The U.S. Army will ease up on the "stop-loss" policy and let about a thousand National Guard and reserve officers out of active service. Stop-Loss is a policy used in wartime or national emergency to keep key troops, active or activated reserves, in uniform even though they were scheduled to get out the service (or return to reserve status.) The officers being released, interestingly enough, are almost all in artillery jobs. This indicates that the army does not plan to use as much artillery as before. The Afghanistan campaign demonstrated that the latest JDAM GPS smart bombs could replace artillery in many (but not all) situations. The last time stop-loss was used was during the 1991 Gulf War.