The Generals Were Cut Out of the Action
Gordon S Fowkes, LTC
USA (RET)
Failure, by Thomas A Ricks an alleged expert on military
affairs in his recent book and article in Atlantic magazine places the blame for failure in OIF and OEF squarely on the shoulders of the General (Flag rank) Officers. By so doing, he demonstrates an abysmal awareness of what the military business and the
profession at arms is all about
In
short, the generals have for well over a decade been cut out of the chain of
command and key staff lines of coordination from the A-Ring to
Afghanistan. The default command and
control of US military forces is depicted in Article I Section 8, clauses 10-17 of the specified powers of the Congress
(raise, equip, and provide for doctrine).
Article I, Section 10, Clauses 1
and 3 deny the States from having full time “standing troops” or ships of war
in time of peace, allowing them in times of invasion or insurrection. The Second Amendment guarantees the States
right to maintain a militia subject to the doctrine provided pursuant to
Congressional Guidance.
The President in Article II, Section 2, clauses 1 and two is
Commander in Chief of the armed services of the US including state forces under
federal control (National Guard). He has the sole right to appoint with the
advice and consent of the Senate, all commissioned “officers of the united
states” which includes cabinet members, judges, and all military officers. Officers make law within their jurisdiction
that enforceable in US courts, which includes failure to pick up all cigarette
butts if ordered to do so. Officers as such carry the authority of the
sovereignty of all the states through Senate confirmation, which the same as
for treaties.
During WW2 when the explosive growth of US armed forces
demanded a rapid field promotion system and the authority to promote officers
to flag rank (General) was delegated to the Theatre Commanders (Bradley. Ike,
Mac, Nimitz and Vandenberg) Thus if a four star screwed up, the Theatre
Commander could relieve him, two stars fell like snow. Today, all appointments
to command positions for generals and admirals have to be approved by the
Senate and the promotion authority for officers’ rests in the hands of service
level promotion boards, and not in the field. During Vietnam, promotions to
Captain were delegated to field army level.
Civil Servants and Contractors are not commissioned officers,
military, diplomatic, judicial or of any
other kind. Their future lies in
the hands of contracting officials not responsible for battlefield success as
are commissioned Officers.
Ricks is clearly not aware that the law that applied in WW2
is a distant memory. The best a higher
commander can do is to relieve for cause which is something not taken
lightly. Murphy’s Law is the First Law
of Warfare, so screw ups and disasters go with the territory. Real civilians can hire, fire or promote
based on ankle and elbow test results.
Civil Servants work and get paid during “duty hours” forty per week plus
or minus leave time. All military
personnel are on duty 24/7 with specified leaves or passes and still subject to
military authority.
There has been a movement most intense for the last twenty
years to remove flag and field grade officers from the staff and command of the
chain of command, and replace them with civil servants and contractors neither
of whom have the carefully designed authority of a military chain of command and staff. US officers and non commissioned officers spend
ten to twenty percent of their full time active service in residential service
training an education over a twenty plus year time in service.
Contractors, Civil Service and even the Pentagon Permanent Party (Senior
Executive Service) have but a tiny fraction of the formal education of those in
uniform. In order to enhance job
retention and security, the Pentagon Permanent Party, now in control of
acquisitions and personnel, ensure that the uniformed passing through Pentagon
do so quickly and without impact.
SecDef MacNamara was particularly incensed at the surfeit of
uniforms in key command and staff positions and decided that what had worked
for almost 200 years needed fixing and the Guard and Reserves were not called,
and advanced mathematical models invented to humiliate those whose experience
was more earthy. Field Marshal von
Rumsfeld continued the purging of flag and field ranks who had the temerity to
use combat proven and tested doctrine, and invented the current system of task
organization (Expeditionary Transformational Rotational Modularity).
This tore the combat support, combat service support, and
service support organizations out of the walls, floors and ceilings, outlawed
the use of the names, and reallocated the functions to favorite contractors and
civilian organizations, leaving the experienced flag and field ranks scurrying
around to find anything that would allow them to add their professionalism to
the fight. Combat commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq reported that there was
little or no military sense in the allocation and management of logistics. Where
it not for the fact that the Army, Navy, and Air Force Guard and Reserve units
were not deployed as trained allowed enough of them to take jobs in the
Contractor Mob and make good money.
As the traditional task organization of squad, platoon,
company, battalion, brigade (group, regiment) division, corps, field army, army
group was flushed toilet wise, and the CS, CSS. SS logistics structure pulled
off the chains of command the necessary and well-rehearsed operational
competence was shredded. It is fortunate
that these procedures had been ingrained in the services under the Congressionally
mandated mobilization alignment in the Capstone Program to real contingency
plans, the screw up factor would have made Bladensburg look like a blitzkrieg.
