From 1981, four-star appointments in the United States were governed by the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act (DOPMA), which established the first unified framework for officer promotions in every armed service.

Under DOPMA, the president could designate positions of importance and responsibility to carry four-star rank, to be filled by general and flag officers on active duty in any service. Generals and admirals held four-star rank only while serving in designated positions, while transitioning between four-star assignments, for up to 6 months while hospitalized, or for up to 90 days (reduced to 60 days in 1991) pending retirement. All four-star appointments and reassignments had to be confirmed by the Senate. Retirement in four-star grades also needed Senate consent until Congress delegated this authority to the secretary of defense in 1996.

History

Appointment Defense Officer Personnel Management Act

The Defense Officer Personnel Management Act (DOPMA) of 1980 created the first unified framework for officer promotions across the armed services, culminating twenty years of reform efforts. Before World War II, the Army and Navy had completely independent officer promotion systems, which the Officer Personnel Act of 1947 updated but did not try to unify. The number of officers in each grade was capped by the Officer Grade Limitation Act (OGLA) of 1954. By 1959 the OGLA field grade ceilings were too low for the Air Force, forcing Congress to enact a series of short-term grade relief bills over the next two decades while working on a permanent solution.Rostker et al. (1993), pp. 1–6.

In 1960, the Defense Ad Hoc Committee to Study and Revise the Officer Personnel Act of 1947 chaired by retired Army general Charles L. Bolte, or Bolte Committee, recommended comprehensive unification reforms that prefigured the eventual DOPMA legislation, including permanent grade relief for the Air Force. The Defense Department packaged the Bolte Committee report as a formal legislative proposal called the Bolte bill in 1963, which won strong support from the Air Force but not the Army or Congress, which declined to act. A stripped-back version called Baby Bolte was submitted in 1965 but withdrawn the next year as still too ambitious to pass Congress.

When the Air Force asked to renew its short-term grade relief yet again in 1972, Congress directed the Defense Department to produce a report on permanent grade relief, which was submitted to Congress as the first DOPMA proposal in 1974 and again in 1975. The House passed this version of DOPMA in 1976 and 1978, but the Senate refused to act, in part because the Defense Department deliberately excluded general and flag officers from the legislation on the grounds that complex reforms proposed for those grades had helped sink the Bolte bill.

The Senate passed its own version of DOPMA in 1979, which included general and flag officer grade caps that scaled flexibly with total force size, similar to field grades, and the first proposal for a joint-duty pool of general and flag officer spaces administered by the secretary of defense instead of the services. The services categorically rejected the Senate bill as unworkable, so the House and Senate Armed Services Committee staffs crafted a compromise that deleted the Senate's proposed general and flag officer grade tables and joint-duty pool, but kept its requirement that three- and four-star reassignments be confirmed by the Senate. The compromise DOPMA bill was signed into law on December 12, 1980, effective September 15, 1981.

Four-star appointments DOPMA standardized four-star appointments across all services, replacing the previous service-specific mechanisms.

Under the Officer Personnel Act, four-star officers held that grade ex officio while serving in a position of importance and responsibility designated to carry that grade, and upon vacating that position reverted to two-star major general or rear admiral, the highest permanent grade to which they could be promoted personally on the active list. Only the first four-star appointment needed to be confirmed by the Senate, not subsequent reassignments. During a war or national emergency, Army and Air Force generals could also be promoted to temporary personal four-star grades that followed them to any assignment.Letter from The Judge Advocate General of the Army (JAGA 1960/3423): Retirement - 3 and 4 Star General Officers (March 8, 1960, OMPF (299741_021a.pdf), p. 460); in The number of four-star officers was capped at a fraction of the total number of general or flag officers in every service except the Marine Corps, in which four-star grades were only authorized for the specific offices of commandant or assistant commandant (or chief of staff to the president as commander in chief, an obsolete office), effectively disqualifying Marines from serving as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or commander in chief of a unified command.

DOPMA streamlined the four-star appointment mechanism and applied it to all services. The president could designate positions of importance and responsibility to carry four-star grades ex officio, which could be filled by general and flag officers on active duty in any service. All four-star promotions and retirements had to be confirmed by the Senate. Generals and admirals held four-star rank only while serving in designated positions, while transitioning between four-star assignments, for up to 6 months while hospitalized, or for up to 90 days (reduced to 60 days in 1991) pending retirement. Four-star grades expired the day before the next four-star appointment took effect, forcing each reassignment to be confirmed separately by the Senate.

