The Transformation Mistake

[SWJED]

3 November New York Post commentary - The Transformation Mistake by Mackubin Owens.

... As I noted in a July 2005 piece for The Post ("Will This War Break the Army?"), the U.S. military, especially its ground forces, is being stretched to near the breaking point. Its long-term health may be at risk; it took over a decade to repair the damage that Vietnam inflicted on the military personnel system.

The debate over alleged Bush administration errors in Iraq - failing to send enough troops to Iraq in the first place, inadequate planning for stability operations after the fall of Baghdad, etc. - largely misses the point: America's ground forces are too small for what our foreign policy demands of them.

As a number of defense experts have observed, the problem - an Army that is too small - is systemic, transcending individuals and administrations. Its cause can be traced to the denigration of land power after the Gulf War of 1991.

In his classic study of the Korean Conflict, "This Kind of War," T.R. Fehrenbach expressed the conventional wisdom on land power's importance: "You can fly over a land forever; you may bomb it and wipe it clean of life . . . but if you desire to defend it; protect it; and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did . . . by putting your young men into the mud."

But that view came into question in 1991, after the U.S.-led coalition crushed Saddam Hussein's forces in Desert Storm with what seemed a combination of air power and information technology. Influential observers argued that this proved that a "revolution in military affairs" was underway, with information technology diminishing the importance of land power.

Some went so far as to suggest that traditional ground combat had become a thing of the past, that future U.S. military power would be based on precision strikes delivered by air or space assets, perhaps coordinated and directed by a handful of special operations soldiers.

There was no question that the Army needed to undergo a substantial transformation to remain strategically relevant. Then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki pushed hard to replace difficult-to-deploy heavy forces with medium-weight, wheel-mobile combat brigades supported by an advanced gun system.

As Donald Rumsfeld became secretary of defense in 2001, the Pentagon embraced a more radical understanding of this "transformation," aiming at an "information-age military force" that "will be less platform-centric and more network-centric." Unfortunately, as military historian Fred Kagan has observed, Rumsfeld's understanding of transformation is vague and confused. It is based on false premises and lies at the heart of our problems in Iraq...

Iraq has revealed several important things:

• Land power remains as crucially important as it was in Fehrenbach's time. Indeed, for the kinds of war we're most likely to face in the future, we need a larger Army...

• The "revolution in military affairs" wasn't as revolutionary as once believed...

• The equation of "transformation" and "technology" in Rumsfeld's Pentagon has harmed U.S. security. Military transformation has been shorn of its political and geostrategic context, reduced to nothing more than hitting the right military target independent of any political goal...

Much more at the link...

[SWJED]

October US Army Strategic Studies Institute LeTort Paper - Confronting the Unconventional: Innovation and Transformation in Military Affairs by David Tucker.

Are there limits to military transformation? Or, if it seems obvious that there must be limits to transformation, what are they exactly, why do they arise, and how can we identify them so that we may better accomplish the transformation that the U.S. military is capable of? If limits to military change and transformation exist, what are the broader implications for national policy and strategy? The author offers some answers to these questions by analyzing the efforts of the French, British, and Americans to deal with irregular threats after World War II...

[typos-R-us]

There is a quick, cheap and easy transformation available. Make the trade schools joint.
Have the Students spend their Sophmore and Joinor years at a sister school.
This will start them thinking purple at an early age.
It will never happen because the MIC cannot make Billions off of it. It would be effective, since it's men, not weapons that win wars.
It would be even better if the US went to a semi-german type system, where Officer canidates spend 2 years in the ranks before even going off to trade school. Something needs to be done, since the current system produces long lines of mediocre ticket punchers. The best bow out at about the O-5 level, not seeing anything in their future worth going thru the BS for.
That is why the best trained, best armed Military in the world cannot subdue medieval savages. Management will never replace Leadership.

[selil]

There is a quick, cheap and easy transformation available. Make the trade schools joint.
Have the Students spend their Sophmore and Joinor years at a sister school.
This will start them thinking purple at an early age.
It will never happen because the MIC cannot make Billions off of it.

You'll have to expand on that a little more.

Currently there is an education movement afoot that is tiptoeing in behind the scenes. Within the United States there is a movement to do away with high school. In a couple states a freshman in high school enters college and shares time or go's to college full time. A report recently out has the last two years of high school done away with and that is the start of college.

My take is do away with any high school with more than 800 people in it nationally, but that is another topic.

So tell us more.

