At present the Battle of Baghdad and the War on Terror is locked in mortal combat … in the halls of Congress and between the A and E Rings in the Pentagon. The former and less significant is broadcast daily on the Telly, while the latter is shrouded in cold fury of a battle of whose bowl is about to be broken. It is a war in which the fate of nations is personified by Bush, Gates and Petraeus on the one hand, and the Dichotomist Ghost of Transformation, not yet dead, on the other as described in the Quadrennial Reviews of 2001 and 204. While much of the dichotomous thinking in the QDR is the result of personnel centric conflict between the services, branches, and components of the Defense Department, it is the result of the psychological conflict between staff functions of intelligence, operations, personnel and logistics.
Intelligence is the determination of the strength, composition, and disposition of the enemy to determine possible courses of action, weaknesses and strengths. Operations is the creation of friendly strength, composition, and dispositions expressed in courses of action that will avoid the enemy’s strengths and exploit his weaknesses to ultimately deny the enemy the ability move, shoot, and communicate and present the enemy with an offer he cannot refuse.
In warfare, operations depend upon intelligence. War is threat driven. In peacetime, we train for war and training is task driven. Intelligence is created to provide a focus for training for the Mission Essential Task List and Skill sets required for military operations.
Likewise in warfare, capabilities and courses of action open for operations is determined by the personnel and logistics available, the former by the imbalance of casualties and replacements, the latter by the provision of gas, ammo, food, and repair parts which require a huge transportation network to move them forward.
In peacetime, personnel turbulence is minimal and little ammo or gas in consumed in garrison operations which is most of the time. Likewise, there is little demand for intelligence in peacetime because the enemy is created for the task, and is provided by known adversaries. Training exercises are rarely fought long enough to exhaust gas, ammo, repair parts, food or replacements to give enough work for the logistics and personnel staff to effectively train on.
The absence of meaningful changes in intelligence, personnel, and logistics in peacetime training gives the operations officer the effective control of unit operations. Operations officer slots, therefore, are real career enhancers. The rest of the staff and the troops they represent are consider “tail” vs the more macho “teeth” of the Six and Three. Thus QDR 2006 “shift in emphasis” in black/white dichotomous terminology includes:
“From threat-based planning – to capabilities-based planning” regardless of who or where the threat may be. Thus Enemy and Terrain are purged from METT-T as a basis for planning. The threat that the S2/G2 might pose to the primacy of the S3/G3 is diminished.
“From an emphasis on (hardware) – to focus on … actionable intelligence” which transfers the blame for a failure to act on enemy information to the intelligence officer who is now has to decide what, if any action, is applicable to the intelligence available … as in the flight numbers and dates of the 9-11 bombers was an intelligence failure.
From reactive response to proactive preventative action, and from “crisis response –to shaping the future, which is capabilities based and not on weather, enemy or terrain … such as the intelligence created to provide precision targets on non existent weapons of mass destruction.
The shift in logistics is from “stove pipes” to “matrix”, from “tail” to “teeth” and “from broad-based industrial mobilization- to targeted commercial solutions” which means privatizing, civilianizing, and outsourcing logistics, particularly in no competition bidding to friends of Dick.
The QDR also enshrines a conflict within the operations community, between operations and planning. Planners are usually a separate organization seated outside the inner circle who plan ahead based on assumptions of mission, enemy, terrain, troops available, time and technology and put their recommendations in OPLANS which can be activated by changing paragraph one (enemy situation) on information from intelligence. This requires those in the inner circle to be bound by the dictates of outsiders (plans, intel, personnel, logistics) and is a threat to the purity and essence of warrior-dom. The QDR continues:
“From predetermined force packages – to tailored, flexible forces”, and from “one size fits all deterrence – to tailored deterrence” which don’t have to deconflict – to integrated, interdependent forces. Deconfliction means task organization to meet METT-TT, and integrated independent forces means one size fits nothing Modular Rotational Expeditionary Brigades based in the States to react quicker to Baghdad than from Germany or Japan.
If Bush, Gates and Petraeus have their way, the Modular Brigades would have to be Civil Affairs, Intelligence, Psychological Operations and Civil Engineering brigades. Since these skills are found primarily in the Guard and Reserves, The need for a larger standing army is placed in jeopardy.
Showing posts with label resetting the force. Show all posts
Showing posts with label resetting the force. Show all posts
Monday, January 15, 2007
Saturday, December 30, 2006
A Modest Proposal for a Restoring the Force
Given human nature, a large long service standing military will do what takes to keep their jobs even if it means defeat in war, would rather play at war than win, and present a standing threat to civil authority, regardless of intent. This tendency is found in any profession, doctors who kill more patients than cure hide behind their union, lawyers who lose behind theirs. And unlike doctors and lawyers, the military doesn’t practice it’s profession so the public, the government or themselves can find out whether or not they are competent.
Before JFK’s renaissance of the military and before Vietnam as I experienced it, shined boots and belt buckles, paint over dirt, shoe tags for parts, and properly formatted lesson plans were the elements of combat readiness. This is the default setting after a decade of peace. The post Vietnam army avoided this by training to specific contingencies which provided a realistic framework for training even when the contingency changed. We lost a lot of people in Vietnam due to shined boots and belt buckles, etc.
It is for these reasons that we can adopt either the default military that won all our wars before DoD was invented, and demobilize the active components of the military and turn the equipment, personnel, and material over to the Guard and Reserves, OR we can adopt a more modest proposal:
The Modest Proposal
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.
Before JFK’s renaissance of the military and before Vietnam as I experienced it, shined boots and belt buckles, paint over dirt, shoe tags for parts, and properly formatted lesson plans were the elements of combat readiness. This is the default setting after a decade of peace. The post Vietnam army avoided this by training to specific contingencies which provided a realistic framework for training even when the contingency changed. We lost a lot of people in Vietnam due to shined boots and belt buckles, etc.
It is for these reasons that we can adopt either the default military that won all our wars before DoD was invented, and demobilize the active components of the military and turn the equipment, personnel, and material over to the Guard and Reserves, OR we can adopt a more modest proposal:
The Modest Proposal
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.
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