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.

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.

Invasion of the Blow Hards

Many pundits to the Right of the political spectrum make much ado of the barbarity and fanaticism of the Muslim Terror elevating these savage clowns to the status of a serious invasion threat of the Continental US and to the Constitution itself. To the level we once associated with the Axis and the Soviets.

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2006/12/plot-centric-warfare-dealing-with.html

We lived under the nuclear gun for forty years, which circumstance elevated national security as the primary focus of national policy, overshadowing all other considerations. The Fall of the Wall and the end of the Soviet Empire is missed by all who need a Villain in their lives to use for personal pleasure and gain. And who would love to circumvent the Constitutional Rights embodied in our Constitution. And True Believers exist at both ends of the political wind machine who are straining at the leash to do.

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2006/12/movie-sets-oil-wells-infantry-and.html

The fact is that the Muslim Terrorists are a serious pain in the ass, but hardly a serious threat to the Continent and constitute a threat to the Constitution only as a blow back from those who take them too seriously. No way is the entire Caliphate from Morocco to Indonesia, all together and united going to be able to mount sufficient naval warships and transport to land a force big enough to overwhelm the US.

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2007/11/defense-of-continent-by-numbers.html


Consider the avenues of approach to the US to get to our coasts or to the Mississippi. The Asian Axis must include control or neutralization of Japan and Kamchatka Peninsula to able to approach Alaska. The avenues of approach to the US from Alaska either must penetrate the wall of mountains at some point between Alaska and the Mexican border or risk constant level of threat from their eastern flanks. Once in Washington State, California must be controlled, likely from the sea, which advance is restricted by the Sierra Nevada, the Rockies, and the Great Plains before being able to strike home.

The Atlantic Approach likewise must control Great Britain, Iceland (as in Red Storm Rising), and go for Newfoundland before reaching the St Lawrence River. It was this avenue of approach that worried FDR should England have fallen to Hitler. He asked Churchill to turn the Royal Navy over to the US should that happen. Churchill said no in very certain terms.

That time frame was more dangerous than we give it today given the fact that we won and no threat appeared. If the French fleet had gone over to Germany and Germany had landed in England, there were British who would have welcomed him, including Edward former King of England. A combined European fleet of Germany, France, Italy, and the Royal Navy would have had the necessary power to support landings in the US. And they would have been supported by an Axis fueled by Soviet Oil. Hitler’s invasion of Russian ended those options.

A Soviet invasion of Europe would have hadto consolidate it’s gains in the same areas and would have had to have the same relative naval power to have ventured against the US that a combined European Fleet under German control. And then venture across the North Atlantic, seize Newfoundland, and the mouth of the St Lawrence before taking on New England.

It becomes obvious that the best chance an invader has is to have substantial support from within the US. Substantial enough to control or seriously disrupt key segments of the nation including at least one of the top three: West Coast, Union, and/or Mississippi. Such an event would need to replicate the inner divisions of such nations at war such as France in 1940 where the pro-German faction was equaled by the Communists who, at that time were allied with Germany.

It is easy to consider a Red State - Blue State division in the face of an invasion, but hard to predict who would favor who. It would depend on the perception of legitimacy of the extant US government, and upon which end of the political wind tunnel blew first. And the high ground would be the rights spelled out in the Constitution, particularly free speech and assembly and due process.

Beware of the Blow-Hards.

Except me.

Civil Service Generals to Replace Real Generals?

The decision to give some flag-rank jobs to civilians, actually civil servants, of the Senior Executive Service (SES) is the result of a natural selection process of back office domination of front office operations, also known as dog wagging. This is a process not peculiar to the military and is a principal cause for bureaucratic incompetence in both public and private sectors where the delivery of goods and services become subordinate to palace politics, administrivia, and job security for the high and mighty.

While much as been said about the shortcomings of the General Officer Corps in the press lately, the General Officer Corps is the result of a long and progressive development process subjecting the officer to increasing levels of complexity and responsibility designed to gain competence across the full spectrum of military operations from platoon to combined and joint operations. It requires demonstrated competence in the art and science of war.

