REMFCOM, FUBAR, and Failure

Few can criticize the shortfalls of a decade of blood, sweat and tears on the conduct of operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and (CLASSIFIED) of the combat efficiency and effectiveness of the troops on the ground, or in the just over.  That which was accomplished was done in the face of serious efforts by REMFCOM (Pentagon) most particularly by the Mufti Cabal aka SES aka Senior Executive Service. 

Those in uniform in the Pentagon are transients as are the appointed.  The efforts to emasculate the chain of command, from flags to boots follows a clearly identifiable trail over twenty years long.  No one other than the Permanent Party (SES) has the longevity to pursue a single minded effort to neuter our armed forces in order to control the troops through personnel mismanagement or control the procurement process without regard to the directions that develop in the field.

Criticism of the actions of any establishment from someone outside that establishment either entrenches justifications for that action or does a complete 180.  This happened Immediately after the Fall of Saigon, any doctrine, hardware, or type units having justified it's existence of Stability Operations were wiped clean.

Aviation and Special Forces were able to re enter the arena after showing relevance of Fulda and of certain Caribbean adventure.

In rebuilding the Army post Vietnam which also included the Mobilization matrix that Jimmy Carter kicked off. The Congress, exercising it's specified powers over military doctrine and organization made the requirement that reserve and Guard units must have a valid combat contingency plan.   The plan created wartime alignments between specific contingencies and the units designated to carry them out.  This was known as the Capstone Alignment of units and a Capstone mission which by law and regulation all units regardless of component had to adhere to. 

Some units had more than one.  The 49th Lone Star Armor Division had a III Corps contingency mission with NORTHAG, the NATO command that covered the North German plain.  I commanded a MI Bn (CEWI type) aligned with the 49th.  All my training plans had to show a clear alignment with operations and plans of those in my Capstone mission.  The 49th also had a mission in the defense of Japan and flew to Japan to participate in the annual Yama Sakura exercise with the Japanese SDF.

The existence of the Capstone program had a downside, it cut the Flag Ranks in the administrative garrison establishment out of determining which way units were to jump.  Fifth US Army and the 90th ARCOM  then in San Antonio worked overtime to wreck the linkage between unit commander and the Capstone mission.

Desert Storm showed REMFCOM (Pentagon) that Weekend Warriors not only could fight, but often better than the Full Time amateurs, particularly in Artillery and Aviation. This was always the case since the airplane and the cannon were invented. This competence in combat posed a Clear and Present Danger to REMFCOM control of the definition of war and of promotion timing and opportunity of AC Field Grades.

In between the Iraq Wars, a group of hacks masquerading as a doctrine research element created a fake doctrine called "Transformation" which restored the Pentomic Battle Group (disbanded under JFK) but with the addition of field grade command positions that the Battle Group took away.  The "Modular" Brigades were identical with no regard to METT-Tc.  The field grades missing from the Battle Group were restored with mini-battalions, but most importantly, the two O-6 Colonel command slots that were dropped from the Pentomic division when the three brigade organization of the ROAD division was adopted.

The move to Kuwait and the invasion of Iraq was done with the ROAD MTOE, but as soon as possible  Transformation was instigated but with no notion or concept by REMFCOM (Pentagon) of logistics and fires.  The organization of fires in Continental, Union, Confederate, and Armies of the United States was top of the World Class ranking.  American logistics were the best since the Romans,  Both had to go.

Artillery is never sub optimized, fire support is centrally coordinated with the priority of fires and ammunition supply rate.  Transformation diluted firepower due to the dominance of National Guard artillery. :Likewise  logistics which formerly consisted of a task organized Combat Service Support (CSS) and Service Support predominantly from the Army Reserve were dismembered, and privatized. 

In order to camouflage the destruction of the effectiveness of the Field Army, REMFCOM deception and psychological operation directed against the US Congress, American People, the Congress, and the Total Force, "Capstone" was reset as a buzzword, back by a fabrication called "operational reserve" to replace a non-existent program called "strategic reserve"
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PentaThink and the Emperor's New Clothes

As Hurricane Ike knocked the power of for ninety percent of Houston, I found the time to catch up with my reading, while listening to the gentle thrum of my Honda 2000 generator. At the top of my reading stack were The War Within, by Robert Woodward, the Coldest Winter by David Halberstam, and “The March of Folly” by Barbara Tuchman.

After a while I found that all three are the same story, echoing down through over two millennia endlessly repeating “pursuit of policy contrary to self-interest” as defined by Barbara Tuchman. She illustrates self-interest as the “greater good” of the body politic which is further defined in the British comedy, “Hot Fuzz” in which a local cabal used homicide to enhance their standing for their local village for Britain’s “best village award” contest.
The local police chief used this cabal as an extension of his grief of the loss of his wife, while the rest of the town clowns followed in the manner described by Hans Christian Andersen in “The Emperor’s New Clothes” also known as Groupthink which is defined in Wikipedia as:

Groupthink is a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. During groupthink, members of the group avoid promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of consensus thinking. A variety of motives for this may exist such as a desire to avoid being seen as foolish, or a desire to avoid embarrassing or angering other members of the group. Groupthink may cause groups to make hasty, irrational decisions, where individual doubts are set aside, for fear of upsetting the group’s balance. The term is frequently used pejoratively, with hindsight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink


Groupthink is also illustrated in George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty Four” with such concepts of NewThink, Good Think, and Double Speak as in the mantra “Peace is War, Love is Hate, Freedom is Slavery” which denies the citizen the ability to think critically.

In Gordon’s War, we propose that the underlying cause of folly in Tuchman’s sense is more a conflict between what people believe is the greater good and that which is the objective reality. The conflict is heavily weighted in the sense of the in-group of their own sense of power and control of the group itself. It is intensely selfish and depends on Groupthink to develop the “Greater Good”


The Confederacy seceded from the Union in order to protect their peculiar institution, slavery, when secession was the only possible way for the Union to abolish slavery was through a Constitutional Amendment which the South could have blocked forever. Japan attacked the US when the US was so committed to isolationism that only an attack on our soil could have forced the US to fight. Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union repeated the defeats of Napoleon in 1812 and that of Charles XII of Sweden in 1709, and those two make the short list of great commanders.


Ego triumphs over the Greater Good with dreadful regularity.

Group Folly depends upon Groupthink, which is characterized by Irving Janis as:

1. Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.
2. Rationalizing warnings that might challenge the group's assumptions.
3. Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.
4. Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, disfigured, impotent, or stupid.
5. Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of "disloyalty".
6. Self censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
7. An illusion of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.
8. Mindguards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information.

Groupthink is the dominant form of decision making in ordinary life, while it’s more rationale and objective counter is done as an exception once groupthink becomes group folly so disastrously as to force reconsideration. As in the Real World (RW), there is more than one group and within any one group there are subsets of groups each bound by the dictates of its own group think. Each group is fighting for survival for the group and the control of other groups.

Within each group is an inner group, the Gold Old Boys/Girls whose group think dominates the rest, and sets the tone for the group as a whole. This statistically is about ten percent of the group at the top of the pile, or one percent of the group plus its affinity groups of like minded or self interested.


This phenomenon is the default for groups of all kinds, and those of us involved in various associations and societies including the ROA know which groups and which persons to which and to whom I refer ... without naming names.

The worst example in American military history is the fable of MG Willoughby, MacArthur’s G2 between 1941 and 1951, who acted as the ultimate gate guard by repressing any intelligence contrary to his or MacArthur’s preconceived notions and whose greatest contribution to MacArthur’s defeat by the Chinese in 1951 was the denial that there were hundreds of thousands of Red Chinese troops in Manchuria and North Korea prior to the Battle of Kunuri on November 1950.

Once groupthink becomes formally established by law or custom, it becomes virtually ineradicable, worse than crab grass or herpes. Such is the case of our military establishment as exemplified by the denizens of the Pentagon as it has descended into dysfunctionality and irrelevance to the defense of the nation.


What Bob Woodward did not sense was the Good Old Boy attitude of the Active Components of the various services that became unsettled by the specter of operationally effective Guard and ReServe units, particularly in fire support and logistics. The storm came to a head when four National Guard separate brigades were poised for deployment to Desert Shield/Storm. While brain surgery and avionics repair were readily accepted as within the capabilities of RC (ReServe Component) units and personnel, the very idea of a “Weekend Warrior” wearing Green Tabs in a combat zone was too much for the Good Old Boy ego, and sense of group survival.

Shortly after Desert Storm, the operationally competent ReServe Components were functionally organized to avoid the opportunity for the leadership of RC units to gain operational experience. The administrative nullification of Federal Law that required units to be trained and deployed as units that followed further nullified the available operational environment necessary to train both units and individuals in the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP). The word went out in the Sea Services that deployable units are anathema and that the proper role of RC naval and USCGR personnel was as replacements for “the Fleet”.


The Army’s ARFORGEN (Army Force Generation model) is clearly the nuttiest notion in military training in all military history, which history includes the use of surveying equipment to dress and cover a military formation. ARFORGEN poses a five year cycle of training starting with individual training escalating to company level training five years hence, with combat in the sixth year.

This assumes that the individual skill sets in years one and two will be valid in battle six years hence. It does not take into account that in a six year cycle there will be two or three different company commanders none of whom has the opportunity to take full control of the combat effectiveness of their own troops. The six year (five plus one at war) is longer than any enlistment contract and ignores the progression of those in the ranks from E2 on up. I went from E-2 to E-5 in less time at the end of which I was a platoon sergeant.


The six year cycle (including the combat year) also assumes that the task organization, tactics, techniques, and technology derived from an analysis of METT-TC can be accurately predicted six years hence and is unchanging lest it screw up the training cycle. It is hard to imagine anyone with real combat experience accepting this nonsense, but they do knowing that it is nonsense and knowing that should they point out that the Emperor has no clothes is most likely to get a McMasters Award (Passover) for excelling above and beyond the limits imposed by the Good Old Boys/Girls.


