Freyja: Here is what I think you missed:
You are correct, an officer from OCS bings to the table qualities a 22 year old ROTC/West Pointer can not. However the argument is not a matter of the quality of the officer from OCS, rather what a higher percentage of OCS officers means to the Army.
-OCS officers tend to have a number of yers in service prior to taking the oath as a LT. This means they reach 20 years at the CPT, MAJ or early LTC levels. This leaves a smaller pool of personnel to choose from for the COL and GO levels. This leads to a decline in the quality of officers at those levels.
-Second, it takes a long time to create a quality NCO. A SSG or SFC leaving the NCO corp at the 8-10 year mark is not replaced over night. They can make a fantastic LT, CP, and perhaps MAJ, but at 20 with exceptions they leave the service. This means that Soldier never beceme a CSM, nor a COL, and the numbers to choose for those jobs is now smaller, hence the quality of leadership is downgraded.

College option OCS officers miss out on at least 2 (usually 4) years of indoctrination into the Army culture that ROTC or enlisted prior service provides other non-USMA Lieutenants. While a college option LT's first experience with the Army is enlisted basic training as a private, ROTC cadets spend several years learning about the Army and what it means to be an officer prior to commissioning. OCS officers coming from the ranks provide much needed experience and basic common sense to the officer corps. I was fortunate as a company commander to have platoon leaders and an XO with a 50/50 mix of OCS and USMA Lieutenants. The OCS officers frequently served as peer mentors to the West Point LTs. While I have seen several quality College option officers in 14 years of service, I can confidently say that the WORST officers I have worked with were comissioned in this manner. (Speaking from the perspective of a 2 year ROTC Scholarship Commissionee).

While there are always individual exceptions, in my observation the best officers were always the former enlisteds-turned-officers ("mustangs"), who were either OCS or ROTC types. I have one caveat, and that is that my observation of the senior field-grade mustangs was quite limited - perhaps because of their prior service they tended to retire after making major or shortly after making light colonel, or perhaps because of institutional bias against them.

I can't say that I ever ran into a mustang general officer, although I am sure the species exists, in rare numbers.

From my view RD’s analysis is closest to the mark. As an example, my son is a ‘mustang’, an athlete and a Univ. of Maryland graduate in Mathematics. But he wanted more than anything else to be a Navy SEAL and beginning as an enlisted man was no challenge to his pride. After five years and two deployments, he decided that his was a long-term career so applied and went to Newport to earn his commission.

While in the post OCS course ‘Junior Officer Training’ run by NSWC he worked alongside many USNA graduate SEAL’s who while getting through BUDs’ had no previous experience other than the Academy. He noticed in JOT that they were superb at public speaking and power point presentations, etc., but were devoid of small unit knowledge and had zero experience working with enlisted personnel. In his view leading enlisted men is a crucial skill only developed over time not something one learns in a course.

Now, I am sure that most of these USNA grads will turn out to be fine officers and many will eventually earn flags, but they seem to start out with a serious disadvantage in experience. It would seem to me that for all potential officers that some period perhaps at least a year as enlisted would give them a base of experience which they would find invaluable and could not be acquired in any other way than serving in the ranks.

Overall very good argument by Rubber Ducky. I would only quibble with the USAFA Christian bias argument. Much hay has been made over a few bad eggs who professed Christianity. And much has been missed of the anti-Christian bias found in places like the department of management sciences. I think Fort Hood is an example of the pendulum swinging the other direction where Christians and atheists a like were too afraid to deal with Major Hasan's extremism because they did not want to be painted as bigots. While DoD pursued witch-hunts (Christian-hunts?) at USAFA, it failed to see the threat that would ultimately harm the force.

There are Christian activist cells operating in the command structure of many Air Force installations. Not churches. Not prayer groups. Activist cells.

Blue...you are correct, it is the same guy, also the same guy who Ricks told us about in "The Gamble" who advised against the surge, and whose advise was ignored on Iraq, even though he was the "commander in the field" at the time.
-Also Blue...there's no ice in my lemonade; now drop down and give me 20!!!

