'The General Mattis collection: a mixture
Moderator's Note
Nine threads in July 2015 easily id'd as linked to now retired USMC General Mattis have been merged here and the threar re-titled 'The General Mattis collection: a mixture'. Prompted by the most recent post. Seven more 2-16 threads merged in 29/12/16 (ends).
I just finished reading Thomas Rick's Fiasco and was trying to track down LTG Mattis' reading list. Anybody out there have it? Thanks.
Shek
Question for SWJED aka(crystal ball)
Do you think he will try to implement a CAP style or Distributed Operations type Strategy?
Crystal Ball Says: Mission Type Orders
Quote:
Originally Posted by
slapout9
Do you think he will try to implement a CAP style or Distributed Operations type Strategy?
General Mattis will attempt to identify the desired end-state (hopefully he will have some help here from the National Command Authority) and based on his in-depth knowledge of COIN issue mission type orders / commander's intent to his subordinate commander in Iraq. Whether that entails CAP or DO or anything else remains to be seen as the situation in Iraq is quite dynamic and what may have worked in one province at one particular point in time may or may not be applicable now. That said, he will hopefully be able to instill unity of command amongst all the entities that are now players in Iraq.
The Washington Post says Mattis may replace Casey
In this post the speculation is that Gen. Petraeus would replace Abizaid and Gen. Mattis would replace Gen. Casey, Gen Casey is also apparently in the running for Abizaid's Centcom slot.
LtGen Jim Mattis to US Joint Forces Command
On the Small Wars Journal Blog - LtGen Jim Mattis to US Joint Forces Command.
Quote:
A rumor we have been hearing since May was reported on yesterday in the North County Times – Lieutenant General James Mattis (USMC) has been nominated for his fourth star and slated to take over US Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia...
Ten or more flag spaces? Unlikely.
OTOH, maybe it's a valid organization and some service peculiar subordinate (nominal, of course...) commands are unnecessary...
Mattis Takes the Helm at JFCOM
Mattis Takes the Helm at JFCOM - SWJ Blog - video of and article on the change of command...
Lets use this as an opportunity to talk about
why we are interested in JFCOM as an organization
What I hope JFCOM can do is become the joint engine of leader agility and adaptation that looks far enough forward in sufficient breadth to help us get it more right than wrong.
A tall order in itself. JFCOM has in the past been billed as an engine of Joint "Transformation" - a term that was ambiguous enough and which appeared to emphasize everything but the people who make up the military. It has been perceived as being techno-centric, deservedly or not - and its embracing of EBO in Joint Doctrine generated some well articulated fights by the opposition (part of this probably has to do with how the services perceive the value of EBO in terms of strengths and limitations)
A large challenge will be overcoming entrenched mindsets (both within and on the outside) to achieve a balance that entices the services and commands out of our kung-fu stances. Fostering a Joint culture of innovation required to identify and understand ourselves and our adversaries (current and future) operating across the broad spectrum of war vs. being perceived as a gear which grinds out flavors of the month is no small task. The collective "we" must come to grips with the limitations of DOTMPF to fix our shortfalls. Wherever we adjust these aspects to answer hard, but specific questions, we paint ourselves into corners.
These are the science pieces, whereas Leadership is the art piece. We don't like to rely wholeheartedly on that one because it seems to leave too much to chance - not everybody is going to be as good as the next guy or gal - so we seek to even the odds with the science. We can't even agree on where "born" ends and "made" begins in the quest for leaders - its too vague and too suspicious - and hits too close to home for many to ponder.
You can give the same tools under like conditions to different leaders in complex organizations operating in complex environments and the odds are at least equal that they will not reach the same outcome - even if their experience set up to the time appears to be the same. One may succeed and the other may fail simply because one has the right innate mixture of courage, character and intellect (be they born to, or developed) equal to the task at hand. That is hard for us to swallow.
This is why putting the right person in the right command matters so much. JFCOM can be about helping us get over ourselves by providing a framework for common discussion that helps us take what we have vs. what we wished we had and jointly solving the strategic, operational or tactical problem set (be it the one now or the one on the horizon). Its success in doing so will depend as much on the folks outside JFCOM as those inside.
Best Regards, Rob
Heh. As the Brits say, "Spot on!"
Quote:
Originally Posted by
SWJED
Ingrained bureaucracy – read GS (especially 15’s and FOGO equivalents) plus the extraordinary numbers of embedded contract workers now prevalent in many major commands - has a habit of ignoring active duty commanders – with an attitude of “waiting it out” until the next change of command. Their stonewalling is both unconscionable and criminal in my most humble opinion.
JFCOM is one of the worst offenders - I wish General Mattis the best and hope he can make a difference... It is sorely needed to say the least.
