Joseph Galloway notes the severe shortage of Captains and Majors facing the Army. As Eric Martin says, we're seeing a noteworthy gap between the number of people interesting in advocating a neoimperial military posture and the number of people interested in carrying out such a policy. Maybe the right-wing bloggers want to start a recruiting drive?
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O Captain, My Captain
31 Oct 2007 09:05 am
Comments (17)
A hidden problem in all of this is that the military usually promotes less than 1/2 of their Captains and less than a 1/3 of their Majors. So, when you have such low numbers of junior officers staying in everyone gets promoted, the excellent, the good, the average, the bad, the sadistic, the political, everyone.
If I was young enough I would enlist just for the guarantee of making Lt. Colonel. Right now as a junior officer, it doesn't matter how good you are, if you have two bars on your shoulder you are guaranteed to make at least LT. Colonel over the next 10 years.
Can you imagine what our force will look like in a few years with some of these guys as Lt. Colonels, Colonels and Generals.
I Can't speak the the shortage of Captains, but the shortage of O-4's is service wide and is a structural deficiency, and not just a function of current events. The post-cold war draw down had many fewer new accessions than in previous years. The late 90's economic boom then caused much lower retention after first tours than historical averages. Consequently, since it takes about eleven years to manufacture a Major/LCDR (and about the same length to manufacture a Chief Petty Officer/Gunny Sergeant/Sergeant First Class/Master Sergent), there are currently shortages at field grade officer and senior enlisted ranks.
Note: this is not a but..Clinton statement; this is simply what happened. The structure of the modern military organization makes the central challenge having to recruit now (in 2007) who will be your ships and battalions Commanding Officers in 2022.
Matthew and Eric Martin are clueless. There is a projected shortage of captains and majors not because there are not enough of them interested in carrying out certain military policies. The problem is that we are trying to grow the military very quickly, and there are not enough officers in the pipeline to mee the demand of that expansion. If we decided to keep the size of the military the same as it was in 2001 or 2002, then we would have all the captains and majors we need.
Conversely, in the Navy at least, their were very high accessions of Ensigns in 2000-2002 (due to the tech sector implosion and then Sept 11). In many communities, there is a slight surplus of JO's reaching the end of their initial commitment. Consequently, in some cases, only about 3 out of 4 have been asked to continue in the sub force (compared to 96-100% throughout the 90's)
Another bit of easily debunked misinformation from Al. (I'd call it a lie if I believed any thought went into it, rather than just mindless repetition of wingnut talking points.) Pot calling the kettle "clueless..."
Regardless of *why* this is happening, the lack of junior officers/senior noncoms is terrible.
Essentially every German officer or soldier interviewed about American performance during the War said the same thing: our junior commanders were AWFUL. This meant that our tactics were clumsy and by-the-book. Now, it should be noted that these same men hated the Soviets, really despised them, but even the most fervent Waffen-SS man admitted that by 1944 they were very, very good, although often suicidal about casualties.
That failure was primarily caused by the expansion of the army starting in 1940, but that's a really shitty excuse, because the Corps was able to expand astronomically, without sacrificing any where near as much. Frankly, Al is not too much off the mark here, but he's wrong to deny that Iraq isn't having an impact. I think that the crucial point is the length of tours. If we had these deployments, but at the same time, much longer times at home, I think these officers would be much happier.
However, to do that we'd need the Army to be 1984/5-sized, which is never going to happen. Or we'd suffer for the reasons Al points out.
Basically, we're in a bind: to keep our current officers/noncoms from retiring, we'd need an army much bigger than the one we have. But to increase to that size, we'd need to dilute the quality of our force, which is exactly what we're trying to avoid.
I think the easy solution is to get the hell out of Iraq. And if by some chance Bush is right (even a broken clock tells the time twice, etc.) and the terrorists follow us home, just use the patented Richard M. Daley Chicago Way (TM).
What is Redshift talking about? All you need to do is look at the graphic that accompanied the original WaPo article on the subject.
In 2004, we required about 50,000 officers and had approximately 51,000. In 2007, we required approximately 56,000 but had only 53,000. By 2010, we will require approximately 61,000, but only have approximately 57,000.
Note the pattern: we will have increased our requirements for officers from 50,000 in 2004 to 61,000 in 2010. The deficit referenced by Matthew and Eric Martin (and Galloway) results from not being able to fill this incresed requirement quickly enough.
Frankly, Al is not too much off the mark here, but he's wrong to deny that Iraq isn't having an impact. I think that the crucial point is the length of tours. If we had these deployments, but at the same time, much longer times at home, I think these officers would be much happier.
Oh, surely Iraq is having an effect on our officer corps. Our officer corps is now the most combat experienced corps in the history of the country. All of the corps for the immediate future will have had signficant combat experience, which will surely make them better off than most of their European counterparts. Already we are seeing that when we put Europe in charge of military operations, the Europeans are utterly terrible - for example, Afghanistan has been slowly turning worse ever since we allowed NATO to be in charge there.
I was curious, so I decided to do a slightly more detailed debunking of Al's spin. Here's a closer look at DoD personnel records.