Likewise the restructuring the Army into Brigade sized units instead of Divisions has no basis in any array on military contingency based on any array of the conditions of METT-TC. It also was manufactured “in flight” without regard for an operational structure above brigade, leaving this (fortunately) for the commanders in the field to recreate.


The fundamental rational for brigading the Army from divisions was that the ROAD Army division had too few Colonel Command positions for Combat Army officers, particularly since one of the three divisional brigades under the Roundout concept was a National Guard Brigade. The reinvention of the Battle Group (five line companies with a Colonel commanding) as a Brigade Combat Team is evocative of the Regimental Combat Team of the Korean War with the shortage of O-5 command and staff slots of the Battle Group corrected resulting in an overall thirty percent increase in high value field grade assignments.

Despite the obvious nonsense of building units based on our “adaptive enemies” not adapting for a rolling six year period of time, in order to provide high value command and staff slots for field grade offices is proceeding with fanfare in accordance with the dictates of Groupthink.


DoD wide, the word is out that the Long War is in. This has been a popular budget builder for DoD which evades the risky effort to figure how to win against those whom we fight. Victory, for the permanent party, is counter productive to career survival and the survival of the Good Old Boy/Girl group.


The Long War then is an admission of defeat which is another word for the evasion of victory. The concept of non-state actors as an excuse for planning for victory is central to group survival for the irrelevant or misaligned. Groupthink doesn’t need much of a push to keep this state of ineptitude going for decades.


The Founders knew this would happen, having experienced the worst of cronyism from within and from without. They know the folly of favoritism, nepotism, and cronyism was inherent in palace politics and deliberately put the decision making process for the form and substance of our military establishment in the Congress (Article I, Section 8, clauses 11-16) and default military force in the states under the Second Amendment as modified by Article I, Section 10, clause 3.

The Founders were very leery of a large standing professional military establishment, which did not occur in American military history until the passage of the Defense Officers Personnel Act (DOPMA) in about 1980. Previous military establishments for war were of a temporary nature which included temporary rank structures for war. DOPMA came about as the product of the Cold War for which the Long War is a clear extension.

At present the Pentagon’s own collective groupthinks have the bit between it’s teeth, which bit needs to be yanked out, teeth and all lest we fall into the abyss created by intrigue within the Palais Pentagon or by the overzealous and under decorated in the field get us into another fine mess.

POST SCRIPT: While the above is the considered and objective opinion of a rabid ReServist, it should be noted that the synergy between GroupThink, Parkinson's Laws, and Haga's Law that lead an organization to expand regardless of demand or resources is a normal human frailty, and should be taken into consideration in organization design and operation.

Impromptu Force Generaton

Those of us familiar with career management within the military likely know of the step stone ladder of promotion showing a progression of assignments and schooling leading up through company and field promotions. Career managers and personnel gurus delight in pointing out to the assembled postulates the predictability of challenges leading to the A-Ring, and the prospects of competition for flag rank. This ladder typically shows where the postulant commands a company, serves on battalion staff, goes to professional schools, and if lucky commands a battalion and serves on high level staff.


Likely the career progression indicates the requirement to go to sea, serve overseas, or even have a tour in combat, or service in some godforsaken clot of dirt on the ramparts of freedom. And we take for granted, this programmed climb to fame and fortune.

The natural extension of this concept is an underlying factor in Transformation, that of providing a predictable platform for progression upon which the postulant includes service on the ramparts and, at the same time, provide this predictability for family life. The All Volunteer military is a married force, and the rotation of assignments now is linked to the progression of units in harms way.

Thus we now are familiar with the terms “dwell time”, “rotation”, and “reset” in the process of force generation. The Army calls it ARFORGEN, the Army Force Generation model. And to make it work, Army tactical organizations have modularized into chunks that are intended to optimize personnel progression of assignments, schooling, promotions, and deployment. Likewise the Navy and Air Force clump units into “expeditionary” task organizations to attempt the same.

The underlying assumption is that threats to national purpose will also be made to mesh with the needs of promotion, stateside assignment, and command tours in field conditions. In order to make things fit, the enemy must be programmable and predictable to serve the needs of promotion timing and opportunity.

It must be extremely annoying to personnel planners that the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and others of the same bloody ilk, do not mesh their terror campaigns with the needs of career progression. And we hear today much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the services being stretched, and of the paucity of Captains in the Army, a condition which precluded 9-11.

Ordained theoreticians of the Order of the A-Ring call this concept, “capabilities based” planning to replace the old, outmoded, Cold War paradigm of “threat based” planning, that is, planning force development in terms of Mission, Enemy, Terrain, Troops Available, Time and Civilian considerations (METT-TC).

The tension between capabilities and threat based planning in the War on Terror has some interesting trade-offs: the creation of a well trained, combat hardened, and experienced force at the expense of a decisive victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. The positive side effect of rotational capabilities based operations has been to build a generation of superbly qualified junior and mid rank officers and noncoms with the know how to know how to fight an extremely complex form of military operations, that of counterinsurgency and stability operations.

It is of considerable interest that the revolution in military doctrine has come from the training and education establishment, which in the Army is the Combined Arms Center at Ft Leavenworth. Therein lies the roots of tragedy. Ft Leavenworth is not the Pentagon, and the various factions within the Pentagon which formulated capabilities based planning are still there, and likely are either frustrated or fuming over the loss of control over the future mind set of the Army and likely the Marine Corps to forces beyond the E-Ring.

The failed attempt by the Pentagon to move General Petraeus from Iraq to Germany is an example of the sense of desperation within the Pentagon. The ascension of Secretary of Defense Gates to the central sanctum of the Puzzle Palace is a clear indication that the President has lost faith in the capabilities based paradigm which has gutted his efforts in the Middle East, and which has generated a groundswell of discontent and loss of confidence in the American electorate in national leadership not seen since the Sixties.

Unlike the Sixties, and as a result of the Abrams doctrine that one should never go to war without the Guard and ReServes which brought the hearts and minds of the American electorate in support of our troops. This is in sharp contrast with the contempt that was expressed against the veterans of the Lifer-Draftee Army of Vietnam. It is fortunate that the combat effectiveness of the Citizen-Warrior is now accepted by the Fair Haired and /Full Time warrior.

Perhaps it is time to implement a force generation model that is matches capabilities to threats, instead of the other way around.

Some basic principles:

Murphy’s Law is the first law of war. Traditional task organization for ground warfare calls for “two up, one back”. That refers to the default assumption that one third of one’s ground power be held back for contingencies, the kind at which Murphy excels in. The composition of forces forward is based on the best guess at what will needed up front. The underlying assumption for this task organization is that the one thing that is predictable is change.

Force development at the strategic level must also plan for Murphy’s Law, for uncertainty and change. This is at the root of the “Full Spectrum” doctrine emerging now and in play in combat. A Full Spectrum force development and personnel strategy calls for a dynamic and eclectic mechanism for keeping reserves in depth for skill sets and units that focuses on full time forces keyed to full time threats, and reserve forces stepped in order of the best estimates of Muphy’s antics.

Full time force planning must include provision of forces of a type and number not anticipated by the best of planning. The extraordinary ability of the our training base and of our troops to change radically to match the needs of fighting in the Middle East is remarkable, and shows that such changes should be made an expectation of all forces in times of relative peace. This isn’t all that new an idea. We took cavalry off of horses and into tanks, and infantry into planes and gliders in two years between the initial mobilization of the Armed Forces in 1940 and their deployment in 1942.










The 1st US Volunteer Cavalry AKA “the Rough Riders” was made up of cowboys and polo players by Teddy Roosevelt to adapt the capabilities he knew to the war at hand. Likewise, individuals in the Civil War raised units of unique qualities, given the charter to do so. The existence of private military companies like Blackwater shows that exotic and highly qualified units and troops can be stomped out of the populace at hand without the need for elaborate career stepping stones.



The capability of impromptu force generation can be made into law by the Congress, and should be brought to the attention of the new Congress and new Adminstration.

Middle Heavy Weights

The Employment section of your typical local newspaper is peppered with two kinds of placements requiring a large number of applicants to find the best of a large number of candidates for jobs with a wide range of qualifications, and those for jobs that have a narrow range with little in between. Sales and computer jocks are big users of advertising space.

In the military, the same principle applies to strategic personnel planning for combat operations. Armies are always short good infantry, in no small part due to the high casualty rates, but even without high casualties, combat needs boots and rifles on the ground. On the other end of the spectrum are the technicians for which time is required to train and gain experience. Top of the lists of these are doctors and pilots.

The Germans and Japanese ran out of good pilots to man the planes they produced. They keep their best pilots in action which ran up some impressive scores, but the quality of the pilots that followed couldn’t match the pilots the US produced. The US produced so many pilots that some were transferred to fight as infantry.

The Army Reserve was originally formed to build a pool of medical personnel right after WW 1. Army and Navy Reserve pilots called to active duty in WW 2 included Jimmie Doolittle. The same occurred in Korea where recalled pilots flew against the Chinese and North Koreans.

The experiences of WW 1, WW 2, Korea and the current unpleasantness show that the depth of the strategic personnel reserve wasn’t big enough for big wars or long ones. Fillers beyond the initial commitment of Capstone aligned Guard and Reserve units were to be drawn from a draft or from a massive recruitment program to fill from the bottom.

In Vietnam and in operations today, the middle ranks got stretched with the grade of O-3 nearly invisible it’s so thin. In 1970, the time in service for an Army Captain was less than 24 months. It is dropping fast today because of the length of combat and voluntary nature of a voluntary force. In Vietnam the stretch came early as the twentieth anniversary of WW 2 years came and went at the same time the Army expanded for the war.

The same thing happened in Vietnam for the NCO ranks. Sergeants used to being squad and platoon leaders were thrust into First Sergeant jobs, while privates with extra training were fielded with E-5 stripes. Needless to say, there were weaknesses in the cohesion and expertise of small units. It’s a good thing that much of the shortage of expertise was addressed with NCO formal education that grew out of the “Shake and Bake” Instant NCO program.

