GAO Report - Army Officer Retention Has Serious Issues

Last weekend the Army Chief, General Casey, proposed expediting the increase in Army end strength to 65,000 Soldiers by 2009. A GAO report released in January, however, implies that the Army will have trouble retaining officers for the slots it has now.

In January 2007, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published GAO report 07-224: Strategic Plan Needed to Address Army’s Emerging Officer Accession and Retention Challenges. The GAO submitted the report to the House Armed Services Committee, which had requested the report. The GAO looked at actual accession and retention rates for officers in fiscal years 2001, 2003, and 2005, as well as projections for later years. The GAO found that the Army faces serious challenges with officer retention and is experiencing a shortfall in mid-level officers. The Army projects that it will fall short of the required number of majors by 3,000 or more annually through 2013. The Army insists, and the GAO concurs, that this shortage is due to post-Cold War reductions 10 years ago which resulted in fewer officer accessions. The GAO does not conclude that the problems in retention are due to the increased operational tempo in Iraq and Afghanistan. Because the Army is a closed civil service and allows for little to no lateral entry, shortages in accessions 10 years ago would result in the shortages we see today and for the foreseeable future. The GAO reports that the new transformation of the DOD under Secretary Rumsfeld, which called for an increase in the Army from 43 brigades to 54 brigades, contributes significantly to the shortage. The Army has developed several plans to address retention, but most of them involve newly accessed officers and therefore will not be effective for the next 10 years. Many of these plans are also not prioritized or funded in the current budget. The Army has sought to overcome its shortage of majors by decreasing the promotion timeline to captain from 42 months to 38 months, decreasing promotion times to major from eleven years of service to ten years, and lowering standards for promotion. For example, the historical goal is to promote 90% of all eligible officers. In recent years the Army has promoted 97% of eligible captains to major and 98% of eligible lieutenants to captain. The GAO found that the Army does not have a strategic plan to address its emerging officer accession and retention plans. The DOD partially concurred with the GAO that the Army did not have a comprehensive strategic plan, but stated that the Army has a variety of plans and processes to evaluate officer retention.