USMC Proponent Notes
(June 1997)
The last few months have proved to be a real "good news, bad news" period for the Marine FAO
program.
In April, HQMC formally established the Regional Affairs Officer Program (ALMAR 114/97). Now, in
addition to 8 FAOs, the FY98 selection board will also send 7 RAOs to NPS for area studies master's
degrees. The RAO program will provide the selection board with the ability to tailor the pol-mil training
that each FAO/RAO candidate will receive. For example, an officer who already possesses a working
knowledge of French or Spanish, but lacks regional academic education, might only need a degree via
the RAO program and an in-country assignment to qualify as a Latin America or Sub-Saharan Africa FAO.
(This is why we included no Spanish language FAO quotas on this year's board.) Since the period of
training would be shorter, more senior majors and even FAOs without a master's degree would be
competitive for RAO selection.
With this flexibility, the full 3 year FAO study track program can be reserved to train those officers
who possess the greatest potential to master the difficult category IV languages. Hopefully, the addition
of the master's degree will attract enough applicants to allow the FAO board to select only Marines with
DLAB scores well above 110 for the program.
In other good news, in February DoD released Directive 1315.17 that establishes policy and
responsibilities for the development of the Military Services' FAO programs. This much anticipated
document is intended to emphasize the FAO program's importance as a source of officers possessing
the political, regional and cultural knowledge that DoD needs for the future. One of the most important
aspects of the directive is that it tasks the services to "develop procedures to ensure competitive career
advancement for officers in the Service FAO Program[s]." Hopefully, this kind of high-level attention will
put some pressure on the services to energize their FAO programs.
That's the good news. The bad news is that the directive's "competitive career advance-ment"
language is a watered down version of the original draft. Citing Title X prerogatives, the services objected
to DoD's initial language requiring promotion precepts for FAOs. Unfortunately, the compromise
language found in the final version may be too weak to affect the promotion rates for Marine FAOs.
Worse, based on this year's promotion results, some FAOs are complaining that promotion boards are
even punishing FAOs for "hiding from the fleet," and that the FAO program is a career killer. Skeptics cite
the FY 98 promotion rates for Marines serving on attach‚' duty to prove their point. Five of seven majors
and 3/4 lieutenant colonels on attach‚' duty were passed over. Even though they weren't all FAOs, this is
bad news for the program.
Fortunately, the overall promotion rates for FAOs weren't as dismal as the attach‚' rate would
suggest. According to manpower's records, 10 of 17 FAOs (59%) were selected for lieutenant colonel
and 8 of 14 (57%) to colonel, compared to the overall board rates of 68% and 39% respectively.
Therefore, based on these numbers (even though manpower insists that the small number of Marine
FAOs considered invalidated the statistics), it is just as easy to conclude that being a FAO is the best way
to make 0-6 as it is to say that the program will get an officer passed over for 0-5.
As a 17 year FAO, and one of the 8 selected for colonel, I do not believe that Marines are getting
passed over because of their service in FAO billets. However, I do believe that this year's promotion
statistics confirm the importance of career other career path, FAOs must manage their assignments to
ensure that they serve in the fleet whenever possible. FAOs must have the discipline to avoid nice-to-have tours and resident schools to preserve time for their FAO tours. The reason for this is not so much
the nature of the FAO tour, as it is the nature of the Marine fitness report.
With today's inflated fitness reports, promotion boards have an extremely difficult task selecting the
most qualified officers. Recognizing that all section "C" comments are inflated, selection board members
use the Value and Distribution (V/D) "truth teller" as a key briefing discriminator. Basically, the briefer
counts the Marines rated above the FAO and compares that number with those rated below to get a ratio.
If the resulting V/D ratio is 1:1.5 or greater, the officer is competitive. If the ratio is 1:1 or less, the officer
is in trouble.
The problem for FAOs is that they are normally rated 1 of 1, neither above or below another Marine
officer, on their FAO fitreps. Since 1 of 1 fitreps do not contribute to the V/D ratio at all, a FAO's FMF
fitreps will therefore have a disproportionate impact. This is why a FAO must seek out opportunities to
compete with other Marine officers and avoid academic, non-observed and 1 of 1 fitness reports
whenever possible. FAOs who perform well in the fleet will improve their V/D ratios and, hopefully,
insulate themselves against a single marginal fitrep. FAOs who have few FMF fitreps risk a having low
V/D ratio, being accused of "hiding from the fleet" and failing for selection.
As always, the program office is available to answer questions on the this or any other FAO issue at
(703) 720-2651.
1997,
Foreign Area Officer Association
Springfield, Virginia
Maintained by LTC Steve
Gotowicki.
http://www.faoa.org