Percentage caps

DOPMA capped the number of four-star officers in the Army, Navy, and Air Force using the same formula as the Officer Personnel Act: 3.75 percent of all general or flag officers on active duty in each service (25 percent of the 15 percent who could be above two-star rank).Act of December 12, 1980 [Defense Officer Personnel Management Act] ().

The grade cap formula cost the Air Force a four-star general when Congress cut the total number of general and flag officers in all services by 6 percent in 1978. The Air Force downgraded North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to three stars while an Air Force general served as four-star U.S. military representative to the NATO Military Committee (USMILREP), a joint position that rotated among the services and counted against the four-star grade cap of the service filling it. This highlighted two deficiencies: four-star officers in joint positions were being charged to their services instead of to a joint four-star grade pool, and four-star commands were being downgraded by an arbitrary formula instead of by validated job requirements.

The Defense Department repeatedly tried to reverse the 1978 reduction in general and flag officers, proposing a Flag and General Officer Management Act (FLAGOMA) that would replace the arbitrary numerical caps on general and flag officers with a framework for validating that specific jobs needed to carry those ranks. The services had presented similar validation frameworks to justify their need for more general and flag officers since 1968, none of which Congress found convincing.The 1968 report validated the Navy's proposal to establish a four-star deputy commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet but disapproved transferring the fourth star from the chief of naval material. It rejected proposals to add 7 more four-star officers by creating a four-star deputy director of the National Security Agency, restoring a fourth star to the recently downgraded director of military assistance in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), and upgrading the three-star commanders of Air Defense Command and Air Training Command and directors of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Defense Supply Agency, and National Security Agency. Despite annual resubmissions by the Defense Department, Congress never voted on FLAGOMA, being unimpressed by a methodology whose 1988 incarnation asked to increase general and flag officers from 1,075 to 1,436, even more than the 1,352 at the height of the Vietnam War in 1968.

Grade cap exemptions

In April 1983, the Air Force tried to transfer one of its 12 four-star billets from Air Training Command (ATC) to Pacific Air Forces (PACAF) by replacing the retiring four-star ATC commander with three-star general Andrew P. Iosue and the retiring three-star PACAF commander with four-star general Jerome F. O'Malley. However, the powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Texas senator John Tower, blocked the Air Force from downgrading the only four-star command in his state. Instead, Iosue was promoted to four-star general to command ATC and the PACAF change of command was delayed while the Air Force lobbied Congress for an extra four-star general. The Pentagon asked Congress to authorize 27 more general and flag officers, which, if divided evenly between the Army, Air Force, and Navy (including Marine Corps), would have increased the Air Force's total from 338 to 347, just enough for 13 four-star generals under the grade cap formula. Instead, the annual defense authorization bill created an ad hoc grade cap exemption that let the Air Force have one more officer serving in a four-star grade during Fiscal Year 1984, without raising its general officer ceiling.Precedent for ad hoc grade cap exemptions had been set the previous year when the Navy asked Congress to let three more flag officers serve in the grade of vice admiral to meet new requirements external to the service, without increasing the total number of flag officers. The Senate version of the annual defense authorization bill revised the Navy's grade cap formula to increase the proportion of flag officers holding three- or four-star grades from 15 percent to 17.5 percent, but the House changed it in conference to temporarily authorize three more vice admirals during Fiscal Year 1983. Act of September 8, 1982 [Department of Defense Authorization Act, 1983] ().

The Air Force's four-star exemption was renewed annually, even after Tower left office, until Iosue retired in 1986. The defense authorization act for 1986 added a second four-star exemption for Marine Corps general George B. Crist to serve in that grade as commander in chief of U.S. Central Command.Act of November 8, 1985 [Department of Defense Authorization Act, 1986] (). When defense secretary Caspar Weinberger sought a third four-star exemption in 1986 for the chief of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO), James A. Abrahamson, Congress would only renew the Air Force's existing exemption for another year, requiring the Air Force to downgrade ATC if it wanted to promote Abrahamson. Iosue was succeeded by a three-star general, but the Senate never acted on Abrahamson's four-star nomination.

In 1987, Congress replaced the ad hoc grade cap exemptions with a general mechanism allowing up to 15 percent of all three- and four-star grades to be transferred between services by offsetting any increase in one service with a corresponding decrease in another service, keeping the total number constant.Act of December 4, 1987 [National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 1988 and 1989] (). This made it easier for services to compete for joint four-star positions, which let the Navy nominate its own candidate to succeed Crist at U.S. Central Command in 1988, in spite of the gentleman's agreement between the Army and Marine Corps to alternate command.Schwarzkopf (1992), pp. 313–316.

Goldwater–Nichols Act