Some Army officers will be shuttled into new job specialties or even transferred to a different service as certain jobs are eliminated, Military Times has learned.
The restructuring cuts come on the heels of a service-wide officer career field review conducted over the last 10 months, Brig. Gen. Gregory Johnson, the Army’s director of Personnel Management, said in an interview.
The officer functional areas, or career fields, that are affected include Force Management, Functional Area 50; Acquisitions, Functional Area 51; Simulations Operations, Functional Area 57; Strategy, Functional Area 59; and Marketing, Functional Area 58.
The entire officer populations of these job specialties make up “a couple thousand” soldiers, Johnson said. The Army declined to say how many positions were being eliminated, as some of those decisions are still being made. Sources have said, though, that some communities may be shrinking by as much as half.
Johnson said affected officers had been notified and had three years to make moves.
“The 36-month transition plan gives a lot of opportunity for officers to make choices inside the Army. This is not a forced reduction at all,” Johnson said. “This is, we’re balancing these specialties, tied to what we see is needed for the operating environment. And there’ll be a lot of options.”
Driving these changes, Johnson said, is an officer review process that has long existed in the Army, but hasn’t taken place since the early 2000s.
“It’s really about aligning our officer career paths and officer talent with the emerging needs of a dynamic and complex environment that’s dominated by more technology and innovation and other capabilities that’s moving really rapidly,” Johnson said.
“Senior leaders … see the greatest risk to us is just inaction, staying with the status quo, and not really reviewing ourselves and then updating to meet the needs of what we see in that changing operational environment,” he added. “So, the ability to evolve is really the key here for us, and that’s what led to the review.”
Two functional areas were flagged for growth in the process: Space Operations, Functional Area 40; and Operations Research/System Analysis, Functional Area 49.
The Army’s interest in building out its space operations officer cadre comes as the Space Force moves to double in size due to growing interest and needs in the space domain.
Of the operations research/systems analysis field, Johnson noted it contains significant technological growth areas.
“There really are smart analytic and data folks emerging, AI capabilities that are in that functional area,” Johnson said. “It’s fluid [but] we know that they’ll grow.”
Meanwhile, he said, the downsizing in select functional areas comes alongside an Army strategy to make jobs more permeable, allowing officers to shift into different areas and specialties more easily.
“Part of the review was to say, ‘Hey, we could probably be a little more fluid there with some of our functional areas.’” he said. “You can maybe let folks go in a little early, maybe even later in a career. … So, that idea of permeability, in and out of those branches, is something that this review landed at as a recommendation that we’ll put into motion.”
This aligns with an expansion of the Army’s Voluntary Transfer Incentive Program pilot, announced in October, that will allow officers to switch job fields earlier in their careers — an acknowledgement that for many younger soldiers, flexibility is a more powerful retention incentive than cash.
That said, it appears inevitable that at least some officers will be making a transition they don’t prefer or opting for retirement earlier than expected.
“The proponent leads for each of the functional areas have been holding town halls over the last couple of months,” Johnson said. “There’ll be several more town halls by each functional area over the next coming months as well, which will really lay down the reasoning again for why the Army conducted the review and the importance of where we landed.”
The town halls will lay out options for affected officers, including changing job specialties, moving to another military branch or retiring, if eligible.
For those eager to stay within their field, Johnson said there will be some opportunities to do so, although it’s not clear how many or what that will look like. He emphasized that the 36-month “ramp” was intended to make the transition as smooth as possible for soldiers.
At an Association of the United States Army event in January, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Randy George acknowledged that reducing communities was more difficult than growing and said the work of developing a more flexible force continued.
“What we’re also trying to do is figure out permeability with people; when they can move,” George said. “Let’s say somebody’s a battalion commander. Typically everybody would say, ‘Hey, you missed your window. You can’t do this.’”
Army leaders, however, wanted to recognize “significant talents” in the force, he added, with “the ability to … go back and forth a little bit.”
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