Deployment Tempo and Captain Attrition

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a considerable increase in the attrition rate of Captain-level junior officers from the United States Army. Because the Army slowly develops its leaders from the ground up, this loss of junior officers becomes critical in reducing the number of future commanders and leaders available to guide the Army in future decades. Following the Persian Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm), an Army-wide draw down lasting until 1995 deliberately decreased the size of the Army without regard to rank. However, from 1996 until 2001, the number of Captain-level junior officers voluntarily leaving the Army did not stabilize. In fact, the attrition rate for these officers doubled during the period from the end of the drawdown until the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks (Vest, 2003). Following the attacks on the Pentagon and New York City, the attrition rate for Captain-level junior officers decreased considerably due to programs enacted by the Army to prevent the loss of personnel during the ongoing Global War on Terrorism.

While the Army was deliberately reducing its total size, the overall number of deployments outside the continental United States continually rose (Rand, 2003). During the 1990s, the number of worldwide operations requiring the deployment of Army personnel quadrupled, representing a 400 percent increase in the Army’s deployment tempo, known as DEPTEMPO (Carter, 2002). With ongoing operations in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Iraq, Africa, the Philippines, and other world hot spots, the number of deployments requiring the stationing of Army personnel overseas can be expected to continue at least at the current rate. Just in the past year, more than 325,000 troops were deployed to over 120 different countries around the world (Army Posture Statement, 2004). Between fiscal year 1989 and fiscal year 2000, the average frequency of contingency deployments rose from once every four years to once every fourteen weeks (Army Financial Statement, 2000). Indeed, even the Army has acknowledged that “Sustained operations and deployments will be the norm for our Army forces supporting multiple and simultaneous shaping and stability operations around the globe” (Army Posture Statement, 2004).

A number of recent studies conducted by the Army and several outside experts revealed that many junior officers are complaining about unpredictable assignments and repeated deployments away from home as important factors driving them away from military service (Suro, 2000). While Army officials acknowledge that there is a problem retaining junior officers, and particularly captains, they do not link the increasing DEPTEMPO with the increasing rate of captain-level, junior officer attrition. In fact, the Army’s senior leadership points to multiple reasons for captain attrition, including a lack of trust in senior leaders, long working hours, eroding benefits, a lack of input into the assignment process, frequent duty station changes, deployment tempo, and a lack of control over the promotion process and career progression (Allbritton, 2003).

All of the studies conducted by the Army and outside experts reveal multiple reasons for job dissatisfaction and, ultimately, captain-level junior officer attrition. All of these studies include frequent and lengthy deployments as a reason for exiting the Army, but mention DEPTEMPO as only one of a multitude of factors contributing to junior officer attrition. This paper focuses on the relationship between the Army’s DEPTEMPO and the attrition rate for captain-level junior officers because there may exist a causal relationship that demonstrates that captains leave the Army in greater numbers as the Army’s world-wide operational deployment tempo increases. Based upon multiple Army and independent studies and individual research, this paper hypothesizes that the attrition rate for Army captains will be higher or lower depending upon the Army’s deployment tempo. Therefore, the research question this paper poses is this: Is there a positive relationship between the increase in the Army’s deployment tempo (DEPTEMPO) and the increase in the attrition rate of captain-level junior officers in the post-Cold War environment?

Literature Review

In the summer of 2000, the Chief of Staff of the United States Army commissioned a study to determine the chief concerns of Army officers. The Army Training and Leader Development Panel Officer Study used surveys, focus groups, and personal interviews with 13,500 Army officers worldwide.

The responses of the officers and spouses involved in the study revealed that many factors contributed to an overall dissatisfaction with Army life, including inadequate leader development, micromanagement, the Officer Evaluation System, and an undisciplined operational pace.

Officers and spouses involved did not focus exclusively on the Army’s deployment tempo, but listed too many short-term, back-to-back deployments and exercises as a major reason for officer attrition. They added that the Army as a whole was trying to do too much with too little and that senior leader attitudes contributed to the desire of many to leave Army life for the civilian sector.

This study did an excellent job of researching the reasons why officers and their spouses were unhappy with Army life and were choosing to leave for employment in the private sector. It supports this paper’s hypothesis to an extent, in that it identifies multiple deployments as a continuing problem and as a major reason for officer attrition. A disadvantage to this study is that it does not reveal the rank structure of those officers involved in the study. Therefore, it is unclear how many officers are in the target group of captain-level junior officers. Instead, the study is a blanket panel designed to find out what factors are making officers in general unhappy with Army life. This study is typical of a number of Army commissioned studies that focus on multiple factors contributing to officer attrition, all of which cite the deployment tempo as a major factor, but none of which focus on it or its impact on officer career decisions.

