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Old 02-04-2019, 19:12   #1
WarriorDiplomat
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Officer corps that can't score-good read from 2014

https://www.theamericanconservative....at-cant-score/

The most curious thing about our four defeats in Fourth Generation War—Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan—is the utter silence in the American officer corps. Defeat in Vietnam bred a generation of military reformers, men such as Col. John Boyd USAF, Col. Mike Wyly USMC, and Col. Huba Wass de Czege USA, each of whom led a major effort to reorient his service. Today, the landscape is barren. Not a military voice is heard calling for thoughtful, substantive change. Just more money, please.

Such a moral and intellectual collapse of the officer corps is one of the worst disasters that can afflict a military because it means it cannot adapt to new realities. It is on its way to history’s wastebasket. The situation brings to mind an anecdote an Air Force friend, now a military historian, liked to tell some years ago. Every military, he said, occasionally craps in its own mess kit. The Prussians did it in 1806, after which they designed and put into service a much improved new model messkit, through the Scharnhorst military reforms. The French did it in 1870, after which they took down from the shelf an old-model messkit—the mass, draft army of the First Republic—and put it back in service. The Japanese did it in 1945, after which they threw their mess kit away, swearing they would never eat again. And we did it in Korea, in Vietnam, and now in four new wars. So far, we’ve had the only military that’s just kept on eating.

Why? The reasons fall in two categories, substantive and structural. Substantively, at the moral level—Colonel Boyd’s highest and most powerful level—our officers live in a bubble. Even junior officers inhabit a world where they hear only endless, hyperbolic praise of “the world’s greatest military ever.” They feed this swill to each other and expect it from everyone else. If they don’t get it, they become angry. Senior officers’ bubbles, created by vast, sycophantic staffs, rival Xerxes’s court. Woe betide the ignorant courtier who tells the god-king something he doesn’t want to hear. (I know—I’ve done it, often.)

At Boyd’s next level, the mental, our officers are not professionals. They are merely craftsman. They have learned what they do on a monkey-see, monkey-do basis and know no more. What defines a professional—historically there were only three professions, law, medicine, and theology—is that he has read, studied, and knows the literature of his field. The vast majority of our officers read no serious military history or theory. A friend who teaches at a Marine Corps school told me the most he can now get majors to read is two pages. Another friend, teaching at an Army school, says, “We are back to drawing on the cave wall.”

As culpable as our officers are for these failings, they are not the whole story. Officers are also victims of three structural failures, each of which is enough to lay an armed service low.

The first, and possibly the worst, is an officer corps vastly too large for its organization—now augmented by an ant-army of contractors, most of whom are retired officers. A German Panzer division in World War II had about 21 officers in its headquarters. Our division headquarters are cities. Every briefing—and there are many, the American military loves briefings because they convey the illusion of content without offering any—is attended by rank-upon-rank of horse-holders and flower-strewers, all officers.

The pathologies that flow from this are endless. Command tours are too short to accomplish anything, usually about 18 months, because behind each commander is a long line of fellow officers eagerly awaiting their lick at the ice-cream cone. Decisions are pulled up the chain because the chain is laden with surplus officers looking for something to do. Decisions are committee-consensus, lowest common denominator, which Boyd warned is usually the worst of all possible alternatives. Nothing can be changed or reformed because of the vast number of players defending their “rice bowls.” The only measurable product is entropy.

The second and third structural failings are related because both work to undermine moral courage and character, which the Prussian army defined as “eagerness to make decisions and take responsibility.” They are the “up or out” promotion system and “all or nothing” vesting for retirement at 20 years. “Up or out” means an officer must constantly curry favor for promotion because if he is not steadily promoted he must leave the service. “All or nothing” says that if “up or out” pushes him out before he has served 20 years, he leaves with no pension. (Most American officers are married with children.)

It is not difficult to see how these two structural failings in the officer corps morally emasculate our officers and all too often turn them, as they rise in rank and near the magic 20 years, into ass-kissing conformists. Virtually no other military in the world has these policies, for obvious reasons.

Of these two types of failings, the structural are probably the most damaging. They are also the easiest to repair. The Office of the Secretary of Defense, the president, and Congress could quickly fix all of them. Why don’t they? Because they only look at the defense budget, and these are not directly budgetary issues. They merely determine, in large measure, whether we win or lose.

Fixing the substantive problems is harder because those fixes require changes in organizational culture. OSD cannot order our officers to come out from the closed system, fortified with hubris, that they have placed around themselves to protect the poor dears from ever hearing anything upsetting, however true. Congress cannot withhold pay from those officers who won’t read. Only our officers themselves can fix these deficiencies. Will they? The problem is circular: not until they leave their bubble.

