A CBO Paper. The Drawdown of the Military Officer Corps
Abstract
The Department of Defense (DoD) reduced the number of officers on active duty by about 23 percent between 1989 and 1996 as part of the post-Cold War drawdown in U.S. military forces. To achieve that cut, DoD officials restricted the number of new officers entering the force each year, encouraged officers who were already in the force to leave voluntarily, and forced some officers to leave active duty involuntarily. In their efforts to balance those three approaches, senior personnel managers faced several challenges. One was to bring in enough new officers, or accessions, each year to ensure that the department would have a vigorous, combat-ready force in the future. Another was to protect, to the extent possible, officers already in the force who had built careers and financial plans based on the expectation of continued military service. Still another challenge was to distribute the cuts in a way that maintained a desirable occupational mix within the officer corps. This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) paper examines how DoD accomplished that drawdown. It also looks at the effects the drawdown had on the composition of the officer corps in terms of occupation, rank (pay grade), and years of service. The analysis covers 1989 through 1996, the period during which most of the post-Cold War drawdown was completed. The number of officers on active duty and their composition are determined by the interactions of demand (as reflected in the services' stated personnel requirements) and supply (the available inventory of officers). On the demand side, national security strategy and available defense budgets shape the number and type of units in the U.S. military. The individual services, in turn, determine their personnel requirements for each type of unit. Together, those requirements define a "force profile" with specific numbers of officers in various pay grades and occupational skills.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 01, 1999
- Accession Number
- ADA447672
Entities
Organizations
- Congressional Budget Office