CBO: Expanding Warrant Officer Ranks Could Alleviate Military Personnel
Concerns
The Defense Department could improve its recruitment and retention of
military personnel by expanding its warrant officer ranks, the Congressional
Budget Office concludes in a recent study.
"Redefining the roles of warrant officers, and increasing their numbers,
could be one of the less radical ways to introduce greater flexibility into
the personnel management system," the Feb. 19 study states.
At the end of 1999, warrant officers -- characterized as the military's
technical specialists -- made up a mere 1.4 percent of active-duty Army,
Navy and Marine Corps forces. In terms of rank, they fall between enlisted
personnel and commissioned officers, and under current policy are selected
from the enlisted ranks depending on their occupational specialties.
In the report, CBO suggests expanding the warrant officer ranks by
converting top-level enlisted positions into warrant officers, transferring
more occupational specialists to warrant officers and changing promotion
practices to focus on technical competence rather than the completion of a
certain set of assignments.
While warrant officers have about 30 percent higher pay and greater status
than top enlisted personnel, their rank is still "undoubtedly the least
studied and least understood of the three main groups of military
personnel," CBO said. |
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Careful what you wish for ... things could get very interesting over the
next 4-5 years for the warrant corps. If it weren't for insider trading
rules, we should buy stock in USCG CWO Inc.
---Dr. Stephen Wehrenberg--- |
But the flexibility in the management of warrant officers has sparked
interest among policymakers seeking ways to attract and retain high-quality,
skilled individuals, the study states. Changes in the warrant officer ranks
could potentially move the military away from what defense officials have
criticized as the "one-size-fits-all" approach to personnel management, CBO
said.
An expansion in the "high-tech specialist" rank could also provide
incentives "for recruits who aspire to more than just a high school
education, for experienced service members with skills that are valuable to
the military, and for very capable people whose superior abilities may not
be adequately recognized in the enlisted ranks."
Seeking strategies that are "feasible within current law," the CBO study
highlights three possible approaches to using the warrant officer ranks to
improve military recruitment and retention.
The first is an "early-select model," which would allow certain people to
enter the military as warrant officers if they have relevant skills from
two-year colleges or technical schools.
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This program would transfer more occupational areas from enlisted
ranks to the warrant officer ranks, including specialties such as nuclear propulsion,
electronics repair and, possibly, intelligence and linguistics.
A second possibility, called a "midcareer approach," is geared toward
improving retention in occupational areas that require intensive training
and experience. This program would offer expanded warrant service
opportunities to enlisted personnel who must decide in their eighth year of
service whether to continue a military career.
"Depending on the degree of improvement in retention that was sought,
warrant officer positions might completely replace senior enlisted positions
in the selected occupations . . . or the replacement could be only partial,"
CBO said.
And in a third approach, aimed primarily at retaining the best of the
enlisted ranks, warrant officers could be selected based on a broader range
of tasks to "appeal both to people who otherwise would rise through the
enlisted ranks so rapidly that a long military career would have nothing
further to offer, and to people without strong leadership ability whose
technical skills would nonetheless earn them high salaries in the private
sector."
Most of the study is devoted to an analysis of current policies and
practices governing warrant officers, which will provide guidance for
policymakers and analysts who are considering alternatives for expanding
warrant officers' roles |