The civil servant has no such progressive educational and experiential process and is primarily the result of adroit self advancement through the labyrinth of office politics. No measurable standard exists to determine an understanding of war and it’s vagaries within the Civil Service.

While a uniformed officer’s career if file-centric (personnel file) based on the successive inputs of rater and endorser, the civil servant’s career is position-centric in which survival is enhanced by turf expansion and protection. As a retired bureaucrat from a large unnamed Texas city known for oil, I have been there and done that. Efficiency reports in civil service are more a formality than a matter of career life or death.


The turmoil attending the rotation of uniformed officers through senior positions to feed the military promotion mill is a cost of career progression that can be corrected by slowing the process down. The stubborn persistence of the process of “Transformation” which stalled at the Brigade level attests to the ignorance of the Department of the Army of division,, corps, and field army operations which expertise was sloughed off to the Army Reserve, and forgotten.

Were it not for the retirees, reservists, and Guard personnel called up in ad hoc manner or hired at multiples of their civilian salaries, there would be no logistics structure. It is tribute to the adaptability of our people to task organize in the field a structure originally task organized by TOE instead of METT-T.

If senior civilians are to act at General Officer level, they should have demonstrated the tactical and technical propensities we expect of their military counterparts. This is the case with Guard and Reserve "technicians" who must maintain their military rank and qualifications to keep their civil service job, often operating in the same duties in both capacities. Guard and Reserve technicians often command units.

Left disconnected to military art and science, an expansion of the flag rank SES virtually could eliminate the need for flag rank military persoonnel, indeed of a professional force of any component. What could be civilianized could also be privatized. Think of a Blackwater bluewater force operating with a Letter of Marque and Reprisal (as Privateers) as in the days of the Bounding Main.

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.

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.

Purging Victory in GWOT

Why aren’t the Guard and Reserves being mobilized “for the duration” of the War on Terror? Now that we have passed the period of time of active combat of WW2, why haven’t we? We mobilized the Guard in October 1941 as a part of the Preparedness Movement along with a peace time draft and call up of Reservists to fill out the ranks.

Federal Law for a long time required that members of the Reserves and Guard be trained and called up as units. In an “administrative rewrite” of the law, that provision seems to have fallen through the cracks. Most “units” being called up today are cherry picked lists of specified individuals arrayed in a document called a “derivative UIC”. This is the Pentagon’s lip service made to that older law and to disguise the fact that too many Guard and Reserve field grades in command slots constitutes an apparent threat to sensitive Regular careerists.

The image of the disorderly retreat of the village militia in our early wars still plagues us, and image that ceased to be accurate during the Civil War. The competence of Civil War units and commanders is paid homage to world wide in the studies of their campaigns. As in that war, the senior commanders of both sides often were professionals who had returned to civilian life or whose excellence in battle was different from their previous military experience. Lee was an engineer, Jackson an artillery man, both masters of maneuver.

As in those days, the core of the leadership of the Guard and Reserves, officer and enlisted, is made of up former Regulars, often with astounding combat experience. The majority of academy graduates do not stay on active duty, and large numbers of them finish their careers in the Guard and Reserves. The USAFR, until recently, took no non-prior service personnel. Their TOE’s reflect that, unlike the other services.

So, people ask, what does the average Guard and Reservist person or unit look like? The answer is that it depends on the person or unit. The range of quality, if measured statistically, has a standard deviation several times that of the more compact Regular services. There are units and personnel in the Guard and Reserves who are a standing embarrassment, and those whose excellence is over the top. I have served in both types.

Since most Guard and Reserve folks are prior service, it is wisest to view them as the Post-Graduate Force, while the Regulars are the Under Graduates. This view is enhanced by the fact that most in the Guard and Reserves are older, more mature, and have life experiences that focus on the chaos of civilian life which replicates the chaos and confusion of the battlefield.

Recent criticisms of the US Army as a whole is that it is not focused on the skills needed to fight the War on Terror. This is due to the separation of those skills into the non-union Guard and Reserve pile. Belated recognition of this is the recent creation of Psyops and Civil Affairs as Regular Army branches. Too late for any good, and too risky for a Regular to risk his career over in the after Iraq Army.