As a former one of the former silly villian types, You are regrettably correct. However, there is a solution. One such who opposes that practice simply need find one kindred soul of like grade (and my experience is that there are always a couple of good ones to battle the four to ten less concerned types in every big hindquarters) and join together to flank, circumvent and befuddle the recalcitrant. :eek:
That's not hard to do because those "wait 'em out" types are mostly Turtles, not willing to stick their necks out for anything. Easy to shortstop 'em, baffle 'em, go around them and get things done. :rolleyes:
Lacking that, it takes only a Chief of Staff with testicular fortitude -- he can make their lives miserable with little effort -- all he has to do is divert the Bonus money. They'll quickly leave unless they're dedicated and good guys. :D
DoD has been trying. Unfortunately,
Quote:
Originally Posted by
selil
That is why I wish active duty commanders were given something kind of reverse of the Taft Hartley Act (forcing people to work) and could fire anybody much like Regan fired the "un-fireable" air traffic controllers on strike in 1981.
AFGE has more votes in Congress... :mad:
Had an employee illegally absent for over 76 days in one year. Took three letters, another 18 months (with more absences) and two hearings to get that person fired. :confused:
A perspective from a newly "coined" contractor
Let me begin by saying I'm a "dirty" contractor, and I needed a couple of weeks before I could come to grips with the title.
My last four years on active duty (recently retired) were spent in two different HQs that were heavily populated with civilian employees (GS and contractor), and I have a few relevant observations...
1. The vast majority of individuals in both groups come to work wanting to do a good job. They are ready to implement guidance, but in many cases are undersupervised by "greens suits" because they are either uncomfortable giving orders to civilians or they don't understand the civilian's role as direct support to the organizational mission.
2. As a rule, contract employees are more responsive because they have far less job security and the customer is always right. Note: This can be both good and bad (sometimes a young major could benefit from listening carefully to a retired LTC).
3. HQs usually prefer the contractor route because its much easier to hire and fire a contractor than it is to get an authorized TDA position. However, this well will dry up when supplementals go away.
4. When a GS is acting like a "toad in the road" its often because they are convinced it is the "right" thing to do. Note: Not condoning, just making the point that its not always because they hate change.
5. The world of the largely civilian work force is here to stay. No way to turn this ship around in the midst of current committments. It is better to stop the customary complaining (I was guilty once as well) about the lazy GS and dirty contractor, and go about the business of leading the non-uniform work force.
I think the adjective is "slimey", not dirty
That said, I wouldn't try to draw too many distinctions among various flavors in the workforce.
My concern with the general's assignment to JFCOM is still that the bureaucracy (regardless of its make up) may be too tough for even this old bird to crack.
My peon's eye view of JFCOM
Rob,
Taking you up on your offer of a discussion, this is a subject near and dear to my heart (and not to mention my paycheck). Safely pseudonymous, here I go.
I think you made a very well articulated case as to why JFCOM is important and what sort of personal leadership challenges, what kind of leader it would take, to be a good and effective commander at JFCOM. I don’t have much to add to that, but I would like to share my personal observations about the problems we have internally, the challenges we face and some specific things the new commander needs to fix if he is going to be successful.
JFCOM was created to fill a real need in the Armed Forces. If JFCOM was done away with tomorrow, it would have to be re-invented, and would be re-invented de facto by the services and the COCOM's, only on a piecemeal and disjointed manner. So while there are of course those who wish to do away with that "worthless" command, they are mistaken and would simply find something like a new JFCOM eventually arising to fill the void left by the old one.
It's a saying around here that the military is trained and equipped by the services, but we fight wars joint. The war we are in now, and certainly the wars we will face in the years to come, require effective and thorough cooperation and interoperability between forces fielded by the services (and indeed beyond, all instruments of national power), in other words, we require "Jointness." The regional COCOM's are not the right organizations to inculcate, foster and train this jointness; they are too focused on the 50 meter targets of their daily missions. Therefore we need a command that can foster "jointness" - develop and promulgate Joint doctrine, develop and field Joint interoperable equipment, particularly command and control systems (or at least strongly influence their development in the right direction by the services), and train the force to fight joint.
But JFCOM has not always been up to its high calling, for many reasons, some its own fault and others the fault of wider circumstances in DOD and the government as a whole about which it can do little.
A lot of good ideas and concepts are born out of JFCOM, often after careful consideration and analysis of lessons learned by the troops in the field, that are useful even needful for the armed forces at large, but fail on the external ambitions and parochialism of the services and sometimes the COCOMs. There is not much the Commander JFCOM can do about this, but be a good advocate and sell the right thing to do to his four star peers.
