http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/11/AR2006021101240.htmlArmy Offers Incentives to Try to Retain Officers
Data Project Shortage of 3,500 Experienced Leaders Mostly in Active-Duty Units
The Army, forecasting a shortage of several thousand officers as wartime demands grow, is boosting the incentives it offers to try to hold on to experienced commanders.
By 2007, the Army projects it will be short 3,500 active-duty officers, primarily captains and majors -- positions that are needed for new combat brigades and other units that are critical to plans for expanding and reorganizing the nation's ground forces. One factor in the shortfall is that the Army took in too few officers in the 1990s, personnel officials say.
The need for officers is expected to be acute in career fields strained by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as transportation, aviation, Special Forces and military intelligence, Army personnel statistics show. Demand is also high for skills concentrated in Army Reserve units heavily deployed in Iraq, such as military police and civil affairs. The Army projects it will fall 7 percent short of the number of active-duty officers it needs with ranks from captain to colonel, with shortages rising to 15 to 50 percent for dozens of specific ranks and skills.
In another sign of the pressing demand for officers, the Army is recalling hundreds of officers who had returned to civilian life but who are still subject to call-up, sparking protests from some who have already served in Iraq and now face more than a year of extended war-zone duty.