Reconstitution of the US Army

Reconstitution of the US Army

Once upon a time when the Third Reich was young, an enterprising journalist published the complete Order of Battle and mobilization plans for the Wehrmacht.  Himmler had him kidnapped and interrogated as to leads and sources.  His answer was open source, from local papers citing who was being assigned where.  He was warned and let loose

The same use of open sources (OSINT) is available on LinkedIn.  The individual profiles of the members who have a direct or indirect connection with the Services, particularly the US Army show that the Army is in the process of reconstituting its forces to face a new revised and more dangerous array of threats.  Far from the rotational mini-brigade expeditionary model, the new models is restoring the Theater, Corps and full divisions to full capacity.

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Projected penetration of Soviet Forces as a model of high speed mechanized warfare

In addition, references in discussions show that the field artillery and air support are being reunited, and the logistics reconstituted under the command of the commander’s intent rather than an acquisition manager’s contract.  The sources are links to a new family of DOD doctrinal publications.

Assignment Algorithms

Some of that which points to this reconstitution is indicated by the assignment of officers to “targeting” and logistics assignments at corps and higher.  This restores what was once called the Air Ground Operations Center at the old Corps and suggests that a restoration of COSCOM and DISCOM may be under way.  There are many references of officers and enlisted to I, III, and XVIII Corps when up until now did not exist, even called defunct, on Wikipedia.  The repeated reference to Theater suggests that the _COM (CENTCOM, etc.) may be replaced by the new Theaters (XXXXX). 

The type of war fighting done right

That a major reconstitution program, normal at any military level after a battle, is not being accompanied by marching bands, cheer leaders, and sonorous intonations from the pompous and egregious is significant.  The most likely outcome is that these new Theaters will be aligned to a specific piece of the world.  That raises the questions of how will the order of battle for these new corps and theaters be constituted.

The Capstone Mission

That which tied unit cohesion to combat mission prior to Transformation was the link between units of all components of the Services and Components into what were called “Capstone Missions” and “Capstone alignments” that brought myself as a battalion commander in contact with the Canadians on my left flank in NORTHAG near where two Roman legions were slaughtered….the Teutoberger Wald. The Capstone program was the result of a Congressional mandate that insisted that each and every unit must have real world mission in order to be funded.  I was at the Congressional House Senate Conference Committee when it was agreed upon.

The Capstone program tying battalions like mine to places in Germany was sabotaged, and a new order of nonsense was sent in harm’s way.  This is what is being fixed.

Un-dropped Shoes (organization and training)

As such several un-dropped shoes remain.  The reality of major commands expected to move or stay in one piece calls for a deletion or elimination of rotational assignments and training. The cost in the degradation of mid and senior level tactical competence in the most recent unpleasantness due to the repression of the chain of command from three stars to three stripes under Transformation and ARFORGEN must be addressed.

The biggest shift in staffing a large force from existing subordinate elements excludes rotations of units, and reinstitutes more individual replacements along with a system to do so.  The individual rotation programs of all wars up to and including Vietnam was costly in terms of the FNG getting killed too quickly which increased the need for more FNG’s (Funny New Guy).  The existing members of the FNG’s unit do not like to befriend one who is about to die, until he has not. Thus the skills of the Good Old Boys are not passed on to the FNG which increased the mortality rate.

As close as one can get without being thre

The one stellar thing attributable to the rotational modular brigade was and is extraordinary unit morale, which after a decade of rotations, is still high.  A balance between the casualty rates, low in this war, must be developed to retain unit identity to enhance cohesion.  The draftee conscript army only works on home turf or next door, otherwise cohesion suffers.  The US Army at the end of the Vietnam War was one step away from mutiny.  The classic work on the Disintegration and Cohesion of the Wehrmacht showed that as long as the primary group is intact, and a sense of identity with the homeland was maintained, no amount of inducement by propaganda worked.

