). The limitation was a hedge against the "everyone's great" mentality of the zero-defect Army of the 1990s.

The Army did away with this type of blocking for lieutenants, captains, and the lower ranks of the warrant officer corps in 2004 or so because it didn't much matter anymore because of pressing personnel needs in higher ranks. With promotion rates to captain over 100% every year and rates to major in the high 90s, it didn't matter if you were a shitty platoon leader. You were needed as a captain (some guys still didn't get promoted, but it was mainly because they broke the law). There were other reasons involved - allowing LTs to take some risks and not be punished for it; LT evaluations are all masked from promotion boards once you've made captain so it didn't much matter anyway.

So what does this mean? It means the Army is getting serious again about effectively and honestly evaluating its junior officers. It means that captains are being truly evaluated again for their company command time - a massive indicator of competence for battalion command. It starts weeding out the weak early and is hopefully an indicator that promotions (and the commensurate increases in responsibility) won't be automatic anymore. It gives junior officers something to strive for: to get that top block to work towards earlier promotions and more responsibility. If you can't tell, I think this is change for the better.

2. 360 assessments. I had no idea the Army had started doing this, but the evaluation form will force the rater to indicate if the reviewed officer has had a 360 degree assessment done in the past 3 years. The assessments are apparently not part of the review, accessible only to the rater, and only for self-development of the reviewed officer. For now. There's been a lot of talk over the years to introduce actual rating by this method to smoke out "toxic leaders" and this is a step in that direction. I have conflicting views on idea of subordinates evaluating their leaders, but I can honestly say a terrible assessment from my subordinates when I was a cadet was a real eye-opener for me. I doubt I would have been a very successful officer at all without it. So this is probably a good change as well - or at least a good step in the right direction for holistic evaluations.

This all suggests that Army is about to get much more serious about evaluating its officers. It could be to get ready to cull the herd once austerity measures are put in place. It could be a response to the toxic leadership surveys. It could be some general just wanted to do it. It could be all of these. Whatever the reasoning, these are good changes and I hope the Army makes more of them.