In short, the generals have been yanked out of effective
control of line and staff, and what was left of that was put up for bid.
In order to address the sense of duty denied, there are
those in the political election business who are trying to subvert those of
uniform to participate or appear to participate in posing as players in partisan
national politics.
There is a substantive legal difference between service
members in general and officers in particular and civil servants doing the same
job, and further with contractors, even those former military personnel. The military can be ordered into considerably
more dangerous situations than civilians, and cab be tried for life for refusal
or failure. A civilian is fired for
failure to perform, not imprisoned.
The "blame" for failure of operations in OIF/OEF I
do place on the contractors per se, but on the Pentagon from stripping the flag
and field officers in command of maneuver troops effective command and control
of their logistics. The contractors are
bound by the terms of their contracts, which were drawn up by a centralized
"procurement" organization. As
such, these logistics elements cannot be prioritized or moved around by the
same echelon of command that used be able to for mission requirements.
A Rand Study
published in 2000 traces the evolution of the Army Division of the XXth Century
and cautions against busting up the divisional structure before it was done on
the Capture of Baghdad/
That which was sliced off the divisional Discom to form the
modular support battalions of the modular brigade was done by dividing the
assets equally between modular brigades, not driven by priority of fires and
maneuvers. The new modular brigade (except Stryker) had two maneuver battalions
instead of two to five as needed. Two maneuver
battalion is not flexible enough, and the commanders in the field had to
cannibalize units and resort the assets to form additional maneuver teams. Many field artillery battalions (fires) were
re-tasked as infantry as were headquarters companies. As of now (a decade later) the third
battalion is being restored.
The original intent of the modular two-maneuver battalion modular
brigade was to restore the number of O-6 (Colonel) command positions formerly
in the Pentomic Infantry division of the Fifties which had five O-6 command
positions for each of five "Battle Groups" which each had five rifle
companies plus two for weapons, support and command. Since there was no battalion in the mix, there
was no O-5 command slot, and the only place a competent infantry Lt Col could
get command time was in an Armored Division.
The Armored division did not have the Pentagonal curse. Thus Armored
officers and a few lucky armored infantry officers had the requisite command
time for promotion to colonel.
The Pentomic Division was replaced with the same organization
as the Armored division which went on until Transformation surfaced. The post-Vietnam task organization of combat
divisions for missions removed one of the three divisional brigade command
slots to put a National Guard Separate Brigade under divisional control on
mobilization in place of one of the divisional brigades. The cost the Regular Army one each O-6
command slot for each affected division.
This had to stop. The Capstone Program assigning Guard units
a combat mission for existing contingencies was a clear and present danger to
promotion opportunity and timing of the O-6 regular officer. This was an integral part of planning for
future missions before 9-11.
The Pentagon set about a deception plan on how they were
going to restore the three lost O-6 command slots, and quietly re-tooled the
Battle Group to have additional field grade staff and command slots (O-4 and
O-5) by slicing up divisional combat support and combat service support assets
to support the new modular brigades. By
reallocating the existing maneuver (IN/AR) battalions in pairs created five
Modular Brigades restoring the three O6^ command positions. And it reallocated combat support and combat
service support staff and command positions to favor combat support
officers. This was a tactical force
design intended for promotions.
The end result of slicing up the DISCOM, COSCOM, TAACOM and
other TOE logistics and support organization and replacing them with ad hoc
contract aggregates also removed the justification for Flag Rank command
positions of those and related TOE organizations. There were no more Area Support Groups,
Transportation Groups, MP brigades, Petroleum Groups et al which made up the
support structure.
Not only were the chain of staff and command structures torn
asunder, but the experience of how to do that disappears from doctrine. All of the workings of a Corps Support
Command (COSCOM) etc had been undergoing command post exercises of entire corps
which included forces from all services and components but those of allied
forces as well.
All of the tables of organization, tables for allocation of
resources were contained in field manuals that have been used as updated by technology,
circumstance that any officer, noncom or service person could slip into any
organization, and know what to do. Now
it's company policy and contract provisions.
In ten years, the experience base will start to erode to the
point that years will be needed to restore.
The stated intent of Transformation was for light, fast and
agile forces, what they got was a force with maneuver limited to an extent not
seen in the field since the Spanish American War. Transformation was intended
to make life simple for the Pentagon to move around, but which required an
extraordinary force of troops to make work.
For that reason, I stand in awe of the professional
competence of our troops that made an impossible task seem simple. The forces I served with in Germany, Japan
and Vietnam would have been stopped cold with the kind of Mickey Mouse
Transformation served up by Pentagon.
This is what General Dempsey knows he has to fix, but the
quagmire in the Pentagon is full of mines and obstacles placed to preserve and
protect lifetime employment of the Permanent Party.