[Smitten Eagle]

There is a quick, cheap and easy transformation available. Make the trade schools joint.
Have the Students spend their Sophmore and Joinor years at a sister school.
This will start them thinking purple at an early age.
It will never happen because the MIC cannot make Billions off of it. It would be effective, since it's men, not weapons that win wars.
It would be even better if the US went to a semi-german type system, where Officer canidates spend 2 years in the ranks before even going off to trade school. Something needs to be done, since the current system produces long lines of mediocre ticket punchers. The best bow out at about the O-5 level, not seeing anything in their future worth going thru the BS for.
That is why the best trained, best armed Military in the world cannot subdue medieval savages. Management will never replace Leadership.

Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda, lots of pie in the sky stuff here.

You may have something of a point on the "semi-German" system of spending time in the ranks. On the other hand, the US Military in general, and the USMC in particular, does an excellent job of filling its officer corps with folks from the ranks, from the academy, from OCS, and from ROTC. Such a system has lots of intellectual diversity and I doubt that advantages could be accrued by homogenizing the entry of officers by use of a single system.

And the remark about O-5s and above is entirely uncalled for. On the contrary, I've seen lots of burned-out field grades who want nothing more than to "make 20" and punch out. They tend to be Majors with prior-enlisted experience or LtCols without such prior experience. Furthermore, I've known some utterly outstanding Colonels in my short 4 years in service to my country. And the generals? Mattis? Amos? Castellaw? Toolan? Helland? Yup--lots of ticket-punching in those guys. Ha.

A little more discipline in thought would be appropriate before we castigate the bird colonels and stars.

[Steve Blair]

What I see at the ROTC level is more of a focus on "let's get these kids easy A's in their ROTC courses and worry about really training them later." That bothers me, because we have an outstanding chance at this level to get them exposed to more diverse thought and give them the tools to think critically. For the most part, you also don't see AFROTC and AROTC programs doing any sort of joint courses or activities. I'm working on a course idea to correct that, but am having a hard time getting traction at the cadre level. The cadets LOVE the idea. Go figure...

[Smitten Eagle]

I'm a product of NROTC, but a Marine Option. For us, ROTC didn't provide much military training at all, but that was taken care of at TBS.

As far as giving a "joint" education, I don't see much of a point in that. The issues we're dealing with as a military today aren't issues of Goldwater-Nichols. The issues we are dealing with are faulty promotion/personnel systems, faulty acquisitions/procurement, and faulty TTPs/Doctrine (in that order.) Me, or anybody else rubbing elbows with some Air Force missile officer isn't going to fix the day to day issues of COIN operations. On the contrary, it'll probably make things worse, because instead of focusing on the enemy, and his critical vulnerability (the population he swims in), I'm instead focusing on "purple" jargon and teaching the basics of what an M-16 is to a bunch of non-FMF sailors who have no business being in the mud (yes, I've done that.)

No "joint" ROTC course is going to fix that.

From what I can see, the benefit of ROTC programs are that they're good for civil-military relations. No longer do I have to go to a service academy to serve my country as an officer--it keeps entry into the military democratic. As to the military skill of these ROTC guys...well...I've seen good ones and bad ones. Same goes for academy guys, prior-enlisted guys, and OCS guys.

[Steve Blair]

ROTC programs don't have all that much to do with civil-military relations when you get right down to it. Universities tend to ignore us, unless they want to protest the military/industrial complex or something similar. What they DO accomplish is provide an intake point for people who might not want to go to the Academies but still want to commission. It can also be scaled easier than academies can, and provides a decent way to target populations (like foreign language majors) when the need arises.

The point behind a joint course isn't to get these kids spewing purple jargon; it's more to show them how they will be working with other services in future environments. In part it's to show the AF cadets that there is more to life than the F-22, and it's also to help the Army cadets see what the AF can provide in terms of lift and support to a COIN effort. The sooner they can get that, the better. At least it will be in the back of their minds.

Just because ROTC hasn't done this in the past doesn't mean that it shouldn't do it in the future.

[Smitten Eagle]

Indeed, Universities tend to ignore ROTCs. ROTCs tend to have very small, if any, impact on campus these days. But the other part of Civ-Mil relations is how the University affects the military, and in this, ROTC is crucial. Basically, it keeps the officer corps academically diverse. I've heard some on this forum call the academies the Kool-Aid Factories, and in this they have a point (the implication being that all cadets/mids have to drink it to make it through, and Kool-Aid isn't very popular unless it's spiked by something unnatural).