9/30/2001
Service . Active Duty . Enlisted . . Officers
Army . . 476,640 . . . 400,461 . . . . 76,179
Marines . 172,934 . . . 154,872 . . . . 18,062
Navy . . 373,509 . . . 319,601 . . . . 53,908
USAF . . 349,272 . . . 280,410 . . . . 68,862
Total . . 1,372,355 . 1,155,344 . . 217,011
8/31/2007
Service . Active Duty . Enlisted . . Officers
Army . . 515,055 . . . 430,256 . . . . 84,799
Marines . 184,574 . . . 164,845 . . . . 19,729
Navy . . 334,268 . . . 282,424 . . . . 51,844
USAF . . 332,897 . . . 264,938 . . . . 67,959
Total . . 1,366,794 . 1,142,463 . . 224,331
% Change
Service . Active Duty . Enlisted . . Officers
Army . . . +8.06 . . . . +7.44 . . . . +11.32
Marines . . +6.73 . . . . +6.44 . . . . +9.23
Navy . . . -10.51 . . . -11.63 . . . . -3.83
USAF . . . -4.69 . . . . -5.52 . . . . -1.31
Total . . . -0.41 . . . -1.11 . . . . +3.37
(Note: I removed cadets from the active duty totals, since I think that just confuses matters)
The overall active duty military has decreased slightly in size since 2001, but there has been a roughly 10% increase in the size of the officer corps in the Army and Marines. This amounts to a growth rate of less than 2% per year since 9/11, which should hardly be difficult to maintain by recruiting and promoting people at a slightly faster rate.
Of course, Al's argument is, as always, supremely disingenuous. The difficulties with recruitment and retention, stop-loss programs, reserve recalls, social promotion of substandard officers, etc., have been widely reported over the past few years. The Army and Marine Corps have had to pull out all the stops just to produce a very small increase in the size of our forces since 9/11, despite the far more ambitious and aggressive military posture we've adopted since that time.
Interesting numbers, LaFollette Progressive, in that they differ from the numbers reported by the WaPo (which is supposed based on DoD also).
But I don't see how your numbers "debunk" my spin. My point was that the numbers of officers has, in fact, been steadily increasing, but the "shortage" we see now (and projected into the future) is because the actual increases in the number of officers are not keeping pace with the even greater increases in demand.
I agree that a growth rate of 2% should be achievable. It has, in fact, been achieved! The issue is that the growth in demand appears to be somewhat higher than 2%.
Al, William Lind may be a little crazy, but he is 150% right about one lesson of Afghan history:
He who sides against the Pashtun loses
Everytime
Because the Pashtun always, always, always win.
Our failure to make any inroads with the Pashtun, who see us correctly as the allies of the Uzbekhs, Tajiks, and Hazara, is the biggest source of the deteriorating situation.
That, and our absolutely unconscionable decision to destroy poppy fields instead of doing what a Chicago School economist would recommend, and just out bid everyone else for the crop.
That would make Afghan peasants thrilled, and it wouldn't be substantially different than the policies we use with our own farmers.
which should hardly be difficult to maintain by recruiting and promoting people at a slightly faster rate.
Except for it is, in fact, difficult to target corrections at the shortfalls being discussed.
It is like saying a (hypothetical) shortage of doctors can be fixed by getting more people into medical school and shortening residency times. You will get more doctors, but they will have less experience, which may be a hinderance to your overall goal of better health care. And you won't see effects in any case for at least eight years. To further the analogy, your trying to get GP's (infantry officers), but the incentives push people toward specialities (better jobs in civilian life), once they can are able to finish their initial commitments and make such a choice.
Matt,
Why do you recommend a recruiting drive by "right-wing bloggers" -- are you worried that conservatives and Republicans are insufficiently represented in the officer corps? How much more ideologically and politically tilted toward the right would like the officer corps to be?
Maybe for the sake of balance some young healthy liberals such as yourself should sign up for OCS.
"This problem is easily solved. Just outsource the work to Indian and Pakistani armies."
That's been the UN's approach in Africa. The Pakistanis have been notorious for sexually abusing the people they are supposed to protect.
"Our officer corps is now the most combat experienced corps in the history of the country."
Yeah - they have one year of experience repeated four times - and it was wrong the first year. Go look up Colonel Hackworth's opinion on this (while he was alive.)
Watch them fuck up Iran like they did in Iraq.
They have learned NOTHING in four years of counterinsurgency. They are still doing the same stupid "patrol - kick in doors - abuse the population - stand around waiting to get shot or blown up - bomb everything in sight" stupidity they did in May 2003.
Not to mention the fundamental flaw in the very notion of "counterinsurgency" - being foreigners in a foreign country at all.
Even the clown who wrote the current counterinsurgency manual has abandoned it and is now relying on air power - the exact same thing he cautioned against in the manual.
Morons.
There's no "shortage" of officers in the military. There's a shortage of anybody with a brain in the military.
In our opinion, those eligible to serve who support the war have an obligation to consider volunteering for military service.
Yes, it's quite true that today's Captains and Lieutenants have LOTS of combat experience; it's important for America that the best be retained. That said, the promotion rate is a legitimate concern, though exactly where to "draw the line" is not easy to define.
But it's also important that all parts of our American society, to include supporters of both political parties, participate in military service. The fact that so few influential people in our society, both in and out of government, personally know any enlisted servicemembers or junior officers, is a serious weakness of our country.
Why didn't President Bush tell Henry Hager to Be A Man! Enlist! when he asked Daddy's permission to marry Jenna?
Comments closed November 14, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
This problem is easily solved. Just outsource the work to Indian and Pakistani armies. You can find lots of Indian Pakistan majors and captains willing to work for dollars. This approach will have the added benefit of averting any future wars between the two sworn enemies.
Posted by gregor | October 31, 2007 9:55 AM