One major reason for the selection of West Point/ROTC grads for fellowships over OCS grads that has always struck me as unfair is GPA. The majority of fellowships and internships have GPA requirements. In my unscientific estimation, the average USMA/ROTC grad is going to beat out the average college-op OCS grad every time. The college-ops didn't have mandatory study halls or curfews, TACs breathing down their necks or the threat of a revoked scholarship as motivation to get their GPAs up. College ops were not thinking about how their GPA would prevent them from getting a Congressional Fellowship 10 years down the line; most were too busy drinking beer and enjoying their college experience. Comparing the GPAs has always struck me as apples and oranges...

GTDKATE,

How can you make such sweeping comments about OCS "College Ops" - particularly when these officers didn't even comprise a substantial portion of the entering RA 2LT cohort until YG 01 or 02? Some of the "college ops" over the past few years include Ivy League graduates, Lawyers with JDs from T14 Law Schools, Engineers with Masters Degrees, Teachers, returning Peace Corps volunteers, etc.

Unlike USMA or ROTC, OCS allows the Army to bring talented college graduates and working professionals into the officer corps - especially from schools and regions underresourced by ROTC assets.

Since 2001, OCS has produced officers with educations and professional experiences that would have been unable to even enter the officer in the 90's because of the ridiculously low production mission for civilian OCS candidates (~150 per FY for the whole country). Visit armyocs.com. I think the "value add" of new LTs with degrees from "nontraditional" LT feeder programs (e.g. those campuses w/o ROTC) and work experience should be obvious.

If used effectively, OCS could be leveraged to recruit, identify and train the proper mix of individuals needed to strengthen our officer corps. OCS could also provide a means of recruiting qualified civilians with work experience into critically understaffed Functional areas/branches such as ORSA, Public Affairs and the Corps of Engineers.

I wish the Army would wise up and embrace the unique opportunity it has to leverage the OCS "college option" enlistment program to build a first-class officer corps instead of viewing it as a "problem".

...was me. I wrote my Masters thesis on USMA officer retention as it related to leadership opportunities. Now to be clear this thesis was done in 2001-2002 and completed in 2003 so the nature of the war and the data is probably of little use at this point.

My thesis surveyed officers in the USMA classes 91-95. Of a possible 4500 or so population I got a very good 750 respondents most of which were in the classes 91-93. At the time of the survey approximately 2/3rds were already out of the service and 1/3 remained on active duty - therefore with around 10 years of service most had departed. Now what is funny about this is - the chart in the Reno report is actually much more favorable than its predecessor chart which I worked with back in 02-03. At the time USMA officers were the most likely to depart early, now it seems it has shifted to ROTC. (See this article for more information, it was one of my references http://afs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/31/1/63 ) I think this has the old chart in it - unfortunately you have to pay to see it.

Nevertheless as ESIII notes above micro-management was heavily cited as a reason for departure. My study found that in general officers who were afforded leadership opportunities (as defined as platoon leader and company commander) positions for longer periods of time were more likely to stay in. Unfortunately the constant churn and understrength nature in the line units in the officer corps and the OES system forces LTs quickly through PLT LDR positions and into staff so that other officers can rotate quickly through platoons, ad nauseum. They are jacks of all trades and masters of none...and more significantly they see that the MAJs and LTCs in their organizations were not having fun. These field grades were just as micro-managed, or lacked the ability to manage and train their units due to all the insane numbers of non-warfighting based taskers levied on the unit. (recall again that my study investigated officers serving in the decade before 9-11)