 

The Eastern Front

The German Army in WW 2 used replacements from the same part of Germany to units also raised from there.  Thus the FNG factor was reduced.  Similar efforts have been done in the British Army through their regimental system which the regiment is the base from where units and personnel were deployed and to where they returned.

One way to restore cohesion is to base replacements through training establishments aligned with specific units and specific areas, like regional or states. The application of All Source Training which includes a training establishment that uses the Chain of Command in each and all training exercises.  Those units and activities can be geographically close to the unit base, or be able to move to the unit.

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The one on the left, then, was when I took the picture in Vietnam

That which is not physically present in the task organization up two and down two and sideways, must be represented or replicated.   That includes units on the flanks, sides and in support.  

The hardest part of training army tactical units is the absence of things that go boom anytime of the day or night, as in field artillery and air support, and in the open.  And done off post as well as on.  Perhaps some form of noisy drone system could provide the audio visual once “shot out” is shouted out.  

An All Source Training establishment would rely on visual reality in a major way. It could establish local training centers where a wandering reserve or Guard officer, could plug into an ongoing “war” as a “replacement”. 

An All Source training establishment would focus on the echelon of command (Corps, Division, Brigade, etc) not the branch or specialty (as is planned today).  Individual and collective training must be done in context of all the other players or participants being there.

The 75^th Training Command Model

The model for echelon of command level focused training is based on the model used for decades at the 75^th Maneuver Area Command (now the 75^th Training Command) based on my experience there in the golden days of yesteryear (1979-1983) when command post exercises were the domain of “battle boards” of acetate, green tape and grease pencil. Communications was by wire.  This process was automated about the time I moved on with Battle and from their website:

“The 75th Training Command prepares large military units for deployments and other missions, by conducting live and virtual scenario-based training, while mentoring senior leaders on effective organizational decision-making….the Training Command now offers virtual and gaming formats. Whether stateside or deployed to a combat zone, military commanders do not lead their units in a vacuum.

 Each commander carefully selects, mentors and oversees a team of supporting staff that manages critical areas including personnel, logistics and operations.

 A commander's ability to keep the troops safe and accomplish the mission is directly related to the professionalism, competence, and teamwork of those staff leaders.

 And while the 75th has predominantly supported Army units in the past, the command now provides similar high quality training to other military branches, non-military agencies, and partner nation military forces.”

Those in the 75^th have historically been savvier about higher echelon operations than the Combined Arms Center at Ft Leavenworth and logistics than Ft Lee. This is due simply to the extended and repeated use of “All Source” inputs and outputs in the form, format, and content of information from outside the unit.  Those giving the exercises gain more than the exercised.  This also was an excellent resource for the development of real world mission awareness.

http://www.usar.army.mil/Commands/Training/75thTNGCMD/AboutUs.aspx

The fly in the soup is the old concept of micromanagement from on high of the details of individual and small unit training including what is called Military Occupation Specialty (MOS) which is used to build empires on high ground and sap the purity and essence of unit combat readiness.  If MOS training is that important to Personnel on High, it should be separately funded from unit readiness. 

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Taken in 1924

The Tactical Shape Shifters

These are transitional times in which the old and the new intermix. There is nothing new under the sun, but a lot of weird stuff keeps cropping up. The factors of METT-TC with a minor adjustment (adding technology to one of the “t” and replacing the C with Culture), remain constant over time, except technology and its effects on the rest.  The largest change in the tactical milieu in the last 4,000 years is the effect of the bullet and fragment storm that broke first in the Crimean War and came to fruition in Flanders in WW 1.

http://templarmilitaris.blogspot.com/2012/05/principles-of-close-order-combat-before.html

The same alternatives exist historically when technology affects the means of mayhem, hence the Tactical Imperative and the Tactical Milieu that are the shape shifters.

