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MOSs on the move

The latest round of the Army’s annual overhaul of its job classification system means tens of thousands of more soldiers will have to retrain and even switch specialties to move up in a rapidly changing force.

The recoding of officer and enlisted military occupational specialties began eight years ago and is nearly complete, but force-structure changes and new equipment have triggered a major overhaul of the skill identifiers key to soldier assignments.

The Army revises its job classification system annually based on changes to the design of units in the field.

The changes that take effect Oct. 1 will have wide impact on officers and enlisted troops and have been in the works for the past two years.

Randy Newman, chief of the MOS classification and structure branch in the Office of the G-1, said the Army’s phased recoding of officer, warrant officer and enlisted specialties is about 90 percent complete.

That recoding effort began eight years ago as an outgrowth of the Army Development XXI study that called for the development of multiskilled soldiers, a sharp reduction in the number of enlisted specialties, and a standard job coding system for the entire Army — officer and enlisted, active-duty and reserve components.

New top NCO specialties

Enlisted changes this year continue an ongoing move in most career fields to establish distinct specialties for senior sergeants, which, in turn, will generate increased promotion and assignment opportunities for the Army’s most experienced NCOs.

“There is a particularly heavy realignment to that model for Military Intelligence,” Newman said, referring to the impending establishment of MOS 35X (intelligence senior sergeant) for senior NCOs currently in 35F (intelligence analyst), 35G (imagery analyst) and 35H (common ground station operator).

In a related action, 35K (unmanned aerial vehicle operator) master sergeants will be moved to 15Z (UAV senior sergeant), and 35L (counterintelligence agent) and 35M (human intelligence collector) master sergeants to 35Y (CI and HUMINT senior sergeant).

Newman noted that the skill identifiers that enter the classification system this year are increasingly technical, for a variety of reasons.

“That partially is related to modularization and force structure changes, and partially related to the fielding of new equipment,” he said.

New equipment typically is fielded in phases, and soldiers trained and qualified on the systems are identified with special codes.

“This insures that assignment managers can get qualified soldiers to the units that have the equipment,” Newman said.

Two special codes are used for enlisted soldiers:

• An additional skill identifier, or ASI, is used to designate enlisted soldiers with a special skill closely associated with a specialty, but is not taught in the basic MOS course. “Usually it is related to a certain piece of equipment or special function,” Newman said.

• A special qualification identifier, or SQI, represents a skill set that normally is not associated with a particular enlisted MOS but has Army-wide application, such as airborne qualifications, drill sergeant and detailed recruiting.

Major changes to the officer system this year include the merger of functional area 43A (human resources officer) into 42B (personnel systems management), and the creation of a new specialty, 42H (senior human resources officer).

Officers with special skill sets are designated by skill identifiers, or SIs.

The Army also uses project development identifiers, or PDIs, as interim codes to identify skills and qualifications associated with programs and systems that are under development, and that eventually may become a permanent part of the officer and enlisted job classification systems.

PDIs entering the system this year include those associated with the Combatives program, the fielding of a joint service pay and personnel system March 1, the development and fielding of Future Combat System weapons and equipment, and the fielding of several new unmanned aerial vehicles.

Promotion effects

The changes are scheduled to take effect Oct. 1, the beginning of fiscal 2009. To prepare for the deadline, Human Resources Command will change progression specialties for all promotable specialists and sergeants on the Armywide E-5 and E-6 selection lists, and on the monthly promotion lists for those grades. The changes will be made Aug. 12-19.

And, beginning Aug. 20, soldiers with a primary MOS that is being converted to another specialty will be entered on documents for soldiers who are boarded for promotion to sergeant and staff sergeant Aug. 20-Sept. 8.

Human Resources Command also will re-sequence promotable senior NCOs who are being reclassified to another primary MOS to make sure they are promoted with their peers.

The re-sequencing is scheduled for Sept. 1-8 for soldiers who are on the sergeant first class, master sergeant and sergeant major lists.

National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers affected by the changes can be promoted locally to vacancies created by position changes to unit authorization documents.

Future realignments

When ADS XXI began, the Army had more than 200 entry-level MOSs. Today, it has 150.

Originally, service leaders hoped to reduce the MOS total to fewer than 100, but sources say that is unlikely because of the introduction of new equipment and the increased complexity of high-tech systems.

“We only have three major movements left for the MOS recoding,” Newman said of the ADS XXI changes.

“The ordnance realignment applies to documents that take effect in 2010; the finance reorganization in 2010 and the engineers in 2011.”

Under those changes, the mechanical maintenance career management field will move into the 91-series codes vacated by the medical CMF two years ago.

The Finance changes will merge the officer finance and comptroller areas of concentration into a new branch, BR 36, followed in 2009 by the recoding of enlisted CMF 44 to CMF 36 (Financial Management).

Officer and enlisted engineers will move from the 21-series codes to AOC and CMF 12 in 2011.

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