But the bottom line that people need to realize about these officer departures is this. Company command probably happens at 5-8 years of service. At or before 10 years in service everyone of these people is usually between assignments or trying to decide to join the MAJ rat-race and hope for a branch-qualifying S3/XO job. At 10-12 years of service they are either deciding to stay for the long run of 20 years or they have already gotten the F%^# out. So the decision for EVERY officer comes about that point - I would argue that the 20 year all or nothing retirement policy negatively impacts those things, heavily (kind of like the up or out promotion system). The other big factor for many officers, USMA in particular, is advanced civil schooling. To remain competitive in promotions you have to get a Masters....but if you get one on the Army dime you generally incur a 6-8 year total additional service obligation (ADSO). Wallah - you are now for all intents and purposes committed to the full 20 years. (Personal note: This is the reason I left the active service in 2000. Had I taken the ADSO I would have been committed to the Army until 2008, 15+ years total - I sure as shit wouldn't be getting out at 15 years. In 2007 I completed my PhD, both my Masters and Phd paid for largely by my civilian employer(s) while continuing to serve in RC - the best of both worlds?)

Now without being derogatory to Mustangs (which is not my intent). Mustangs generally already have several years of service, they finish company command (the last truly fun job) and they may already be over 10 years of service, sometimes well over. They often got their degrees from the smallest or least respected schools, and often had bare minimum grades to do so. To be frank, they may not have the options of a guy who had a full ride at USMA or fought hard to keep their ROTC scholarship grades-wise. Given that they already have a number of enlisted years of service, it is quite natural for them to stay Army. (Note: There are great officers from USMA, ROTC and OCS; there are also crappy ones from each commissioning source.)

The one thing I think bears repeating here is this - the Reno chart is actually more favorable than the one I used almost 10 years ago in my study. I think, if we went back far enough it may have ALWAYS been this way. So this may not be a sign of the great malaise - it's not worthy of Chicken Little hysteria, but it should be investigated.

I disagree with Tom on USMA's value (but I went there so I would say that), instead I don't think the problem resides at USMA, and I know that the values of service are inculcated there. I think the problem is that when you build very smart, highly motivated super troops (like USMA does), and they get out into a hidebound Army focused largely on zero-defect micro-management, churning through assignments and they see that even their field grades above them have no enjoyment or autonomy in their jobs (or now that we have GWOT) and continuous deployments...they are going to leave. (You should see the 100 pages of qualitative data that my survey respondents provided - in 10 point font single spaced)

That USMA diploma plays real well in getting into Ivy league graduate schools and Fortune 500 companies. Having fulfilled their commitments (generally 5 years active, 8 years total) they leave. And for those who say they should owe more; when you ask a 17-18 year old to go to the academy for 4 years and then owe 8 more on top of that - I think that is enough for an initial entry contract. The problem doesn't reside at the commissioning sources, the problem rests with the Army's inability to retain ROTC and USMA graduates.

I really appreciate the thoughtful, informed quality of these comments. It means a lot to me that I can learn from the people who read this blog. I appreciate it.
Happy new year,
Tom

Yes,
This is why I qualified my post by saying "Now to be clear this thesis was done in 2001-2002 and completed in 2003 so the nature of the war and the data is probably of little use at this point."

Nevertheless we still have two issues. We have the GIGO (garbage in garbage out) problem that IRR Soldier presents - with fewer schools and lower production you can only get so many new officers into the pipeline. Of course USMA also reduced their production, down 10%, from the halcyon days of the 80s-90s...I think we can infer that most of this was tied directly to the reduction of the force as a whole from the Gulf War 700K+ to the sub 500+ we had for most of the 00s.

The second problem remains. What are these Os doing in the force and what appeal does the force have to the Os? I think the big news (which isn't news) is that in "an era of persistent conflict" guys look at the 10-12 year mark with real suspicion. That decision point is tough even in good, peaceful times, you're committing to another 10 years on the road with the wife and kids. Today, a decision to leave a service life you may love becomes much easier when you realize that if you stay another 10 years you may have 5-7 more year long opportunities to widow your wife and orphan your kids. But hey it comes with the territory.