ARFORGEN - DEATH OF AN ARMY

ARFORGEN – DEATH OF AN ARMY

Gordon S Fowkes, KCTJ

October 16, 2015

For a decade now, the US Army has been training and deploying forces absent an effective collective spinal cord, nervous system and battle mind.  That this combination has failed is evident in the collapse of all that was put in place in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places oft classified.  The root causes of the deterioration of the collective combat capacities goes to rotational training and deployment of units (ARFORGEN) of an Army in which the General Officer Corps was excluded, or marginalized.

A root cause of transformational rotation goes to the concept of a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) which has been driven off the battlefield by the counter revolutions in warfare from insurgency to full spectrum environments.  Like ISIS and the Russians.   The concept of a fixed revolution or form of warfare readily predictable in fantasy or crystal ball, is sadly, the norm and normally wrong to the extent of national extinction. 

The ARFORGEN model had a multi-year rotational cycle starting with individual training, ending with collective training in a minor fraction available for collective training, and that according to fixed scenarios instead of the come what may.  This produced a steady stream of well-trained troops with inexperienced leaders, inexperienced in the hurly burly of wartime operations. In short, the quality of collective combat operations showed a serious degradation from that quality found routine in the Army from 1942 until Baghdad. 

Training cycles are inherently defective while continuous collective and concurrent operations is the norm on the battlefield, and hence the model for training.  Rotation of units breaks the collective competence of the forces committed, which does not translate to successive generations in the fashion of commands in continuous combat, oft for years.  Those commands matured and evolved while the rotated withered.

 The exclusion of General Officers from the Chain of Command was the product of “Transformation”, a process which broke up the Army Corps (XXX, LTG Commanding), the Army division base (XX, MG Commanding), and the disappearance of the Separate Brigade (X, BG Commanding).  That disassembly broke up the logistics and fire support commands (Corps and DIVARTY; COSCOM, DISCOM) and parceled up suboptimal elements to modular brigades (COL Commanding). The modular brigades default had two maneuver battalions and an artillery battalion of two batteries.

 The dilution of field artillery lead quickly to the degradation of effective fire support of committed units from the old war standard from interlocking fragmentation and flame to that of intermittent if at all. Too many medals for valor have been awarded because the artillery was not there, or was ineffective.  

The fire request radio nets tied the forward observer or grunt directly to the Corps air-ground support center.  All echelons in between monitored and the rule was that “silence was approval”.  This removed the delays in fire support from getting to where it was needed.  Two minutes from call to “shot out” was the minimum to preclude unnecessary casualties.

The Army’s distrust in the capacity of General Officers in command extended to the colonels, full and light by task organizing their forces by table of organization (MTOE) instead of in accordance with the Principles of War and the Estimates of the Situation regarding mission, enemy, terrain, troops (technology), time and culture.  

The “combined arms battalions” were intended to be committed without regard to the situation on the ground by denial of the options to the commander. Fortunately, those in charge over there did what they needed to do without regard and in spite of lunacy to the contrary.  Headquarters units were busted up to provide enough boots on the battlefield. 

This normal process of developing doctrine traditionally begins in the field or combat in which the experience of those at the cutting edge as it is passed on to successive replacements and carried back to the Service School Systems for post basic training for officers and noncoms.  Thus the interface between experience and doctrine is tied to the ground instead of fantasy.

 

What has changed from before when we used to win battles, is the introduction of transformation and rotational warfare, which was not developed in the field and refined in the service schools. It has been dictated from a Pentagon in which the uniforms of the uniformed services were marginalized and ticket punched.

ARFORGEN - A PACK OF LIES

LINK TO

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2014/08/rewriting-military-history-to-fit.html

The ARFORGEN concept limits the size of the force deployed to that fraction of the ARFORGEN cycle designated as such.  The size of this force compared to all available forces ranges from a fourth to an eighth of the total forces on hand.  The concept of fractional commitment inherent in ARFORGEN would have reduced the effective combat strength in combat in WW 2 of 98 of 100 combat divisions to 33 divisions.  Or equivalent.  In Vietnam from ten to three divisions.  

