FAKE OFFICERS AND FUBAR IN THE PENTAGON

Fake Officers & FUBAR in the Pentagon

 There is a malignant growth in the Pentagon of several generations and many administrations that has effectively neutralized the combat power of at least the Army.  And weakened the links between it and the other services, to the point that after its most successful land operation in its history, failed to defeat a fractious but rabid irregular foe, and failed to stand up effective governance in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Something it had done successfully in Japan and Germany.  And the entire misadventure has been managed by fake officers not confirmed by the Senate as Officers of the United States.

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The Transformed by the Fake

(The President) shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The fact that these fake officers have not been confirmed by the Senate breaks the Constitutional limits and controls over the military, judiciary, and executive personnel in critical positions considered expressions of the sovereignty of these United States.  All such “Officers of the United States” include ambassadors, consuls, cabinet members, federal judges, and all military officers down to Butter Bar.  As such, each Officers’ word is law, enforceable in court as such. 

Survival Imperatives Differ - Officers vs Civil Servants

The survival imperatives of Civil Servants vs military officers differ dramatically between the Job Description vs the Efficiency Report (OER) on file.  The Personnel File, once called the 201 File, contains the list of assignments and schools together with associated OER.  One slip, and late in one’s career it can end under the Up or Out policy.   This hits usually in the Second Decade of service with odds as low as fifty percent for survival, depending upon the current SWAG.  Been there, done that. 

The Officer’s career assignments are determined on a competitive and centrally controlled process.  The end result is the selection of officers in senior grades, usually O-6 (Colonel and Navy Captain) who has the expected preparation and performance.

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The Civil Service Job Description and table of organization gives authority and territory upon which continued employment is grounded. This is dependent upon connections, favors, and a strangle hold over processes.  The assignments of Civil Servants are principally under the control of the Servant, with the selection and promotion process subject to compromise and manufacture. It is rigged, and with few external set of standards applied to selections for promotion or assignment.  Been there, done that.  

This lack of objective standards of performance or experience, taken collectively and protectively, mandates that military expertise by the military becomes a clear and present danger to civil service survival.  Complementing this banality is that the officers caught up in Civil Service traps must play the part of a puppet on a string.  This is how we lost the Middle East. 

WE KNEW THE CULTURE BEFORE

The current flap over ISIS, and of the diminished capacity of Iraq and Afghanistan to dealing with irregular and peer enemy forces, despite over fifteen years of US military effort and trillions of dollars, were preventable had the effort been fought by Officers of the United States, without the fatal influence of Fake Officers of the SES and their crony contractors.

The post mortems posted about the prewar estimates and post war operations has been laid at the door of cultural arrogance and incompetence at the level where the difference between Shia and Sunni was dismissed, in favor of a turnkey Kansas under the baleful gaze of Neo-Conservatives.  The blame has been shifted in-house to denounce stability (nation building) as a righteous military mission.

The problem with that assessment is that it ignores that the US Army had trained for decades in Rear Area Combat Operations (RACO), Civil Affairs and Military Government, and Psychological Operations all of which I had extensive exposure to during that training effort which filled the time between Vietnam and 9-11.   Likewise, the capacity to operate at Field Army level with multiple corps and divisions was destroyed. 

In order for an officer to get his or her Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) prior to 9-11 approved in CA and PSYOPS, one had to submit a PSYOP or Civil Affairs Estimate of the Situation that necessarily covered such niceties as Shia and Sunni.  Or Pashtunwali.  Where did these estimates go?

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Draft of What Was Known in CA and PSYOP

Why were the capacities to fix and administer devastated and/or conquered territories for which preparations long precede D-day, H-Hour deleted?  Instead of Civil Affairs brigades and PSYOP groups prepping the battlefield, only a handful of Army Reserve Officers were given a back seat at the briefing. 

TENURED (SES) AND THE TEMPORARY (Officers)

Rumsfeld has long left the Pentagon, but the programs that he advanced had been long in the plotting, going back to, at least, Desert Storm.  It occurred to a number of my fellow veterans that the “Regular Army” was at fault proceeding with policies that guaranteed their promotions in a competitive fashion, over the necessities of actually winning in war.  Military officers’ tenure in the Pentagon, however, rarely exceed four years, and usually run three.  It is not possible for a decades long military doctrine run from inside the Pentagon be done with the connivance of commissioned officers of the United States.  They then are the hand puppets of those permanent employees (Civil Service) welded to their desks.

COMBAT SERVICE SUPORT

The glue that held Field Army and Corps operations together was the force structure in the US Army Reserve, and to a large extent the Army National Guard with counterparts in the Air Force and other services.  The glue came about due to the unglamorous role that glue, as in logistics and service support did not facilitate competitive promotions in the Active Components.  The result was the massive transfer of unglamorous activities (service support and combat service support) to the Reserve Components. 

Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait brought a sudden and traumatic shock to the Pentagon that the US Army, nor other services, could go to war without the Reserve Components. 

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ARFORGEN

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2015/10/arforgen-death-of-army.html

Once Baghdad had been secured, however, the glue was dissolved as was the corps along with the core of logistics, combat service support, which was banished from the Army dictionary as defunct and obsolete.  Since then, large scale maneuvers became problematic at best with maneuver replaced by rotation under ARFORGEN (Army Force Generation) designed to provide equitable opportunity to participate in combat for promotion and career development purposes. 

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Likewise, while all units in the Armed Forces had been aligned to war time plans, the new “transformation” mandate under Rumsfeld, replaced any coherent defense strategy with blizzards of “snowflakes” from his imperial orifice.   Rumsfeld had taken the measure to transfer senior military officers to the field where they could be more useful, and replaced them with senior civil servants aka Senior Executive Service aka SES.  Then abolished the field commands these military officers might have been assigned to.  