The Chief of Staff of the Army also commissioned a study called the Chief of Staff of the Army’s Leadership Survey. The study involved 760 mid-career officers (majors and lieutenant colonels) attending a resident course at the Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

This study asked the surveyed officers about junior officer attrition and the effects of multiple deployments. Officers responded that they felt junior officers were leaving the Army for many reasons, including a lack of empowerment, a zero-defect mentality, micromanagement, the Officer Evaluation System, a lack of command opportunities and command time, and a continuing erosion of benefits. The study also found that the officers surveyed did not see multiple deployments as a problem and that these officers felt that deployments and an increased deployment tempo were okay if they felt that the mission was justified and worth whatever cost might be involved. Overall, this was a valuable study in that it revealed problems that the Army needs to be concerned with, particularly problems with its leadership. However, the chief disadvantage of this study is that it focuses on the wrong group! In order to discover why junior officers are leaving the Army at an increasing rate each year, it is necessary to survey junior officers. Conducting a study of officers outside of the target group results in an opinionated finding from a group not involved in the problem being studied.

The Rand Corporation conducted a study, at the request of the Army, to determine how the increase in the number of deployments during the 1990s was affecting the retention of military personnel. Rand analyzed officer personnel records to see if there was a link between deployments and retention of officer personnel.

The study determined that the effects of deployment on officers were typically positive with only a few instances of negative impact. The study went further to state that non-hostile deployments had a more positive effect than hostile deployments, and that overall the effects of deployment depended on the type of duty involved and the length of the deployment. In other words, officers typically liked deploying for non-hostile duty such as peacekeeping or humanitarian missions. These officers were affected less positively when the deployments involved hostile action, or when the length of the deployment grew excessively long.

This study is useful in that it focuses on the relationship between the Army’s deployment tempo and officer attrition. However, it is unclear how Rand measured the effect of deployments on attrition without the use of surveys, interviews, or focus groups to measure attitudes and opinions that could establish a causal relationship between deployment tempo and attrition. Focusing on officer records provides data on the lengths and types of deployments for a particular sample of officers, but it does not determine if those officers then choose to leave the Army because of the deployments. As in the study by the Army Training and Leader Development Panel, the target group is unclear. It is unknown if the officer records analyzed belonged to lieutenants, captains, majors, etc.

Dr. Mike Matthews conducted a study at Fort Benning, Georgia called “Why are Captains Leaving the Army?” The study, conducted in 1999, consisted of interviews with thirty-three captains in which a combination of open-ended and structured questions were asked in an attempt to find out why junior officers at the captain-level were leaving the Army at an increasing rate each year.

The study listed, just as previous studies did, multiple reasons for the junior officer exodus: operational tempo, micromanagement, overall job satisfaction, and an increased deployment tempo directly tied to an increase in peacekeeping and contingency missions.

This study offered more detail than previous studies in that if provided the demographics of the officers who participated in the interviews. What the study found was that the demographics of those leaving the Army were virtually identical to the demographics of those officers staying in the Army. All of the officers interviewed had just over five years service in the Army and seventy-five percent were married. What this study revealed was that by and large the vast majority of the officers leaving the Army were graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Again, this study did not focus exclusively on the Army’s deployment tempo as a direct cause of junior officer attrition, but sought through interviews to find out why captains were choosing to leave the Army. No weights were assigned to particular reasons, so there is no way to know which factor contributed most heavily to an officer’s decision to leave the Army. The study confirms that there is a problem with captain attrition rates, but further analysis is needed to determine if the deployment tempo of the Army is a major factor.

In January 2003, a former Army officer named Mark Lewis submitted a paper entitled “Army Transformation, the Exodus, and the Cycle of Decay” to the First Annual Graduate Student Conference on Security. The paper focused on junior officer attrition and what the Army was doing to address the problem.

Mr. Lewis’ paper cites multiple studies, including a 1997 Leadership and Professional Assessment from the Center for Army Leadership, a 1999 Army Research Institute survey, a 1999 Institute for Defense Analyses study, the 2000 Army Chief of Staff’s Leadership Survey at the Command and General Staff College, a 2000 Army Research Institute’s Survey of Officer Careers, a 2000 Center for Strategic and International Studies study on military culture, a 2000 United States Army War College Strategic Studies Institute study, and a 2001 report by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies that all confirm there is an increasing problem with captain attrition that began following the Army draw down and continued until the launching of the Global War on Terrorism.