It would have made too much sense to mobilize the structure in place to form an Army capable of transitioning Iraq into a more democratic form. It would have required creating several two star Civil Affairs/Military Government structures with sufficient MP, Psyop, Engineer, and combat forces to make it work. Once Baghdad had fallen, the combat units would be gradually be made into regional, local, and national reaction forces until the Iraq Army had been stood up.

The Army reserves have the capability of training the entire Iraqi structure. These elements, like all others, have been committed piece meal. So logical is this approach, one has to ask why wasn’t it even considered? And the answer to this is not so buried in recent past.

And the problem arises from what one does with wartime troops when the war is over. The historical modus operandi was that the state militia was mobilized, placed under federal control, and after the war went home to parades, and political office. A militia colonel kept his rank and as an honorific made good press. The problem came with the Regulars who took temporary ranks as militia officers, US volunteers (like Teddy Roosevelt), or “brevet” rank like the old “acting jack” of Basic Training. After the war that temporary rank came off, which was a serious embarrassment which at Little Big Horn cost a few scalps. This continued through WW1 in which many Regular Majors reverted to Captain. After WW2, the size of the occupation forces reduced the impact of Reduction in Grade (RIG),

After Korea, the Army resorted to Reductions in Force (RIF) to purge the Active force of excess reservists. I lost two company commanders in 1958, one went to corporal and the other to sergeant. In those days, officers could revert to an enlisted rank. Legend of the time had it that a Lt Col got off his plane in Berlin as a civilian and the Army refused to ship his house hold good home. The Reserve Officers Association (ROA) pushed a law through Congress that locked a soldier in for his or her twenty year retirement on achieving eighteen years of service. This we call the Eighteen Year Lock-in.

There were too many former officers in the enlisted ranks in the late Fifties and Sixties that the Army barred officers who had no former Regular service from enlisting. At that time, the ranks were stalled for promotion. It took seven years from 1st Lt to Captain, and it was a rare bird that made Lt Col before retirement. The problem was considered acute as too many of the officers on active duty were not Regulars. A plan was devised to use the Up or Out System to purge the Reserves before the lock in. Then came the deluge, and the plan was deferred.

In 1961, twenty years from 1941, the numbers of soldiers reaching twenty year retirement started to climb fast. By 1965 is was a torrent. The middle ranks were emptying out. And them came Vietnam with a simultaneous explosion of the need for troops of all kinds. In 1960 there were company commanders with the superannuated age of 35 close to retirement, and by 1970 some company commanders had two whole years of time in service. After nearly a decade of combat over half of the officers on active duty were Guard and Reserve officers on extended active duty, “voluntary indefinite” it was called.

After four RIF’s between 1970 and 1974, the old plan was resurrected and in the promotion boards of 1974-76 for Major and Lt Col were constituted (illegally it turns out) without an “appropriate” number of Reserve Officers. The selection rate for combat experienced Reserve Majors was ten percent, and thirty percent for Captains for promotion to the next higher grade. It is significant that a lower percentage was set for those in imminent reach of retirement.

A group calling itself The Promotion Research Committee, chaired by Major Maxfield, USA, was formed to find out why and filed suit over age discrimination and improper composition. The brains of the operation was former “company” employee, Nancy Maxfield, who later retired from the White House staff. I was the Congressional mouth, which accounts for both my sensitivity to the subject and exposure to the depths of depravity and deceit that the Personnel Puke will sink to. This was exported to the Corporate Sector as “down sizing” and “out sourcing”.

The Army, in it’s haste to purge the Reserves, blew a gigantic whole in the mid ranks of the Army’s officer corps. Recently commissioned lieutenants who had been accepted for six month tours were involuntarily extended for two years to flood the lower ranks to the upward suction the purge had created.

The Promotion Research Committee won in court, restoring some to active duty, and sensitized the Congress to the point that in the After Desert Storm Downsize, they deflected the Pentagon from repeating the RIF/Up or Out paradigm and forced an early out program into effect.

Having learned this harsh lesson, the Pentagon has devised the perfect plan to avoid messy law suits and costly early out programs. The Guard and Reserves aren’t allowed in the Active Army, which is now for Regulars only. The troops in the War on Terror are still in the Guard and Reserves, their rating chains still trace their ways back to the Armory or Reserve Center in Allville.