A lot of good ideas and concepts are born out of JFCOM but fail on the internal ambitions and Byzantine organizational culture. Also, bad ideas and concepts are also sometimes born out of this, and are promoted and foisted upon the services and COCOMs. Sometimes. These things, Commander JFCOM can do a lot to fix, and here are the things he needs to tackle, as I see them.
Our incoming Commander needs to fix:
* Internal communications - horizontal (cross directorate) and vertical (from the directorates up to the commander) communications are usually very poor in JFCOM. The right hand does not know what the left hand is doing, or the heads of the hydra never bother to talk to each other. This has the effect of isolating the JFCOM directorates from each other, and prevents the command from working effectively as a whole. It also keeps the commander in the dark about what is going on inside his own command (this is often the case inside directorates, too). If General Mattis doesn't know what is going on inside JFCOM and what JFCOM is doing to and with the rest of DOD, he can't lead JFCOM to live up to its mission.
* Internal ambitions and agendas of directorates and components - often work towards own ends at cross purposes to other JFCOM components and directorates, and even the command's own priorities and goals as set by the commander. The new commander must bring the independent operators to heel and get them working in unison with the rest of the command. Initiatives should not be pursued and funded that aren't vetted at the DCDR and CDR level, and fall in lockstep with the commander's vision.
* Institutional culture suffers from fuzzy thought and dubious ideas due to fascination with buzz words (buzz paragraphs in this place) and uncritical acceptance of the latest trendy concepts to pass through the door. Solving the problem listed right above this one will help a lot, because a lot of otherwise stupid BS gets latched on to as it seen as a vehicle to acquire funding and resources. But more than that, there is no disciplined way to think about the future and apply that to JFCOM's activities. There is no overarching vision that informs the way the command's directorates do business, across the board. This leaves everyone free to experiment, and there is no rigorous intellectual process to consider and vett ideas, no "sanity check" to separate the wise concepts from the hare-brained schemes.
In my opinion, we need an overarching, strategic vision to guide the efforts of each of our directorates, particularly the big ones - J7, J8, J9. A commander who is both a strong leader and a strong intellectual like General Mattis seems to be just what we need.
Of course, we are manned by the services, and the doctrine and systems we develop must be accepted by them, so good luck with the overarching strategic visions. Never said the commander's job was going to be easy.
* Reduce internal bureaucracy, it is impossible for JFCOM to promote 'agility' if it is itself clumsy. My personal experiences with the JFCOM staff process were traumatic, it was long and painful to get major projects through all the staff wickets before we could get them released to the COCOM customer. And the processes we have imposed on our customers to get help from us (and here I am writing about my particular competency, JNTC), sometimes turn what should be easy and effective fixes into drawn out, inconclusive efforts that satisfy no one.
Everything, including our bureaucracy and how it is constituted and how it operates, should be as simple as is absolutely possible (except where it might put me out of work ;) ). If General Mattis fixes all of the other things, but the JFCOM internal bureaucracy remains a hopeless mess, his best intentions will be stymied.
General Mattis has a big job ahead of him, but it is an important one. DOD needs JFCOM, and needs it to function right. If he can be a success, in ways his past several predecessors weren't IMO, he can leave a much more significant and lasting mark on the DOD than if he had become a regional COCOM commander, or even CMC. I am guardedly hopeful, he is an outstanding personality and intellect, and has real character, unlike so many featureless and generic GO/FO's we have today - if anyone can succeed at this task, it must be him. Let's wish him the best of luck and pray for his success.
Thoughts from Gen. Mattis
He makes some good points about over reliance on technology.
Mattis: Military should rely less on technology
Contrary to popular opinion, there were radios when I started
wearing a war suit...:D
I really do post date the Smoke Signals and even the Telegraph and Heliograph. ;)
...Barely...
However, I'm old enough that radio was the primary comm means and we did back then turn 'em off for training and for real when our emissions might have been a problem.
There was no replicate to it, the idea was not to find alternatives or substitutes, it was to do the job without using them at all. Hard as it is to believe with all the modern gee whiz stuff, GPS, BFT, etc. (those are just aids -- and that's all they are, aids, they are not imperatives) and amazing as it may seem that units were trusted to the extent that they were released from view and 'positive control' to perform actual combat missions in a fairly active war or two, it was done. You can really do that... :wry:
One would be remiss to not understand that even if non use of comm and the other aids was not intentional it did, does and can happen due to both technological and logistic problems -- and even more frequently as a result enemy or combat action. Combat is hard on equipment...
The problem is that we are not using our aids as aids-- they are too often being used as substitutes for a lack of training. They have ceased being a cane and have become a Walker (or even a Wheelchair in some cases...) That's what Mattis is warning against...