All of the academies are, at their core, engineering schools. Sure, you can study polisci, or history, or economics at an academy, but it's not the strong suit. ROTC provides a certain level of diversity to this somewhat monolithic method of training officers. I see value in this academic diversity, and I see value in being able to attend a state school and serve as an officer.

The point on the F-22 is taken. I think there was a class on the make-up of the Navy, Army, and Air Force back in TBS. Maybe a better way of teaching such classes is with some sort of teaching LNO from the other services. At the same time, the marginal impact of learning the capes and lims of the F-22 or a Trident Submarine is pretty low, and such time could probably be better spent in MOUT Town.

[Steve Blair]

Exactly, Eagle. What I'm kicking around is a semester-style course that works out to be an operational exercise. AF and Army cadets take roles in their respective services (JFAAC and such) and then go against each other in notional settings that also include a variety of LIC-type considerations. I'm not focusing on high-end system capabilities at all, but rather how do you use the systems you have (my OBs are all based on older equipment and are scaled to be more or less equal) to accomplish your goals. There are things in it like population control, BDA operations, and popular reactions to military decisions (like if someone decides to carpet bomb cities in their opponent's country, the ethnic minority in THEIR country becomes restless and troops have to be diverted to population control). Simplistic? Sure. But it's intended to make cadets think and deal with situations that are not ideal.

Anyhow, I'll put my pet rock away now.

[120mm]

Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda, lots of pie in the sky stuff here.

You may have something of a point on the "semi-German" system of spending time in the ranks. On the other hand, the US Military in general, and the USMC in particular, does an excellent job of filling its officer corps with folks from the ranks, from the academy, from OCS, and from ROTC. Such a system has lots of intellectual diversity and I doubt that advantages could be accrued by homogenizing the entry of officers by use of a single system.

And the remark about O-5s and above is entirely uncalled for. On the contrary, I've seen lots of burned-out field grades who want nothing more than to "make 20" and punch out. They tend to be Majors with prior-enlisted experience or LtCols without such prior experience. Furthermore, I've known some utterly outstanding Colonels in my short 4 years in service to my country. And the generals? Mattis? Amos? Castellaw? Toolan? Helland? Yup--lots of ticket-punching in those guys. Ha.

A little more discipline in thought would be appropriate before we castigate the bird colonels and stars.

I've met Petraeus and Wadjakowski, and like them both, and know a few O-6s that I'd follow through hell with a peashooter, but they are the VAST minority in the many O-6s and above I've dealt with. I'm all for the castigation of the higher "O"s and the way they become that rank.

I think it is a great weakness of our military.

But I'm just a burnt out prior-enlisted Major.

Especially in CSS-land, I've seen the Army effectively relieve O-5s and above for incompetence, only to put them back into the same position later in the tour, and they still get good OERs and get promoted. We had an Active Duty O-6 basically refuse to deploy to Iraq, through feet dragging and malingering and as far as I can tell, he received no censure. His job was done, excellently, by a Reservist O-5.

There is a tendency to "command by powerpoint" at the O-6 and above level.

[Smitten Eagle]

Fair criticism, 120mm. I've seen similar too. But saying LtCols and Majors are awesome because they get out is probably incorrect. I've seen far more ticket-punching careerism by fat field-grades who are burned out and just intent on making 20. They're place-holders, and obstructionists. They provide no combat power.

Anybody ready "Path to Victory" by Vandergriff? He advocates the US military adopt a regimental system like the brits, decentralize promotions, and decentralize assignment-filling to those regiments.

There's about 5 things I'd change with the Fitrep/OER system, too. Like add peer and subordinate comments, get rid of the zero-defect mentality, etc.

If I every become Deputy Commandant for Manpower, that book will be my bible.

[Steve Blair]

I've been a big fan of Vandergriff since I read that book. Had him as a professor as well...very sharp guy.

A great deal of what he's talking about is really the way the personnel system used to work (read before Root's "reforms" and the business school mentality took hold).

[RTK]

On that note, I highly recommend Anton Mayer's Once an Eagle, though I gather most people in this forum have read it.

I see many Courtney Massengales in the army. Unfortunately, I'm beginning to see them at lower ranks than I did 7 years ago.

[Smitten Eagle]

On that note, I highly recommend Anton Mayer's Once an Eagle, though I gather most people in this forum have read it.

I see many Courtney Massengales in the army. Unfortunately, I'm beginning to see them at lower ranks than I did 7 years ago.

Where's Sam Damon when you need him? I guess they get killed, as that's how Medals of Honor are earned these days.

Grim world we live in.

RTK...how have you seen the "Massengalism" in the lower ranks?