Most of these studies focus on problems with Army culture and Army leadership and all conclude that junior Army officers are unhappy with their jobs. None of these studies focuses on the correlation between the Army’s deployment tempo and the rate of attrition of Army captains. Mr. Lewis’ paper cites multiple studies, but does not cover them in detail. He briefly touches on the reasons for captain attrition but his main emphasis is on the actions taken by the Army to make up for the shortage of captains, actions which include bringing more lieutenants onto active duty each year and then promoting those lieutenants to captain at a faster rate.

This paper is helpful in that it provides data from multiple studies in one place. However, the focus of the paper is on what the Army is doing to fix its shortage of captains and provides little useful data for establishing a causal relationship between the Army’s deployment tempo and the attrition rate of captains.

Phillip Carter penned an essay for the Soldiers for the Truth organization (SFTT) called “Exodus: Why Junior Officers are Leaving the Military.” As stated in the title, the essay focused on the reasons why junior officers, and in particular captains, were making the decision to voluntarily separate from Army service. The essay focuses on the opinions of junior officers, a group to which the author of the essay belongs, and reveals multiple reasons for junior officer attrition, including time away from home, uncertainty about career progression, a lack of performance incentives, and private sector opportunities.

Mr. Carter dismisses the Army’s deployment tempo as a contributing factor in officer attrition, although he acknowledges that multiple deployments place a strain on soldiers and their families. Instead, Mr. Carter cites money as the primary motivation for the junior officer exodus. Mr. Carter’s essay is extremely slanted toward a preconceived idea, that better monetary opportunities in the private sector are responsible for the officer exodus. He asserts that the post-Persian Gulf War Army draw down flooded the civilian sector with junior officers who possessed valuable management experience and whetted the business community’s appetite for these officers. Overall, the essay offers virtually no empirical evidence for the increased rate of junior officer attrition and uses the author’s personal conversations with his peers as evidence that private sector opportunities are causing the exodus of captains from the Army.

At the request of the Department of Defense, John C. F. Tillson of the Institute for Defense Analyses conducted a study to identify approaches to resolving problems caused by the increased tempo of operations. The study conducted 487 focus group discussions with 5,887 soldiers divided into five categories: junior enlisted soldiers, junior sergeants, senior sergeants, junior officers, and senior officers.

The study broke up the term “tempo” into three categories: DEPTEMPO (the rate of deployment), PERSTEMPO (personnel moves such as reassignments), and OPTEMPO (the rate of activities or missions at home station). The study acknowledged that a high DEPTEMPO was required to meet national security requirements established by the President, and that service members who experienced multiple deployments perceived tempo negatively. However, the study determined that DEPTEMPO itself was not a major concern for the Department of Defense, but that the combination of DEPTEMPO, PERSTEMPO, and OPTEMPO created an operational pace that was a major concern. The study effectively used Conflict Resolution Diagrams to find solutions to the tempo for each category and concluded that a reduction in PERSTEMPO and OPTEMPO would lessen the effect of DEPTEMPO on service members.

The study does an excellent job of examining DEPTEMPO and concludes that the Department of Defense cannot reduce the rate of deployments and still meet the national security requirements of the President. However, the study does not focus exclusively on DEPTEMPO but looks to other aspects of military life, like constant relocations and major training exercises, that cause extended working hours and reduce personal and family time. A major draw back to the study is that it does not break down the results of each category of the focus groups. One cannot tell from the data presented if junior officers cite DEPTEMPO as the primary reason for leaving the military.

Research Design

This is a comparative study in that it will compare the Army’s deployment tempo with the rate of officer attrition for each year beginning with 1996 and ending with 2001. An attempt was made to gather data on officer attrition for the United States Air Force and for the United States Navy (including the United States Marine Corps) without success. There were no data available in the public forum and data contained on official Air Force and Navy Internet web sites was restricted to members of those respective branches of service. If time were an available resource, a request could be submitted to the Air Force and to the Navy under the Freedom of Information Act.

This effort will conduct a quantitative comparison of calendar years from the end of the Army draw down (1996) to the beginning of the Global War on Terrorism (2001). The comparison of calendar years will be based on the variable of DEPTEMPO, defined as the number of Army personnel deployed on contingency missions during that calendar year.
To measure the dependent variable (captain attrition rate), this paper will use data from various studies conducted by the Army and independent panels, data from official Army internet sites, and Army reports to the President and Congress that all demonstrate a steady increase in the attrition rate of captain-level junior officers between 1996 (the end of the Army drawdown) and 2001 (the beginning of the Global War on Terrorism).

