The Army has scrapped a Biden administration program that had a stated goal of reducing conscious and unconscious biases and using new methods for command-level promotions.
The Command Assessment Program used psychology and peer assessments in addition to traditional methods. It was created as a pilot program in 2019 to evaluate sergeants major, lieutenant colonels, and colonels for command assignments in battalion- and brigade-level units, Military Times reported Tuesday.
In January, days before President Donald Trump took office, then-Army Secretary Christine Wormuth made CAP an official program of record, Military Times reported.
But her successor, Dan Driscoll, scaled back CAP from a formal program and ordered a review last month. The program has been renamed the Army Warrior Leader Certification.
"Good riddance," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote Wednesday in a post on X. "Promotions across @DeptofDefense will ONLY be based on merit & performance."
It is among the latest policies established by the Biden administration that have been rolled back by the Trump administration over the past several months.
Although CAP was praised by some for focusing on evaluating positive personality traits in leadership, it did not boost participation in promotion in the Army, the Military Times reported. In 2024, a record 54% of officers chose not to participate in the program — a jump from 40% in 2019 before CAP was widely introduced into the service.
The Army will revert to its Centralized Selection Board/List process in which officers review evaluation reports for command candidates written by an evaluator and a senior evaluator to determine whether soldiers are suitable for leadership positions, according to Task & Purpose, a military news website.
Maj. Travis Shaw, an Army spokesperson, told Task & Purpose that those who sit on CSL boards evaluate officers' past assignments, performance and "demonstrated potential" to produce an order of merit list.
"Previous CAP results will not factor into the process," Shaw said.
Shaw added that discontinuing CAP is "in line with" a June 20 memo from Jules Hurst III, then the acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, that ordered a review of military officer evaluations, promotion boards, and command selection processes.
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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