A strategic personnel program then should focus on in depth backup for skills and grades that take time to produce. That means middle grade officers and NCOs, technicians, pilots, medical personnel and a host of others familiar to the needs of the service. Tables of organization should make room for more in the middle and expert ranks as well as other programs to maintain this experience. The Reserve forces (Federal) should be middle heavy and exercised in leadership positions under operational conditions.

The immediate impact of a program to build, preserve and maintain combat essential skill sets is that the career programs for Reserve forces should not mirror the career patterns traditionally associated with the Active forces. The aggregate skill sets for mobilization, full or partial should match those contingencies requiring rapid and/or sustained fill.

And, we need pools of qualified infantry.

This means a paid and trained IRR. It means drill pay for individuals and a system to provide opportunities to train with units of any component.

Parkinson's Laws and the Pentagon

The Founders of our country had a clear and near experience with the abuses and uses of power and were keen on the idea that a balance of power was needed in the affairs of our nation state. We are keenly aware of the balance of power between the branches of our national government: legislative, executive, and judicial. Likewise a balance exists between state and federal powers as the former has the ability to abolish the other, so long as the right to alter the Constitution rests in a three quarter majority of state legislatures to ratify. When Congress created the Defense Department of the three major services, however, the balance tipped, and is beyond the tipping point.

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2006/12/quadrennial-defense-rubbish.html

While amongst conspiracy theorists, this imbalance is proof of a vast evil conspiracy bent on sinister purpose. The truce, however, is considerably more mundane. C. Northecote Parkinson, noted political theorist and wag, postulated that organizations grow, regardless of purpose or workload. He cited that the British Admiralty and Colonial Office grew in inverse proportion to the number of capital ships and colonies of the British Commonwealth. He also stated that work expands to fit the time available

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law

The driving mechanism of the expansion of bureaucracy is described by William J Haga in his book “Haga's Law: Why Nothing Works and No One Can Fix It and the More You Try to Fix It the Worse It Gets” because of the basic principle that “anxiety begets organization, and organization begets anxiety”. To relief anxiety, managers hire assistants to spread the work load, but fearing rivalry hire two more to manipulate.

http://www.amazon.com/Hagas-Law-Nothing-Works-Worse/dp/0688004679

When Haga’s anxiety strikes, Parkinson’s Laws are invoked to the point where an organization of thirty five (according to Parkinson) can be fully engaged with internal processes and produce nothing of value. As a retired City of Houston civil servant, I have seen it done with as few as a dozen. My studies of the budget and acquisition process in local government show that more money is spent in acquiring, accounting and paying for the goods and services that government uses than the total value of the contracts for the goods and services themselves. The military doesn’t have the locks on this nonsense, it’s everywhere.

The phenomenon of full time military establishments working to undermine part time militaries is not restricted to the land of the free and home of the brave, but endemic and persistent making the dire prediction that reserve forces are poorly equipped, trained, and led, a self fulfilling prophecy based more on job security than national security.

An article today (March 27, 2008) from the Associated Press cites that the Joint Chiefs of Staff have informed the President:

Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Behind the Pentagon's closed doors, U.S. military leaders told President Bush March 26 they are worried about the Iraq war's mounting strain on troops and their families. But they indicated they'd go along with a brief halt in pulling out troops this summer.

The “mounting strain” is often blamed on the (small) size of the Regular services, and the leading candidates for President’s staffs candidly report favoring a larger Regular service, The truth, however obvious, evades observation. The Reserves and Guard weren’t large enough to face a Big War or a Long one.

Two large steps are required for those committed to an “Adequate National Defense”. First, make the relationship between the Congress and the Pentagon much closer, and to increase the distance between the troops and the Pentagon. And second, make the Guard and Reserve forces a multiple of the strength of the Active forces by law, tying the sum of them all to a percentage of the population at large.

The Constitution’s balance of powers extends to military power, with a balance between state and federal enshrined in the Second Amendment to the effect that the security of a free state in ensured by a “well regulated militia”. Knowing that a state, left to it’s own devices would raise standing armies or allow it’s militia to become unregulated (meaning trained in accordance with doctrine), the Founders prohibited the states from having ships of war, and standing troops in time of peace, and dictated that the Congress provide for the regulation (know today as doctrine) for the states. The Founders also split the providing forces and the command thereof between the Congress and the President, largely based on dreadful experiences in the English Civil Wars and the confusion of command in our Revolutionary War.

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2006/12/modest-proposal-for-resetting-force.html

At present, the Congress perceives its mandate regarding the military as one solely concerned with the budget. Reading the Constitution’s allocation of specified powers to the Congress, it is far more comprehensive. The Pentagon is, according to the required reading for the Industrial College of the Armed Services (little blue books), contemptuous of Congressional process and only critical of Pentagon process while the errors of both are in accordance with both Parkinson and Haga. The distance across the Potomac needs to be closer, at Congressional dictate in order to ensure that doctrine, organization, and equipment are in the interests of the national defense.

Likewise, the Congress needs to distance itself from the conduct of foreign relations (save trade) and the conduct of military operations which are the specified prerogative of the President.

The size of the Pentagon, due to the influence of natural laws, has become too large and needs to be trimmed, cut, sliced and/or diced to reach sub-critical pre-tipping point balance. It doesn’t matter parts are affected, only that the dominance revert to the Constitutional balance. Perhaps separating the services, the components, or command vs. administration might do the trick.

The natural tendency of the Pentagon to distance itself from the Congress is complemented by the equally natural tendency to micro-manage the troops. This micromanagement of the minutia of military endeavors is cited as the number one reason for Captains (O-3) to have left the service even before the war on terror creating a huge shortage that now strains and stretches the forces as reported. Congress should limit the size of the Pentagon as a minor fraction of the forces available for deployment. There should be fewer admirals in the British fleet than capital ships.

In as much as the natural tendency to secure job security overrides national security vis a vis the Reserve Components, the Congress should enact laws specifying the relative size of the components and services in accordance with the size of the active force with floors established and relative to the size of the population of the nation as modified by the perception or reality of threats to the national security.

As an example, the size of all forces available for deployment in six months should be not less than one percent of the national population as determined in the last census. This would mean that today’s military establishment of all services and all components that ready to move out should be not less than three million.

Deployability, however, must be something more akin to wartime needs which often are unpredictable in detail. The essence of deployability is the competence of the forces in the military decision making process and basic collective battle skills regardless of table of organization. Our forces have demonstrated in Iraq the ability to convert artillery and armor units to security forces involved in stability operations in short order due to competence in basic military skills. In short, individual and collective deployability means that one is warm, can take orders, shoot, dig holes, drive, and survive and Uncle Sam owns the contract.

Within that one percent (or larger percent determined by the Congress), the size of the reserve components at such readiness shall be not less than twice that of the active services in with one half of that Reserve/Guard allocation be for the purposes of individual or small unit rapid mobilization and the other half be in trained units. The balance between Guard forces and (Federal) Reserve forces in king favor the location of a trained and deployable “personnel reserve” in the (Federal) reserve forces with the traditional focus of units extant in the Guard remain so with (Federal) reserve units be focused on the needs of the deployed forces of all components mobilized.

Forces beyond the six month deployability window may also be in “drill status” but be beyond the one percent window.

An example of a force at current national population calling for three million deployable in six months may require a small regular force, and by such law, the size of the Guard/Reserve deployable force would be increased directly not less than one for one. A three million deployable force might have one half million on active duty with two and a half million in reserve., but if more than a million were required on active service, the size of the deployable reserve would have to be increased proportionally.


The balance between capabilities and components under such laws would be determined in budget considerations.

Forces needed beyond the six month window, for both individuals and units must also address raising forces from scratch so as to have a prepared mobilization schema to reach the Big War contingency such as a war calling for something akin to a World War in which the forces on active duty were over ten percent of the population and another forty percent in war production industries.

These proposals set in terms of percentages are set as an example only, but close to today’s needs. Any such law and subsequent budgetary constraints would be negotiated n terms of ratios and percentages.

From an Operational Reserve to a Personnel Reserve

The Committee on the National Guard and Reserves report (aka CNGR) is an illustration of the folly of placing Reserve Affairs under the Secretariat for Personnel and Reserve Affairs (M&RA). The CNGR recommendations to disarm the National Guard and reduce the Reserves to that of a Repple Depple (Replacement Depot) for individuals and units no larger than a company are consistent with the actions of those secretariats even before the Bush 43 Administration. The CNGR report continues to beat a drum that is broken and already halfway into the dust bin of military history.

The grouping Reserve Affairs under M&RA transformed an Operational Reserve into a Personnel Reserve. The concept of contingency planning expressed in Operation Plans (OPLAN) is not that of the Personnel World of rotating assignments for career management and of replacing losses. In short, Transformation which is billed as an Operational concept is in fact more personnel driven. The National Guard and Reserves were an Operational Reserve and the effort has been to convert them into a Personnel Reserve.

The Laws of Inverse Attribution dictate that the new Personnel Reserve be labeled an Operational Reserve and the old operational reserve be labeled a Strategic Reserve as if such concept actually existed before (which didn’t). The Laws of Inverse Attribution call for emphasis on the worst of one’s virtues, and project the strongest of one’s vices on one’s opponent. Rewriting the Past is also a very old gimmick used to redirect the future.

In the days when BDU’s were new, I was a USAR tactical MI Battalion Commander with a Capstone alignment with the 49th Armored Division TXARNG which was aligned to III Corps at Ft Hood which had a contingency mission with NORTHAG in northern Germany. We trained to that mission. As a member of the 75th Division (then called the 75th MAC) I participated in dozens of exercises in which Guard, Reserve, and Regular units of all services and a few foreign forces worked together to test and refine doctrine, operating procedures, and tactical prowess.

