The Army will review the use of selection boards to assess senior soldiers for command positions, officials said.
In a memo Thursday, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll rescinded the official status of the Army Command Assessment Program, or CAP. CAP is a review board system that evaluates command sergeants major, lieutenant colonels, and colonels for command assignments. Those soldiers appear before a selection board of general officers and sitting or former brigade commanders. The boards evaluate a candidate’s suitability for command based on peer reviews, subordinate feedback, and other criteria to determine if they should be recommended for command.
CAP was elevated to an official program of record in a Jan. 13 memo by former Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, just days before the end of the Biden administration. Driscoll’s Thursday memo rescinded that status.
Driscoll ordered a “deliberate review of how CAP fits into our broader talent management and warfighting strategy,” Lt. Col. Jeffrey Tolbert, a spokesperson for Secretary Driscoll, told Task & Purpose in a statement.
It’s unclear if the change in status for the program will immediately impact ongoing selection boards. The review of the program will take place over the summer, Tolbert said.
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Tolbert said that decertifying CAP as an official program gives the Army the ability to make changes, such as editing the selection criteria that the board uses to score candidates. Driscoll is calling for a review to determine whether the program assesses candidates for the “appropriate attributes” that Army leaders view as promoting “lethality” and “meritocracy,” Tolbert said, concepts that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has put at the center of his time at the helm of the Pentagon.
According to an essay in Military Review by former CAP officials Bob O’Brien and Col. Andrew Morgado, the program was set up to identify “potentially ‘hidden’ attributes by measuring intellect, behavior, and personality as well as counterproductive and ineffective leadership.” The program’s “psychometric” tests measure “cognitive capacity, emotional intelligence, conscientiousness, self-awareness, and other behavioral traits.”
The Command Assessment Program came under scrutiny last year when Army Gen. Charles Hamilton was relieved as the head of Army Materiel Command. The decision to relieve Hamilton of command came after an investigation found he attempted to use his authority to get a subordinate selected for battalion command.
Peer and subordinate reviews are one component of a candidate’s overall CAP score, along with other skills like written and verbal communication, physical fitness and body composition.
Scores that candidates receive for peer and subordinate feedback along with an interview, “make up the Leadership Strength Spectrum in equal parts,” Bullock told Task & Purpose in January when the program became official. Brigade and battalion levels of command, key billets, and the soldier feedback make up 5% of a candidate’s score.
