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The Pentagon will soon add a new standardized battlefield-style assessment for senior officers seeking promotion to one-star general or admiral, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in a video last week.
The new Joint Warfighter Evaluation is intended to measure officers’ operational planning, decision-making and leadership under simulated combat decisions.
Or as Hegseth put it, to “stratify their ability to fight, adapt and win.”
The new evaluation will be added to the current process, which involves a promotion board evaluating performance reports, command assignments, education and operational experience.
“Our troops deserve commanders chosen by proven competence, not paper credentials,” Hegseth said.
The Pentagon has yet to release any JWE information other than the two-minute video, but multiple published reports have details attributed to senior officials.
Six versions of evaluation have been developed — one for each of the five services and another through the Joint Staff, according to Fox News Digital.
For example, the Army plans to put colonels through a remote written assessment followed by a digital wargame, while Air Force colonels will take a two-hour online analysis test before undergoing a one-hour interactive simulation.
The new evaluations will begin next year. Eligible O-6s will undergo the evaluations between roughly February and June 2027, ahead of their services' O-7 promotion boards between July and September, according to Fox.
“Right now, in our current system, we have people that are very good at navigating their careers,” Stuart Scheller, a former Marine officer and the senior Pentagon adviser leading the effort, told Fox.
“We have very good, I want to be clear, very good military personnel and leaders across the military,” Scheller added, “but there isn’t a stand-alone function that can truly assess the best military commanders on the battlefield.”
The Pentagon has not established how heavily the results will influence promotion decisions.
Scheller told Fox News that existing performance reports will remain the “bedrock” of promotion decisions, with the JWE providing an additional data point.
“The secretary still has judgment based on how it will be weighted in the board, so we haven’t determined,” Scheller added. “We’re kind of waiting to see how well this thing is rolled out.”
—By John Goheen
