Junior enlisted soldiers in several military occupational specialties will be put under a Big Army microscope during re-enlistment processing, even if they are avidly endorsed for retention by their commanders.

The re-up squeeze, called "precision retention," is related to the drawdown, and is designed to ensure that dwindling retention opportunities in some MOS go to top-quality soldiers with high potential for future contributions to the Army.

The precision retention strategy introduced five years ago allows personnel officials to make reassignment and career management decisions based on the near real-time specialty and rank composition of the enlisted force.

Under a key component of this strategy, the Army has moved from an annual, 12-month retention mission format to quarterly missions in which commanders will be issued re-enlistment goals every three months based on changing personnel requirements.

Enlisted soldiers become eligible for re-enlistment under the revised system 12 months in advance of their contractual expiration term of service, or ETS.

However, the Army has retained the long-standing policy that requires soldiers to re-enlist no later than 90 days before their ETS. This means when soldiers enter the 12-month window of eligibility, they have no more than nine months to execute a service extension or re-enlistment.

A review of the most recent re-up statistics shows that as the Army gets smaller, the annual retention missions assigned to commanders are getting smaller, which in turn increases competition among soldiers who vie for the available re-enlistment vacancies.

The retention plan now in effect opened Oct. 1, and is designed to re-enlist 47,000 Regular Army soldiers — 7,000 with ETS in fiscal 2015, and 40,000 with ETS in fiscal 2016.

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It appears that commanders are well on the way to achieving those goals, as seven months into the fiscal year they are just 605 soldiers shy of meeting the cohort 2015 mission, and 11,099 soldiers short of the cohort 2016 mission.

Under the precision retention strategy, re-up opportunities are subject to change every quarter. Depending on requirements, the Army may restrict re-enlistments based on a soldier's ETS, military occupational specialty, skill level and special qualifications.

An update to the program announced May 6 places precision retention restrictions on the following MOS and skill levels:

09L1 (interpreter and translator)

12R1 (interior electrician)

12W1 (carpentry and masonry specialist)

13T1 (field artillery surveyor and meteorological crewmember)

15J1&2 (OH-58D armament, electrical and avionics systems repairer)

15S1&2 (OH-58D helicopter repairer)

94Y1&2 (integrated family of test equipment operator and maintainer)

The restriction list also includes all skill levels of MOS 35P (cryptologic linguist) with these language codes:

CM (Chinese Mandarin)

FR (French)

HE (Hebrew)

JN (Indonesian)

KP (Korean)

PG (Dari)

PU (Pushtu)

PV (Pushtu-Afghan)

QB (Spanish-Caribbean)

RU (Russian)

SC (Serbo-Croatian)

TA (Tagalog)

UR (Urdu)

Soldiers in the MOSs and skill levels listed above who are approved for re-enlistment by their commander must have their re-up request and commander certification (DA Form 3340), and their Enlisted Record Brief, forwarded to the Human Resources Command by their supporting career counselor.

While no further documentation is required, HRC officials recommend that soldiers and leaders provide memos that articulate accomplishments not described in the record brief or in other official personnel documents.

For example, if the applicant was named soldier of the year for his or her brigade, that information should be relayed to HRC decision-makers.

Command officials will then evaluate the soldier's record and compare the accomplishments to other soldiers of that MOS and skill level throughout the Army. HRC retention officials will then render one of the following decisions:

Approve re-enlistment in the soldier's current MOS.

Direct reclassification to a new MOS.

Approve an extension of enlistment

Deny re-enlistment.

The decision will be relayed to the soldier's commander via a memorandum that will include any restrictions to the length of the soldier's re-enlistment or extension.

Soldiers will have seven days from the HRC approval date to extend or re-enlist. Soldiers who fail to take action within seven days will have the HRC approval revoked, and will be considered to have been afforded the opportunity to extend their service.

Soldiers who are denied re-enlistment will have their records annotated with code "9F" to indicate they "have been denied retention by the secretary of the Army."

These soldiers may be eligible for separation pay. They are eligible for continued military service in the reserve components.