It may be ignored in US writing...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Fuchs
...to violate orders when one thinks it's better like that is at the root of the whole system and pretty much ignored in U.S. writings.
but I can assure you it is or at least was emphatically not ignored in practice by a great many US commanders and leaders. :D
That's why the current push for mandatory interconnectivity, BFT, PLRS and all that (not to mention UAVs which offer a way to be the 'Commander in the Sky' without hovering overhead in a Helicopter). Guys who as Captains ignored their Lieutenant Colonels or as LTCs ignored their Generals by "turning off their radios" are now Generals and want to make sure that no one does the same thing to them...:eek: :wry:
The sad thing is that they really ought to be encouraging initiative instead of inadvertently destroying it. :mad:
Technology is not the enemy
Not sure I understand the tech aversion by so many here.
Take UAS for example. In OIF 1, there was virtually no V Corps UAS support because Predators were concentrating on trying to find “strategic” SCUD targets. Would having more Army direct support tactical UAS have reduced brigade and below commander initiative or enhanced it? If you no longer had to rely on movement-to-contact or intelligence tasked by some distant operations center and fed to you from the U.S., but instead had access to your own assets and combat information, wouldn’t that help?
If you had the UAS video in your combat vehicle or on a dismounted patrol, accessible to the JTAC and F/A-18, company commander, and providing information to the FS officer in the battalion CP, the Shadow GCS being influenced by the brigade CP, and visible to Apaches supporting you, doesn’t that help?
If the enemy attempts to jam the local UAS digital line-of-sight signal, he is emitting and can be targeted. If instead, he takes out the satellite controlling the "theater-capable" UAS, the temporary loss of information may not be so temporary. And do you prefer to rely on a Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) analyzing UAS video and communicating with you from California, or would analysts operating inside your battalion/brigade CP DCGS-Army be more immune to loss of signal to provide more timely analysis based on the tactical commander’s CCIR?
Would we prefer combat information to come exclusively at the speed and range of the mounted or dismounted Soldier/Marine, whose ground perspective may be limited and events may change minutes after the patrol passes by? Can you see or influence the Taliban shooting at you from 700 meters away? Can you watch that mosque 24/7 with a secure dismounted 2-man OP? Do you trust the lead vehicle keeping an eye out for ground disturbances more than the UAS operator using coherent change detection? Is it possible that just because you don’t understand a technology's value, it still might help you?
When the enemy starts launching long range missiles, rockets, and mortars against your unit (or allies), aren’t you glad we have counter-mortar radars, C-RAM, and Patriot/THAAD/SM3/Aegis…not to mention HESCO and stealth aircraft and satellites with sensors that may detect missile launch? When you cross that minefield or unknown ground near the attack objective, aren’t you glad that tank has a line charge on it? Will that line charge be as effective if every commander mounts his mounted assault based on personal preferences without the benefit of that line charge breech, pre-planned fires, and support-by-fire that one commander may be providing another at specific times and phase lines?
As for commander’s intent, isn’t it fair to say that tactical and strategic actions must mirror that of the national command authority and joint force commander?
In 2003, our probability for success to go all the way to Baghdad was good since we had planned the logistics to support heavy force refuel efforts and had BFT to track unit locations, provide digital comms and graphics, and prevent fratricide.
In contrast, a continued Desert Storm attack well beyond what was logistically supportable and that could have increased fratricide risk and attacks by bypassed threats was not in the cards, despite what a squadron commander may have wanted. And the commander’s intent of the POTUS and General Schwarzkopf were not to go that far. Should those orders have been disregarded?
Just my personal view.
I'll tell you the same thing I told you on the front page.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Cole
Not sure I understand the tech aversion by so many here.
No one is being tech averse so far I can see. Several of us caution that you cannot totally -- remember that word, totally -- rely on it and you should be prepared to implement alternatives, that just seems prudent. That inability to totally rely on it is only partly due to technological flaws or failures, it has much more to do with potential enemy disruptive action or own side human error. No one suggested not using anything...
I will, though, point out that every thing you cite has been used in a relatively benign environment. One cannot always rely on that relatively low degree of combat action and friction. I said I'd say the same things I said on the front page. Here are some:
"Mattis didn't say don't use technology, he pointed out that it is rarely failsafe for a variety of reasons and he adds that if you lose a techno-capability, you'd better have a fallback."
"No one I've seen here including Mattis is suggesting doing away with any technology, the issue is to not become over reliant on technology and to attempt to let it substitute for poor or missing training."
"The issue is not less technology, no one said that; the issue is a better balance between technology and training and a suggestion that total reliance on technology can be dangerous. Any thinking peer opponent of the US is going to seek ways to degrade or render useless our technological edge. We would be foolish IMO to not prepare properly for such unknowns."
Could you please point out where I or anyone else in this thread has really been "tech averse" or suggested NOT using any of the systems you cited?