O-3 Blues

Are our captains fleeing the Army at rates that threaten the Army?

I don't know. This is an issue that worries me, but given past complaints that don't seem to be based on anything that appears real to me, I'm skeptical.

Is there a problem with zero-error tolerance in our officer corps? Yes, I think there is. If a mistake wrecks your career, most officers will avoid doing anything that risks a mistake. This breeds caution in too many of our more senior officers, I think. But by all accounts, our leaders at the platoon and company level have been outstanding in their adaptability out in the field during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This has been a small-unit war. It may be that the loss of opportunities to exercise initiative that so many combat officers enjoyed in the field once they moved beyond small unit leadership was too much to endure. Or maybe there is too much of a culture gap between the war Army in the field in Iraq and Afghanistan and the--for all practical purposes--peacetime Army back here at home. I ugess I just don't know if the zero-error tolerance problem is really causing captain attrition.

Yet our senior leadership has adapted to changing circumstances in our campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. I worry that in high intensity warfare that they might not be able to adapt at the faster pace of that type of combat even though they adapted to the slower counter-insurgency pace. But they have adapted so far at war. Maybe I'm wrong to worry about how the senior officers could react to fast-paced conventional operations against a tough enemy force.

This captain loss has been around for a while. And perhaps it really is a problem, now, that threatens the Army. I'm open to being persuaded. I confess I just don't know nearly enough to evaluate this issue. And I haven't read anything by anyone I really trust to evaluate this issue.