Secretary of Defense Ash Carter revealed the Pentagon’s plan to overhaul the military’s nearly 40-year-old promotion system during a speech at the Pentagon Thursday.
Carter announced the final two “links” of his four link Force of the Future plan. The first new link will reform the promotion system, commonly referred to as “up-or-out,” while the second will overhaul the civilian Department of Defense workforce. Carter hopes the new changes will lead to better force retention and recruitment for the future military.
The “up-or-out” system is currently governed by what is known as the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act (DOPMA), a 36-year-old piece of legislation that outlines how and when officers can be promoted. Carter aims to make four key changes to this system.
The first change will involve reforming the lineal nature of the promotion system. Currently, officers are promoted in groups based on seniority. Because DOPMA limits the amount of officers in each rank, younger, qualified officers have to wait to rise in rank, which can lead to a talent drain should those officers leave the military. Carter intends to change this system to include “superior performance.”
Second, Carter wants to make sure that talented officers who seek to broaden their knowledge through extra-curricular experiences such as education. This can lead to officers being passed over for not doing what Carter referred to as “typical military jobs.”
The third change revolves around what is known as lateral entry, where highly-skilled individuals like doctors and lawyers are able to join the military at a rank matching their experience. Lateral entry, however, only applies to a limited number of career fields. Carter wants to expand those career fields to include in-demand skills such as cybersecurity and various other scientific areas of study.
The final change will involve allowing future Secretaries of Defense to more easily waive DOPMA in certain situations.
“We know there may be unforeseen problems that could come up five, 10, or 20 years from now. We also know we’ve never been perfect at predicting the strategic future. So under certain conditions, the services need to be able to waive select DOPMA constraints to very quickly build up expertise in a critical career field,” said Carter.
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