OPMS XXI AND THE FOREIGN AREA
OFFICER PROGRAM
By Zsolt Szentkiralyi (March 1997)
A lot has been said and written lately concerning changes to the Officer Personnel Management System
(OPMS) which are being proposed by the OPMS XXI Task Force. Hopefully, the following few paragraphs will
"set the record straight" and eliminate any misconceptions concerning the Task Force's efforts and
recommendations. Although the comments below are primarily targeted towards FAOs, they are equally valid for
all "hard-skill" functional areas and specialties.
To begin with, let me make absolutely clear up front the primary purpose of the Task Force: to improve the
warfighting capability of our Army. In practical terms, this means reducing officer turbulence in the TOE force and
leaving key leaders (prinmarily S3s and XOs) in position for longer than the present 1-year average (the goal is two
years). Doing so will lead to more experienced leaders, resulting in better units.
Literally, for the Army to win on a future battlefield, we need "skill overmatch" to execute the "technology
overmatch" which we describe in Army Vision 2010. The problem is that we are not growing the specialists needed
for that future vision. We must update the way in which we manage officers to ensure that the Army of the future
will have enough of these specialists in the right skills and at the right grades. Being able to fight is essential, but it
is not enough; we also need officers who know how to "run" the Army and "prep the strategic battlefield" for the
operational force, and it is this latter group that we are also addressing with our efforts.
What does this mean in practical terms? For officers who stay on the "command track" in the operational
force, it will mean longer tours with units and less non-branch assignments. For officers who become specialists in
a functional area, it will mean continued service and a genuine promotion opportunity to LTC and COL without
field grade troop time. As a FAO in the future under the proposed OPMS XXI system, there are basically two
things which can happen to you after your intital training, once you get selected for promotion to MAJ:
You can be designated to remain in the Operational Force career field, be an S3 or XO for two years, and
compete for promotion to LTC and Bn Cmd. If you're successful and make it to COL, you can then fill a FAO
assignment as an O-6. If you're not selected for Bn Cmd after promotion to LTC, you will be transferred to the
Specialist career field. Here you will fill FAO assignments for the remainder of your career and compete against
other FAOs for COL at a 50% promotion rate.
OR -
After selection to MAJ, you can be designated for the specialist career field, where you will fill FAO and
maybe some branch-immaterial assignments. You will compete only against other FAOs for promotion to LTC and
COL at DOPMA promotion rates (70% and 50%, respectively).
CGSC selection will no longer be an issue, becouse it will no longer determine your access to S3/XO jobs;
designation to the operational career field will. Career field designation will NOT be just a "quality cut" (ignore the
Army Times on this one), rather, it will be a function of aptitude, training and experience, needs of the Army, and
personal preference.
The issue that has occupied most of our time within the Task Force is that there are not enough FAO COLs to
fill all of the FA 48 O-6 jobs that exist. Basically, there are three ways to address this imbalance: 1) reduce the
number of jobs to fill, 2) increase accessions to "grow" enough COLs at a set of given promotion rates, or 3)
laterally transfer some COLs into FAO to help fill the shortfall in jobs. As concerns option 1, the proponent is
doing a thorough review of FAO jobs worldwide. However, this effort will probably not bear much fruit, since the
O-6 list of FAO positions has been subjected to regular scrutiny and there does not appear to be a lot of "fluff" left
in it.
Regarding option 2: The number of officers we need to access in order to grow enough COLs is larger than
the Army can afford in terms of personnel, and training costs would exceed any reasonable budget for the career
specialty. Even if we could start with enough MAJs, this starting number is greater than the number of FAO MAJ
requirements Army wide. The same is true at LTC. In other words, if we started enough MAJs to ensure that the
right number of COLs came out the other end, we would have to find something other than FAO work for a
significant number of MAJs and LTCs to do.
This brings us to option 3. If we start (read that to mean train) enough officers to produce the number of COLs
we need, but allow some of them to remain in the Operational force (command track) career field and compete at
least through their majority, we accomplish two things: we reduce the number of MAJs and LTCs that we need to
find employment for when they're not doing FAO jobs, and we create a pool of trained officers on whom we can
draw from to help fill the O-6 FAO billets further down the road, when they're needed. Even so, it will probably
still take a few (single digits) untrained lateral transfers at O-6 to meet our goals. These lateral transferees would be
fed into positions designated as "developmental positions" by the proponent (in order to enhance these officers'
FAO credentials for later assignments).
The hard part is finding the "magic" combination of the 3 options outlined above to fill all O-6 spaces with the
appropriate faces. We don't know what this works out to be yet, and there are obviously some management issues
involved to ensure that what you put into the pipeline comes out the other end in the numbers and way in which you
intended. But in a nutshell, this is where we are and what we are wrestling with now. Don't know how the numbers
will work out yet, i.e. how many will stay in Ops, how many will move to the specialist field, how the transition will
work out, what happens to cohorts now in the pipeline, etc. But what I've outlined above is the crux of the new
system.
The system will probably be phased in incrementally, and the transition of those officers currently in the
system will similarly happen incrementally. Officers such as you and I, who are already in the system as Majors,
will probably be designated one way or the other IAW Army needs and personal wishes in conjunction with our
LTC board.
Finally, the timeline for implementation and execution of any new system is fairly tight. We are to brief GEN
Reimer, Chief of Staff, Army, in mid-April. He will make a decision on implementation and give us course
corrections at that time. A final report is due 1 July, with the actual start of implementation to coincide with the
introduction of the new OER in October.
The OPMS XXI Task Force has two FAO representatives. Feel free to contact them directly with any
questions or comments you may have. They are: MAJ Szentkiralyi, e-mail= szentkiz@hoffman-emh1.army. mil,
phone 703-325 (DSN 221) -8616 or LTC Jack Dees, e-mail= deesw@hoffman-emh1.army.mil, phone 703-325
(DSN 221) -4670.
1997, Foreign Area Officer
Association
Springfield, Virginia
Maintained by LTC Steve
Gotowicki.
http://www.faoa.org