If American military officers want to know, or even care, why we keep losing, they need only look in the mirror. They seem to do that most of the time anyway, admiring their now-tattered plumage. Behind them in the glass, figures in turbans dance and laugh.

William S. Lind is author of the Maneuver Warfare Handbook and director of the American Conservative Center for Public Transportation.
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Old 02-07-2019, 08:30   #2
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The main problem I have with Lind's analysis is that all the structural problems he identifies - the bloated officer corps and the issues with the promotion/retirement system - were just as bad, if not worse, in the 1970s. The maintenance of a larger-than-necessary officer corps was based on the belief that these officers would form the cadre of a larger Army on mobilization. It was intended to remedy the problem the US had before other major wars when we had to quickly expand, and was a constant in the Cold War since we could not predict if or when it would turn hot. And the pressure to push people up or out, mostly out, was strongest in the early 1970s, when Army end strength dropped from a peak of 1.57 million in 1968 to 811,000 in 1972, reaching a Cold War low of 760,000 in 1980. Percentage-wise, this was a much bigger drop than the post-Cold War draw-down. So while these structural issues are important on their own, I don't see how they explain the purported silence of the officer corps on reform matters which Lind alleges.
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Old 02-07-2019, 20:50   #3
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Originally Posted by Airbornelawyer View Post
The main problem I have with Lind's analysis is that all the structural problems he identifies - the bloated officer corps and the issues with the promotion/retirement system - were just as bad, if not worse, in the 1970s. The maintenance of a larger-than-necessary officer corps was based on the belief that these officers would form the cadre of a larger Army on mobilization. It was intended to remedy the problem the US had before other major wars when we had to quickly expand, and was a constant in the Cold War since we could not predict if or when it would turn hot. And the pressure to push people up or out, mostly out, was strongest in the early 1970s, when Army end strength dropped from a peak of 1.57 million in 1968 to 811,000 in 1972, reaching a Cold War low of 760,000 in 1980. Percentage-wise, this was a much bigger drop than the post-Cold War draw-down. So while these structural issues are important on their own, I don't see how they explain the purported silence of the officer corps on reform matters which Lind alleges.
You don't think more promotion opportunity and careerism does not promote sycophantic self serving behaviors as it has become today?....we are in a different time....with the decay of the moral compass of society so goes the Military as well. Smedley Butler and Dwight Eisenhower seem to see the military as much different....it has been fairly clear since the end of WW2 and Korea that the wars are being fought on smaller levels and on different terms such as diplomatic economic sanctions types and security assistance with partner nation militaries. We should not have Colonels with nothing to do doing busy work raking in the cost of 5 functional soldiers pay and General upon General upon General......walk into a 3x shop anywhere in any COCOM in the world...1 I saw was in a 20ft by 20ftroom.... there were 2 LTC's, MAJ, CPT's, CW4, CW3's, E8's, E7's...bureaucracy deluxe.

This is what we are seeing in every level of leadership with SOF let alone big Army.....this mirrors what the malfeasance letter had stated concerning decay and moral bankruptcy. How many echoes from the men on the ground engaging in a crumbling military do we need to hear to admit we have major cultural issues.
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Old 02-08-2019, 15:30   #4
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Strength of the Officer Corps U S Army:

Total Number of Officers: (W-1 to 0-10) 99,198 Total number of Enlisted Personnel: 411,343: The total number of 4-star Generals 231 (this is a U S Code cap) Sec.10 #526 limits the number of 4-star General Officers on active duty to 231. That's 1 four-star general for every 1780 enlisted personnel. Congress needs to address this General deficit and pass a new law to raise this cap.
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Old 02-08-2019, 15:57   #5
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Total Number of Officers: (W-1 to 0-10) 99,198 Total number of Enlisted Personnel: 411,343: The total number of 4-star Generals 231 (this is a U S Code cap) Sec.10 #526 limits the number of 4-star General Officers on active duty to 231. That's 1 four-star general for every 1780 enlisted personnel. Congress needs to address this General deficit and pass a new law to raise this cap.
Is the 4 enlisted to every 1 officer an appropriate ratio?
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Old 02-08-2019, 16:06   #6
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I vote for one officer per enlisted soldier as a battle buddy.

