Brian,

As noted, there are issues with the ONS process.

I agree with Bill, however. If we had waited for the standard Army process to get us the stuff we need, we would still be driving around in soft HMMWVs, with a few M1114s in the MP units.

I learned from my DLRO instructor that there is a triad of speed, cost and quality, and you can never have all three. You can have good and fast, but its going to cost. Or, you have have good and cheap, but it will take a long time. Frankly, we can't afford a long time.

Having lived through the ARFORGEN cycle as it developed with 3 back-to-back-to-back deployments, the real issue is that there is not opportunity to train while you are at home. You redeploy, and don't do much of anything for 90 days. Then, you bleed people for another 90 days. Then you get a huge dump of equipment (although its mostly legacy, soft skin stuff, so only of marginal utility for training) and must rush through the gates (which are legacy gates- company live fires? really?) to get to the MRE and then you are shipping stuff off for deployment- probably with new Soldiers still coming in that have no individual training, much less any collective training. It simply can't work, and we need to develop an appetite suppressant, but that rarely happens in our culture.

The real answer is that we need to grow the force and fund the equipment (or reduce committments) to get to 1:3. Then we will actually be able tro train. Until then, we're going to live with band-aids.