EXCLUSIVE: Amid Recruiting Woes, Officers Allege The Army Is Preventing Their Scheduled Discharge

The U.S. Army is changing its terms of service guidelines and denying soldiers scheduled discharges, a letter signed by 61 aviation officers alleges.

Recruitment and retention failures have beset all five branches of the U.S. military in recent years, with a 2022 Pentagon study finding that 77% of Americans aged 17 – 24 are unfit to serve due to obesity, drug use, or other health issues. The Army missed its 2022 recruiting target by 25%, and Secretary of the Air Force Gen. Frank Kendall said in March that his branch is likely to miss its 2023 target by 10%.

The recruitment and retention failures impact all parts of the military, including its most elite units, multiple news outlets have reported. In an effort to compensate for personnel limitations, the Army is changing its service requirement guidelines for some officers, according to a letter 61 aviation officers submitted to members of Congress. The officers assert that by reinterpreting contract language, the Army is preparing to tack on three years of service to the seven or eight years the airmen were initially promised.

“Army Aviators have been misled by HRC [Human Resources Command], the USMA [U.S. Military Academy] and ROTC [Reserve Officers’ Training Course] Aviation Branch Representatives, and our Career Managers on the exact length of our service contract,” the officers wrote to at least 11 members of Congress. They are “request[ing] an inquiry into the U.S. Army’s Human Resources Command (HRC) due to significant mismanagement relating to the enforcement of Active-Duty Service Obligations (ADSOs) for Army Aviation Officers.”

BRADSO Congressional Letter w Encl Compressed Redacted -2 by Michael Ginsberg on Scribd

The Daily Caller gave three letter signers anonymity to speak candidly about their experiences attempting to navigate the discharge process.

All three signers emphasized the service contract’s confusing language, with two noting that military lawyers had trouble understanding its terms.

“It was a contract we signed as cadets in ROTC or at West Point,” one aviation officer told the Daily Caller. “Those contracts are kind of sketchy because they technically don’t exist. It’s a made-up document. It’s not a Department of the Army form.”

It’s “definitely a vague document,” a second officer agreed, noting that a Judge Advocate General attorney he consulted gave him an interpretation different from the Army’s and the officer’s. That officer said that all contract signatories were not in a position to question the language of the document when they signed.

“We’re 20-year-old cadets and they’re briefing me that [the three-year Branch of Choice Active Duty Service Obligation (BRADSO)] will be served consecutively to my commissioning course,” he said.

The heart of the issue is when the soldiers must serve their three-year BRADSO. Until recently, the Army allowed aviation officers to serve their BRADSO concurrently with their flight school Active-Duty Service Obligation. The Army recently changed the rules to require the officers to serve the BRADSO consecutively, adding three years to the officers’ service times.

The Daily Caller obtained a video filmed in 2020 of an HRC officer saying that the BRADSO would be served concurrently to the flight school ADSO.

“You’re ADSO upon graduation … you’re not going to have to do three [years] after,” he said, in reference to the BRADSO. The officers note several instances like this one of them being told that the BRADSO would “run concurrently with the flight school ADSO.”

All three officers told the Daily Caller that they were alerted to the changed interpretation in February 2023.

Army HRC did not provide a response to the Daily Caller’s request for comment by publish time.

The Army’s recruitment and retention struggles have particularly impacted the aviation officer corps, the three signatories told the Daily Caller. Aviation officers do not fly as much as their subordinates, and stop flying almost entirely once they get promoted to the rank of major. The lack of flying opportunities is a key reason for retention issues, the officers emphasized.

“Every company commander I’ve had in five-seven years has left. None of them have made a career of it,” the first aviation officer said. Company commanders are typically captains. Some officers want to exit the service before they get promoted to major, which, for most, is effectively a grounded desk position. “I don’t want to do that.”

FORT CARSON, CO – MARCH 31: Cavalry scouts with the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team land in a Blackhawk helicopter as they participate in Operation Steel Eagle on March 31, 2022 in Fort Carson, Colorado. (Photo by Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)

“If flying was a guaranteed position for us we would stay,” the third officer added. He said that so many captains are leaving at the end of their service obligation that the Army has begun promoting captains as early as six months ahead of schedule. The Daily Caller was not able to independently verify that assertion.

Members of Congress have repeatedly sounded the alarm on the military’s personnel crisis, with Republicans like Indiana Rep. Jim Banks and Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw suggesting that extensive diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are causing recruitment to drop. Some reports have highlighted extensive drug use and lack of physical fitness among the military age population. A 2018 Heritage Foundation report argued that increased rates of obesity in children and teens could drive a national security crisis.

The offices of North Carolina Sen. Ted Budd, Texas Rep. John Carter, North Carolina Rep. Chuck Edwards, and Pennsylvania Rep. John Joyce confirmed receipt of the letter.

All three officers emphasized that their post-service plans will be significantly disrupted if the Army goes through with the guidelines interpretation.