These exercises ranged from Brigade and Group to that of Corps and Theater Army and exposed flaws in assumptions and trained several generations of officers and troops in what was expected in case of war. It is this expertise that sustains our combat operations overseas and, had there not been these exercises, our forces could not have done what they have done particularly given the ad hoc nature of the War on Terror. The announcement that these “Big” exercises were a thing of the past back a few years ago were a harbinger of the conversion of a highly competent operational reserve into one used for personnel.

It is obvious that the first thing the next Administration and Congress do to restore a real operational reserve is to break the link between Personnel and Reserve Affairs except for those issues dealing with personnel. Operations and Training of all components should be under the same staff supervision.

That leaves the question of Reserve Advocacy up for grabs, but it has been a disaster of major consequence to lump it with Personnel.

Regular Shredding Keeps the Terrorist Away

One of the members of the Committee on the National Guard and Reserves (CNGR) let slip that the Pentagon had no need for Guard and Reserve units, and that their needs were for combat troops. This, of course, is no news to members of the Guard and Reserves as the Pentagon and it’s predecessors have consistently felt the same and such feeling is endemic and pervasive down to their inner selves. The late Colonel Hackworth, something of an iconoclast, also believed that Regulars should command Guard and Reserve units. He was surprised to note, that that could happen in the Guard if the state Governors would allow it.

Inasmuch as the process of the destruction of Guard and Reserve units has been the policy and practice of the Bush Administration since Field Marshall von Rumsfeld took office, and in defiance of Federal Law and of the Constitution (Second Amendment), illustrates the ancient dictum that standing armies are a standing threat to civil authority, regardless of the nature of the civil authority. This goes back to tribal days when the elected War Chief overthrows the authority of the tribal council of elders. The history of ancient civilizations also is describable in terms of the struggle of the war chief versus the priest hood (aka intelligentsia) over who would dominate the town council, the latter reduced to that of privy council of cronies.

The justification of a take over by the war chief is often found in the inability of the tribal council to defend the tribe against sustained threats. This, however, doesn’t apply to the USofA, as since the creation of the Department of Defense, the war winning record has been abysmal despite being more ready than before DoD. The Pre-DoD record was full of battles lost and wars won, now replaced with battles won and wars lost or called off.

The history of American war since before the United States has been that there are never enough infantry and never enough trucks (be those trucks float, fly or drive). This too the Pentagon missed in their preparation for the Long War, but realized that replacements will be needed to flesh out the 10-30-30 “Whack-A-Mole” rotational war so favored by those in the Wolves Lair by the Potomac. This gave them the opportunity to shred the Guard and Reserves.

Despite the fact that Guard and Reserve units and personnel have demonstrated stellar performance, the CNGR proceeded blindly in their Rumsfeldian quest. We all recall that the first stage of the shredding was the cherry picking and packaging of RC units under flags of convenience particularly leaving out field and flag rank command slots in deploying units. It occurred to no one in the Puzzle Palace that the traditional way to call up RC and militia units was to send Regulars in as fillers and replacements thus preserving the usual stellar cohesion that RC units excel in. Italian units “stiffened” with German officers and NCO’s often performed admirably in North Afrika.

There is, however, a valid defense requirement in what the CNGR member let slip, and that is the need for individual and small team replacements to fill short falls and unanticipated needs in the forces on active service regardless of component. The only components capable of maintaining such a pool are the Reserves as contrasted with the Guard which is unit based, and the Active Components by their year end staffing requirements. The Guard and AC must cannibalize units to provide fillers. And the Army and Air Force Reserves have failed to maintain an adequate system of trained fillers. The IRR system failed, in part for lack of money, and in part due to fear that non-unit affiliation would threaten a major source of income, and make for a less competitive career. Just providing more money didn’t work.

One of the major lunacies of the Rumsfeldian unit shredding schema is that the most valuable RC individual replacements, however contrived, is for experienced and trained troops well past entry level. These troops, for the most part, got their entry level experience on active service and are like Napoleon’s Old Guard, are older. In addition to technical skills, the leadership skills of the mid level manager, officer or enlisted, require practice, a practice gained only in units. Consequently, the need for trained non-coms and officers is best met from persons in units. That’s exactly where the Pentagon got them, but by cannibalizing RC units.

It seems obvious that the best solution to meet the replacement problem is to provide units for individuals to train with, by authorized over-strength (a notion already under way) and the creation of units formed for the purpose of collective training for the individuals. These would be units in training configured along tactical lines but lacking the full complement of hardware necessary for deployment. These units would form command cells to participate in a “war” created by war-game, virtual reality, and/or command post exercise in which individuals would join in a war in progress, a very realistic mode.

Other activities of a unit in training would be ad hoc aggregates to under go selected skills training such as NBC, weapons qualification, patrolling, or the usual array of required training so favored by under-employed higher staffs.

Imagine the UmptyUmpth Fighter Squadron consisting of flight and fight simulators, or the Last/UmptyUmpth combat brigade engaged in a virtual reality enactment of the Battle of Tora Bora in progress. An RC Sergeant in town for business could hop by the local RC center, and participate in an exercise available and for which a training need exists. The record of his/her participation would go into his on-line training folder.

In several years of exercises with the 75th Division, I found that such exercises can be hard to distinguish from the command post environments I found in Vietnam and in the Fulda Gap.

In short, unit shredding is counter-productive to the needs of the Active Components as well as the needs of the RC components. Using the proven effectiveness of modern training technology can present realistic training for RC units be they deployable or not.

The fact that Guard units are experienced in working with civilian authorities makes them, as units, better suited for the Long War than AC units, gives rise to the notion that AC units should be shredded to fill Guard units.

Towards A Mission Oriented Force

Today’s military organization, staffing, training and equipment is force oriented, or more accurately, career oriented. Hitler once said that a nation needed to be “blooded” every generation to remind the nation of the sacrifices and of the skills needed to defend the state. Unlike Hitler’s dogma, which was victory oriented, ours isn’t oriented on victory but fighting without regard to any notion of victory. Or, of what sort of mission our nation must be prepared to do in order to preserve the nation and it’s goals, however defined.



And that is the first step. What are the missions needed for what purpose. Each new administration will have their own concepts and an enduring effort to stay ahead of the great game, the military must be engaged in a continuing process of mission analysis followed by contingency planning through the Military Decision Making Process.



It is clear that a wide variety of missions will evolve from said continuum of analyses, knowing that whatever contingency is planned for will require revision before implementation. That is the nature of military planning and execution, from Fire Team to Field Army or Fleet.



Mission analysis, like intelligence analysis, uncover repeated eventualities, requirement and course of action that once isolated can be lumped into groups of missions, actions, events, and course of action. The planning for the defense of the Fulda Gap transferred quite well to the Gulf, for it is the planning that matters more than the plan.

Of Butter Bars and Stripes

I wore tracks on my collar during the days of when we fought Victor Charlie in jungle and rubber. On tracks I rode, on Thunder Road, named not after Robert Mitchum’s story of running moonshine on Kentucky roads, but of exploding mines made from unexploded bombs, and artillery rounds. A lot of this comes to mind as I watch the detailed accounts of combats in Iraq, and Afghanistan. But there are some really big differences I note.

The biggest is that of the extraordinary competence of the Non Commissioned Officer Corps. Of missions they routinely carry out with expertise unheard of in the “old” Lifer-Draftee army. We never trusted a sergeant to do anything outside the range of an officer which downgraded the Butter Bar to do sergeants work without the experience with troop handling that sergeants with time under their belts. It was demeaning and counter-productive.

We ran out of experienced Noncoms early in the war, as by 1961, the WW2 veterans reached the twenty year mark, and emptied the mid ranks of Noncom as they filled the First Sergeant jobs, for which they had not trained. To fill the void, a program was instilled, called the “Shake and Bake” program to take enlisted direct from Advanced Individual Training into a NCO academy. Successful conclusion gave the graduate the rank of E-5. After the dust had settled, studies found that half were damn good, the other half was over-paid.

The NCO training that was built to meet an emergency grew and matured into the Noncommissioned Officer Education System (NCOES) which has produced the best Noncoms in the world. It is because of this, that our troops are so damn good. I am constantly amazed at the degree of detailed knowledge and competence I see on the small screen from what I see against over thirty years of experience. The talking head in front is a distraction, so listen to what the sergeant says.

To back the development of Noncom competence, the Army lifted a training system from the Strategic Air Command (SAC) that we eventually called the Battalion Training Management System (BTMS). BTMS stressed a collective action oriented training mode which insisted that, during breaks in the battle, the Noncom would conduct “hip pocket” instructions that he believe his squad or platoon’s Mission Essential Task List (METL) needed to practice.

I am concerned over maintaining the competence of the NCO corps in the face of the return of the Training Cycle.

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2007/12/dumbing-down-force-rotational-training.html

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2007/12/concurrent-and-networked-training-cure.html

Another thing that concerns me is that these magnificent sergeants, including those the Marine Corps calls “the Strategic Sergeant”, are being committed outside the range of both radio and fire support. That’s something that the uneducated OJT officer corps of Vietnam never would do. Two to five minutes is more than enough to get 155mm on the way, with mortars filling the wait. It’s a bad idea to send troops into Indian country without eyes in the sky carrying a minigun and maybe some rockets. Something’s not right here.

I also don’t see the grab and pile on tactics developed in Vietnam for Air Cavalry or Leg Infantry riding into hot LZ’s on Slicks with Guns covering the flanks. I don’t see the Air Cavalry role of reconnaissance by force being used by forces with plenty of Cobras, Apaches, and Blackhawks.

The basic tactic of air cavalry we used was to nose around with grunts on the ground or a “Pink Team” made up of a Cobra and an OH-6. The idea was to get a reaction from the bad guys, hold on and pile on. The Air Cavalry Squadron had an infantry platoon, called the “Blues” ready to drop in and join battle. Ordinarily, an infantry generated contact was similarly treated with forces on strip alert or close to a landing zone for pick up. A shot fired at or by a squad at noon could be answered by two or more companies by dusk.

