Report Says Army Wasted Bonus Cash

In its effort to quickly grow the force, Army officials spent too much on bonuses and failed to adequately address its accelerated promotion of officers.

The service also misallocated bonus money by providing cash incentives for non-priority positions while failing to offer bonuses to priority jobs in the Army.

Those are some of the key findings in a Government Accountability Office report issued earlier this month that focused on how the Army allocated resources for recruiting and retention in the past four years.

The report comes as the Army -- along with the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps -- decrease bonus amounts as the recession boosts recruiting and retention.

In short, the days of plush bonuses for non-critical roles across the armed services are over, but the services will continue to offer handsome retention and possibly recruitment bonuses to service members with vital skills.

Army captains, for instance, should expect to see continued retention bonuses as the Army continues to experience shortfalls in company-grade officers through at least 2013 despite changes to key promotion thresholds and requirements, the report said.

Through the end of fiscal year 2008, the Army was short over 1,200 captains, about 3,110 majors and nearly 530 lieutenant colonels, according to the GAO report.

The GAO, which is the investigative arm of Congress, slammed the Army for failing to conduct sufficient research to determine if it was paying higher bonuses than necessary.

"Because the Army does not use available research to determine whether it is setting bonus amounts at the most cost-effective levels, it does not know whether they are excessive and therefore cannot be assured that it is getting the maximum benefit from bonus expenditures," the report states.

But the Army told investigators that quickly growing the force justified what the GAO perceived to be the haphazard allocation of bonus funds.

"During our audit work, Army officials told us that the main proof of the success of the bonus programs is that the Army has met its goals for accessions and retention," the report states.

Despite the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the attendant high rate of deployments, the Army has been able to rapidly increase its size and meet its end-strength goal more than two years early.

The Army achieved this by increasing the number of recruiters on the streets by 30 percent -- from roughly 10,200 to nearly 13,500 -- as well as by increasing the amount spent on recruitment and retention bonuses from $671 million in 2005 to $1.2 billion in 2008.

The Army also more than doubled bonuses for the Army Reserve and nearly doubled cash incentives for the Army National Guard, the GAO found.

Recently, however, the Army has began recalling recruiters as the recruiting burden eases and the Army seeks "deployment equality" by dispatching Soldiers without combat experience to either Iraq or Afghanistan.

However, the Defense Department agreed with some of the GAO findings in a preliminary report and in February launched a probe designed to measure the effectiveness of cash incentives.

The GAO also said the Army recruited too high a number of Soldiers lacking a high school diploma or who required a waiver due to prior criminal behavior.

Army officials, however, told the GAO that only three of out ten potential Soldiers ages 17 to 24 do not qualify to enlist without a waiver for either medical conditions, conduct issues, number of dependents or low aptitude scores.

Examples of Soldiers allowed to enlist with a waiver included a recruit who had been smoking marijuana since he was 12, meth since he was 18 and was convicted of DUI at 22 as well as two separate recruits convicted of armed robbery.

Last year alone, roughly 12 percent of Army enlistees required conduct waivers, including some with felony records, the GAO found.

The report also took issue with the Army's ability to manage its accelerated promotion of officers.

"The Army has recently promoted officers at above-average rates, reduced time-in-service requirements for promotion and suspended a performance indicator for its junior officers that it had previously used to identify the best-performing officers relative to their peers," the report states.

"These actions have had an immediate effect on alleviating some of the shortages, but the Army has not yet assessed whether the short-term measures it has taken will have long-term effects on its officer corps in the future.