For you Army captains out there, if you haven’t already, you better hurry up and take advantage of this program before it ends this month:

A two-phase, multimillion-dollar retention incentive program targeted at several thousand active component captains will close Nov. 30, according to Army personnel officials.

The program, launched in September 2007, so far has enticed 15,000 captains in year groups 1999-2005 to sign service extension contracts in exchange for bonuses of up to $35,000, Army-funded graduate school attendance and certain assignment and training opportunities.

More than 90 percent of the soldiers who are participating in the program opted for a Critical Skill Retention Bonus, which carries an active-duty service obligation of three years, according to Lt. Col. Doug Ingros, chief of the officer retention branch, Human Resources Command.

Ingros said the program was launched as a temporary measure to bolster selected year groups that initially were not sized to support the officer manning requirements of the Grow the Army program.

“This program was not intended to be a permanent entitlement, only a temporary incentive targeted at year groups 1999-2005,” he said.

As of early November, the Army did not have plans to reopen the current program, or any similar programs, to officers in year groups 2006-2008, according to Ingros.

The current program has been conducted in two phases, with Phase I (September-December 2007) attracting 12,556 volunteers, and generating bonus payouts of nearly $400 million.  [Army Times]