Following a review last month, the U.S. Army has canceled its Command Assessment Program, formally established as a program of record in the last days of the Biden administration.
Starting in 2019 as a pilot program for selecting battalion commanders, CAP was implemented throughout the Army during 2020 with the stated goal of reducing conscious and unconscious biases and using new methods, including psychology and peer assessments, to evaluate candidates for command roles.
It replaced the Army’s longstanding Centralized Selection Board/List, or CSL, a promotion system based on a series of performance factors.
The CAP program, by contrast, relied heavily on peer evaluations and behavioral analysis. Additionally, measures were introduced into the program with the stated goal of protecting minorities from bias.
“The battery of psychometric assessments employs several different instruments to measure cognitive capacity, emotional intelligence, conscientiousness, self-awareness, and other behavioral traits,” according to Army documents on CAP first published in January.
Those documents noted that subjectivity was a factor that had to be considered in assessing candidates’ behavior.
“Though not completely hidden, assessing intellect through casual observation is highly subjective and contextual,” Army officials noted.
Former Army Secretary Christine Wormuth made CAP an official program of record just days before President Donald Trump took office.
“The CAP process puts a priority on screening out individuals who have counterproductive leadership behaviors,” Wormuth stated previously in a podcast. “You can be confident that the folks coming out of CAP who are going into command … are a lot less likely to have counterproductive leadership tendencies.”
While CAP was praised by some for its focus on evaluating positive personality traits in leadership, it cannot be said, to this point, to have generated additional interest in promotion within the Army.
In 2024, a record 54% of officers chose not to participate in the program — a jump from the 40% average in 2019 before CAP was widely introduced into the service.
Over the last several months, the Trump administration has rolled back many policies and procedures established by Biden administration officials — CAP now being one of them.
The Department of the Army rescinded CAP months ago, pending potential changes to the program’s evaluation criteria. The service has since decided to scrap the program altogether, and will now revert to its previous CSL system.
Zita Ballinger Fletcher previously served as editor of Military History Quarterly and Vietnam magazines and as the historian of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. She holds an M.A. with distinction in military history.
