DOPMA limits the number of field-grade officers in each service. Those limits, however, are designed so that as the size of the officer corps in a particular service falls, the proportion of the officers in that service who are permitted to be in the field grades rises. Thus, DOPMA automatically accommodates some upward shift in the pay-grade distribution during a drawdown. Nonetheless, in the 1995 and 1996 defense authorization acts, the Congress allowed an even greater increase in the proportion of field-grade officers during the drawdown than DOPMA would have permitted. The Congress granted temporary relief for grades O-4 and O-5 in the Marine Corps and for all field grades in the Air Force and Navy.(1) In the 1997 act, the Congress made much of that relief permanent.(2)

Several factors played a role in the Congress's decision to grant relief from those ceilings. The Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 and the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act of 1990 led to the creation of new joint-service assignments and requirements for professional military education. The Navy and Marine Corps, in particular, may have needed additional officers in pay grades O-4 and O-5 to meet those requirements. Concern about the services' ability to maintain adequate opportunities for promotion during the drawdown without temporary relief also played a role. With the relief, the services were generally able to keep promotion opportunity and timing at or above the goals set by DOPMA. (See Appendix C for more details about the opportunity for and timing of promotions to field-grade positions.)

The extent to which the Congress granted relief varied by service. The Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps were each close to their DOPMA ceilings in 1989, just before the drawdown, and--without early relief--would have needed to separate more officers in the field grades or cut back more on promotions (see Table 8).(3) The Army managed the drawdown from 1989 through 1996 without any temporary relief, even though it reduced its officer corps by 25 percent during that period.