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.
Showing posts with label privateer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label privateer. Show all posts
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Why need Regulars when Blackwater is here?
Blackwater proves that we don’t need a large standing military to raise highly technical and specialized military forces in time of need from the general population. Their excesses prove that this shouldn’t be done by the private sector. Likewise, the logistical and service support needed for an eclectic military force provided by such firms and Halliburton proves the same point.
South Africa has made it illegal for South Africans to join private military companies in the aftermath of objections to Executive Solutions, featured in “Blood Diamond” were objected to by the rest of the African states. Executive Solutions proved that a highly trained force was more than cost effective, replacing ineffective UN and African peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone. Since reconciliation, large numbers of highly trained and combat experienced South Africans have been seeking employment in the guns for hire sector.
Historically privatized military forces on sea were either pirates or privateers, the latter being pirates with a government license. Privateers were banned by the Declaration of Paris in 1856 signed by all the major European powers, but which the US did not for lack of greater protection for what was left of US shipping after the devastations by the Confederate Navy. Half the US merchant marine reflagged itself to prevent capture by the Alabama and Shenandoah.
Field and siege artillery were private sector until the French in the late 17th Century made it a part of the regular military establishment. It seemed that the private artillery companies had a penchant for leaving the battlefield to preserve their capital investments against capture or destruction.
Logistics in the US Army used “sutlers”, private PX’s, up until after the Spanish American War. They tended to be gougers of troopers paychecks. While there are many private sector logistics operations that have provided the services that Army Reserve and Guard logistics units were tasked to perform, there has been widespread corruption and incompetence that has proved counter-productive in the war on terror. The building built by private contractors for the Iraqi Police Academy leaks shit from the light sockets. Shoddy construction and abandoned projects throughout Iraq leave a bad taste in the mouths of the people whose hearts and minds we bleed for.
The motives for the unprecedented use of the private sector on the battlefield stems two mutually reinforcing sources: Neo-Con religious fervor towards privatization and job security for the Regular Army. The latter fear that People From Outside the Box will threaten the job security and promotion opportunity and flowpoint if the Guard and Reserve forces trained for over a quarter of a century to provide combat service support and service support at levels from battalion to Theater Army would interfere the availability of command and field staff positions to budding field grades.
Few outside the military know that the structure of units above division (corps, field army, and theater army) were well trained and ready to go to support any kind of military operation. Fortunately for the US, the private sector has drawn from the experience and training of the Guard and Reserve in this capacity to provide the services needed. That is in addition to the ranks of the retired, and from those on active service who wish to double or triple their paycheck in the private sector.
There is a move in global politics and within the Bolshevik Left in the US to exploit the trigger happy reputation of Blackwater to emasculate GWOT. Rather than revert to the tried and true,however, the threat of Guard and Reserve parity with the Regular Army is enough for the Pentagon to now speak of withdrawing from Iraq to be able to be ready to fight an imaginary war instead of winning he real one in front of them.
South Africa has made it illegal for South Africans to join private military companies in the aftermath of objections to Executive Solutions, featured in “Blood Diamond” were objected to by the rest of the African states. Executive Solutions proved that a highly trained force was more than cost effective, replacing ineffective UN and African peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone. Since reconciliation, large numbers of highly trained and combat experienced South Africans have been seeking employment in the guns for hire sector.
Historically privatized military forces on sea were either pirates or privateers, the latter being pirates with a government license. Privateers were banned by the Declaration of Paris in 1856 signed by all the major European powers, but which the US did not for lack of greater protection for what was left of US shipping after the devastations by the Confederate Navy. Half the US merchant marine reflagged itself to prevent capture by the Alabama and Shenandoah.
Field and siege artillery were private sector until the French in the late 17th Century made it a part of the regular military establishment. It seemed that the private artillery companies had a penchant for leaving the battlefield to preserve their capital investments against capture or destruction.
Logistics in the US Army used “sutlers”, private PX’s, up until after the Spanish American War. They tended to be gougers of troopers paychecks. While there are many private sector logistics operations that have provided the services that Army Reserve and Guard logistics units were tasked to perform, there has been widespread corruption and incompetence that has proved counter-productive in the war on terror. The building built by private contractors for the Iraqi Police Academy leaks shit from the light sockets. Shoddy construction and abandoned projects throughout Iraq leave a bad taste in the mouths of the people whose hearts and minds we bleed for.
The motives for the unprecedented use of the private sector on the battlefield stems two mutually reinforcing sources: Neo-Con religious fervor towards privatization and job security for the Regular Army. The latter fear that People From Outside the Box will threaten the job security and promotion opportunity and flowpoint if the Guard and Reserve forces trained for over a quarter of a century to provide combat service support and service support at levels from battalion to Theater Army would interfere the availability of command and field staff positions to budding field grades.
Few outside the military know that the structure of units above division (corps, field army, and theater army) were well trained and ready to go to support any kind of military operation. Fortunately for the US, the private sector has drawn from the experience and training of the Guard and Reserve in this capacity to provide the services needed. That is in addition to the ranks of the retired, and from those on active service who wish to double or triple their paycheck in the private sector.
There is a move in global politics and within the Bolshevik Left in the US to exploit the trigger happy reputation of Blackwater to emasculate GWOT. Rather than revert to the tried and true,however, the threat of Guard and Reserve parity with the Regular Army is enough for the Pentagon to now speak of withdrawing from Iraq to be able to be ready to fight an imaginary war instead of winning he real one in front of them.
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