Soldiers and Marines have had the most deployments, seen the toughest fighting and suffered the greatest number of U.S. casualties in recent wars.As in most post-war periods, ground forces will see their career opportunities tighten faster than other service branches. The Army plans to shed 60,000 troops, or 11 percent of its active force, to reach 490,000 by fiscal 2017.The Marine Corps will cut 20,000 troops — 5,000 a year over the next four years — to reach an end-strength of 182,100.Both services say they are determined to sustain force quality and to keep a proper mix of job skills and leadership experience to meet future requirements through the drawdown.“Everything we do through the next five years is going to be about making the Army a quality force,” said Al Eggerton, deputy chief of the officer division for the directorate of military personnel management.“We won’t just be opening the door and allowing everyone to walk,” he said.  “We want to use precision, care and compassion.”Army leaders haven’t reached final decisions yet on grade structure or skill mix for the post-drawdown force.Eggerton can’t  yet say how force cuts will impact specific groups of officers or enlisted.“That’s a point of contention for field officers who would love to know exactly how we’re going to do this,” Eggerton said. “But at this point we’ve got the framework but not the decisions.”When final decisions are made, perhaps soon after the election, “we will begin to look at each year group of the drawdown period and, by grades and skills, analyze our populations to determine where we need to pare and where there are shortages or gaps we have to fill,” he said.In the post-Cold War drawdown of the 1990s, the Army cut recruiting too deeply, creating hollow areas that later impacted the career force.Recruiting this time is falling more modestly.From 2004 to 2010, the Army was expanding, and officer promotion selection rates “were allowed to go fairly high because we needed to keep all the fully-qualified people we had,” Eggerton said.In the last two years, rates moved “back toward what was the norm prior to our large expansion,” he said.Competition for promotion is rising. Some officers in overmanned skills, if not selected for promotion on a first pass, are being invited to leave service early through waivers of remaining service obligations. Other officers are being offered “affiliation bonuses” to leave active duty for reserve components.The Army also has asked for authority to separate some officers involuntarily, anticipating that voluntary enticements and the usual promotion board process of separating officers who twice fail selection to the next highest rank won’t get the Army to its drawdown targets fast enough.Eggerton can’t yet say how many officers might be forced out if Congress grants that authority.For the enlisted force, the goal is “precision retention” of careerists.Commanders will be able to deny even “enlisted members who are fully qualified the opportunity to re-up their contracts” based on service needs.The key force-shaping tool is the enlisted Qualitative Service Program, introduced earlier this year to identify non-commissioned officers for involuntary early separation from active duty.  A series of “centralized enlisted selection board processes,” the program will allow tailoring of the force based on how well leaders have developed.Gen. James Amos, Marine Corps commandant, said the Corps plans no involuntary “reductions in force” that would cut service contracts short.That would not be “keeping faith” with Marines “who are bred on loyalty and faithfulness” and who have put their lives on the line again and again, Amos said.Still, competition to reenlist, or for officers to extend service obligations, “will be a little more fierce” as the size of the Corps falls, he said.Like the Army, the Marine Corps has slowed recruiting.  During the Iraq war, its accession target hit 35,000 some years, Amos said, up from the normal 30,000.In fiscal 2012, the Corps signed only 28,500 recruits.Meanwhile, first-term reenlistments have become “much more competitive,” Amos said.Combat experience alone is no guarantee a Marine will be retained because 70 percent of current Marines have seen combat.Top-performing Marines who haven’t seen combat shouldn’t feel discouraged about their career prospects.The world “isn’t getting any nicer out there,” Amos said, so Afghanistan likely won’t be the last chance this generation of Marines has to fight for their country.A “superstar” Marine who hasn’t seen combat will still compete favorably for promotion with a combat-experienced Marine who “is something less than a superstar player,” Amos said.“Our system is designed, promotion-wise, actually to [find] the best Marine.“Combat is a pretty good filter for the performance of a Marine under stress But over time we have gone through periods of peace.  And our bright young Marines have always floated to the surface in preparation for future combat.”—To comment, send e-mail to milupdate@aol.com or write to Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, VA, 20120-1111

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