Should the Army bring back the Specialist titles?

That's why the Army is losing so much talent to the contractor side of the house.

It is okay to be a master of a highly complex vocation, and that is sole objective. Having soldiers who masters of their vocation is a cost saving measure, so it would behoove the Army to bring back the Specialist rank. If they desire to move to leadership slot, then teach them, and give them the tools to succeed.

Yes! They have the technical skills and needs to be recognized for it.

Absolutely they should be brought back and for the reasons stated above. Who wants to continue working at any job without a chance for advancement? I never would have become the leader of my pack if it weren't for the specialist ranks. The "spec's" allowed the recognition of hard work and the demonstration of your proficiency in your MOS to be acknowledged. At the end of my six year hitch I was offered E-6 to reup but I was young and stupid. Had I known what I know now I would have stayed in for thirty years no questions asked.

No! A highly skilled tech is a paraprofessional. He should have Warrant officer or Limited duty officer status. In civilian Corporations they are generally salaried non-exempt or classed with the same level of responsibility as a project manager.

That last word(sergeaMenornt),was written by the system itself, not by me.Impossible also to erase,after coming out.

Totally NO.These ranks have no use,since everybody in the army is a specialist in an MOS.Beside that, all those ranks brought during those years, was a lot of confussion and bad understandings,between hard strips soldiers and specialists.There was a recurrent battle,of who was in charge of what, when a higher specialist and a lower hard strip NCO,were operating a mission.That very same problem still ocurrs today,between a less experience and skillfull corporal, and a senior more experience specialist.I myself encounter those situations,while in the active components many times.
For me the solution for this situation should be the opposite.The army should get rid of the specialist E-4 rank once and for all,and established the corporal rank as the only E-4 rank.
The army, this way,will have more privates that are more needed in traditional labor duty and greater economy in lower pay ranks.At the other side,it would bring more distintion,standing and authority, to the well historic achieve corporal rank,as an excelent preparation for every soldier prior to become a full flesh NCO sergeaMenornt.

Specialist 4 Was A Rank That I Loved, Because Of The Name! Specialist Makes One Feel, The Best At What Ever The Job One Has On Hand! Johnnie H. Williams Jr. Viet Nam Combat Veteran 199th Light INF. 4/12 (TET 1968). [login to see] http://www.helpisonthewayforveterans.net

When I first joined in 1984 there were still SP4 through SP6 (I still have people ask what an SP4 is when they look at my first PCS plaque). The concept was that a specialist was not a leader. They were specialists in their field. Food Service, Commo, Engineer, whatever. Thus a "hard stripe" E5 SGT would outrank a E6 SP6. Technically even a E4 CPL outranked an E6 SP6.

The problem became that a 17 year SP6 is being told he has to follow the orders of a 3 year CPL. This caused conflict, especially when the orders of the NCO directly contradicted something the SPC knew from years of experience were the best way to accomplish the mission.

The other issue that I saw at the time was that there was a lack of NCOs and they would put the senior SPC in charge of the section. This just created it's own problems as these individuals had NO training in leadership.

All in all the previous Specialist Rank structure/program was a great idea, poorly executed.

All that being said, I would love for the Army to try again and get it right this time. I am a Career Counselor. Every day I see Soldiers that have no interest in being a leader, but love being in the Army and doing their MOS duties told that they have to move up or out. This is a terrible waste of resources from both the training dollar standpoint and the manpower standpoint.

I don't know how exactly to rectify the issues I pointed out at the beginning of my post. That is for the bigwigs at the Pentagon to wrangle, but something needs to be done to stop the hemorrhaging of talented Soldiers whose only "crime" is not having the desire or in some cases talent to be effective NCOs.

Yes, I agree with the statement above. The Army should bring back the Specialist. When I got out I came out as a sp/4.