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http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=0-ARMYPAPER-1910029.php
Issue Date: June 16, 2003
Big job changes in the works
Aim is to streamline specialties, create multiskilled soldiers
By Jim Tice
Times staff writer
For the first time since Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki ordered sweeping changes to job specialties, soldiers can see a comprehensive outline of which jobs will be added, deleted and merged — and when.
The transformation continues several years of streamlining specialties and will align enlisted and officer personnel codes. The overhaul supports big changes in the way tens of thousands of officers, warrant officers and enlisted soldiers will train, work and progress through their careers in coming years.
The list of military occupational specialties, updated in April, depict a sharply different make-up of officer, warrant officer and enlisted specialties than existed in June 1999 when Shinseki became chief of staff. While the job classification system is under constant revision because of changes in doctrine, equipment and force structure, the new MOS charts reflect Shinseki’s efforts to consolidate specialties and cultivate the development of multi-skilled soldiers.
Soldiers can look at the charts and determine the future of their specialties: Whether their job skills will be unchanged, renamed, merged with others or deleted altogether.
The change dates are included in the chart; they began in March and run through 2006, although further revisions are likely. For example, the Medical Career Field, Career Management Field 91, will move to MOS designations 67 and 68 when that career field is vacated by aviation maintenance.
Also reflected in the enlisted chart is the push for multiskilled soldiers by consolidating specialties with similar training and functions. Ultimately, the Army will shed about one in five enlisted specialties, from a current 234 to about 190.
Prominent among these changes was one two years ago, in which the enlisted CMF 11 (Infantry) was expanded to 25,000 soldier slots when MOSs 11M (fighting-vehicle infantryman) and 11H (heavy antiarmor infantryman) were rolled into 11B.
Such reclassifications will be common over the coming years and will require soldiers to retrain and become more versatile to get through the promotion gates.
Some roll-ups will be complex, as will the planned merger of 91B (combat medic) and 91C (licensed practical nurse) into a new MOS, 91W. The new MOS, health-care specialist, will included 16,000 authorizations, second largest in the inventory next to 11B.
Under a transition that will take four to five years, former 91B and 91C soldiers are being cross-trained and certified in advanced lifesaving skills.
The new specialty charts also standardize codes between related jobs in the officer, warrant officer and enlisted ranks. The current jumble of different codes for officers and enlisted soldiers is the outgrowth of ill-advised changes to the classification system in the mid-1960s, which grew unabated until just recently. Illustrating this part of the consolidation on the new list are changes in the Armor officer branch codes and the codes used for the three enlisted Engineering career management fields.
Early this spring, areas of concentration 19A (armor, general), 19B (armor) and 19C (cavalry) were added to the classification system, laying groundwork for the October 2004 deletion of Branch 12 (armor) and its associated 12-series specialties. The 19-series designation standardizes commissioned officer codes with enlisted CMF 19, armor.
A reverse process is happening for combat engineering, general engineering and topographic engineering, where enlisted CMF 21 (engineer) has been added to the system, along with MOSs 21B (combat engineer), 21C (bridge crew member), and 19 general engineering and topographic engineering specialties.
Career management fields 12 (combat engineering), 51 (general engineering) and 81 (topographic engineering) will be deleted from the system in September 2004. The 21-series codes align with officer and warrant officer branches 21 (Corps of Engineers).
On Transformation to-do list
When Shinseki became chief of staff he had four key initiatives, with each being assigned to a study group for refinement and planning. Included were his vision statement of Army Transformation; the modernization of weapons and equipment; the redesign of Army headquarters and subordinate headquarters; and manning the force and related personnel issues.
One of the major problems identified by the personnel study group was meeting unit MOS requirements with an end-strength of 480,000, the smallest since before World War II. At the same time, personnel specialists were grappling with an incredibly complex matrix of nearly 3,000 enlisted and officer paygrade/specialty combinations and 10,000 to 12,000 units vying for these soldiers at different points in time.
With Shinseki’s major concern being force readiness, he chartered another task force in late 1999 to take a look at the enlisted and warrant officer personnel systems and determine how many specialties could be efficiently managed by the personnel community. A similar review of the commissioned officer personnel system in 1996-98 produced OPMS III, and the elimination of dual-specialty career patterns.
the MOS-reduction issue triggered what became known as Army Development System XXI, a task force of senior officers and NCOs who also tackled other Transformation challenges such as leader development and the identification of the skills, knowledge and attributes that will be needed by enlisted soldiers and warrant officers over the next 25 years.
Many of the ADS XXI findings subsequently were used by the Army Training and Leader Development Panel in its recent redesign of officer, warrant officer and enlisted education and training programs.
Among the ADS XXI approved by Shinseki in early 2002, one called for the consolidation and deletion of 50 specialties and another the standardization of specialty codes.
Because MOS codes are the language of Army personnel and force-structure management, they must pass through a phalanx of red tape before being added or deleted from the system. That process is governed by G-1 officials at the Pentagon, but managed on a day-to-day basis by the operations directorate of the Total Army Personnel Command.
Randy Newman, chief of the classification and structure branch, said the Army appears headed toward an inventory of about 190 enlisted specialties, the same total envisioned by the ADS XXI task force two years ago. As of early June there were 234 MOSs.
Newman said the complex process of adding and deleting specialties is conducted on a one-year cycle.
However, before being authorized for use in unit-manning documents, changes undergo a three-year review from the time they are proposed by service schools and other specialty proponents — typically, 150 to 200 changes a year are proposed — until the effective date of approved changes.
Axed specialties disappear first in the active component, followed 11 months later in the reserves, Newman said.
Newman estimates that about 70 percent of the ADS XXI proposals have been implemented, as specialty proponents throughout the Army strive to consolidate MOSs where possible.
In about two months, he said the Army will establish a Web site through Army Knowledge Online where soldiers can keep track of the latest changes to the classification system, so “all you’ll need is an [Army Knowledge Online] username and password.”
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JOB conversion snapshot
A look at the enlisted MOSs slated for conversion. Effective June 21, the new codes will be used by the personnel community for certain data queries involving the Enlisted Distribution and Assignment System.
Old MOS New MOS
00B 21D
12B 21B
12C 21C
12Z 21Z
51B 21W
O51H 21H
51K 21K
51M 21M
51R 21R
51T 21T
51Z 21X
52E 21P
54B 74D
62E 21E
62F 21F
62H 21V
62J 21J
62N 21N
67R 15R
67S 15S
67T 15T
67U 15U
67Z 15Z
68B 15B
68D 15D
68F 15F
68G 15G
68H 15H
68K 15K
68N 15N
68S 15J
68X 15X
68Y 15Y
71L 42L
75B 42A
75F 42F
75H 42A
77F 92F
77L 92L
77W 92W
81L 21L
81T 21U
81Z 21Y
82C 13S
82D 21S
93F 13W
93C 15Q
93P 15P
95B 31B
95C 31E
95D 31D
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Resident Semi-Permanent Finance Support
Group: Community Supporter
Last Login: 11/13/2008 9:02 PM
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Thanks, Hawk. I was going to buy the times just for that article and mostly to see what they're doing with my field. Nothing listed, but the changes are further off than just next week. Thr worst part of all this is that after two years, i was just getting to know mostof the alpha-numeric codes and what the specialty title was, and the go and change it. Heads up for anyone else, the above listing, is just the beginning of a long, drawn out change over, that, for example, will turn all personnell specialties into one and reduce the number by as many as 60 percent. Army of One? It may just be that many in each MOS before too long.
"He that hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart" - King Henry V "It doesn't matter what you think, you don't get paid to do that."
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