Отборочный центр офицеров британской армии: AOSB

Army Officer Selection Board (AOSB) is an assessment centre used by the British Army as part of the officer selection process for the regular army and Army Reserve and related scholarship schemes. The board is based at Leighton House, Westbury in Wiltshire, England in a dedicated camp. It is commanded by the President AOSB, a colonel in the British Army, supported by a number of vice presidents. AOSB is an equivalent of the Navy's Admiralty Interview Board and the Officer and Aircrew Selection Centre of the Royal Air Force.

The AOSB has its roots in the War Office Selection Boards (WOSBs), created by Army psychiatrists in 1942 during World War II. They involved candidates taking a three day stay in a country house, where tests were administered including written tests of mental ability, questionnaires, leaderless group tests and interviews. Psychiatrists and some psychological components of the WOSBs were removed from the Boards after the war. The Army Officer Selection Board was known as the Regular Commissions Board (RCB). In 1949, the RCB moved from Sussex to its current facilities at Leighton House in Westbury, Wiltshire. Both Regular and Army Reserve officers are screened here.

Applicants for the British Army undergo initial suitability assessments, through computer based tests and interviews, along a number of routes. All officer candidates will be required to attend AOSB at a point determined by the type of entry. Candidates for scholarship and professionally qualified officers will attend only one board; other entrants will be required to attend both a briefing board and a main board. Candidates will usually have undertaken insight or familiarisation visits to appropriate units prior to attendance at the board.

Candidates are divided into groups of six to eight, each supervised by a group leader who is a major or captain and who runs the activities and records evidence. A board consists of one or two groups and is presided over by a president or vice president, with Professionally Qualified Officer boards supervised by an officer of the appropriate specialisation. Each group is assessed by a deputy president, who is a lieutenant colonel; their group leader; and an education advisor, who is a serving or retired officer of the AGC (ETS). Up to three boards can be run concurrently.

This is a four day selection event that consists of a number of different but inter linked intellectual, physical, mental and aptitude tests. It is designed to put candidates for both the Regular Army and Army Reserve under pressure whilst fostering their team spirit and competitiveness. The Boards normally run from Tuesday until Friday but a small number each year take place from Thursday until Sunday. On arrival, candidates are allocated a number (used instead of their name) and placed into groups. As candidates are assessed against a standard and not against each other's performance, strong groups may see a large proportion of their members meet the standard. On the last night of the course a formal dinner is held for the candidates. The staff are at pains to point out that the meal is not an assessment, and no directing staff are present at the event. The details of the physical tasks, command tasks, interviews and academic tests are not made public. It is known that the assessment consists of a physical fitness assessment, an individual obstacle course, two multiple choice tests on current affairs and general knowledge (in the past a third test covered military knowledge), three interviews, a group discussion and essay on current and moral affairs, a 5 minute lecture, individual planning exercise, and both leaderless team tasks and a series of command tasks where a team member commands the rest. There are also group races where each group gets an opportunity to test themselves against the other groups undergoing selection at the time. Candidates are only permitted to make two attempts to pass the board, which must be separated by a minimum of eight months.

The Army runs two Scholarship Boards each year for boys and girls aged between 16 and 17. The board is similar in many ways to the Main Board, with a fitness test, interviews, planning exercise and leadership tasks. The process takes 24 hours, and is tailored to suit candidates in this age range. The Board is designed to identify intelligence and leadership at a young age. Successful candidates are then subject to further scrutiny by Recruiting Group prior to potentially receiving a financial award whilst at sixth form, and then a subsequent annual award for each year whilst studying at university. They are also awarded a final lump sum on completion of the 44 week Commissioning Course after university. By passing the Board, scholars have a guaranteed place at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and they do not need to pass the AOSB Main Board to enter that establishment.

The estate on which Leighton House stands belonged to the Phipps family, a prominent family in Westbury's cloth industry who first leased a house there in the early 18th century, and bought the property from the Earl of Abingdon in 1791. In 1800 Thomas Henry Hele Phipps, father of coffee merchants and politicians John Lewis and Charles Paul Phipps, built a new neoclassical box house, naming it Leighton House. William Laverton (d.1925), who ran a wool mill inherited from his uncle Abraham Laverton, bought out the entire estate in 1888.

In March 2016, the Ministry of Defence announced that the Westbury site was one of ten to be sold in order to reduce the size of the Defence estate. In November 2016 the estimated date of disposal of the site was given as 2024, with the Selection Board due to move to Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Berkshire. In 2021, this decision was reversed under the Future Soldier reforms and the board will remain in place.