[RTK]

Where's Sam Damon when you need him? I guess they get killed, as that's how Medals of Honor are earned these days.

Grim world we live in.

RTK...how have you seen the "Massengalism" in the lower ranks?

I've seen guys who are career SGS jockeys, guys who have spent 6 months in a platoon and distinguished themselves so poorly that they spent the rest of their LT years on Division staffs, only to come out of it on the other end with a Meritorious Service medal. It kills me.

I get asked by a lot of new 2LTs how they can pursue their Master's degrees while they are platoon leaders. They seem more than a little put off when I tell them that they simply can't and be a good platoon leader at the same time.

I've seen more backstabbing PLs in the last 2 years than I did in the previous 5 years all together. I'm not sure why. I've never seen so many junior officers try to climb over eachother to get to the front, and spitefully so, than I have recently. I'm told by those who are older that the reason is "generational." There seems to be an epitome of the "me" culture. As a microcosm of society, I guess that might be expected.

Finally, I've seen some piss poor platoon leaders. I've seen some fantastic ones as well. But, like all things, you tend to remember the bad sometimes more than the good.

[Smitten Eagle]

I've seen guys who are career SGS jockeys, guys who have spent 6 months in a platoon and distinguished themselves so poorly that they spent the rest of their LT years on Division staffs, only to come out of it on the other end with a Meritorious Service medal. It kills me.

I get asked by a lot of new 2LTs how they can pursue their Master's degrees while they are platoon leaders. They seem more than a little put off when I tell them that they simply can't and be a good platoon leader at the same time.

I've seen more backstabbing PLs in the last 2 years than I did in the previous 5 years all together. I'm not sure why. I've never seen so many junior officers try to climb over eachother to get to the front, and spitefully so, than I have recently. I'm told by those who are older that the reason is "generational." There seems to be an epitome of the "me" culture. As a microcosm of society, I guess that might be expected.

Finally, I've seen some piss poor platoon leaders. I've seen some fantastic ones as well. But, like all things, you tend to remember the bad sometimes more than the good.

Grim indeed. I guess I haven't seen <much> of that in the Marine Corps. Maybe I'm just biased, though.

I've seen some malingering Lts, who faigned injury to be rear party OIC while the unit deployed to IZ. But that was a single case.

I haven't seen many problems with the Masters Degrees, either. I think most wait til they get to their 'B-billet' (non-FMF tour) to do that.

[Rob Thornton]

I think it is a more of a matter of emphasizing what we say we believe in. There are multiple parts to it, but in the end it comes down to investing in people. I don't think it takes an extreme solution though; if you don't buy into the solution you’re are currently pursuing, and then adopting an extreme solution to force an issue won't work either - people will just get more creative in circumventing it.

I think an organization will only truly change only if it wants to (if you force change, it is just a matter of changing your stripes and waiting something or somebody out). Desire for change is at least partially based off of how an organization sees itself (does it succeed, does it fail, etc.?), and whether it believes the gain is worth the effort. For an organization like the military, we are also subject to external factors such as politics - both directly and indirectly. Since our budget comes from the GDP, and not commercial earnings - we are limited - not to mention there is lots of competition for those $$$.

Even if you do set all the conditions for success, I'm not sure you get the "Transformation" of personnel on the scale you're after. Smitten Eagle makes a good point when he points to some extraordinary senior FG and General Officers, but we call them extraordinary for a reason - and they are great examples of a system that recognized their abilities and placed them where they could best provide leadership. They also provide the rest of us a model for what right looks like.

Given the resources, I think we could improve the education of our general population, but to attract the surplus raw talent beyond those with an inclination to serve or develop requires that we can motivate more than just those who would normally come our way. How do we accomplish that? Good question.

[Stan]

Quote
The best bow out at about the O-5 level, not seeing anything in their future worth going thru the BS for.
Unquote

I am really glad he is wrong in this area, or I would have never made it to senior NCO ot even lived to tell my daughter about it.

We have the best officers in the world and I have 23 years of experience to back that statement.

Typos, go pack sand (bags).

Thanks for dumping this member !

[JKM4767]

One major downfall of Army ROTC is in many cases, the instructors for these future LTs are old retired LTCs and MAJs who have no operational experience in the GWOT. Now, with that being said, I understand we can't ship all of our recent COs to ROTC, but it makes sense. But soon, there should be an effort to get young combat vets (to include NCOs, especially former PSGs) to ROTC immediately so that they can educate these future PLs on what is expected of them as leaders in combat.