I hear the cry of collateral damage to explain away not using artillery, justifying the cut in guns in direct support of troops in contact by reliance on precision munitions which aren’t available when you need them and upon air strikes dependant upon the approval of CinCWorld to fire. I love the Air Force with their Nape, Snakes, and Nails. But they aren’t responsiveness for those caught in the killing zone.

There’s a break in the chain somewhere/

Dumbing Down the Force - Rotational Training

Once discredited, the rotational training cycle has returned as a part of preparing troops for war. It was discredited after Vietnam as it was found that concurrent training at multiple levels under what was called Systems Engineer Performance Oriented Training, later dubbed BTMS (Battalion Training Management System) was far more effective and efficient. At the core of the systems engineering part was the break down of what needed to be done on the battlefield into Tasks with attendant Conditions and Standards. This was aggregated into a hierarchy of tasks, called Mission Essential Task Lists (METL) for the entire chain of command.

The analysis of the performance orientation aspect of training quickly came to the conclusion that concurrent training of all levels was more efficient and effective. Under BTMS, the Army’s level of competence rose faster than in any period since the Revolution. Until Vietnam, the collective competence of an Army could go to practically ineffective in less than five years. Task Force Smith of Korean War ignominy, where troops from Occupied Japan were clobbered by North Korean troops raised and trained after WW2.

This did not happen after Vietnam. The Army reassessed itself and rebuilt itself. The Reserve Components did likewise and in my opinion (based on experience with the 75th in large unit exercises) they were better trained at all levels than the troops that I had served with in Germany and in Vietnam.

Key to this revival was concurrent training which turned the training of individuals over to the NCO, and of the unit to the leadership. This, coupled with NCOES professional training for the NCO empowered the whole chain of command which had been serious weakening in the Fifties and Pre-War Sixties by officers doing the work of sergeants, and sergeants being over paid privates.

BTMS had two fatal flaws. It cut out the Colonels and the staffniks at levels above battalion. And in the words of the ruff and ready, no combat ready unit ever passed an paperwork inspection, nor a paper ready unit ever pass combat. DTMS was difficult to paper over as it was too complex and irrelevant for combat ready units to mess with.

Power abhors a vacuum and into the breach charged the Staffniks with Mandatory Training Requirements, and consolidated training under staff control. Staff control of unit activities is gratifying to the frustrated staffnik who wants the fun of command without the responsibilities. Any successes go to staff and the blame to command. This isn’t peculiar to the Army or to the military in particular as many a corporate employee can attest.

Once the Pentagon realized, as had many of the Two Star Crowd in the Field, that RC units were more than “up to snuff” but better than AC units, the panic button was pushed. After years of raising the performance bar for RC units, hoping they would trip and stumble, until the bar was raised above the standards for AC units, the Pentagon had to act decisively. They scrapped the mobilization plans based on METT-T (Mission, Enemy, Terrain, Troops Available and Time) to one based solely on the Time and Troops Available, ignoring Mission, Enemy and Terrain.

Included in this “Transformation”, is the Return of the Training Cycle. It makes a sort of crude simplicity and clarity of definition with successive levels of command being trained in succession as if one level was dependent on lower levels for competence at each level. While this may make sense for an individual destined for a command slot, it is counter productive for a collection of individuals who have to operate with other collections of individuals. A rifle squad operates in conjunction with an artillery gun crew through the fire direction system which involves several staffs in between.

The Training Cycle that I was experienced in prior to Vietnam was on an annual basis, not the five year basis under Transformation. In Germany the culmination of the Training Cycle was when the ground froze and we could conduct large scale maneuvers, up to division on division. The Cycle restarted after the thaw and individual training resumed. Given the destructive effect of the Duty Roster on training, the only real training we got was when the harvest was in and we could maneuver through “Comrade’s” farm yards. Individual and Squad training was ineffective.

Early in my career, whilst I was a young sergeant in the 63rd Division USAR at Camp Roberts, my Company Commander, one Otto Atkinson, took our company to the field the Sunday we arrived and returned the following Friday night. In the field we dug in, wired, and “mined” the area and conducted training 24/6. Later, in the 3rd Armored Division (Spearhead) in Germany, one battalion commander (Don Starry) showed the Division Commander the amount of time lost in garrison and convinced him that the Division should move to the field while at Hohenfels. Our training time tripled and administrative time virtually disappeared.

Later, as Battalion Commander of the 304th MI Bn (USAR) I took my battalion to Ft Hood to participate in Operation Starburst which was the 49th Armored Division (TXARNG) which was fully deployed, guns and all. It was a target rich environment for our direction finding, traffic analysis, counter intelligence and command capabilities.
It was a vicious fight to get my battalion free of staffnik control as, but under the rules of the road at the time, I had the responsibility for the training, not them.

The most valuable lesson learned was the complexity of interface with other units for support and to support. This was extremely difficult to simulate in training particularly since few knew of those relationships not having exercised them in reality, virtual or actual.

In short, concurrent training of a chain of command in environments replicating those of combat deployment 24/7 year round is the optimum training environment. Simulation, even sustained simulation using a continuous scenario, is proving to be an effective tool to cut the costs of full up 24/7.

Imagine an RC unit reporting in for their battle drill weekend, and walk into a war in progress in a mix of simulation and field work as if checking in from a previous day. The actual size of the unit involved could be as small as a squad or as large as a full division.

Based on the observations of over forty years, I find that the training cycle approach is the most efficient system to dumb down a force. And with five year cycle, unit commanders who have to go to war with their unit may have never commanded it.

Ask the Candidates what kind of military they favor

The current direction of DoD planning, according to releases from the Pentagon, is to make the shape of the military conform to the requirements of the Secretary of Defense. While that may sound all warm and cuddly from a corporate standpoint or from the point of view of a unit commander, the design of the military establishment is the sole Constitutional purview of the Congress, and any authority that the President and SecDef use to design, raise and equip are provided by the Congress via laws and appropriations.

Until 1940, the order of battle, the number and type of units and major end items of equipment were each and every created by act of Congress. Since WW2, that control was ceded to the services, and then to DoD. Since then, our successes in battle have increased but the end performances of wars fought to a successful conclusion have dropped dramatically. Some smaller operations have been successful such as Grenada and Panama, but Mogadishu ended that run. It is time we rethought this process.

The blame of this series of debacles committed by the Executive Branch is actually to be laid at the doors of Congress where the authority to fix the problems lies. But instead of resuming their duties, the Congress chooses to meddle in military matters that are Constitutionally barred from, the direction of military operations and of foreign policy (less trade) which are the exclusive domain of the President.

The average military person I know cringes at the notion of members of Congress arguing about the relative merits of ships versus planes, yet this is what the Constitution calls for. At the very least, Congress gets to take the blame for the screwups committed by the White House and Pentagon.

What we, as voters, should do is to start asking the Candidates for office, including State legislatures and governors, what kind of military they stand for. State officials are responsible also for the state of their militia and Guard units. The cop out that those issues are Presidential Commander in Chief issues is false. \As these are legislative issues, is devolves to the voters to become savvy of issues military as well.

We should ask our representatives what are the national defense priorities they feel should be covered. Do we need expeditionary forces perched in Kansas ready to pounce on Tora Bora? While it is the President’s job to determine where and when the force goes, we should ask the question whether or not the President should have this capability.

There are serious holes in our national defense, given the restoration of a global economy and the absence of regional imperial powers using military force for economic advantage as was the case from the Phoenicians to the creation of the British Commonwealth, and Pax Americana. One of these holes is having the force to enforce Pax Americana and preclude a resurgence of imperial competition for markets and sea lanes of trade.

Start asking.

A Tail of Teeth

The ratio of teeth to tail in a field force from Theater down is about ten to one in accordance with the historical experience of the entire Twentieth Century. Since teeth are more sexy than tail to those with little heads, a cerebral colonic inversion occurred in the Pentagon on the realization that the expertise in Corps, Field Army and Theatre Army operations lay in the Reserve Components, most predominately in the Army Reserve.

This corollary to this is the plain fact that the ability to conduct operations at levels above division had be lost to those in the Pentagon giving rise to colonic confusion that teeth don’t need tails, at least those from the detested weekend warriors. Accordingly, the decision to eliminate the tail from the teeth by creating a force that didn’t need one, called reducing the “footprint” of tactical forces. An privatizing the tail makes it weigh less. Way less.

A new battle doctrine likewise had to be invented that didn’t require ammunition re-supply, casualty replacement, or equipment maintenance, hence the Rumsfeldian “Whack-a-Mole” Rotational Modular Stabilized Expeditionary Transformational mini-brigade force. All wars and military emergencies could, under this approach, be won in a “10-30-30” cycle: Go in Ten, Win in Thirty, and Recover in Thirty Days.

Fortunately for the US, GWOT is not a near peer war like WW1 or 2. In WW1, General Sir Douglas Haig fed the finest infantry in the world into the shell holes of Hell in Flanders followed by the cream of Britain’s youth with a determined Pig Headedness that seems to have been replicated in the Pentagon. After six years of a failed rotational, transformational, expeditionary, modular war, and in spite of the burgeoning success of the new Counter Insurgency doctrine, the Pentagon prefers to cut and run than adapt to the eclectic and effective.

Lest this be seen as another of my pipe dreams, remember when there was a thing called “combat readiness”? How the Pentagon attempted to denigrate and marginalize the Reserve Components with phony readiness standards like MOS training, equipment readiness, et al? And remember what happened before 9-11?

Desert Storm did it. The Pentagon realized that the Reserve Components could rock and roll with the best of them. This had to go. No more “major” command post exercises to be done to continue to exercise Corps and above under combat conditions was a lead indicator.

