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The career development of Army Reserve officers in the Civil Affairs Branch continues throughout their career life cycle with progressive responsibilities in troop-program-unit, staff-officer and institutionaltraining assignments. Officers must also complete their professional-military-education requirements in order to ensure their professional growth and to remain competitive for Army promotion-selection boards.
CA officers selected for promotion to major must complete some form of military-education-level 4, or MEL 4, training, and all officers selected for promotion to colonel should complete MEL 1 training. Self-development is key for all officers in the CA Branch. Because CA is a reserve-component branch, officers must develop their regional expertise and foreignlanguage capability through self-development. The CA Branch's goal in officer development is to access officers at the tactical level and develop them into strategic-level CA campaign planners who can support combatant commanders.
Accessions
As a nonaccession branch, the CA Branch draws its officers from all other branches of the United States Army. CA officers are expected to have served a successful initial tour as a small-unit leader (a lieutenant) in another branch. As a result, when accessed they should be experienced Army leaders who have a working knowledge of conventional Army operations and tactics. The majority of officers are accessed into CA as senior first lieutenants, captains or majors. Occasionally, on a case-by-case basis, the CA Branch may access lieutenant colonels who have civilian skills that are relevant to one of the CA functional areas.
Lieutenant colonels must receive a waiver to attend the branch training and to be allowed to branch transfer into the CA Branch. The waiver request must be endorsed by the applicant's chain of command and forwarded through the commanding general pf the U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command, or USACAPOC, to the commanding general of the U.S. Army JFK Special Warfare Center and School; Attn: AOJK-SP; Fort Bragg, NC 28310-5200.
CA Branch officers should have already attended their captains career course or the officer advanced course of their basic branch; they will continue to follow the Army Officer Education System according to the standards of the Army's new Officer Personnel Management System, OPMS III. The Civil Affairs Qualification Course, or CAQC, is the branch-producing course for Army Reserve CA officers. Officers who graduated from the...