Data will be presented for other officer ranks, including lieutenants (the rank immediately preceding captains), majors (the rank immediately following captains), lieutenant colonels (the rank immediately following majors), and colonels (the rank immediately following lieutenant colonels). This data will be presented for comparison and to determine if there is an increase in officer attrition at all ranks (minus generals) as a result of an increased deployment tempo or if the increase in attrition is limited to captain-level officers.

The independent variable (DEPTEMPO) will be measured by looking at the numbers of deployed troops for each year beginning with 1996 and ending with 2001. This data is contained in an official study commissioned by the Department of Defense and conducted by the Rand Corporation, and in official Army reports available on the Internet. For purposes of this study, DEPTEMPO is defined as the number of Army personnel deployed around the world on contingency operations during a given calendar year.

The data gathered for officer attrition rates and DEPTEMPO will be presented in tabular format that will either support the hypothesis that a causal relationship exists between the independent and dependent variables or fail to support such a causal relationship.

Data Gathering and Analytical Techniques

The dependent variable (captain attrition rate) is defined as the percentage of captain-level Army officers that voluntarily choose to leave military service. The data on captain-level junior officer attrition was gathered from a briefing by Mark Lewis, presented to the Security for a New Century Discussion Group of the 107th Congress, on August 30, 2001. Mr. Lewis gathered this data from the Army’s official Personnel Management division web site. The data was contained in an Army briefing prepared by the Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, Lieutenant General Timothy J. Maude.

The independent variable (DEPTEMPO) is defined as the number of Army personnel deployed away from home station on contingency operations during a given calendar year. The data on the Army’s deployment tempo was gathered from a study conducted by the Rand Corporation’s Arroyo Center in 2003. The title of the study is “The Global War on Terrorism: An Early Look at Implications for the Army,” and was authored by Mr. Bruce Nardulli. The data in the study was presumably gathered from official deployment statistics provided by the Army for the study.

As previously mentioned, the data gathered for officer attrition rates and for deployment tempo will be presented in tabular format that will facilitate a comparison of the independent and dependent variables for the calendar years from 1996 through 2001. For a given calendar year, the level of DEPTEMPO (number of Army personnel deployed) will be compared to the attrition rate for captain-level officers for that year. If the stated hypothesis is correct, an increase in the number of deployed Army personnel should result in a corresponding increase in the percentage of captain-level junior officers who voluntarily choose to leave military service.

For a quantitative comparative study, tabular data that graphically depicts the two variables is the most suitable technique for data analysis. However, there are some possible problems with the data collection methods contained in this paper.
A major consideration for this study is the fact that much of the data is from official Army sources, and as such may be biased to present a particular view that the Army wishes to portray. Additionally, I have relied upon online information sources for all of the data that I have collected. I have been unable to locate any published books that analyze the data or seek to explain the effects of a high DEPTEMPO upon attrition rates.

So far, I have been able to locate statistical data on deployment tempo and attrition rates for each of the years from 1996 to 2001. With the launching of the Global War on Terrorism, the Army implemented a “Stop Loss” program that effectively stopped voluntary attrition for Army officers in order to provide the Army the ability to meet manning requirements for ongoing contingency operations. There is no concrete way to make a valid estimation of potential officer attrition rates for years beyond 2001 because the “Stop Loss” program only allows involuntary separations (physically unfit, overweight, bad conduct, etc.).

Data Presentation and Analysis

The following table depicts Army officer attrition rates for the calendar years from 1996 through 2001. The table contains officer ranks from lieutenant through colonel and depicts the percentage of officers at those ranks who voluntarily chose to leave military service during a given calendar year. Entries of “N/A” indicate that data for that particular cell of the table was not available.

Officer Attrition Rates by Rank and by Calendar Year

1996-2001 (% leaving Army service)

Rank 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
Lieutenant 6.3 4.3 4.7 6.1 N/A N/A
Captain 7.2 8.4 10.6 10.9 11.6 10.9
Major 5.5 4.2 3.5 4.1 3.3 N/A
Lieutenant Colonel 9.9 11.1 12.5 13.3 13.2 N/A
Colonel 13.6 16.3 18.7 20.0 19.8 N/A
Source: Briefing Presented to the Security for a New Century Discussion Group of the 107th Congress, compiled by Mark Lewis, [Accessed June 16, 2004.

