The number of career officers who are joint-service qualified, and thus more competitive for promotion, will rise sharply under a new system that the Armed Services will begin to implement Oct. 1.
The list of almost 5,400 designated joint specialty officers in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps could climb by at least a 1,000 during the next year, officials estimate.
The prized designation will be changing too, this October, to joint-qualified officer.
One factor driving the overhaul of joint-officer management are complaints from many officers that their real world experiences, particularly since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, are ignored by narrowly defined joint-qualification rules set by the Goldwater-Nichols Act before the Cold War ended.
Goldwater-Nichols was on target in 1986 in setting requirements to ensure that officers, by the time they reach flag rank, are educated and experienced in joint operations, said Navy Rear Adm. Donna Crisp, director for manpower and personnel on the joint staff. But all of the services have become expeditionary forces and are operating more jointly today than the architects of Goldwater-Nichols had envisioned, Crisp said.
“We train together. We do exercises together. We do joint combat operations. We do joint noncombat and humanitarian missions together. Whether our missions are global or whether our missions are here, such as Task Force Katrina, we are together as one joint force,” Crisp said.
As a result, the services need more tools and flexibility to ensure that their officers get proper credit for joint experiences.
“To recognize the way we were using these officers and their talents, we needed to expand Goldwater-Nichols,” said Sheila Earle, a director in the office of deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy.
The new system will give thousands of officers involved with contingency operations – including wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, relief missions at home or abroad and joint task forces – more opportunity to gain joint duty credit.
The credits will be gathered retroactively, too. Active duty officers will be able to ask their services to apply joint credit on to duty and experiences back to 2001.
The look-back to Sept. 11 for active officers to gain credit for joint experiences could improve competitiveness for future promotions, but the credits will not be allowed to influence past selection board decisions.
“We don’t plan on having officers come back in and say, ‘Had I had that years ago, I would have been more competitive,” Crisp said.
In October, the services will begin to implement the changes, including a new dual-track system for accumulating joint credit, Earle explained.
Intensity of joint experience will be measured. Officers engaged in joint combat, for example, will accumulate more points toward joint qualification than officers doing joint staff work.
An individual’s joint duty progress will be tracked at four levels, the first to start as soon as an officer is commissioned, a signal that acquiring joint duty credits should be a career-long endeavor, officials said.
The services will be announcing full details on how they will implement the new system for their officers, including steps to obtain retroactive credits.
To comment, e-mail milupdate@aol.com, write Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, VA 20120-1111 or go to: www.militaryupdate.com.
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