Army recruits intent on joining the armor field — which spans Abrams tankers, cavalry scouts and Bradley crewmembers — have traditionally enlisted with a specific role in mind.
But under a new set of Army recruiting guidelines, recruits going into the Army’s ‘heavy metal’ jobs will be assigned their position during their first few weeks of basic training. While new soldiers will ship out to boot camp knowing they are headed towards an armor job, they’ll get their job based on “individual strengths and interests” before starting their job training at their formal school house, Army officials said.
“The recent changes to the career fields creates flexibility for the Army to meet recruiting demands,” Heather Hagan, spokesperson for the Army said in a statement to Task & Purpose.
The concept isn’t new. The idea of “picking your job” with a recruiter is a long-time military right of passage, but Army recruits going into military occupational specialties, or MOSs, in the infantry or air defense artillery have faced uncertainty as they headed to basic training. Those recruits have been general infantry or air defense recruits before being assigned their specific MOS at basic training.
Over the last few years, the Army has made a number of changes to its recruiting tactics which have included new incentives, recruiting companies, and career fields focused on the business of recruiting. The changes, which went into effect in late December, will now impact the first few weeks of the armor recruits’ careers.
“The Army wants to increase troop strength, and flexibility and gain the right person into the right specialty at the right time,” Hagan said in a statement.
To quell the uncertainty that comes with the armor recruitment process, Hagan said the Army is offering recruits bonuses and their station of choice – incentives that the service has offered field artillery and air and missile defense recruits. Officials said previously that the station of choice incentive was one of the most popular offerings for potential soldiers.
Changes to Army formations
The changes will impact soldiers wanting to join one of the Army’s newest military occupational specialties, 19C, Bradley Fighting Vehicle, BFV, crewmembers. The new MOS created a specialized career path for soldiers operating the Bradley vehicles which were previously occupied by infantry soldiers. The MOS was created as part of the Army’s preparation for large scale combat operations and with the hopes that more vehicle expertise would improve safety, former Command Sgt. Maj. Levares Jackson Sr for the Army’s Armor School wrote in a 2022 piece for the service’s armor branch publication. Jackson wrote that more than a dozen incidents over the last three years killed five soldiers.
“Due to the lack of expertise on the BFV, multiple safety incidents have resulted in damage to equipment, injuries to soldiers and loss of life,” Jackson wrote. “Part of how we will address the problem is supported by the III Corps lethality report, which found a direct correlation between BFV proficiency and safety incidents.”
The uncertainty facing armor recruits is also impacting current soldiers in armor positions like cavalry scouts — a career field whose numbers have been on the chopping block of the Army’s modernization. As part of the service’s restructuring, the Army has inactivated several cavalry squadrons that were part of U.S.-based Stryker and infantry brigades.
With the focus on large-scale conflict, the Army is moving away from human-based reconnaissance to adjust for the 21st century battlefield where enemy detection is happening “at greater distances than previously through more technical means rather than by means willing to sacrifice blood for first contact,” Maj. Gen. Michael J. Simmering wrote in an ARMOR piece as former commandant for the Armor School and Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Moore, Georgia.
In March 2024, the Army put out a call for certain MOSes, including cavalry scouts, to voluntarily switch into underserved career fields like artillery and armor positions. Soldiers with the rank of corporal or specialists and below who switched were offered retention bonuses depending on their new MOS and others who reenlisted and didn’t opt-in to switch careers may have ended up being reclassified anyway based on the Army’s needs, according to policy documents.
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