Similarly, your point about the masters degree and its requirement for promotion is likely a reflection of the times as much as the promotion playground. I recognize that there is no selection process for promotion these days - this is a bad thing (but go back to my widow/orphan comment for an easy reason). But the peacetime army HAD to rely on advanced degrees as a discriminator. There is only so much differentiation between an officer who survived an NTC rotation and another officer who survived a different NTC rotation. I was always dumbfounded on how a promotion board can look at a picture and read senior rater comments in 15 seconds and make any sort of delineation between the hundreds of candidates. A Masters degree back then stood out. Besides necessity, perhaps (perhaps) at this point the Army realizes that the real world experience of - I don't know - actually fighting our nations wars is just as important or more than getting another degree in Criminal Justice.

(Aside: I would believe this self-described statement even more if the Army was adjusting their schools to accomodate deployments rather than the vice versa...also if they were changing the school curricula to reflect the conflicts we are fighting. But that is grist for another mill).

BTW I am not an advocate of monetary bonuses and what not for retention. It's wasted money. Extrinsic motivators don't pay off in the long run, you have to find those things that motivate intrinsically and feed that. (BTW did you know that some USMA cadets sign on for extra years of obligation for branch of choice or post of choice - not sure if that program still exists but it was functioning not too long ago. I don't agree with the practice, some guys shouldn't be making that commitment at the age of 21, but you take the kings shilling...)

Bottom line is that the Army personnel systems needs an overall. Don Vandergriff had been saying so long before me, and far more eloquently. As I have argued before we would do well to analyze how our people are being used before we call for huge expansions or other knee jerk reactions. The fact is we have enough officers (for the size of the force...probably too many), they just aren't doing the right things. But regardless of the changes that are made they need to be thought out in a 20-30 year plan. Because the sine wave that we are riding is hugely detrimental, and actions from 1991-1994 are bearing foul fruit in 2010.

IRR Soldier, your comments an excellent and informative, however, I still wonder whether the entire officer selection system in this country (OTC, ROTC, US Service Academies) produces the quality officer product our forces need?

Israel, a country with no military academy, as I understand it selects candidates for officer training from those enlisted recruits who distinguish themselves, are intelligent and show leadership promise. NCO’s are selected in a similar but less rigorous manner.

Perhaps the size and nature of the U. S. armed forces precludes this process (too merit based and egalitarian?) and requires a substantial force of more ‘managers’ than ‘combat leaders’? The IDF’s mandatory retirement age is 55 but they have a ‘two-career’ policy that assists junior officers in moving into civilian jobs.

Of course, Israel has conscription which enable them to draw into service very high quality personnel which otherwise may never have considered a military career. So this is probably and apple and oranges comparison. Perhaps a better and also different comparison would be the British officer selection process by a testing and a general officer candidate selection board and then assignment to Sandhurst, which is not a University as is West Point. It would be interesting to see your comments on these different approaches.

Given our shared concerns about "motivators" for officer retention, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on making many of our functional areas (FAs) into "initial accessions" career fields - if not for the USMA grads, at least for ROTC or OCS "College ops." For example, I think that we staff many of our FAs in a very backwards manner. Take Public Affairs for instance, each year we have a pool of new officers that 1) have an interest in PAO work; 2) have degrees/experience that the Army PAO community can leverage; 3) have an actual talent/ability to excel in that FA. Instead, the Army expects new LTs interested in PAO work to lead a platoon, perform staff assignments and command a company before having the opportunity to pursue that interest. Consequently, most of the best potential PAO talent has probably left the Army by the 7 year mark and many of who remain have excelled in the operational career field making the tranistion to PAO seem like a "step down." This doesn't leave the best bench of talent to perform this vital task.

The story is similar in Acquistions, USACE TDA assignments and a host of other functional areas. Our sister services allow officers to "track" in these functional areas from the time of commissioning, while the Army expects them to do "something else" for 7 years.

I completely concur with your reservations over the "extended ADSO for branch" deal being offered to cadets. 21 year olds should not be faced with this choice - it's "3 magic beans for a cow" as far as I'm concerned. Ditto for the wrong-headed proposal in the "Reno" Report to mandate separating RA officers to spend the remainder of their MSO in the drilling, selected reserve. Having recruited for ROTC and the AMEDD as well as being a moderator at armoyocs.com, I can tell you that this proposal, if enacted, would be a huge disincentive to many, fine candidates. It seems like we are trying to squeeze the most "suck" out of the smallest possible number of young Americans.

