This report describes the professional experiences and other characteristics general and flag officers in the military services tend to share due to each service's approach to personnel management, and potential implications of those approaches.
Increased use of the reserve component has renewed interest in the question of the appropriate number of reserve component general and flag officers. RAND researchers conducted a review of requirements for reserve component general and flag officers.
The authors identify useful steps toward modernization of officer career management in the military, examine constraints on reforms, and propose mitigating strategies and ways forward.
Appointment scrolls are required for initial appointment of officers and for reappointment in a different grade, military service, or component. In some cases, they are necessary for appointment to a special branch or segment of a service's officer corps. The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) processes over 2,500 appointment and promotion packages per year, and many require rework to correct administrative errors and incorrect information. Even without rework, the appointment and promotion scrolling process takes time, affecting the assignment timelines of officers needed in new capacities that require reappointment. The Office of the Under Secretary for Personnel and Readiness seeks to reduce the time needed to process appointments and the incidence of administrative errors, which result in time lost, administrative costs, and processing delays. In this report, researchers evaluate the requirements for creating appointment scrolls, examine the highly varying processes used to meet these requirements, identify problems in the scrolling process that create delays for both the services and OSD, and recommend improvements to increase efficiency. In addition, they examine Title 10 of the U.S. Code and other related statutes to identify changes needed to appoint officers within a military service rather than within a component of a military service. Book jacket.
In 1950, when he commissioned the first edition of The Armed Forces Officer, Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall told its author, S.L.A. Marshall, that "American military officers, of whatever service, should share common ground ethically and morally." In this new edition, the authors methodically explore that common ground, reflecting on the basics of the Profession of Arms, and the officer's special place and distinctive obligations within that profession and especially to the Constitution.