Great Skill Program

Great Skill Program (GS or GSP) is a secretive internal U.S. Army program to identify promising recruits and help to develop them into soldier spies. The focus is on Human Intelligence (HUMINT), Counterintelligence (CI), and Technical Intelligence².

Great Skills is not a formal unit, but rather a specialized program for managing individuals with unique skills for sensitive and clandestine operations. Recruits are removed from the Human Resource Command (HRC) database (which tracks career assignments and locations of all Army personnel) and instead places them on the Department of the Army's Special Roster (DASR) effectively making these individuals invisible to the broader Army. This allows members to be assigned with more flexibility and secrecy.

The primary motivation is to allow these soldiers to be assigned to Special Access Programs (SAPs) with high security classification and no concern of rotation or reassignment.

While not always true, members operating in these roles are almost “in the army without being in the army” and can work without uniforms, ranks, etc to protect secrecy.

The program was born out of the National Security Act of 1947 and has changed names throughout time (for example, in 1977 it was referred to as The Military Intelligence Enlisted Case Officer Program⁴ and is now renamed Army Strategic Intelligence Recruiting³). There are ways for members of other services to operate within this program, but it’s primarily intended for Army enlisted members.