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"
.
.   

Sunday Punditry misses the point

The Sunday pundits meeting the press or facing the nation assert with good reason that the reasons that we as a nation face serious defeat in Iraq due to the incompetence of leadership and inability of the military to adapt to the conditions of counter insurgency. They say that the military misread the Iraqi mind, failed to have a reconstruction plan, unable to train a new Iraqi military, and obsessed with conventional war of the Cold War. The truth of the matter is that these were failures of the Pentagon, and that the services themselves had the correct capabilities and doctrine, mostly in the Guard and Reserves which were committed piecemeal and ineffectually. And in so doing, double crossed the President.

The Pentagon has a management culture and way of doing business that bears little relationship to military staff and command procedures. The military themselves are rotated in and out of the Pentagon with too short a tour to have lasting effect, likewise with most appointed officials. The real power in the Pentagon is wielded by long serving civil servants including the formidable clerical staff and the Machiavellian super-grades who maintain the continuity of policy regardless of the intent of the military and political assigned there.

As in the case of the courtiers of Versailles, the Tsar, Imperial Rome or the Forbidden City, survival depends on flattery of the powerful and on assuaging their insecurities, by raising the powerful above the decision making process which the courtier and bureaucrat is only to willing to assume. In this way, the Pentagon’s civil service treats it’s clients as a closed union shop, like ancient nobility, which excludes the lesser and less noble. Such is the case of the Guard and Reserves who are treated as seasonal workers fit only for non union, less noble work. This process, in Pentagonese, is called Transformation.

Transformation, like the Emperors New Clothes, is aimed at transforming the military from something that used to win wars against real enemies, to one that battles imaginary ones, by creating standardized expeditionary packets of troops that rotate to and from the battlefield so that every gets a crack at being up to bat. We no longer hear of campaigns like Tet, the Bulge, Normandy, or Meuse Argonne, but of Rotations 1, 2, 3 or 4. Imagine WW2 being fought with two thirds of the Army resting up for a rotation to the Pacific or the ETO.

The Pundits assert that the military doesn’t have the capacity to win this war. They do, but it’s being kept out of the fight. The solution is simple. Stop unit rotation so that the commanders on the ground can achieve a stable and consistent presence. Mobilize the necessary Guard and Reserve units as such for the duration. By pass the Pentagon by creating a direct link to a single theater commander which includes the necessary incident management system to coordinate all government agencies involved.

The real tragedy for our military is that they have never been so well trained, equippped, or led by their field commanders nor have they ever had such high morale and esprit de corps than in any previous war, far more than the "greatest generation", and that their best efforts have been tossed like used toilet paper by a wacked out puzzle palace. Even today where the troops outside the Beltway are training to best practices for Full Spectrum Warfare, inside the Beltway the golden cockroaches and embedded charlatans make a full court press to achieve "Transformation", already proven to be a prescription for defeat.

And now the Loony Left, unaware that the Third International is privatized, goes after the troops not the nuts by Shutting down JROTC in Fog/Fag City. The last time the Left got their pants in a tie-dyed twist, military retirees lost thier medical care which took thirty years to recover.