The Army needs to expand its officer recruiting base. It's nothing short of alarming when one recognizes how little has been done on this front since 2002. We still have no coherent OCS recruiting program/strategy for civilians and there has been no expansion of our ROTC footprint despite the need for more officers and ones of a higher caliber.

JPWERL,

You raise some excellent points. While the British and Israeli systems both offer some best practices for the Army to borrow, my "ideal" is located even closer to home at the US Marine Corps. Unlike the Army, the USMC minimally relies on ROTC as a source of its officers. The strength, to me of the USMC officer recruiting model, is that it casts a wide net at just about every college and university in the nation for its PLC/OCS programs. The Marines recruit Lieutentants every year from NYU, Yale, Williams and Amherst - something the Army doesn't.

I think that unless the Army expands its ROTC "footprint" to better capture the talent and diversity of American higher education, Army ROTC, as we know it, has outlived its usefulness. As I've said previously, compared with 1987, today's ROTC cadets are drawn from a much smaller and much more "Southern" pool of potential officers. The Army has written off large swaths of the country as a source of potential officers. Even our efforts at "diversity" are Southern and "red state" in focus. The Army puts a premium on the HBCUs put has minimal to no presence in the systems where many more minority collegians attend (e.g. the Cal State system, SUNY and CUNY).

While on AMEDD recruiting duty in NYC, I saw the USMC model in action and it was awe inspiring (from a recruiting standpoint). Young, high-quality Marine officers visited just about every campus (from Columbia to NYU to Medgar Evers) and sought Marine officers from every background. While the USMC may not always be successful (for a variety of cultural/historical factors that the Army isn't cursed with) in recruiting as diverse an officer corps as it hopes for, it at least makes a sincere effort. The Army does not.

The residual 285 American campuses with Army ROTC are not where we should expect to find or want to find over half of the Army officer Corps. It's too damn narrow, too self-selecting and excludes too much talent.

I like the "College Op" OCS model the Army currently has. I think that there is great value in sending prospective OCS candidates to regular, enlisted basic training (something that even the USMC doesn't do).

In a perfect world, I would like to see an expansion of the Army OCS "College op" program that is 1) truly selective; 2) has a coherent, first-rate outreach/recruiting effort like the USMC; and 3) has an option for people to attend, excel and ultimately decline a commission if they choose (also like the USMC). There is great value in exposing motivated young people to the Army - even if they decide it's "not for them." The USMC recognizes this value and knows that it will pay huge, PR dividends for them down the road.

I'm not sure the academies are going anywhere as they have great political support. To be honest, I don't see them as a "problem" provided they don't make up more than abpout 15-20% of the overall entering officer cohort. The "problem", if I must identify one, is ROTC in its current, down-sized and narrow form (disclosure I am an ROTC grad myself).

We actually agreed about something!

I see some merits to restructuring the career paths for the functional areas. I think if the BOLC thing had worked out well that might have fed into something like that. But BOLC II was apparently diluted to the lowest common denominator. It was a junk course that didn't teach anyone how to be a fighter.

While I think you and others give the USMC too much credit most of the time I do agree with their sentiment that everyone is a rifleman first. Their Officer Basic is reflective of that. I think if the Army transitioned likewise (heh isn't that the Warrior creed claptrap we keep hearing about...all bark no bite) then there would be real merit in adjusting FAs into branches better suited for college ops OCS and the like.

But then again I wonder if FAs are the best usage for our Army as a whole. What's the cost-benefit and what does it add to the bottom line? I was headed to Acquisition Corps when I made my decision to get out. If I (bore you) and extrapolate further on my previous personal story...here I am a (very) successful Company CDR with an engineering degree from USMA. I was given a FA, but I don't even remember what it was because I had already applied for AcQ Corps. At the time I didn't know if I wanted to be a Operations track guy and roll the dice on the S3/XO treadmill and later hope for a Bn Cmd. I might have been competitive, maybe not. I made the conscious decision to make my OWN destiny and went the AcQ route, it made sense with the eng. background. I was accepted into AcQ, they wanted me to get a Masters. Cool. But once I did the math the ADSO didn't seem to be a good idea, so I bailed instead. (I'm glad too because I don't think I would have been happy wearing a uniform and riding a desk everyday).

