By Joshua Arnold | The Washington Stand
The U.S. Army has formally discontinued its Command Assessment Program (CAP), only months after its formal adoption by the Biden administration in its final week.
The program injected subjective criteria into the military’s promotion assessment and sought to correct for “conscious or unconscious” bias. “
Good riddance,” tweeted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in response to the news. “Promotions across @DeptofDefense will ONLY be based on merit & performance.”
The CAP expanded upon a pilot program for lower-level promotions, the Battalion Commander Assessment Program (BCAP), begun in 2019 during the first Trump administration. The goal was to create an in-depth, comprehensive replacement for the Army’s Vietnam-era Centralized Selection Board/Lists (CSL), in use since 1969, which identifies non-commissioned officers for promotion.
In addition to performance metrics, the new program also gave weight to interviews, personality assessments, and feedback from peers and subordinates.
It’s not entirely clear when the program went awry, but the program had shifted significantly after four years under the Biden administration.
“A panel conducts double-blind interviews of the candidates behind a screen to limit unconscious bias related to race and ethnicity,” described a 2022 paper in the U.S. Army War College Quarterly. “Panel members participate in antibias training just before the initial interview process and receive a shorter refresher each day they serve on the panel.”
The theory behind the antibias training was that the military officer corps was too straight, too white, and too male, and that overt sensitivity training could correct this perceived problem.
Or, to put it more diplomatically, “the CAP process puts a priority on screening out individuals who have counterproductive leadership behaviors,” stated Biden’s Army Secretary Christine Wormuth. “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.”
One effect of this heavy screening was a marked decline in the number of officers applying for promotion.
From 2019 to 2024, the percentage of officers choosing not to participate in the promotion program jumped from an average of 40% to a record of 54%. To state it differently, this means that the Army saw a 25% decline (from 60% to 46%) in the number of officers seeking promotion, in the space of five years.
What could cause such a rapid shift? Perhaps the unspoken message was clear: officers with certain demographic features (or political beliefs) need not apply.
For some, however, the military promotion structure was still not woke enough.
In late 2024, four-star General Charles Hamilton was fired after he attempted to improperly influence the CAP promotion system, to push through a black officer he favored, who had already failed twice. Hamilton blamed the officer’s failure on unconscious, pervasive racism throughout the Army.
The Biden administration, however, was satisfied with the leftward progress they had made in the military in four short years, and they determined to cash out. On January 16, 2025, four days before President Trump’s second inauguration, departing Army Secretary Wormuth published a directive establishing CAP as an enduring Army program.
Months later, the Trump administration’s Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, downgraded the program, placed it under review, and suspended it pending changes. At one point, administration officials proposed to eliminate the program’s more “touchy-feely” aspect by renaming it “the Army Warrior Leader Certification.”
As of early September, the CAP has been scuttled irretrievably.
The Army will return to the CSL model, where a board evaluates officers’ past assignments, performance, and “demonstrated potential,” said Army spokesman Major Travis Shaw. “Previous CAP results will not factor into the process.”
Shaw gave no reason for shelving the CAP except that the decision was “in line with” a June 20 memo, “Evaluating Military Officer Promotion and Selection Procedures.”
That memo came from Jules Hurst III, then serving as the acting Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. Hurst previously worked as a legislative director and defense advisor for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), and he now serves as acting comptroller and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense (unprecedented obstruction by Senate Democrats means that, nearly eight months into the Trump administration, the U.S. military still lacks a Senate-confirmed CFO).
“The Secretary of Defense is committed to fair, transparent, colorblind, and merit-based processes to select and promote the best officers to lead our men and women in defense of our nation,” Hurst stated in the memo. “As such, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness will assess current programs and policy … to ensure we select superior military leaders.”
“Objective standards and measures should be at the forefront of the promotion and selection process,” he continued. “This holistic review of military office promotion and selection processes … will incorporate an examination of current policies” including “command selection boards.”
The U.S. Army will likely respond to this change like a balloon held underwater springs to the surface when released.
After years of flagging recruitment, the Army already met its 2025 recruiting goal four months ahead of schedule; the number of officers applying for promotion will likely see a similar resurgence.
After four years of stifling wokeness under President Biden, military morale can once again count on a commander in chief who will once again back them up, let them win, and not penalize them for personal beliefs.
The Army may need to replace the 50-year-old CSL eventually, but at least it has preferred the old system to a new format captured by wokeness.
First published on The Washington Stand
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