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Junior officers to face more career hurdles

About 1,650 lieutenants vying for promotion to captain in February will face the possibility of separation from active-duty service under a new policy that could affect thousands of junior officers in years to come.

The Career Designation Program, approved recently by Commandant Gen. James Conway and Manpower & Reserve Affairs, will push dozens of Marines out of active-duty service in 2010. Hundreds of junior officers will face a similar fate annually in the future, as career options tighten with the end of the Corps’ growth to 202,000 active-duty Marines, said Lt. Gen. Ronald Coleman, the departing deputy commandant for manpower.

Marines who do not receive a regular commission will include some selected for promotion to captain by the next board, putting an additional hurdle in the path of junior officers looking to make the Corps a career. Those who are not selected for a regular commission can apply for open spaces within Reserve units or return to civilian life as a member of the Individual Ready Reserve, Coleman said in an Oct. 27 interview.

“To pick a number, we’re going to say, ‘OK, we need 80 percent [of Marines selected for captain] to stay,’ ” Coleman said hypothetically, outlining how the program will work in future years. “The 20 percent will be [processed] out, and that 20 percent can go into the reserves, or not.”

For Marines who became officers in 2008 and early 2009, while the Corps was offering $4,000 accession bonuses and $30,000 to pay back college loans, the change of direction may be jarring. But Marine officials said junior officers should consider history.

Until 1997, the Corps used a competitive officer augmentation program that assured regular commissions only to lieutenants who attended the Naval Academy or a Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps program. Other lieutenants were awarded a Reserve commission and had to compete for a handful of active-duty slots each year, with selection rates as low as 10 percent in some military occupational specialties, Coleman said.

Career prospects aren’t expected to be that tight under career designation next year, but in later years, the percentage of regular commissions will drop, said Lt. Col. Doug Feiring, an officer in the plans and policies section at manpower. Officials expect that about 95 percent of Marines who are assessed in February will get a regular commission next year, with about 70 percent to 75 percent receiving one in future years once the Corps reaches a steady state.

How it will work

The Corps will introduce the program as the 2011 Captains Selection Board convenes Feb. 2. Marines will be chosen in five competitive categories: combat arms, combat service support, aviation, aviation service support and law, Feiring said.

Captains will compete for regular commissions within their own category, along side Naval Academy alumni and NROTC graduates, and there will be no forced lateral moves to other specialties, an unpopular reality of the former officer augmentation program. The Corps also will continue to use an existing, separate program that allows junior officers to take a voluntary lateral move before they face the captains board, if they think it will help their career.

“What we want to do is say, ‘You can stay in the Marine Corps if you want to do what we need you to,’ ” Coleman said. “Some people may say they just want to be a Marine, and that’s good. But I personally didn’t like the idea of forcing [a Marine] to do something else. That’s traumatic, I think.”

Conway has directed manpower officials to make competition the strongest among the combat arms, combat service support and aviation service support categories, said Feiring, who declined to release projected percentages for the categories. Marines bumped to the Reserve can seek reinstatement, but the Corps typically selects only a handful of captains to return to active duty each year.

Any Marine who is in zone for captain and has 540 days of active-duty service time accrued following The Basic School and MOS training automatically will be flagged for career designation review, with a board reviewing each Marine’s fitness reports after they are reviewed for promotion, Marine officials said. An additional board will convene later this year to review officers who did not have 540 days accrued by February.

All Marines who do not get a regular commission will be reviewed by the Corps twice each year for possible reinstitution to active duty until they reach their end-of-active service date.

The career designation program is considered a potential boon for the Reserve, which has experienced a perennial shortage of field-grade officers since doing away with the augmentation program, Feiring said. Statistics were not available, but Coleman estimates career designation could result in several hundred new officers joining Reserve units each year.

Another caveat to the program: the Corps’ 23 commanding generals will have the ability to select one Marine each year to bypass the career designation board.