As I said before I got all the education I wanted, mostly free, I still have a great and fulfilling career in the RC and oh BTW I work in AcQ Corps - on the other side for a Defense company. My point isn't to say how great and lucky I am...it's this. There are lots of AcQ jobs and FA type jobs - but is that where our warfighting capability should be? Is it our CORE BUSINESS? No. Defense contractors like myself can do AcQ stuff with limited oversight (heh, fox and henhouse I know).

The size of our military is restricted by Congress - do we really want it tied up in secondary or tertiary efforts? No, I think not. Cull the General staffs, get rid of all the layers of command that don't do much but waste resources and ask for reports. Push that headstrength back down into new BCTs (to the original Reno report, we have an ARFORGEN model with not enough BCTs to adhere to it!). I'd bet that by doing so and culling the higher ranking billets for COL and above you'll re-create a naturally competitive environment again as well and the result will be a setting where NOT everyone gets promoted again. Fact remains we still have way too many Os for the force structure.

Yes there have to be some "take a knee" jobs out there....but I am not sure FA type jobs are the right kind. Maybe instead we go back to the three R jobs. That would certainly alleviate some of the OCS recruiting problems IRR is speaking about, a renewed focus on hiring from the outside with more combat vets visiting schools and selling the service and less recruiter suicides..WIN WIN.

I think what needs to happen is the State Department needs to fill in on the PA and the FAO and other appropriate FA-type jobs, in fact State needs to pick up lots of crap the Army is stuck doing right now. Then when you do have a hard-charging INF LT down in the trenches in Baghdad he can concentrate on his CORE BUSINESS (be it the COIN fight or the High intensity fight) and let the State guy at his side do the SWEAT analysis and the CERP and the chai drinking and all that statesman crap we are asking of our young LTs, some of whom are still learning which end the bullet comes out of (which is what they ought to be doing).

(Now before everyone goes all COIN blah, blah on me I am exaggerating for effect - the LTs need to understand the population centric aspects of what they are doing, they should probably drink some chai with the locals too etc. etc... they just ought to have a lot more State help in the matter). E.g. I don't think there is a IN, AR, CAV, or FA Bn out there that is authorized a S5 - but most everyone of them in theater has someone (or teams of them) acting like one, taken out of hide...perfect spot for a State embed, not a ill-trained Civil Affairs officer in ACUs (who may not ever wanted to be CA!). You get the point.

In the end if we take these steps we get back to the CORE BUSINESS of generating forces and fighting forces.

Last thing. You asked about motivators. In my Dissertation (yes, I got all kinds of studies) I surveyed a RC unit Os and NCOs on the things that motivated them to serve in the RC and on a particular deployment. In one part of the study, of 15 rank ordered choices with 7 being intrinsic motivators and 7 being extrinsic motivators, most of the responses placed 6 of the 7 intrinsic motivators well ahead of the extrinsic in importance. Some of those intrinsic motivators included the top rated “Quality of coworkers", “Serve country/serve Army", “Leadership opportunities", “Adventure/Travel”, “Opportunities for job satisfaction”and "Military career advancement/promotion". Only the extrinsic motivator "Take timeout from school/job" made it into the top scores. "Pay/Needed the money" were always low rated.