And what happened when the balloon did go up? Converting artillery and tanks units to a new breed of motorized infantry in short order gave the lie to the relation of MOS to combat readiness. All that matters, now as in all wars before, is that a soldier needs only not to be gay, and that the government owns a piece of his/her ass. And the rest of the body doesn’t have to have all the parts issued originally.

One thing the last QDR did accomplish is that the Army has been transformed from a combat ready force to a combat experienced force. It is time to bring sanity to the next QDR but note that the Pentagon is trying to eliminate the Reserve Representation on the staff that prepares the QDR. BOHICA 08?

PPPPPP

Since the end of Desert Storm, the mobilization of Reserve and Guard units has been done with “derivative UICs” which are cherry picked lists of unit members called up under a partial unit derivation and when mobilized combined with other cherry picked units to make a provisional unit. The reasons advanced include the rationale that not all unit members were MOS or physically qualified. Well enough to drill but not to fight.

Since MOS (military occupational specialties) are skill sets presumed to have some relevance to unit mission and personal reassignment and career development, the skill sets that went to war were not the skill sets needed for this war. Artillery and Armor units re-equipped, trained, and deployed as “constabulary” units destined for patrolling the roads and alleys of Iraq.

Does this invalidate the foundation for personnel management or the foundation for the existence of units? The evidence suggests that the Personnel Managers, their Super Grades, decided that the existence of trained Reserve and Guard units is valid only as fillers and as “non-union” temporary warriors for non-union seasonal work … like war.

QDR 2006 spells it out in bold terms, but without clearing with Congress that their consistent insistence that Reserve and Guard units have a clear wartime mission is being ignored utterly.

And, worse yet, the QDR 2006 is the quintessential example of the deliberate adoption of the 6P principle (PPPPPP – “Prior Preparation Prevents P*$$ Poor Performance) which is the opposite of the Six Sigma principle of Deming enthusiasts. And it might be said that, despite the best trained, motivated, lead, and equipped, the performance of the progress in Iraq is definitely PP.

QDR 2006 dichotomous shifting includes “From under resourced , standby forces (hollow units) – to fully equipped and fully manned forces (combat ready units)” which means that that the Pentagon views Guard and Reserve units are inherently hollow.

The entire Capstone program mandated by Congress aligning units with combat mission is classic contingency planning. QDR 2006 tosses the entire concept of contingency planning in favor of “proactive” prevention based not on threats, but on capabilities. The QDR 2006 dichotomous shifting requires some innovative thinking, as follows:

“From threat-based planning – to capabilities based planning”, “From peacetime planning – to rapid adaptive planning”, and from “from forces that need to deconflict – to integrated, interdependent forces” which all means that no planning based on Mission, Enemy, Weather and Terrain is required, Modular Stabilized one-size-fits-nothing Brigades can rest in Festung Kansas and pounce with speed, agility, and precision on any and all contingency … without planning.

This no planning modus operandi is officially disclaimed elsewhere in QDR 2006 which calls for a dichotomous shift “from crisis response – to shaping the future” and from “reactive” to “proactive”. I have a hard time envisioning being proactive without threat based peacetime planning. PPPPPP.

While the Democrats are spending useless energy in trying to conduct military operations in Iraq, which they have zero Constitutional authority, they, and the disaffected other Congress members should focus on what is their specified Constitutional authority to do which is to provide for the regulation (doctrine) of the military. It is clear that the Puzzle Palace on the Potomac can’t do it.

America's Neglected Empire - the UN

FDR, Harry and Eleanor built the UN as a US clone in order for the US to provide governance to the world without appearing to do so, particularly to the isolationist Red stater. Unfortunately, the isolationist has devolved into the unilateralist and we find ourselves crafting an increasingly entangled web of bilateral treaties, the kind that George Washington warned us of.

FDR, Harry and Eleanor knew an effective American world empire would require imperial American citizenship and taxation with representation and that neither would pass muster in the US Senate or the necessary three quarters of the state legislatures needed to change the Constitution where sovereignty is treated as if it were virginity.

Consequently the UN Security Council was created to maintain the good old boy network at the top and to provide the illusion of allowing the rest of the world participation in good old boy status. And, the General Assembly was created in a similar fashion to fashion the appearance of true governance, while segregating international treaty negotiations with behind the door legislative negotiations to hide the normally messy underpinnings of politics.

Once the little problem of the Soviets Unions’ attempt to deprive the US as the normal leader of the world failed in the Cold War, work can proceed on world governance provide by the US as originally intended. The US, however, lacks the necessary focus to proceed towards imperial dominance, as the American electorate has Attention Deficit Disorder when it comes to a consistent imperial policy. After all, the rest of the world is full of foreigners.

Once, isolationism could be defined as letting each nation go its’ own way and if trouble came, we insisted on talking about a solution. In unilateralism, we’ll tell them what the solution is giving the appearance that we might actually step into the imperial throne. Unfortunately as the next hot topic on the networks distracts the electorate, like the Chandra Levy controversy, or Bill Clintons blow job, and the rest of the world is dismayed, distraught, and disappointed that the imperial nabob with the nuclear football trades world peace and prosperity for a crusade against gay marriage.

FDR could not know, however, that the linchpin of world empire is an imperial army. Any decent empire in days past in our situation would have already formed the Iraqi Republican Guard with US officers and NCOs like the Brits did in India. An ambitious officer seeking medals, combat experience, and a heavy warrior reputation in Victoria’s British Empire would have gotten himself a commission in Her Imperial Majesty’s Iraqi Army, and taken command of the best the Iraqis had.

The Brits usually hired the best their former enemies had in the way of troops, trained them with the best NCOs in history and a century later these units would be more British than the British. Alas, the Pentagon, and it’s predecessor, the War Department, would never stand for an American officer having his career managed by the officer himself. It would unbalance the rotation of the fair haired version of the day that gives the personnel weenie the illusion of potence.

While it may seem far fetched that the fortunes of the nation and global peace and prosperity would be sacrificed over such trivia as centralized career management, it should be remembered that the military attracts, retains, and promotes the Anal Retentive, whose central obsession is micromanagement. And that warriors, like doctors, lawyers, candle stick makers, and plumbers seek the respect of their peers, and a steadily increasing pay check.

And that accounts for the failure of the Project for the New American Empire. The Pentagons’ narrow career centric order of battle focused on creating career enhancing Brigade Combat Teams without a cohesive support structure or coherent strategy to be rotated in and out of the combat zone leaving no consistent or stable effect on the battlefield in order to stabilize the opportunity for command in combat for selected field grade officers. This also aimed at reducing the trauma on the military family as permanent changes of station means changing schools for the kids and getting new drapes.

There is, however, hope for the future. US Special Operations Command, and the Special Forces in particular are specifically trained to operate in diverse situations and to form and lead foreign forces. And inasmuch as the likely hood of an invasion of the US mainland taking place in any time soon, Special Operations should be formed as a separate service and the mission, functions and equipment of the Army and Air Force, less strategic forces, be transferred to the Reserves and Guard.

The Congress should also allow US officers and NCOs to serve in Blue Hat capacities as in the manner of the British such as “Chinese” Gordon who commanded a Chinese
Army, before losing his head leading a Sudanese one. UN peace keeping operations are a goat rope with differing national agendas and rules of engagement. Given the opportunity for a US officer to gain promotion and retirement points, these problems would achieve short shrift.

A Modest Proposal for Resetting the Force

Candidates for Congressional office most lately have been presenting argument about what they would do in Iraq and Afghanistan, about staying the course or cutting and running. The Constitution, however, gives those kinds of decisions to the President in his specified powers as in charge of foreign affairs (less trade) and as Commander in Chief. The President, however, does not have the authority to determine what kind of military he has to command unless the Congress has given him by appropriation or law, the authority to do so.

Too many on the Hill, in the White House and across the Potomac think that Congress’s authority in military affairs is limited to just raising the money. The Pentagon now takes the position that Congress doesn’t have the authority to dictate what kinds of weapons it gets. It does have that authority and is more specific in the case of war and the military than in any other endeavor as is specified in Article I, Section 8 and Section 10 of the Constitution along with the Second Amendment, extracted here:

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And

In accordance with these specified powers, the Congress dictated that all reserve component units be trained and mobilized as units, and that each has a mission tied to specific war plans. As such and under both the Powell doctrine and Abrams doctrine, a Total Force was built, trained, and exercised to a high degree of detail and competence. A division of labor ensued in the progress between components with the less sexy types of units and functions such as combat support and combat service support being concentrated in the reserve components and the combat forces concentrated in the active components. The Guard retained its traditional combat focus. But these divisions seemed to have been worked out as I witnessed in dozens of major field and command post exercises. As an MI battalion commander in support of the 49th Armored Division, I knew exactly where in Northern Germany my battalion would bivouac. As acting Chief of Intelligence of US Army Japan in an Operation Yama-Sakura with the Japanese Self Defense Forces, I met 49th Armored Division troops also preparing for their role in the defense of Japan. A co-worker of mine at the City of Houston spent one AT in Korea doing the same thing.

But the Pentagon really never intended to go through with it. There were early signs of it before Desert Storm, and during Desert Storm, the Pentagon just couldn’t let the mobilized National Guard combat brigades deploy. That was just too much of a challenged to their image of self importance. And when the deployments in the Balkans arose, the tools of evasion of Congressional mandate were developed with the creation of “derivative” tables of organization to cannibalize and cherry pick reserve component units.

Despite the Congressional mandate that reserve component units be trained and mobilized as units, the Pentagon never really intended to obey that requirement. As I assumed my duties as commander of the 204th MI Bn, I found all my MI troops being trained as replacements for NSA field stations (aka Elephant Cages) at a facility in Austin in ways unrelated to my combat mission of operating and maintaining a direction finding base at the front of a moving armored division.

Most recently, the BRAC closings and rearrangements of RC units included consolidated training of pilots at a great distance from home station and closing down facilities in the pilots home towns. The arguments presented by the Pentagon included bogus data, and retired aircraft with years left of service on them. The high degree of competence in battle of Guard and Reserve pilots shook the Air Force to its core, and such a Clear and Present Danger to the Active Component’s budget had to be squashed lest the Congress find out that a superior force could be maintained at one third the cost.

