Military

The Problem With Personnel Reform: Who are the Army’s Best and Brightest?

The phrase “best and brightest” is frequently used but ambiguously defined.  Secretary of Defense Ash Carter’s Force of the Future aims to recruit and retain this group, but it fails to define who the best and brightest are.  Many proposed personnel reforms do the same thing. Doctrinal and popular sources define which officers are the Army’s best and which are its brightest.  These sources suggest that the Army’s best and brightest officers form two almost completely independent groups.  The best officers succeed in traditional leadership positions, the brightest officers leverage their participation in Broadening Opportunity Programs to attempt to improve the Army, and the best and brightest do both.  The firmly defined career track of the Army’s best and the Army’s up-or-out policy combine to prevent the best and the brightest from overlapping.  A number of reforms have been proposed to address this state of affairs, but recent reports suggest that the Army’s policies will not change.