The concept that a combat experienced unit is suddenly fully dumbed down to require a repeat cycle wastes the experience, the time, and the mission.  That the most experienced now become the dumbest is a seriously crazy notion.  And given the duration of the dumb down cycle, the rotation of personnel out of the collective environment does in fact dumb the force until whomever gets the command starts to learn his/her job. 

Despite heroic efforts of TRADOC to bring the essence of the battle to the training base, does not include the full spectrum of forces tied to the battle, as is the case in concurrent and collective operations.  Everyone tied to the battle must be tied to the training, for real or replication. Any link left out, breaks the chain.  It is only in large scale collective and concurrent training that the small unit understands the larger context that is the default in combat.

The concept of a hierarchical evolution of skills in any field presumes that the human mind is a file cabinet similarly structured.  This is a logical conclusion except that the mind-body is not a filing cabinet nor does it rely on logic. The mind-body is primarily analogic, by comparison of analogues to what seems to be the case. This includes arithmetic.

And it is concurrent and collectively a full sensory experience, with the oldest of senses is smell.  A major part of the combat related skills are already coded into the DNA which only requires certain triggering events, normally called play.  This is proven conclusively by the fact that recess and lunch room are the most valuable of activities.   Games such as hide and seek, keep away, sports and extra-curricular are fundamental combat skills to survive in an earlier world when that was combat survival vs being lunch.  This is where combat training should start.

At any point of time and place, a tactical milieu consisting of a rapidly shifting array of tactical imperatives creates a change in means, modes, tactic, technique, and procedures:

http://templarmilitaris.blogspot.com/search?q=tactical+imperative

Recommendations:

1.     1.  All units must have one or more real world missions (as opposed to DARPA fantasies). All training must be related to these missions including all units related laterally as well as vertically to the mission. What is not there must be replicated.  That means artillery and resupply.

2.      2.  All training must replicate combat missions as spelled out in action, condition, and standards dictated by the mission.  Subject matter orientation must be replaced by concurrent and collective training

3.     3.   Only “officers of the United States” whose commission or position has been confirmed by the US Senate shall command and/or rate.  This means putting the Generals and other officers in the chain of command and coordination.

4.      4.  The Congress has the specified power to “provide for the regulation” of the forces, and as such require and authorize direct communication with Service School Systems.  Command interference with doctrine is performed by the determination of the assigned missions as determined by the President.   In short, the President commands the force the Congress give him/her.

5.     5.   Only uniformed personnel should be authorized to command, lead and/or rate uniformed personnel. This may mean the creation of new uniformed services, but under the UCMJ.

6.       Further use of deceit, fabrication and misrepresentation in the uniformed services to members of the services and/or the Congress and President result in criminal charges pursuant to provisions of law, custom and the UCMJ.

Early indicators suggest that many of the problems noted above are in the process of correction, albeit without the bullshit. 

Why Do We Need Two Marine Corps?

The Army turns green with jealousy over the existence of the Marine Corps, particularly their elan, panache, esprit de corps, and sang froid (French for cheeky upstart). The Marine Corps stole a march on the Army with the Banana Republic Two Step (Expeditionary Warfare) which folks forget is their traditional role going back to their 1776 raid in the Bahamas to disrupt British operations.

As long as there are American interests that span the Seven Seas, both the Navy and the Marine Corps are front and center in the ranks of the long serving professional force, particularly in those years in between Big Wars which tend to be Bananas and Nuts.

The Army and Air Force understand at a visceral level that the absence of a serious clear and present danger, there is no pressing need for a long standing professional Army or Air Force. What reinforcements needed by the Navy/USMC can be provided by Reserve and/or Guard forces. The fact that no serious big war threat faces the US is impressively documented by the return of Air Force and Army units to Festung Kansas where their forces are closer to the Middle East than either Europe or Asia (Globe please).

What is also damning is the Pentagon effort to Navalize the Army by creating Brigade Combat Teams be deployed like LGBs (Large Gray Boats). Rotating brigades is a copy cat of rotation of ships, except that some ships swap crews and go back to sea.