The first officer explained that moving bases has been difficult for his wife, who works remotely and is planning to stay long-term in the area where he is currently stationed. He plans to fly for commercial airlines after leaving the Army, but worries that three extra years in the military will harm his civilian career.

“It’s telling when there are 130 people that all have the same complaint,” he said. “We know our names are going to be on that [letter]. I know in my heart I’m doing the right thing. This is what is best.”

The second officer explained that he has several family commitments that he will struggle to fulfill if ordered to serve another three years.

“I’ve been planning this for eight years,” he said. “My foot is out the door and they’re changing it up on me.”

The third officer likewise emphasized the strain on his marriage. His wife is unable to work remotely, so they spend significant time apart. He blames the Army for not being more forthright with soldiers about its requirements.

“We are told to uphold all things moral, ethical, and legal. This is not ethical and it’s not done in good faith,” he said.

Those are the wordings of the oath of office or enlustment not of the presentation and issuance of orders signed by the president (in the case of officers commissioning).

Simply put, it’s more invloved than surface speculation.

From USNI:

“Ask any officer why he or she is commissioned into service, and why enlisted personnel are contracted into service. Pay close attention to the answer; often it will be incomplete.

While serving as a CNO Strategic Studies Group fellow more than two years ago, one of the Navy civilian technology fellows posed this to me: “Why does the Navy of the future need a distinction between officers and enlisted? Isn’t the commissioned officer an artifact that needs to be retired in the interest of eliminating such a rigid class structure?”

In the ensuing discussion, it occurred to me that the U.S. military officer commission is not widely or fully understood. This is not just the case for the general population, but includes many officers.

The officer commission does not exist simply to distinguish the military’s executive class from a technical labor force. The nation could accomplish that without commissioning its officers. Nor does the commission describe the type of work officers and enlisted do. They often perform similar or identical tasks, especially in the information age. Instead, the U.S. officer commission is a constitutional imperative and must be understood in both legal and professional contexts.

The commissioning of officers has a long history and can be traced back to the Roman Empire. In the Middle Ages, sovereigns would offer noblemen commissions to raise armies to protect the realm. The commission was a lawful extension of sovereign power. The granting of commissions became more commonplace under the British Empire. After the American war for independence, the Continental Congress recognized the need to continue the practice. Because there was no unitary executive during the second Continental Congress, authority to grant commissions was somewhat clumsily shared between Congress and state governments.

During the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the framers likely acknowledged the need to vest the power to grant commissions solely in the executive because this solution was present in the first draft that summer. In the closing lines of Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, the President is required to commission all officers of the United States: “. . . he shall take care that the Laws be faithfully executed and shall commission all the officers of the United States.”

It is instructive that the framers chose to place this in the “take care” clause as opposed to in Article 2, Section 2, with the other enumerated powers. The framers did not see the commissioning of officers as a power the President could and should wield at his discretion, but rather a responsibility he must properly bear. Thus, the President could be held fully accountable for his constitutional responsibilities as the nation’s executive. Indeed, in 1926 the solicitor general argued successfully before the Supreme Court that all commissioned officers are an extension of executive power. In other words, the President cannot be held accountable to “take care that the Laws be faithfully executed” unless he is fully responsible for and can remove the officers who exercise his executive authority.

Congress creates the office to which the President nominates an officer. Once the Congress approves the appointment, the President grants the officer the commission. While in practice granting commissions to officers is a ministerial act, it does not change the nature of the commission in the constitutional context. In the famous Marbury v. Madison decision of 1803, Justice John Marshall wrote that “granting a commission is the distinct act, done in the name of the President, which empowers an officer.”

Commissioning is done to ensure the President is fully accountable for what the military does in defense of the nation, and this is why officers serve at the pleasure of the President. It is fundamentally different in nature from the enlisted contract.

Flowing from the constitutional context is the legal context. There are several U.S. and international legal requirements and distinctions for commissioned officers. For example, under international law, a warship must be commanded by a commissioned officer. This inextricably binds the state to the actions of the ship. Likewise, under U.S. law, all commanding officers must be commissioned officers. This binds the power and accountability of the commander-in-chief, the executive, to all military command positions.

Finally, officership above all is else a profession. In his famous 1957 book The Soldier and the State, Samuel Huntington wrote that the distinguishing characteristics of a profession are expertise, responsibility, and corporateness. The latter characteristic means a shared sense of organic unity and consciousness as a group apart from laypersons.

Military officership, according to Huntington, is a profession because it fully embodies these characteristics. Military officers certainly share a sense of organic unity that distinguishes them from laypersons. The expertise, Huntington asserts, is the management of violence. While enlisted personnel are technical experts in the application of violence, the officer is the manager of violence on behalf of the state. The responsibility of all officers is the military security of the state. In return, the society of the state must fairly compensate its military officers, but not overcompensate them, lest their chief motivation for service become confused. The state’s military officers are not mercenaries on behalf of a well-paying client; they are professionals of a higher calling.

The commission binds both the officer to the state to serve lawfully and defend the Constitution, and the state’s executive to each officer, making him or her a direct extension of the executive’s constitutional power.”

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