Likewise, as the requirements for a green water and brown water navy became apparent in the War on Terror, the Navy began to shut down Navy Reserve units with those capabilities. Instead of units with equipment, the Navy Reserve is being relegated to the function as a repple depple for the “fleet”.

The disastrous circumstances we face today in Iraq is directly related to the division of labor of the Total Force with such functions as logistics, psychological operations, civil affairs, and combat support such as military police and rear area security in the Guard and Reserves, particularly the Army Reserve, being left out, civilianized, sub-marginalized and out-sourced. It is now commonly accepted that the failure to properly identify the reaction of the Iraqi people to our incursion, and to properly plan for the governance of Iraq is at the root of our disastrous performance there. And it is US Army Reserve Psychological Operation units and Civil Affairs units that have the expertise to have prevented all this with proper Estimates of the Situation and with proper deployment of the units with the requisite expertise.

In short, the Pentagon’s evasion of Congressional mandate expressed in law and appropriations that is the root cause of our failings in Iraq.

Once the forces crossed the border and drove into Iraq, as a military analyst on News24Houston, I expected to hear of Civil Affairs units racing forward to secure the archives, monuments, and museums against mob rule. They weren’t there. Once Saddam’s irregulars attacked the flanks of our advancing troops, I expected National Guard Rear Area Operations Centers to deal with them using National Guard Light Infantry Brigades and other RC Military Police units as I as a 75th Division controller had watched them do in countless command post exercises. They too weren’t there.

I had been a 75th Division Controller on several major combat support exercises including one with MG Hultman’s Corps Support Command in which supplies and transportation were managed by Movement Control Centers and Material Management Centers and protected by MP Brigades and RAOC’s. And the supplies were carried by USAR logistics units including Petroleum Groups, Area Supply Groups, Ammunition Groups, and the like. They weren’t there, and still aren’t. What is there are contractors, some armed, some not, traveling on mined roads through ambushes in accordance with a jury rigged accommodation in lieu of established doctrine.
The best one can say about the Pentagon is that their intense focus on the ten percent of the forces up front left them to ignore the ninety percent that keeps them there. This is a natural unintended consequence of the Warrior Ethic and is at the root of the original separation of functions. Logistics, administration, psychological operations, civil affairs aren’t really warrior-like and not sexy enough for Warriors and in particular, one doesn’t want them competing for promotions against Real Warriors. Thence, out of sight, out of mind.

And we come now to the Center of Gravity of the problem, promotions, for promotions are the profit motive for all save entrepreneurs, investors, and the self employed. It all boils down to what gains advantage in the boss’s eyes, and the boards behind them. It’s about suck up, kick down, and move up. Failure to do so has serious consequences, one fails to put food on the table, a roof over one’s head, and to provide for the kid’s education.

Essential for survival is self esteem and self confidence, for pride in accomplishment and for the support of one’s peers and one’s family. Survival is, however, seen as a zero sum game. Even when it is not, the predisposition continues.
Arrogance, however, begets incompetence. Over confidence begets defeat in battle. Western arrogance under-rated Japanese competence, and at Hong Kong on December 8, 1941 the British reported that Japanese aircraft were flown by Germans as it was impossible for Imperial Britain to believe that little yellow people could whip us. Despite having decoded Japan’s Declaration of War before the Japanese Embassy in DC had, we claimed them and do now, that Pearl Harbor was a “sneak attack” despite the military dictum that says that unsneaky attacks are called defeats. And then there is the business of “bitter enders”.

Exclusion of outsiders is an ancient social device to exclude competition for the gene pool and limited food supplies. Or promotions to the next higher grade. It is natural, it is normal, and it is important in the survival for the tribe, plus or minus a wipe out or two, or maybe taken for slaves or an interesting protein supplement. There are some serious downsides to career centrism in combat development.

The competition within the services for a place on the promotions list impacts on force composition and weapons development. We all know of the competition within the Navy between surface, sub-surface, and air forces. Some war essential capabilities such as ASW and Anti-mine warfare lack the panache and glamour of other parts of the Navy and as such are either left to wither or transferred to the Navy Reserve. The Air Force slipped its UAV/drone warfare units experienced in Vietnam to oblivion or to the reserve components.

The desire for exclusivity at the promotion trough is manifested in other walks of life such as found in those special places for the elite to water such as in the lunch room, the play ground, certain stalls at Mel’s Drive in, the country club, and in exclusionary professional groups such as the AMA, ABA, Teamster’s union, and the Regular Army. And, DOD is a union shop run by the unions of the unions and for the unions, and the Guard and Reserves are scabs.

Desert Storm proved the Total Force worked and that was totally unacceptable as deep down the union fears, loathes, and despises the Guard and Reserves. It is natural, normal, inevitable, and ineradicable. And they have a great deal to fear.
The days of the shoot and run village militia are gone. The popular image of Guard and Reserve units made up of under-trained, poorly led amateurs misses the simple fact that the Guard and Reserves are like Napoleon’s Old Guard. They (we) are the veteran force, the post graduate force, the troops with the most experience on the ground, in the seas and in the air. The Guard and Reserve forces are not only veteran, but older and mature with the eclectic experiences required for the War on Terror. This is what scares the Pentagon, and what generated their response which they call Transformation.

Much of Transformation is modernization and an infatuation with the technological trickery first introduced in the Vietnam War and which was crowned as the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Systems engineering was applied to notional enemies that fit the kind that Warriors would fight ignored the simple fact that enemies don’t all have systems or critical nodes. Such was the lessons of Lenin, Mao, Ho and Giap in Protracted War as was taught in the terrorist training camps in Libya, Moscow, and East Germany which is now taught by their graduates in the Muddle East.

After Vietnam we decided to fight only in the Fulda Gap and after the Cold War ended we had to find a justification to keep the Cold War active force structure employed. Otherwise, the country might revert to the default small regular force and large Guard and Reserve force structure that had won all the wars before the Cold War. The Marine Corps moved first and re-occupied their traditional role as adjunct to the Navy’s role in securing the sea lanes of communication and as such a role in preserving global commerce including oil. The Corps’ expeditionary model suddenly became the rage and everything Air Force or Army had to have the “E” word in addition to the “T” word to be truly warrior-ish.

This ignited a long festering conflict within the Army between the Infantry and Armor branches and schools, a conflict as serious as any within the Navy. And from my viewpoint of 33 years of service beginning in the Pentomic Army of the Fifties, I could see the battle unfold. When I enlisted in 1957, there were two types of combat divisions, the Armored Division and the Pentomic Infantry Division. The Armored Division had four four-company Armored Rifle Battalions and five four-company tank battalions of which one was heavy. These battalions were assigned as needed between three Combat Commands (A, B and C). The Pentomic Infantry division had five Battle Groups of five line companies each. A Colonel commanded the Battle Group.

The logic behind the Battle Group was that the atomic (nuclear) battlefield required independent rapidly moving groups to avoid destruction by nuclear weapons. The battle group concept, however, didn’t give command experience to Lt Colonels and as such, had to go. The armored division model was then adopted for all divisions with battalions reduced to three companies to increase the number of O-5 command slots but at a cost of two O-6 command slots in the division.

Back in 1986, I had returned to the 75th Division and attended a briefing from DARPA on the next big thing in tactics called Units of Action which were described as independent rapidly moving groups to avoid destruction by nuclear weapons. Imagine my surprise when these Units of Action became Modular Brigades each with two maneuver battalions of three companies each. Thus a ten battalion division would now have five Modular Brigades each commanded by a Colonel. The Battle Group returned, but with the O-5 bug command bug fixed. And, the Armor School was moved from Knox to Benning to mind meld with the Infantry. Strange, I thought, since there hasn’t been a “leg” infantry division in the Army since Vietnam except in the Guard.

DARPA also was the author of a tactical system in vogue after Vietnam we called “mathema-tactics” in which over eighty percent of maneuver forces were committed forward and little left in reserve. Someone had figured out that in a maneuver division using the two-up, one-back formation left eight maneuver (infantry/armor) companies on the front line out of twenty seven in a nine-battalion division with two brigades forward, one back with the two brigades each with two battalions with two companies forward in each. Mathema-tactics allocated units along “axes of advance” defined by the gaps between the green on a map with little consideration for the ability of forces to maneuver in forests. As G2 controller of the Division Exercise Group of the75th, I watched NG division staffs try to cope with a typical Soviet offensive finding themselves unable to shift forces laterally across the front of an advancing enemy.

Thus the Modular Brigades were sold as a thirty percent increase in firepower by adding ten Colonels with staffs to the existing number of battalion then organized in thirty three brigades, both divisional and non divisional. As such it is a thirty percent increase in Colonel Command slots. In order to support these modular brigades, the brigade’s slice of support from division is now organic to the brigade such as a two battery artillery battalion. The net effect on promotions for O-5 was reduced for the Combat Support branches by twenty percent which has recently been addressed by the Army Chief of Staff by allowing Engineers and Artillery officers to compete for maneuver battalion command. Those having prior battalion command experience are ineligible, of course.

It gets worse. The Army’s new Modular Brigades are task organized by Table of Organization (TOE) to fight as is without further task organization in accordance with METT (Mission, Enemy, Terrain, Troops available). The battalions and companies are pre-task organized into “combat arms” companies. While armored cavalry units had been combined arms, the commander could always scramble or unscramble then to meet the situation. The new Transformational Modular Brigade was task organized by the Pentagon instead of by the unit commanders. This intent was made clear to me by a former project manager of this program during a briefing he made as 4th ID commander enroute to Iraq at a meeting of the Houston Military Affairs Committee. He bragged about making sure all the new brigades had exactly the same TOE, unappreciative of the fact that enemy firepower has the capacity of punching holes in TOEs. Besides, the TOE and MOS’s are highly structured paper drills that keep the Anal Retentive busy until their talents in cleaning up messes is needed on the very messy place battle tends to be.

