Officer Personnel Management And The Defense Officer Personnel Management Act Of 1980

The Congress enacted the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act (DOPMA) on December 12, 1980. The new code replaced an existing patchwork of rules and regulations governing the management of military officers and updated numerical constraints on the number of field-grade officers (0-4 through 0-6) that each service might have as a percentage of its officer corps. It was the Congress's expectation that DOPMA would 'maintain a high-quality, numerically sufficient officer corps, provide career opportunity that would attract and retain the numbers of high-caliber officers needed, (and) provide reasonably consistent career opportunity among the services.' In September 1990, the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Force Management and Personnel) asked RAND to review the past ten years of operations of DOPMA, to identify and appraise any difficulties in manpower management that may have developed from that legislation.