Twofer troopers will be the new normal in today's Army.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/twofer
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Old 02-08-2019, 16:25   #7
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Is the 4 enlisted to every 1 officer an appropriate ratio?
Considering an Infantry Platoon has 1 2nd Lt for roughly a 42 man MTOE
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Old 02-09-2019, 19:18   #8
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We should not have Colonels with nothing to do doing busy work raking in the cost of 5 functional soldiers pay and General upon General upon General......walk into a 3x shop anywhere in any COCOM [sic] in the world...1 I saw was in a 20ft by 20ftroom.... there were 2 LTC's, MAJ, CPT's, CW4, CW3's, E8's, E7's...bureaucracy deluxe.
An O6 over 26 makes just under $11,400 a month. Divided by 5 equals $2280, or less than what an E4 over 3 earns a month. You're not arguing that those E4s could do the same job the O6 with more than 26 years of experience is doing, even as a staff officer, are you?
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Old 02-09-2019, 22:28   #9
WarriorDiplomat
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An O6 over 26 makes just under $11,400 a month. Divided by 5 equals $2280, or less than what an E4 over 3 earns a month. You're not arguing that those E4s could do the same job the O6 with more than 26 years of experience is doing, even as a staff officer, are you?
A private is a functional soldier.....I think you are unaware of how many Officers are doing jobs that are made up busy work atom splitting bullshit to include Colonels and Generals

And yes there are levels of rank doing things even a specialist can do...there are no realistic plans of fielding a multi million man army even big Army has restructured to work more like SF in advisory roles and has all but retired its heavy armor units....this is a top heavy Army that is showing how bad in can damage a military.

If a 2nd Lt can be the only officer responsible for a 42 man platoon and 6 over a nearly 180+- man company what are the rest for?

I have never seen any functional shop in the Army with a 1-4/5 ratio....so why do we need to pay a COL 11,000 a month to sit around drink coffee and tell low ranking what to do for his brief? or to discuss products that the lower ranking enlisted and GS have

E-1
Private Pay
Starting pay $1,638/mo

E-2
Private Second Class Pay
Starting pay $1,836/mo

E-3
Private First Class Pay
Starting pay $1,931/mo - max $2,177/mo with over 10 years' experience

E-4
Specialist Pay
Starting pay $2,139/mo - max $2,597/mo with over 10 years' experience
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Old 02-09-2019, 22:54   #10
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Brother, I think perhaps you should take a trip north to Pete and visit both SOCNORTH and NORTHCOM for a week or so to gain a better understanding of just what folks at those commands do day-to-day, and the level of experience/knowledge/training required to do those jobs. The job requirements of a LT platoon leader at the tactical level are not equitable to those of field grades working at the strategic level.

As for getting rid of heavy armor, there are 10 (soon to be 11) ABCTs currently in the Army. Each one has 90 M1s, so that's almost 1000 tanks in maneuver units, plus a slew of Bradleys, M109s, M113s, and CEVs. Last fall the Army announced that one SBCT at Bliss would transition to an ABCT, and an IBCT at Carson would transition to an SBCT. To me that indicates a desire for more mounted, armored units rather than less.
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Old 02-09-2019, 23:20   #11
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Brother, I think perhaps you should take a trip north to Pete and visit both SOCNORTH and NORTHCOM for a week or so to gain a better understanding of just what folks at those commands do day-to-day, and the level of experience/knowledge/training required to do those jobs. The job requirements of a LT platoon leader at the tactical level are not equitable to those of field grades working at the strategic level.

As for getting rid of heavy armor, there are 10 (soon to be 11) ABCTs currently in the Army. Each one has 90 M1s, so that's almost 1000 tanks in maneuver units, plus a slew of Bradleys, M109s, M113s, and CEVs. Last fall the Army announced that one SBCT at Bliss would transition to an ABCT, and an IBCT at Carson would transition to an SBCT. To me that indicates a desire for more mounted, armored units rather than less.
I will respond better tomorrow but I can tell you I do not agree after spending some time in a GCC and SOC and knowing who does the work....what they know and what experience you are alluding to...I assure you with most of them it isn't rubber meeting the road experience sitting in a command center in Iraq listening to an op ain't the same as ground truth...there is a reason the SWCS started the UW Operational Development Course to teach this and I can't say the GCC staffs appear to understand center of gravity or the ideas behind the politics of it any better than anyone else. It makes me wonder how we fought other wars without the bureaucracy? Do we need to flip the pyramid over and add more O's to manage or micromanage everything....an O who has spent less time in a tactical level maneuvering the action of people who have forgotten more about the probable outcome from experience than a guy doing all the planning?
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