Army to Assign Soldiers by Unit in Effort to Boost Morale, Loyalty

The Army will begin assigning combat soldiers by unit rather than individually to boost morale, foster loyalty and improve fighting ability, senior officers said Friday.

The structural change will keep combat soldiers in the same unit from the time they are trained through their deployment overseas and afterward, a concept based on the theory that troops who stay together will fight better because they care more about each other.

“This is a major shift in American Army thinking” because the emphasis previously has been on the individual, not units, said Lt. Gen. Robert Elton, deputy chief of staff for personnel.

The Army chief of staff, Gen. John Wickham, approved the change last month. It is expected initially to affect 600 companies in armored, mechanized, infantry, artillery, air defense and engineering units by the year 2000, the service said.

The plan is to expand the new system to the entire Army, which has about 780,000 men and women.

In the first major personnel change in more than 30 years, the Army moved toward the buddy-like system in 1981 with an experiment called Cohesion Operational Readiness Training (COHORT), in which troops were kept together for at least three years--the original term of enlistment.

The Army has put 196 companies into COHORT, which will be dropped and expanded to form the new program, called the Unit Manning System Concept. The new system will keep the original basic unit together beyond three years.