ARMY FAO PROPONENT UPDATE

by COL Mark Volk, Chief, DAMO-SSF

Like the rest of the Army, the FAO community remains busy and committed. Here at the Proponent office, we continue to work many short and long term issues.

Career Field Designation

The priority for our office remains the correction of the Career Field Designation (CFD) process to minimize the loss of officers in the training base. We made some small improvement in the last CFD board. Unfortunately, we continued to have FAO trainees returned to basic branches only to receive untrained officers from those same branches. The elimination of that issue is the prime focus of the changes to the CFD process.

A complicating factor in the CFD process is the fact that the next several Year Groups (YGs) going through the O4 Board and CFD are shortage YGs. These YGs were assessed under strength and, as a result, the Army must distribute the officers across all of the branches and functional areas to meet requirements. As a result, we will continue to lose some officers in training due to short-term changes in requirements of the basic branches.

There is good news on the horizon, though. Both Army G1 and PERSCOM are now engaged in correcting the problem. We expect that we will be able to eliminate the loss of trained/partially trained officers in lieu of untrained ones -- and should see this implemented for the upcoming CFD board results this summer.

FAO PROMOTIONS

FAOs continue to fare well in OPMS promotion boards. Congratulations to all of you who have been selected. The FY02 O6 promotion list should be released in January 2003 and we expect FAOs to continue to do well.

A review of the results confirms that manner of performance continues to be the greatest factor in promotion selection. As expected, FAOs selected for promotion look more like the DA PAM 600-3 model with each successive board. This trend is a result of the diverse files of those officers who grew up in the dual-track OPMS 2 world. While a differing opinion was offered in the last issue of the Association journal, FAOs must be vary careful about equating their files with those of officers predominantly raised under the old OPMS system. For OSCF officers, BN XO and S3 time is no longer a possibility nor is it a requirement. Of course, many officers from the senior/transition year groups will have had an opportunity to fill those positions. Regardless of positions held, any officer with all Above Center of Mass OERs could reasonably expect to be promoted. Be very careful, though, when you try to apply OPMS 2 history to OPMS 3 realities.

MENTORING

Speaking of OPMS 2 and 3, I would ask all senior FAOs to ensure they fully understand OPMS 3 before mentoring our young officers. Failure to do so will only hurt the officer, the FAO corps, and the Army. Many of the "norms" of OPMS 2 no longer apply, yet I'm shocked that I continue to find FAOs, and other officers, who really don't understand the implications of providing outdated advice to our young officers. You don't have to agree with OPMS 3 -- but you do owe it to those you mentor to understand it and help them to be successful through wise counsel.

INTERMEDIATE LEVEL EDUCATION (ILE)

The Army continues to work through the issues associated with implementing ILE - - formerly known as Universal MEL4. The ILE process is integrated to a full revision of the Army's Officer Education System (OES) and includes two components: (1) the Common Core -- that part of a MAJ's education that provides the skills all officers need to effectively function as a field grade officer (the MEL4 component) and, (2) a follow on course that provides the specific skills relating to the officer's branch/functional area. All MAJs will receive ILE, once implemented.

Under the current proposal, the Common Core can be completed through a resident or a non-resident course of instruction. The only criterion is that all officers successfully complete it. Duration of the resident phase is approximately 3 months. All OPCF officers will attend the resident Common Core at Fort Leavenworth and will remain for a follow on course to complete their ILE requirement.

FAOs, for the most part, will either attend a resident Common Core at a satellite campus such as in Monterey, or will complete a non-resident version. Again, how you do it is not important -- getting it done is. The remaining ILE component for FAOs is our existing training program (language school, grad school and ICT). Completing the three phases of FAO training and the Common Core will fully qualify you as a FAO.

CONCLUSION

We, at the Proponent Office, wish all of you a very happy holiday season and we here at the Proponent office look forward to the challenges and opportunities of the New Year

2002, Foreign Area Officer Association
Springfield, Virginia
Maintained by LTC Steve Gotowicki.
http://www.faoa.org