The Army has formally established the Command Assessment Program, a centralized screening program meant to strengthen the selection process for battalion and brigade commanders and other leadership positions. 

The Command Assessment Program offers “a true 360-degree assessment,” former Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said during a recent episode of the From the Green Notebook podcast. “The CAP process puts a priority on screening out individuals who have counterproductive leadership behaviors. You can be confident that the folks coming out of CAP who are going into command … are a lot less likely to have counterproductive leadership tendencies.”

The program was officially established by Army Directive 2024-14 on Jan. 16, according to an Army news release. The pilot program was announced in summer 2019 and was initially known as the Battalion Commander Assessment Program because it screened candidates for battalion command. Officers selected by the board process began attending the program in January 2020.

Each four-day cycle of the program evaluates officers’ physical fitness and verbal and written communications. It also includes cognitive and non-cognitive assessments and culminates in a panel interview with senior Army officers.

Almost 2,000 candidates each year are evaluated through the program’s Battalion Commander Assessment Program, Colonels Command Assessment Program and Sergeants Major Assessment Program, according to an Army Human Resources Command webpage.

Though the program was flexible and adaptable as it was developed, the assessment maintains a focus on each soldier’s leadership mindset and capability.

Prior to the Command Assessment Program, it was difficult for soldiers vying for key command positions to understand “where” they “actually stood and what people were looking at,” Col. Bob O’Brien, the Command Assessment Program’s highly qualified expert adviser, said in an Army news release from October 2023.

“When I was selected for battalion and brigade level command, ... I had peers who didn’t make the list, and nobody could ever tell them, ‘This is why you did not make the list,’ ” O’Brien said. “CAP gives us the ability to understand people in a very detailed manner, and we’ve got an ever-improving feedback loop to help candidates understand themselves and build themselves a developmental plan so that they can achieve whatever they want to achieve.”