No commander in his/her right mind would even think of employing any such force as is, and aren’t according to all reports I read or hear of action on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. We fight the way we always have, with what we have to do what we have to do. And in the War on Terror and our other missions world wide, we are using and are training in the training base to use whatever resources are needed in the eclectic dynamic mix of military, political, economic, and social tools we need. And the Guard and Reserves, due to their eclectic mix of those experiences are better suited than the narrow scope of the Modular Military.

The old Battle Group, however, was flat enough to allow for detachments and still keep a two-up one-back formation without breaking up the forward companies. The Modular Brigades, by design and intent, are not to be further task organized and leave the Brigade commander no choice than to violate the intent of DCSPER to form a reserve. The old Pentomic division did leave the Division Artillery intact to allow massed fires across the battle field. Division artillery in the Transformed Modular Military is now a maneuver brigade with it’s guns penny parceled amongst the Modular Brigades. Thus the DARPA designed DCSPER centric Transformed Army unable to form a reserve or mass fires on the intensive battlefield.

Added to this madness are the unintended consequences of a marvelous innovation called the National Training Center (NTC) first at Ft Irwin, CA and now in other parts. NTC afforded the opportunity for large forces up to brigade to maneuver in a computer assisted simulated near real force on force field exercises. In no small way are our victories in battle are due to NTC and the Action-Condition-Standard system of training adapted from SAC in the Army in 1974. But since NTC only handled one brigade at a time, brigades have been “rotated” between home station and NTC on a scheduled basis. Thus the concept of rotational warfare was born with our forces being rotated in and out of the combat zone. We no longer hear of campaigns, but of rotations.

One of the dictums of training is to train the way you fight. The downside is fighting the way you train and training against the enemy you think you are going to fight which may or may not be a bad decision. Given the rotational system of unit replacement, continuity on the battlefield is sacrificed despite some innovative and creative ways to minimize the disconnect on relief in place. Stability operations require stability of forces and experience as war is an act of politics and all politics are local. I hear the same story over and over again about one unit stabilizing an area only to be destabilized when the next unit moves in.
Unit rotation was adopted as an incorrect evaluation of low morale and effectiveness in Vietnam as being attributed to individual rotation. Units in Vietnam tended to stay in the same general area and became familiar with the terrain and the enemy. A radio intercept related to me told of a VC commander in 1968 telling a subordinate to hit the Americans at the same place they hit the French in 1952. Ditto the AQ, the Sunni, Shiite, and Pashtun.

The morale problems in Vietnam were related to the fact of over-reliance on the draft, the failure to call the Guard and Reserve, the exodus of the WW2-Korean War vets and the concurrent expansion for war stripped middle management bare. Whole classes of OCS grads were often wiped out within ninety days of graduation. We had “shake and bake” NCOs. And 18 months in service to the grade of Captain. And to which we add the Red ranting of the Viet Cong activists on those socialist madrassas we called institutions of higher education and thousands of them marching under enemy flags in our national capitol.

Unit commanders in combat cannot handle one year tours as was found out in Korea, Vietnam in both world wars. There is too much responsibility for too many lives at risk. Likewise, there were always the old guys who had survived to keep the FNGs (funny new guys) alive or to serve as examples of how to get another wake up. Under rotational warfare, the whole rotational brigade is FNG. And the terrorists rotate back into cleared areas.

It gets worse. Transformation proceeded with the immediate fielding of these top heavy under-gunned Modular Brigades without a clear concept of what the higher echelons were going to look like. The division has been gutted, and the Army Corps hasn’t been configured to provide support to the brigades. The places for Reserve Component CS/CSS plugs to plug into weren’t there or filled by the Transformational Lifer-Contractor paradigm deemed better than the Life-Conscript force that fails on export such as in Indo-China and Algeria for the French, the Falklands for the Argentines, and US in Vietnam. Under the Lifer-Contractor paradigm, forces are provided by Civil Servants, private contractors, and the Guard and Reserves employed in derivative cherry picked chunks. While the Civil Servants and contractors include many reservists and veterans, they are paid from Operations and Maintenance Funds, while the Guard and Reserves are paid for by Military Pay which competes with the active component at least at the level where a cost cutter might get the idea that maintaining the same force at one sixth the cost might bet a bigger bang for the buck.

Even worse, the rotation of units of the Guard and Reserve are done at least in the Army by ARFORGEN (Army force generation) which is organized to rotate RC units in and out of a deployment on a seven year basis. The personnel person loves projections and predictions of predictability, career paths, all to smooth out promotion flow points and opportunity. All to be done without even the benefit of a good crystal ball. And, without considering the perils of death and injury on the pool of eligible. During a recent Mid-Winter ROA Convention, I asked LTG Helmly, then Chief of the Army Reserve, about how we would deal with casualties in this rotational caracole. He was taken aback, it appeared as if he hadn’t considered it and he gave no answer except to refer to his rotational module.

In short, the problems in the Arc of Instability require solutions of stability enhancement which, as is being taught at NTC, are eclectic, dynamic, multi-talented ad hoc forces deployed with a long term stable presence. The rotational expeditionary personnel centric modular military is none of these. Its purported magic is all smash and no grab, a whack-a-mole modality more suited to 18th Century piracy on the Main without the employee benefits at worse and 19th Century gunboat diplomacy without the diplomats at best.

Even worse, this essentially counter-productive rotational force is being rotated back to CONUS where they are too close to the flag pole and too far from the unstable. The Founders were very clear about their fear of the Man on Horseback, of a neuveau Oliver Cromwell, that the only default force guaranteed in the Constitution is the Guard as in the Second Amendment under conditions specified in Article 1, Sections 8 and 10. Given that the Founders were well aware of their own British history and through their classical education knew that the Roman Republic gained an Emperor when its citizen legions became a long serving standing military. The quintessential guru of political gamesmanship, Niccolo Machiavelli, considered a citizen force as the best and most reliable force for the state.

We are at a major crossroads in the continued existence of our republic in deciding what to do with the first even long serving standing military. To be sure, there are threats out there. Ask any soldier. But then again, soldiers, if he/she is any good will seek out and destroy our enemies unbidden. Wouldn’t be any good otherwise. As such, empires have risen and fallen to the ordinary ambitions of the ambitious warrior. The Roman Empire was built by ambitious governors and generals often without approval from the Roman Senate or Emperor. The French conquered North Africa in defiance from orders from Paris. Most of the Japanese conquest of China was in defiance of orders from commanders in the field and from Tokyo. Soldiers worthy of the name go in harms way and if no harm is available, stir some up.

Given this natural normal tendency to stir up trouble and the transformed silliness of the means devised to do that, the simplest solution to preserve the republic and the tax base is to demobilize our forces not needed overseas, and transfer the mission and equipment to the Guard and Reserves. For those overseas, they can come home with their shield or on it.

Or, one can adopt a more modest proposal that deals with Congressional revision of the promotion process, the military’s center of gravity.

1. End the Up or Out System. There is no good reason why once on reaches his or her level of competence to stay there.

2. Open the promotion system to all qualified regardless of component or service.

3. A rank or grade goes with you, regardless of service or component promotion in one is good for any other.

4. A service member may compete for positions of a lower grade with no loss of grade on retirement.

5. All service is computed in points and at 7200 points, the benefits of a twenty year full retirement are available.

6. All service in any component is by contract such as is done for enlisted personnel.

7. The President may designate service with other countries or government branches as creditable service for experience and points as authorized by the Congress.

8. The Congress will resume the practice of authorizing the creation of units and activities and personnel therein for the duration any emergency or contingency deemed of importance.

9. The federal military reserve components will contain units intended to be deployed as units and of units and other activities intended to provide trained individual replacements to the other services and components as needed.

10. No civilians will be employed in combat save as under the UCMJ and meeting minimum training standards for deployment as the military services.

11. The Total Forces in active or drill status will be maintained at a level to allow for expansion of a fully mobilized force of ten percent of the population within three years. This is the same level achieved during WW2.

In such a modest proposal, a service member can come and go when needed or as desired and in a career path suited to the individual’s and the service’s needs. This proposal, if it seems oddly familiar is the traditional method used in the Guard and Reserves for personnel management. The model for the Total Force is us. It returns to the model for raising forces used prior to the Cold War. It allows the rapid development of the forces needed from the talent available free of considerations of career paths, or promotion flow point and opportunity as forces impacting on the organization, equipment, tactics for war and combat operations.

The Rough Riders, the 1st US Volunteer Cavalry, was raised from scratch as such and certainly did well on San Juan Hill. The officer in charge of the Mulberry project for the D-Day invasion was called from civilian life and given the rank needed for the job. Most of the generals on both sides of the Civil War including graduates of the academies returned to active duty from civilian life. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more academy graduates in the Guard and Reserve anyway. Certainly the type of risk takers needed for quick decision making in murky circumstances wither on the vine in vacuous staff positions marking time for field duty. The Navy in WW2 picked sailors whose annual income exceeded $30,000 for duty in on shipboard Command Information Centers (CIC), which is similar to recent experiments in using stockbrokers as players in a certain recent major exercise.

The quandary we face in the War on Terror is that the forces needed for irregular warfare and stability operations are not those required for high tech intensive war but include talents normally found in the Guard and Reserves. The forces required for high tech intensive war can be maintained in the Guard and Reserves at one third to one sixth the cost. The kind of eclectic force needed in irregular warfare and operations should include a very professional active force of special operations troops augmented, supplemented, and complemented by specialist units and personnel from the Guard and Reserve. Otherwise, the basis for a standing military force should be the need for forces whose sustained deployment or presence is required such as sea and service overseas of duration. In this regard, it makes no sense to bring forces from bases in Asia and Europe to the US so they can be deployed more quickly to places farther away than where they were.