This is a reversion to the paradigm we used as late as the Spanish American War and which proved inadequate for export and was dropped in the Dick Act of 1908. But al least, the Pentagon is not faced with the messy problem of dumping embarrassingly competent non-union labor. And as a result of maintaining the Purity of Essence of the Regular Establishment, has engineered something tottering on defeat.

The Five Sided Blunder

What is the brass in the Pentagon thinking about how to exit Iraq? What is the military going to do? Actually it matters little as the Pentagon isn’t run by the brass, they only think they do and any resemblance to military the Pentagon is not. It is dominated by civilians and is run in accordance with the Dilbert Principle … as is the rest of government and corporate America. The least qualified is propelled to the top spot with special attention in suppressing the more talented.

The Pentagon has five sides inside its five sided edifice. And the first of these are the Iron Butterflies, the clerical staff of civil servants most of whom are typically short, round, and female largely of Black or Hispanic origin and before not only Angels but Demons fear to tread. Any field soldier who dare brusquely before them risks career perdition. Not to be fooled with, but are amenable to gifts as tribute and laudatory salutations as in the days of the Greek Gods.

The heart and soul as well as nervous system are the Super Grades, GS 14 and up, who form the permanent cadre pretending to be deputy assistants whose long tenure and file cabinets hold every conceivable reorganization devised by man. Many of them have military service and have not updated their military experience which in outdate form continues to surface and resurface with new names impervious to meaningful modification. The Army’s light and fast Modular Brigades have resurfaced as the resurrection of the Fifties “Battle Groups” originally designed for the “atomic” battlefield.

The Brass, the military officers rotated in and out of the Pentagon are primarily there to get a ticket punched, and have their homes in Northern Virginia refurbished. Many a sound field soldier has met his or her Waterloo, rather Cervantean Windmills, when a brave attempt is made to use the Military Decision Process in the face of “staff coordination” a westernized version of Nemawashi, the Japanese method of consensus building. In fact concurrence or non concurrence by a Pentagon milicrat is called a chop, after the personalized stick used in the Far East in lieu of a signature. Unlike Nemawashi, where all must agree after all is said and said again, the Pentagon version is sabotaged by truly non concurring despite concurrence.

Only the Three Star Brassnik has enough stroke to over ride the Super Grades but they too ride off into the Fairway in time.

Outside the Pentagon’s walls are the Civilian Contractors, including the Beltway Bandits and the Merchants of Destruction ….the Defense Indusry/

Lurking in the forests along the Beltway are the Bandits who serving one master or another to exploit fissures between Nemawashi and the Military Decision Making Process, by doing the staff work that internal politics denies to Pentagonian sufficient energy to do. Been there done that.

A truly significant element equal in theoretical relevance is are the Merchants of Destruction, the Defense Industry, the industrial half of the Military-Industrial Clique. Far from sinister, they are the font of ingenuity and source of many of America’s mightiest weapons. The military manufacturing and repair capabilities are experts at tweaking their best, but it takes the Defense Industry to come up with the original. Many of our best systems have been the result of visionary work done contrary to Pentagon (War/Navy Departments) desires like the P51, P47, P38 while many of the Pentagon’s creations have been less than expected.

To be sure, there is a dark and lighter side to each of the five sides, with corrupt manufacturers, and bloody fools, as well as visionary civilians (theoretically at least).

The last of the five sides of the Pentagon are the Political Appointees, like Strange Robert and Field Marshal von Rumsfeld whose maladministration of the Pentagon calls for an immediate reevaluation of the suitability of such over aged adolescents as captains of the national fate. The role of the Political Appointee is to over-ride the internal resistance that any organization has to outside interference such as the will of the Elected Leader. Hopefully the under-qualified spend their time on cosmetic changes that serve to make brownie points with their Party, or as minor political interference on behalf of some contributor or friend of the inner circle.

