New Army policy will force out senior NCOs, improve mid-grade promotions

About 3,000 senior noncommissioned officers will soon leave the Army under new retention rules designed to boost promotion opportunities for mid-grade soldiers.

The policy goes into effect Oct. 1, and it is meant to help the Army keep its best and brightest as the force continues to get smaller.

Army Secretary Eric Fanning signed the directive May 26, bringing the Army’s retention control points for senior NCOs back to the levels they were before the surge in Iraq, essentially shortening the amount of time career soldiers can stay in uniform without getting promoted.

“We grew the Army, and now we have to get smaller, and this is the right way to do it,” said Sergeant Major of the Army Dan Dailey.

During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many soldiers were getting promoted and fast, as they shouldered back-to-back deployments. Now that the Army is being forced to shrink — from a wartime high of 570,000 active Army soldiers to 450,000 by fiscal 2018 — the service must look to “right-size” itself.

“The promotion system inherently had to respond to the environment and the operational needs,” Dailey said. “We have to get back to an Army that is an Army that can project readiness across the globe and prevent and deter war, and be ready to respond at a moment’s notice to respond to war.”

Bringing back the pre-2007 retention control points creates “a lot of benefits,” Dailey said.
It creates upward mobility; increases promotion rates for sergeant first class, master sergeant and sergeant major; and reduces the need for Qualitative Service Program (QSP) boards, he said. The Army, via QSP, screens for NCOs in overstrength specialties or those who have stagnant promotion opportunities, or both.




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“QSP does right-size the Army in regard to numbers, but things like deployability, talent management, they’re harder to determine when you’re looking at files,” Dailey said.

The Qualitative Service Program screens for retention NCOs in overstrength specialties or who have stagnant promotion opportunities, or both.

Under the new rules, the Army is already projecting increases in promotion selection rates for master sergeants and sergeants first class.

The selection rate for this year’s master sergeant board was up 35 percent from last year, according to information from the Army G-1. Personnel experts also anticipate a higher selection rate for the upcoming fiscal 2016 sergeant first class board.

Army Directive 2016-19, “Retaining a Quality Noncommissioned Officer Corps,” changes the tenure limits for sergeants first class, master sergeants and sergeants major, said Sgt. Maj. LeeAnn Connor, the senior Army career counselor. The changes are effective Oct. 1.

Under the new rules, the retention control point for sergeants major is 30 years instead of 32.

It will be 26 years instead of 29 years for master sergeants and 24 years instead of 26 years for sergeants first class.

RCPs for the other grades will remain unchanged.

The changes are designed to help the Army retain the best force even as its numbers get smaller, Connor said.

“It’s not about kicking people out or separating people,” she said. “It retains a quality NCO corps as we reshape our Army, and it supports a healthy, balanced promotion system for all enlisted ranks.”

The Army must flex during a drawdown, Connor said.

“We have a choice to take risk in our senior population, that we know are a known loss, or we take a risk in our mid-grade NCOs, who are the future of the Army,” she said. “What we’re doing is we’re giving [mid-grade NCOs] more potential for promotion, more opportunities for continued service.”

Any retirements triggered by the new retention control points will be staggered over several years, Connor said.

There is a “tiered timeline” for each affected grade, and every soldier will have at least one year from Oct. 1 before they have to retire, Connor said.

“At a minimum, they’ll get a year from October,” she said. “Most people will fall in farther than a year.”

As outlined in the newly signed directive, the Army has created 10 groups of rank and Basic Active Service Date combinations to allow affected soldiers to know what their new retention control point date will be, and it allows the service to stagger the retirements over a three-year period.
Dailey said he is keenly aware that the change in retention control points affects people and their families.

This is why soldiers affected by this change will retire “over a few year period, so those people currently in those RCP zones won’t be immediately affected,” Dailey said.

All affected soldiers are eligible for retirement, he said.

“Although this does affect people, it doesn’t have as great of an effect, you can imagine, if we ask someone to leave with less than 20 years,” Dailey said.

Balancing the Army’s total strength is a “very complex math problem,” Dailey said.

The number of senior NCOs affected by the change in retention control points will fluctuate as people retire or get out on their own, Dailey said.

“That’s why we decided to spread this out,” he said. “We have to tune this as we go. We can raise or lower the numbers based on our [overall] numbers.”

Dailey said he is concerned about the low promotion rates for the senior enlisted ranks.

“I was very concerned about where the downward trend was heading, and this is going to reverse that,” he said. “If you go too low, there’s a risk to the force.”

For example, just 11 percent of the sergeants first class considered were selected for promotion to master sergeant during the most recent board, according to results announced May 10. The previous year’s board selected just 8.4 percent of E-7s for promotion.

Over the last five years, the average annual selection rate for promotion to sergeant major is 13 percent; it’s 23 percent for sergeant first class.
With the new policy, Dailey “wanted to have an immediate effect to stimulate promotion rates,” he said.

“We’re getting smaller. Promotion rates are dropping,” he said. “That will have a long-term effect on the Army.”

Soldiers are “highly qualified, very motivated” and “aggressive seekers of further responsibility,” Dailey said.

“That’s exactly what we train them to be,” he said. “If you don’t provide that [upward mobility], you risk losing talent.”

In 2007, at the height of the war in Iraq, the Army “made a conscious decision to grow the Army based on operational needs,” Dailey said.

“We had to grow the Army. We were at war,” he said. “We had to get bigger quick and build more brigades.”

To meet some of those needs, the Army raised the retention control points for senior NCOs, Dailey said.

Almost 10 years later, “we’re at a point in history now where we’re in the inverse,” Dailey said.

“We were directed to make the Army smaller, which is historically consistent with every post-war era,” he said. “So I asked the team a few months back, let’s do an analysis on how we’re going to draw down the Army. We were focused and committed on doing a talent-based drawdown.”

The goal is to keep qualified soldiers with valuable wartime experience while transitioning others properly, Dailey said.
The Army began using QSP and the Qualitative Management Program (QMP), which screens and processes soldiers who have derogatory information in their personnel files for possible involuntary separation.

“QMP is something we’ve always done to make sure we maintain the standards of those who remain in the profession,” Dailey said.

To manage the Army’s ongoing drawdown, leaders had to look at the future talent pool, Dailey said.

“How are we doing on promotions?” he said. “As the Army gets smaller, the promotion rates will decrease. We have to keep an eye on those things. You’ve got to maintain upward mobility.”

When the Army grew in 2007, “a lot of people” were extended,” Dailey said.

“They’re retirement-eligible, and we need to retain the talent that we have in the mid- and junior-noncommissioned officer ranks. We need to create upward mobility and right-size the Army.”

This upcoming change is “the best course of action to right-size the Army with regards to readiness for the future,” Dailey said.

“It’s the right thing to do. We’ve looked at all the numbers over and over. This was no small decision. This was eight months of running the numbers, running the projections," he said. "I have a responsibility to fill the ranks of soldiers and noncommissioned officers with soldiers who are capable to fight and win in the complex world. We have to invest in the future. It’s a no-brainer. This personally affects people. We know that. But this is what we have to do, and it’s going to take care of our future noncommissioned officers.”