The table indicates an attrition rate for captain-level Army officers that steadily increases from 1996 through 2000, and then dips slightly in 2001. Although there is a slight dip in the captain-level attrition rate for the year 2001, the attrition rate remained higher than pre-draw down attrition rate levels. During the Army-wide draw down from 1989 through 1995, the Army had an average captain-level junior officer attrition rate of 6.5 percent, and that was during a period when the Army was trying to entice its personnel to leave military service to meet downsizing requirements (Lewis, 2003). Additionally, it is still well above the 7.5 percent attrition rate that most military leaders find manageable (Carter, 2002).

The below table depicts the number of Army personnel deployed away from home station in support of contingency
operations for the calendar years from 1996 through 2001.

Year DEPTEMPO

1996 30,000
1997 12,000
1998 14,000
1999 13,000
2000 15,000
2001 12,000
Source: The Global War on Terrorism: An Early Look at Implications for the Army, compiled by Bruce Nardulli of the Rand Corporation, [Accessed June 16, 2004.

This table depicts that While the Army had 30,000 personnel deployed during 1996, that number was cut by half or more in the subsequent years through 2001. The year 1996 featured the end of the major deployment in Bosnia and a drastic reduction in Army forces in that region. Subsequent years were subject to an increased number of operational deployments, as is indicated in various studies, but these deployments appear to be smaller in size. The number of deployed Army personnel between 1997 and 2001 remained relatively constant.

To review, examination of the first table reveals that lieutenant-level officer attrition rates fluctuated from between 4.3 percent in 1997 and 6.3 percent in 1996, with the years 1998 and 1999 somewhere in between. Lieutenants were not a focus of this study because typical active duty service obligations (ADSOs) generally keep lieutenants on active military for four years, at which time they are promoted to captain. Therefore, increases or decreases in lieutenant-level attrition rates would not support or refute this paper’s stated hypothesis.

The table further reveals that captain-level officer attrition rates steadily increased from 7.2 percent to 11.6 percent between the years 1996 and 2000. The captain-level attrition rate then dipped in the year 2001 to 10.9 percent, a figure still well above the Army’s pre-draw down attrition rate of 6.5 percent. This data confirms that the dependent variable (captain-level attrition rate) did increase between 1996 and 2001, as suggested by the hypothesis of this paper. However, this table alone does not provide explanation for the increase in captain-level attrition.

Additionally, the attrition rate for major-level officers remained fairly constant, with a low rate of 3.3 percent in 2000 and a high rate of 5.5 percent in 1996. The probable reason for a steady attrition rate (and a low one) among majors is that officers at this level typically have between 11 and 15 years of service and are well on their way to the retirement benefits offered for 20 years of active military duty. A noticeable increase in major-level officer attrition would have served to confirm or support this paper’s hypothesis. A similar statement may be made for the data on lieutenant colonels and colonels. While the attrition rates for lieutenant colonels and colonels may appear high when compared with the rates for lieutenants, captains, and majors, it is important to remember that officers in these ranks typically have 20 or more years of active military service and are eligible for retirement at a time of their choosing.

Examination of the second table reveals that during the years from 1997 through 2001, the Army deployed anywhere from 12,000 to 15,000 of its personnel in support of contingency operations around the world. In 1996, the deployment tempo was double that of the subsequent period, probably as a result of the ongoing operations in Bosnia during that year.

Conclusion

Based on the data contained in the above tables, there is no reason to believe that a causal relationship exists between the Army’s increased deployment tempo and increased rate of captain-level officer attrition between 1996 and 2001. The DEPTEMPO table demonstrates that between the target years of 1996 and 2001, the number of deployed Army personnel remained relatively constant at approximately 3 percent of the Army’s authorized strength of 480,000 soldiers. The consistency in deployment tempo does not correspond to the increase in captain-level officer attrition for the period from 1996 through 2001. The data contained in this study do not support the hypothesis that there is a causal relationship between the Army’s deployment tempo and increased captain attrition. Still, the attrition rate table demonstrates that there was a steady increase in captain-level officer attrition between the years 1996 and 2001, a rate that was well above pre-draw down levels.

This study recommends further investigation and continued study of the reasons for the increased level of captain attrition since the end of the Army draw down in 1995. As mentioned in this study, the Army has acknowledged that today’s soldiers are doing more with less and that an increased rate of operational deployments will continue for the foreseeable future. These deployments have proven to be small, specialized missions that draw upon particular expertise, such as Special Forces and aviation soldiers. Further study is recommended to determine if captain attrition in high demand career fields is a result of the increased number of specialized deployments since the end of the Army draw down.

References

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