Army to Begin 'Involuntary Classification' Reassignments
By Lisa Burgess
Stars and Stripes
Wednesday 21 July 2004
Arlington, Va. - Some soldiers are about to switch jobs - whether they like it or not.
Under a long-standing authority called "Involuntary Classification," Army officials are about to
exercise their right to tell soldiers they need to take a different job in order to "rebalance the force,"
Army officials said.
Beginning this week, around 140 soldiers will get a letter informing them that they've been
reassigned, complete with a date to attend a school for retraining, along with information about
whether they will need to pull up stakes and move permanently, or just attend the school in temporary
duty status, according to Connie Marche, Chief of the Army's Reclassification Management Branch.
Soldiers should have "at least 90 days notice" of the move.
"But it's not optional," Marche said in a Monday telephone interview. "It's an order."
The involuntary reclassification program is necessary because the Army - like the Navy and Air
Force - has too many people doing Cold-War era jobs that aren't relevant to today's missions.
The Air Force and Navy are using programs that give first-term airmen and sailors in overmanned
jobs a choice of changing to an area where they is a shortage of personnel when it's time to re-enlist. If
the members won't do it, they often aren't allowed to re-up.
But those two services can afford to lose members who don't want to change jobs. The Air Force
needs to cut 22,000 airmen by Sept. 31, 2005, because it is beyond its authorized end strength, while
the Navy intends to reduce its size by 7,900 by the same time, in order to fund future technologies.
The Army, on the other hand, has primary responsibility for missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
With no end to either in sight, the Army can't spare a soul. In fact, Congress has told the Army it
needs to add another 30,000 soldiers over the next couple of years.
Nevertheless, the Army has tried the volunteer route, too.
The Army has not exercised its legal right to tell people to switch without giving them a 90-day
volunteer period first since the early 1980s, Marche said.
If enough soldiers don't take the bait, only then has the Army resorted to involuntary assignments.
The problem, Marche said, "is that we've never been too successful with ... [asking] for volunteers
... We all get comfortable with what we do and don't want to make changes."
The initial numbers of involuntary reclassifications are small because the Army needs to make its
changes in "low-density" MOSs, where you probably have fewer than 1,000 soldiers," Marche said.
Nor are the involuntary reclassification soldiers being asked to switch their basic career fields, just
their sub-specialties within that field.
"We're only going to do this if you're going to be in the same career field, the logic being it won't be
such a drastic change" for soldiers, Marche said.
In those MOSs, "if you have just one more soldier, you can be over strength," she said.
But the involuntary reclassification program will continue, and not always on a small scale, Marche
said.
By the end of the year, as many as 700 intelligence soldiers may be ask to shuffle jobs, although
the plans have yet to be finalized, she said.
Moving from an over-stressed field to an under-strength job has its advantages, even if it's not by
choice, Marche pointed out.
Overfilled MOSs "have stagnant promotion opportunities ... and [a lack] of career-enhancing
assignments," which is not the case at all in undermanned areas, she said.
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In Anbar Province, Change of Course Rankles Many U.S. Soldiers
By Tom Lasseter
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Tuesday 20 July 2004
Ramadi - Scaling back the military and political goals in Iraq's Anbar province has hurt the morale of
many U.S. soldiers stationed there, and some have begun to question openly not only their mission,
but also the leaders who sent them to Iraq in the first place.
It's not just buck privates. Several sergeants - the backbone of the enlisted military - said they felt
the same way.
Instead of neighborhood patrols, most of the convoys that leave the bases in Ramadi these days
are on their way to guard main roads and the government building downtown. There are also
observations posts throughout the city, where soldiers sit and watch, waiting for something to happen.
To carry food from one base to the next in Ramadi, a matter of a few blocks, takes four vehicles -
armored Humvees and trucks - all with .50-caliber machine guns mounted on top.
"I'm tired of every time we go out the gate, someone tries to kill me," said Staff Sgt. Sheldon Rivers.
Asked whether most Americans have an idea of how bad the security situation is in Ramadi, Sgt.
Maj. John Jones said recently that he was annoyed every time he heard analysis about Iraq from
politicians and journalists on TV.
"When people come over here, where do they stay? In the Green Zone. I call it the Safe Zone," he
said, referring to the secure area in Baghdad where the government is housed. "They miss the full
picture."
What is the full picture?
"It's just like the West," Jones said, "when we were trying to settle it with the Indians."
He wouldn't elaborate.
"It means that we have to kill all of them," said a captain standing nearby, half-joking.
Jones just shrugged.
Sgt. 1st Class James Tilley was on patrol on the road outside Ramadi later that afternoon, sitting in
his Humvee for an hour or two in one spot - sweating profusely in the 105-degree heat - before moving
a few hundred yards down the road to another place.
The patrol is designed to ward off insurgents from trying to put bombs in the road.
"A lot of times, I look at this place and wonder what have we really done. ... When we first got here,
we all wanted to change it and make it better, but now I don't give a shit," he said. "What the hell am I
here for?"
Staff Sgt. A.J. Dean was on the same stretch of road a couple of nights later, and his tone was
similar to Tilley's.
"I don't have any idea of what we're trying to do out here. I don't know what the (goal) is, and I don't
think our commanders do either," he said. "I feel deceived personally. I don't trust anything (Defense
Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld says, and I think (Deputy Defense Secretary Paul) Wolfowitz is even
dirtier."
Dean motioned down the road to a bridge.
About two weeks ago, he said, a buddy of his was on a patrol that stopped to look at a possible
bomb. As he walked around the device, it detonated, sending shrapnel through one side of his face
and out the other. The soldier, whose arm also was mangled in the explosion, survived, but the word
came down that the bridge had become off-limits for patrols.
"To me it's a month and a half of patrols wasted because we've given them back that bridge," Dean
said. "It makes me question the whole mission." |
