The Army Needs Hundreds of Officers to Leave Combat Arms
3 min read
The Army is seeking 300 lieutenants from oversaturated combat arms fields to voluntarily transfer into understaffed roles.
Lieutenants currently branched in armor, infantry, combat engineer and field artillery can apply between Jan. 7 and Feb. 17 to transfer to adjutant general, air defense, finance, logistics and signal corps, the service announced in November.
Additionally, the service is also looking to fill in space operations, public affairs, simulations operations and information technology fields.
“Maybe they’re looking for company command time but in a branch with a long wait queue, or they didn’t get their initial branch of choice upon commissioning. This is a retention tool for those who want to stay and serve rather than to separate and seek opportunities elsewhere,” Maj. Jesse Lansford, who analyzes personnel placement for Army Human Resources Command, said in a news release, adding that no officers will see forced reassignments.
The move comes in September that the service is aiming to slash Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, or ROTC, scholarship funding from an annual $315 million budget to a total of $100 million through the rest of this decade – cutting the number of officers who can be commissioned by between 2,500 and 4,000 in that time period. The service also sought a separate batch of young officers to transfer out of combat arms earlier this year.
The move to cut funding for the ROTC, which produces three-fourths of Army officers, would not affect any cadets currently enrolled but would reduce class sizes in the coming years.
Service planners routinely adjust the number of troops within the ranks, which can sometimes be difficult to calculate years ahead of time. In recent years, the service overinvested in combat arms roles — highly sought-after and competitive branches for cadets — while underinvesting in support roles.
Some service planners behind the scenes have also raised concerns over the growing cost of college, making what has historically been a relatively cheaper way to produce officers a more painful hit to the service’s budget, which has been relatively flat.
With a bloat of officers in certain fields, such as combat arms, the service has effectively had to create ad hoc roles for them. Combat arms lieutenants build their careers off the framework established while platoon leaders. A shortage of platoon leader spots and then delegating those officers to office work can kill their careers before they begin.
The move also comes as the Army is reorganizing its forces and shifts away from counterterrorism operations, which dominated its mission for two decades.
“We want to be postured for large-scale combat operations,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told reporters in February. “We looked at where were there pieces of force structure that were probably more associated with counterinsurgency, for example, that we don’t need anymore.”
Traditional ground forces will still play a central role as the service looks to posture itself in the Pacific to counter China’s growing influence. Roles such as air defense that received less emphasis during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will likely need more nurturing amid a proliferation on the battlefield of low-cost drones and missiles, which are a generally new threat to U.S. troops, particularly from Iran.
Air defense has been severely undermanned even as it has been a key part of the force’s presence in Africa, Europe and more recently Israel, where an Army Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery, or THAAD, was deployed to help defend against Iranian missile attacks.