The creation of a bloated Defense Department as a buffer between the Congress and the Services cannot be considered and unqualified success. In the Old Days, the Congress was involved in deciding such issues as battle ships versus carriers versus subs versus aircraft and in fact used to determine the military order of battle as a matter of law. The last time this was done was in 1940.

Lest one forget, the Constitution gives the President the power as Commander in Chief of the forces created by the Congress. This includes weapons, staffing, and “regulations” aka doctrine. Congress has been buffered out of this primary responsibility by their creation of DoD. Today the Pentagon asserts that Congress doesn’t have the power to determine what systems it needs. See Article 1, Sections 8 and 10, and the Second Amendment to see who has the power to do what.

America used to lose a lot of battles, but lose no wars before DoD was created. The record of winning wars isn’t as distinctive today since then. And the reasons are inherent in the internal dynamics of the five sided blunder house … the Pentagon.

FT Article on US Army

Jacob Weisberg’s article in the Financial Times “the International Way forward in Iraq” incorrectly asserts that “US troops are not trained or experienced at peacekeeping”. The truth is that the US does, but they were committed piecemeal as individual enhancements to Regular Army units not designed for peacekeeping, nation building, consolidation operations or, for that matter, no other foreseeable contingency. They were not committed in the battalions, brigades and groups that they have been configured in early WW2. I am referring to the Civil Affairs, formerly Civil Affairs and Military Government, units with the institutional memory of the successful occupations of Austria, Germany, and Japan. They are also staffed with Army Reservists who civilian occupations include local and state government and the skills not possible to replicate in a garrison bound Regular Army. One of the principle jobs of Civil Affairs is to secure public facilities such as power plants, museums, hospitals, police stations, and such. If they had been used in accordance with existing doctrine and training, the looting would not have taken place.

A Civil Affairs plan to rebuild Iraq was presented to Bremer’s staff but was rejected and GOP activists and friends of Dick used this opportunity to try to convert the Muddle East into the Middle West.

In a similar vein, it is widely understood that the expectation of the Pentagon that the Iraqis would welcome the US with flowers instead of IED’s. Any competent Psychological Estimate of the Situation would have readily discounted this wishful thinking. And the PSYOP capability of the Army is in the Army Reserves.

We continually read of our convoys being ambushed on roads and the initial attack into Iraq was stalled for a few days when Fedayeen irregulars attacked the lines of communications. The National Guard had light infantry brigades and Military Police brigades trained specifically to protect the lines of communications and Rear Area Operations Centers and logistics control centers to orchestrate the whole movement of troops and supplies in the rear. These were not called up as such. Initially the Guard Brigades were used to guard US bases in Germany and in other Gulf states.

The underlying cause for this failure to commit the proper forces to meet the mission, enemy, and terrain inherent in the War on Terror is a military fad called Transformation in which such factors as who are going to fight, with whose help, where, and for what reason are deemed irrelevant. All efforts in the Army is to form “modular brigades” configured in identical formats to be rotated to and from foreign battlefields without regard to maintaining a stable presence to stabilize unstable regions. The grip that Transformation has on the Pentagon is a perfect example of Hans Christian Andersen’s “Emperor’s New Clothes”.

Imagine if WW2 had been fought by rotating the 98 combat divisions sent over seas, thirty at a time. Or without the flexibility that allowed US forces to adapt to war in mountains, jungles, deserts, and urban areas against Asians and Europeans.

The US has only had a large standing Regular military force since 1980. The earlier Cold War army was a temporary force with large numbers of draftees and reserve officers. After we withdrew from Vietnam, it seemed likely that the Cold War would continue and a large force would be needed and that could be done with an “All Volunteer” force which the Pentagon interpreted as an All Regular Army. Unsexy, un-warrior skills such as maintenance, logistics, intelligence, PSYOP, and Civil Affairs were sloughed off to the Reserves and out of sight, became out of mind.

In short, the Pentagon views the military as a closed union shop run by the personnel department. The Reserves are deemed non-union suitable for seasonal and part time work at best and scabs at worst. The Pentagon’s full court press to disarm the Guard and reduce the Reserves to replacements is motivated by the revelation that Guard and Reserve troops have more combat experience plus extra life experience that makes them better suited for the eclectic war on Terror.