Posted on Dec 16, 2015
Could the Army run better with fewer Officers?
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Officers are the decision makers, but could we do less without them. I agree the Commander should be an Officer, but do we really need Officers for many of the Staff positions? If a NCO can earn the degree and do the same work for a lot less money, would that be cost effective? Bottom line, I have the same degree as many Officers and a LOT more experience. Why not let me just have their job?
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A few thoughts:
- Simple question but does not have a simple answer when viewed through different lenses such as: ratio officer to Army size, temporal (time) issues, leader development, and promotion rates. I will take each in turn.
- Officer to Army size ratio. Would require research to prove but I think we have a higher ratio now than we have historically. Reason being, especially at senior levels, an officer is surrounded by staff. We need to keep the officer-Army size ratio lower which argues for fewer officers.
- Temporal (time) issues. Private industry creates senior leaders on a 70:30 mix. 70% grown internal and 30% recruited from external. The Army, however, grows 100% of our own leaders. This means we take in X number of LTs this year not because we need X number of LTs now but because we need Y number of LTCs 20 years from now. Having excess numbers of junior officers now mitigates the risk of not having enough senior officers in the future. Argues for more officers at least at lower levels.
- Leader development. As others have written, good senior officers have a breadth and depth of institutional and operational experience. This argues for more opportunities/experiences at junior levels.
- Promotion. By promotion rates I mean that we should not have so few officer positions that we have excessively high promotion rates which translates into less qualified officers reaching higher rank vs so many officer positions that the promotion rate is excessively low. Requires a balance here.
- Simple question but does not have a simple answer when viewed through different lenses such as: ratio officer to Army size, temporal (time) issues, leader development, and promotion rates. I will take each in turn.
- Officer to Army size ratio. Would require research to prove but I think we have a higher ratio now than we have historically. Reason being, especially at senior levels, an officer is surrounded by staff. We need to keep the officer-Army size ratio lower which argues for fewer officers.
- Temporal (time) issues. Private industry creates senior leaders on a 70:30 mix. 70% grown internal and 30% recruited from external. The Army, however, grows 100% of our own leaders. This means we take in X number of LTs this year not because we need X number of LTs now but because we need Y number of LTCs 20 years from now. Having excess numbers of junior officers now mitigates the risk of not having enough senior officers in the future. Argues for more officers at least at lower levels.
- Leader development. As others have written, good senior officers have a breadth and depth of institutional and operational experience. This argues for more opportunities/experiences at junior levels.
- Promotion. By promotion rates I mean that we should not have so few officer positions that we have excessively high promotion rates which translates into less qualified officers reaching higher rank vs so many officer positions that the promotion rate is excessively low. Requires a balance here.
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CW3 Stephen Mills
The problem with that analogy is it doesn't address what the OP originally said outside of the rank structure. What the OP said was why cant NCO's be the leaders in place of the officers?
While I understand going from private to general without a track change isn't a realistic or wise method, why cant more qualified NCO's be provided this track change.
it also ignores the value of warrant officers as commanders.
As far as the military raising its own senior leaders. There really isn't much difference between the military and civilian world if you look at each military unit the same as you would look at a single civilian company. You start small and move up the ranks. The idea that staff positions need to outrank subordinate units is easily disproven by a PVT MP.
While I understand going from private to general without a track change isn't a realistic or wise method, why cant more qualified NCO's be provided this track change.
it also ignores the value of warrant officers as commanders.
As far as the military raising its own senior leaders. There really isn't much difference between the military and civilian world if you look at each military unit the same as you would look at a single civilian company. You start small and move up the ranks. The idea that staff positions need to outrank subordinate units is easily disproven by a PVT MP.
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COL Charles Williams
COL Jason Smallfield, PMP, CFM, CM You, my friend, are much more eloquent than I...
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COL Jason Smallfield, PMP, CFM, CM
CW3 Mills,
I disagree. The original poster's question was "could the Army be run with fewer officers". One of his solutions was using NCOs in staff positions. My post focused upon the poster's question as to considerations for and against more officers in the Army. Better to focus upon one problem/question than to comment upon only one of many possible solutions.
I disagree. The original poster's question was "could the Army be run with fewer officers". One of his solutions was using NCOs in staff positions. My post focused upon the poster's question as to considerations for and against more officers in the Army. Better to focus upon one problem/question than to comment upon only one of many possible solutions.
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LTC Robert McKenna
The short answer is yes, The German Army has been doing it for years. Were we generally have five officers in a infantry or tank company (CO, XO, 3 x PLs) the Germans generally had three (CO, XO/1st PL, one other PL).
They also didn't generally have "regular" LTs serving as assistant staff officers at the BN/BDE level (these are filled by long service NCOs or LDOs). The drawback here is that the system is not built for attrition and selection. You have fewer officers, but you need to retain them and train them.
The cost/risk, is that you might not get as well rounded an officer initially in command; but as the German Army Career is 40 years officer remain in their positions much longer.
The other cost, is that you don't have a flow of talent into a robust reserve component, which is really the greatest strength of our system. Our bench, is light years ahead of most other nations starting teams.
They also didn't generally have "regular" LTs serving as assistant staff officers at the BN/BDE level (these are filled by long service NCOs or LDOs). The drawback here is that the system is not built for attrition and selection. You have fewer officers, but you need to retain them and train them.
The cost/risk, is that you might not get as well rounded an officer initially in command; but as the German Army Career is 40 years officer remain in their positions much longer.
The other cost, is that you don't have a flow of talent into a robust reserve component, which is really the greatest strength of our system. Our bench, is light years ahead of most other nations starting teams.
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I think the Army can run better with less officers having served on Active Duty, Army Reserves and returned to Active Duty from where I retired. I will give my perspective about what I saw in the Army Reserve and on Active Duty. In the Army Reserve I saw a lot of Senior NCO's serving with excellence in Officers position because of a shortage of officers in the Reserve. However theses NCO's brought a lot to the table because some of them held executive level positions as civilians and at times were more educated than some of the officers in the Unit and were great critical thinkers. I even deployed once with SFC and MSG in 1LT and Captain slots as members of a battalion staff because of the shortage of company grade officers. On active duty I saw lots of officers in staff positions that i felt did not need officers, because the officer had a senior NCO subject matter expert in their section who the officer got their information from which they would brief the commander. I always felt why put the officer in the middle when that senior NCO can run that shop and also brief the commander. The NCO Corps today is much more educated, have a lot more critical thinkers than in the past and are the subject matter experts who are now involved in planning at all 3 levels of war. Therefore senior NCO's can replace a lot of the staff officers positions because these Senior Staff NCO's are the SME's in those sections and are the ones who create the deliverables for their section leader the officer to brief the CO.
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