Now mine was a small study and certainly not reflective of the Army as a whole but I bet you would find that people have similar motivations for military service - esp in a time of persistent conflict. My older brother - a former Finance officer - "[paraphrased] said it is stupid to offer 6 figure bonuses to SpecOps guys. It's economic rent. These SpecOps guys live to eat snakes, they wouldn't want it any other way." Sure they'll take the money if you give it to them, who wouldn't...but you need to feed that intrinsic motivation, and eliminate the detractors and distractors from sucking away that precious internal fire. Micro-management, zero-defect mentalities, careerism, reports for reports sake, CYA, these are things that drive our fire-breathing soldiers (of any kind, O, NCO, WO) out of the force, and no amount of money will stop them from leaving a sinking ship. I leanred form the previously mentioned thesis that many of the Os left their jobs because they spent more time in staff positions than leading troops - like they learned and prepared for at USMA. These are all cogitive dissonance between what people expect in the Army and what they get, and it makes people very sad/mad...sad/mad people don't hang around.

Sorry for the long rants - a subject I am both passionate and somewhat learned about.

Rubber Ducky,

I am in complete agreement. I had so much hope back in 2007 that GEN Casey would take drastic actions as CSA and try to mitigate/undo some of the damage from the Schoomaker era. Instead, I see a doubling down on some very bad ideas (e.g. ARFORGEN, "the operational reserve", and the blue ASU uniform). Needless to say, this is disappointing and urgent action/attention must be taken before these officer personnel problems become institutionalized and socialized across the force.

From what I could piece together, it looked like the "Reno" report and its recommendations were put together in early 2008. Amazingly, it's already 2010 and some of those modest proposals (e.g. the direct commissioning of civilians with needed skills) have yet to be implemented.

Doesn't the Navy do this? 25 years ago a neighbor of mine - a 65-year-old Danish MD who had was in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front - was commissioned as a Captain in the Navy in order to do research directly for the Navy.

He died suddenly about a year in, but it was amusing to have an older guy with a heavy Germanic accent and a limp from Russian shrapnel suddenly become a Navy Captain and start commuting to somewhere in Virginia or Maryland. He was an immunologist who was working on an AIDS vaccine. Why the Navy was interested in that I don't know. It was pretty early in AIDS saga - the mid-80s.

All services, Army, Navy, etc...do have direct commissioning of certain career fields, specifically doctors, surgeons, lawyers, etc...they are put through a short transition course (to learn basics such as wear of the uniform), and come into the service as anything from a CPT to a LTC.

Yes, while Army does directly commission Medical Professionals, Lawyers and Chaplains, one of the major recommendations of the "Reno" report (linked above) was to institute the direct commissioning of other professionals (e.g. Engineers, IT gurus, Public Affairs folks, etc.) There is great value in implementing such a program and its disheartening that nearly two years after the "Reno" report was issued, we are no closer to implementing this recommendation.

Direct Commissions could be managed a number of ways. The "hard core" route could be the requirement of OCS prior to eventual commissioning as an LT or CPT. Another option is to follow the model we use for medical professionals.

Yes, while Army does directly commission Medical Professionals, Lawyers and Chaplains, one of the major recommendations of the "Reno" report (linked above) was to institute the direct commissioning of other professionals (e.g. Engineers, IT gurus, Public Affairs folks, etc.) There is great value in implementing such a program and its disheartening that nearly two years after the "Reno" report was issued, we are no closer to implementing this recommendation.

Direct Commissions could be managed a number of ways. The "hard core" route could be the requirement of OCS prior to eventual commissioning as an LT or CPT. Another option is to follow the model we use for medical professionals.

It is my understanding that direct commissioning has recently been expanded (past couple years), at least in the Army Reserve. While it has long been offered as a choice to medical professionals, lawyers, etc, prior enlisted (or civilians, I believe) can be commissioned as a reserve officer into transportation, logistics, quartermaster, signal, intelligence or other support branches.

OCS is not required. Just the branch school within the required timeframe after commissioning. As long as they are commissioning NCOs with deployment experience, I have no problem with it.

Two comments:

1. Such a reaction from the right-wing whackos (redundant, that) would be a helpful sign that the effort was on a good path.

2. Would not expect such reaction if the reform initiative had its origins within the Army itself. Not sure that change imposed from the outside would be effective anyway - Army seems impervious to good ideas.