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Under Transformation, the Corps was abolished and along with it the well-oiled close air support system was broken from the days when a request for an airstrike was monitored by the Air Force and silence was approval.  Too many Medals for Valor including the Medal of Honor have been awarded due to a failure of approval of immediate airstrikes due to the abolition of the Corps.

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PREPLANNED  AND IMMEDIATE AIR SUPPORT

Such was the case of the “transformation” process that proceeded to create a collection of “units of action” (instead of companies, battalions, regiments and brigades) that would be perfectly suited for future combat, the shape of which was to be determined by magic crystal ball.  Said crystal ball being ensconced in the Office of Net Assessments, which was designed to destroy the Services’ pet projects.  And “verified” by war gaming but not validated by the Schools or the Field.

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Any policy that has a life of over three years is not likely from a military staff in the Pentagon. In previous years, the Army was divided into “branches” (Armor, Artillery, Military Intelligence, etc) which branches governed doctrine and training and was active in procurement.  Branches have been abolished, and the dominance of doctrine and equipment has been sucked up into the Pentagon, and away from the Service Schools that melded field experience with national requirements.  The operative model for Transformation was to turn the Army into modular units like ships in the Navy. 

Rummy was Navy. 

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TASK ORGANIZATION TOO COMPLICATED FOR REMFS

The Senior Executive Service (SES) which operates as if it were consisting of Generals and Colonels, are not “officers of the United States”, and their directives should not be considered “orders” in the military sense as they do not convey the sovereignty of these United States.  The oath of enlistment or office for service members requires obedience to the “officers” appointed over them, which Civil Servants are not.

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TRANSFORMED INTO TABLES FROM ON HIGH

While a purge of those fake officers is not practical, the severance of the malignancy from the chain of command is easily obtained by the Senate saying that it will not consider any efficiency of fitness report by other than an Officer of the United States” in the process of confirming the promotions of military officers.  This will instantly produce a REMF stampede from the Pentagon of officers seeking real units to serve in.  These can be readily funded by the shredding of the payrolls of the SES. 

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If need be, those whose services are essential can be presented to the Senate for approval and concurrence.  In that manner, the Senate regains control over a Pentagon run wild. In addition, lateral entry of personnel and units as has been the wartime custom since before George Washington, can be set up.  

A UNIFORMED GENERAL STAFF CORPS!

And, finally, the Army needs a General Staff Corps trained to run things from the top, to provide the linkage between brass and field.  After WW 1, the concept of a General Staff was denounced as too Germanic.

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In addition, and foremost, the present efforts of the Army to reconstitute itself must be supported in defiance of those whose payroll depends upon its demise. Corps and divisions are being reassembled along with the necessary combat service support (logistics).  

Gordon S Fowkes, LTC USA RET, KCTJ

Failure to let the Generals Command the Commands at War.

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.

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

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/

http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/2007/MR1211.pdf

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.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/63-3/Ch9.htm

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.

Sycophancy - Key to Miltary Career Survival

Lt Col Yingling’s widely read criticism of the General Officer Corps lack of creativity and integrity has been followed by a number of other criticisms of the officer corps in general and calling for better training. Another recent article derides the concept of civilian interference with military operations insisting that although the civilians set the policy, the military should be free to carry it out the right way. Each blames something wrong that can be fixed inside the services, to wit, the Pentagon, Each is wrong.

The profit motive for entrepreneurs is profit, for investors it is the value of shares held, but for everyone else, promotion is the profit motive. And the key to promotion within an organization is fundamentally to suck up and move up. Actual effectiveness is a positive factor, but often effectiveness, productivity, efficiency, or other positive feature pose a threat to other employees, and especially those on high. This is true in the private, public, and military sectors of endeavor.

Sycophancy in the military is not only politic, it is essential for survival, given the Up or Out system of promotion based primarily on the report cards written by raters and endorsers. Part of this process is the creation of the military itself by retaining the system by which those who survived the gauntlet maintain it. Part of the process is that of the Congress which has the authority to provide “for the regulation” of the Armed Forces, specifically including the confirmation of officer selections and promotions by the Senate.

Two measures are required: 1) Congress should abolish the Up or Out system as wasteful of valuable talent and supportive of insufferable sycophancy. 2) The services should adopt the enlisted promotion evaluation system for officers, which system reduces the impact of rater and endorser to a minor fraction of the promotion point system needed for promotion.

The Up or Out system is most devastating in the second decade of service in which an officer is already no longer house broke for civilian use and has a decade of service that needs to be retained to maintain combat effectiveness. The Army has been short of Captains for decades due to the diminished chances of career survival in the second decade and the prospect of unrewarding field grade staff positions. There is nothing wrong with a long service Captain, as Captains (Navy Lt) run the units in the field.

The present Army Enlisted promotion point system has had the evaluation of the rater (Commander) at around twenty percent but has just been reduced to yes/no. The rest of the evaluation system also diminishes the impact of a review board and now stresses assignments, schooling, and awards which are a more objective criterion that the damning faint praise an aggressive officer might get.

We are in the last stages of the war in Iraq, and it is now widely accepted that the problems created by over bearing civilian authority may have fatally flawed the enterprise from the beginning. The big question on people’s lips is to question why didn’t the professionals speak out? The answer is that to do so would make it difficult for the officer’s family to pay the rent, or buy groceries.

It may take a law to accomplish both objectives. As we face a potential draw down of forces in the next administration, it would be wise to try to save the combat experience learned, even if it makes the year group distribution look a little skewed. But that’s another story.