USA – The courage to change: Modernizing U.S. Marine Corps human capital investment and retention (Eric Reid, Brookings)

Since its transition to an All-Volunteer Force (AVF) in 1973 — and especially since its initial 1985 Enlisted Grade Structure Review — the United States Marine Corps has been committed to an idealized “first-term” force with an inexperienced, bottom-heavy grade structure. In pursuit of low personnel costs, the Marine Corps is unique in its commitment to high enlisted turnover which reduces aggregate experience, proficiency, and stability across the operating forces when compared to the other military services. Today’s Marine Corps enlisted manpower management practices are unnecessarily disruptive to cohesion, wasteful of talent, inimical to the Marine Corps’ warfighting philosophy, and incompatible with requirements of the modern battlefield. The hidden assumptions underpinning the way the Marine Corps fills its enlisted ranks require urgent, sober, dispassionate, thorough, and courageous reexamination.

The courage to change: Modernizing U.S. Marine Corps human capital investment and retention (brookings.edu)