U.S. Army Col. Joshua Gaspard, outgoing commander of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, passes the guidon to Maj. Gen. Andrew C. Gainey, commanding general of U.S. Army Southern European Task Force, Africa, who then passes it to Col. Mark Bush, incoming commander, during a change of command ceremony at Caserma Del Din in Vicenza, Italy, June 26, 2025. (Jose Lora/U.S. Army)
The Army has cut a program it used in recent years to pick officers to lead battalions and brigades and select to the top enlisted leaders for those formations, the service’s Human Resources Command announced this week.
The Command Assessment Program, or CAP, has been discontinued after a review of Army officer promotions systems ordered by the Pentagon’s personnel and readiness office in June, Maj. Travis Shaw, an Army spokesman, said Wednesday. CAP — which was also known as the Army Warrior Leader Certification — was first piloted in 2019 when service leaders billed it as a more thorough vetting solution to select the top officers and enlisted leaders for the service’s battalions, brigades and medical services and acquisitions formations led by lieutenant colonels and colonels.
CAP was billed as “a true 360-degree assessment” of leaders by former Army Secretary Christine Wormuth who on Jan. 13 made the process an official Army program just days before leaving the office when President Donald Trump’s administration returned to the White House. She and other Army leaders touted the program as a means to filter out any “conscious or unconscious” biases against soldiers seeking command, especially those from minority groups.
CAP added various assessments including physical, psychological and communications evaluations before a selection board determined which candidates would be OK’d for command or senior enlisted leadership. CAP also included subordinate’s evaluations and peer feedback in the selection process instead of only performance reviews from superior officers.
The Army previously said CAP had been used to evaluate some 2,000 officers and command sergeants major for top leadership positions annually since 2020.
The service now will return to its legacy system for selecting brigade and battalion commanders and enlisted leaders, according to HRC. In that process, a board of senior officers considered candidates from a centralized selection list, or CSL, and generates an order-of-merit list based on the board’s evaluation of soldiers’ “past assignments, performance and demonstrated potential,” Shaw said.
He and other Army officials did not provide a specific reason for the service’s decision to end CAP. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll ordered a review of the program earlier this year.
“The Army remains committed to selecting the best leaders to lead our formations and fight and win our nation’s wars,” Shaw said.
Under the legacy CSL system, candidates’ positions will be determined by the boards’ ranking of them against their peers, with the most favorable candidates ranked highest on the order-of-merit list making them eligible for their top assignment choices, according to the Army. Past results from the CAP program’s evaluations will not be considered going forward, Shaw added.
