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Thread: Officer Retention

  1. #201
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    This is a problem that will not be fixed for a long time.

    The reduced officer manning levels at TRADOC occured under Shinseki's term as CSA. Remember when he dictated that all Divisional and below units will be manned at 100%? That cut TRADOC down to 50% of their authorized manning levels, and some Corps and higher level units were also severly impacted (Corps FA BN's especially). I submit that TRADOC needs to be expanded soon in order to meet the expanding Army - if the Army can actually recruit and retain 547K of personnel.

    The CPT issue is a much broader problem as Cavguy deftly illustrates. The holes in the CPT rank today are going to be the holes in the MAJ/LTC/COL/GO levels of tomorrow. Are their staff billets that can be cut - oh hell yes. Why a DIV HQ requires 1000 people to man it is truly a mystery to me.

    Plus there is job statisfaction to take into account - once Company Command is complete, for the most part, you are out of troop leading positions forever. Very few people actually command battalions and even less BCT's. Plus the command tours are so short because "everyone has to get their shot" and damn you to hell even if you are the second coming of Audie Murphy, Rommel and Wellington combined. There's an Auckenlick, Clark and Meade waiting behind you and "he needs to get his shot." As long as this mentality exists, and the best commanders are not kept in command positions, I suggest that we will never be truly successful in war. We'll muddle through at best.
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  2. #202
    Council Member RTK's Avatar
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    I subscribe to the Office Space theory, that some of these guys will work just hard enough not to get fired.

    Ryno and I see it day in and day out. Generation Why has a sense of entitlement that can't be paralleled with anything in history. Guys like Ryno and I tend to shake them out of their tree. Often we're the first two people to tell and 22 year old that he's all jacked up....the first in his life.

    Someone once told me that being in the army was the best job on earth because "all you had to do was do your job and people would notice you as a hard charger. Put in even just a little effort and you look like the Second Coming of Christ."

    I'm beginning to see where he was coming from.
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  3. #203
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ski View Post
    I submit that TRADOC needs to be expanded soon in order to meet the expanding Army - if the Army can actually recruit and retain 547K of personnel.

    It's going to have to happen sometime in the next three weeks, since they added another class this year for the Armor School and we're at about 70% of what we need in terms of instructors right now. I have guys that will get 4 days off between May and September next year. And this is the assignment for "guys to recharge their batteries."
    Example is better than precept.

  4. #204
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    You know as well I do that it's not going to happen.

    And the cycle continues to degenerate into a spiral.


    Quote Originally Posted by RTK View Post
    It's going to have to happen sometime in the next three weeks, since they added another class this year for the Armor School and we're at about 70% of what we need in terms of instructors right now. I have guys that will get 4 days off between May and September next year. And this is the assignment for "guys to recharge their batteries."
    "Speak English! said the Eaglet. "I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and what's more, I don't believe you do either!"

    The Eaglet from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland

  5. #205
    Council Member Rob Thornton's Avatar
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    Ref CMD opportunities & expansion - I think the initiative to grow the force may open those opportunities quite a bit - in fact I wonder where we'll get enough of the right grades to fill them out. My guess is we'll have to come out of hide - meaning more TRADOC and like billets will get filled by contractors, and/or some of the folks filling career field tracks will have to bounce back and forth, or cross back over. Depends on what big Army decides is the priority.

    Lots of tough choices coming up - whatever else it is - it will be interesting.

    Best, Rob

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ski View Post
    You know as well I do that it's not going to happen.

    And the cycle continues to degenerate into a spiral.
    How did we ever come to this? I know there are plenty of explanations, but it's one of those things that despite all that, and despite that I understand at some level (at least I think I do) at least some of those explanations, I can't understand, down in my gut, how it is that we came to this sorry impasse.

    We reduced the size of the Army to a ridiculously small number in vain hopes of a "peace dividend" in the 90s, smoked Rummy's dope and thought we could make up for numbers with gizmos, and then with nothing left but a rump Army to fight two major conflicts simultaneously, we frittered away (are frittering away) the Army's future, we're eating its seed corn. I get that.

    What I don't get down in my gut is how can it be that it seems no longer possible to increase the size of the Army back to, say, what it was in the first Gulf War? The Army is half the size it was when I was on active duty, yet it seems to me, we're spending even more money than we did then, and merely to increase the force 60k or so seems an impossible task. Something just doesn't add up. We spend incredible sums, but our ROI in terms of real military power seems to get less with every passing year.

    A cynic might say that we have indeed undergone Transformation, but we have transformed ourselves into a force increasingly incapable of sustained combat.
    He cloaked himself in a veil of impenetrable terminology.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Stevely View Post
    How did we ever come to this? I know there are plenty of explanations, but it's one of those things that despite all that, and despite that I understand at some level (at least I think I do) at least some of those explanations, I can't understand, down in my gut, how it is that we came to this sorry impasse.

    We reduced the size of the Army to a ridiculously small number in vain hopes of a "peace dividend" in the 90s, smoked Rummy's dope and thought we could make up for numbers with gizmos, and then with nothing left but a rump Army to fight two major conflicts simultaneously, we frittered away (are frittering away) the Army's future, we're eating its seed corn. I get that.

    What I don't get down in my gut is how can it be that it seems no longer possible to increase the size of the Army back to, say, what it was in the first Gulf War? The Army is half the size it was when I was on active duty, yet it seems to me, we're spending even more money than we did then, and merely to increase the force 60k or so seems an impossible task. Something just doesn't add up. We spend incredible sums, but our ROI in terms of real military power seems to get less with every passing year.

    A cynic might say that we have indeed undergone Transformation, but we have transformed ourselves into a force increasingly incapable of sustained combat.
    Well, I think it got to this firstly because the Army was pushed too far for too long, and now it's stuck facing long-term institutional damage that's too late in the day to fix, and of course in the short-term it, and for the same reason, it can't hold on to its own people anymore - they're burned out or their families are. And this same situation extends to the USMC, the British Army, the Royal Marines, and the Canadian Army. They've all been Red-lined for so long that the machine is now breaking down, for real.

    The other problem is that, simply, those who wanted to join the military, already have done so, and the rest by and large aren't really interested; they're interested in themselves, not so much their country. So when the people that you can attract to the military are already leaving, there's not very many willing people to replace them, except for some people who don't think that they have anywhere else to go.

    Things have gone back to the old days, where there is this strong tendency in English-speaking societies to look at the military and consider them as just a bunch of people who can't make it in civilian life. Having driven away so many of our own who were willing and able over the past several years, we're stuck with dropping standards to try to scrape up those who we ordinarily would not want and would not accept. And that just reinforces those old views of the military as a dumping-ground of society's ne'er-do-wells.

    The final reason for all this goes back to that famous quote from that story about Vietnam, where the one returned soldier says to his buddy beside him "It's not touching anybody." Just because Iraq and Afghanistan are constantly in the news just obscures the fact that society at home doesn't feel a thing, doesn't have to do a thing, and doesn't have to be involved one way or the other. It's the Military's War, not Society's. Society has simply opted out of the War.

  8. #208
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    Quote Originally Posted by Norfolk View Post
    Well, I think it got to this firstly because the Army was pushed too far for too long, and now it's stuck facing long-term institutional damage that's too late in the day to fix, and of course in the short-term it, and for the same reason, it can't hold on to its own people anymore - they're burned out or their families are. And this same situation extends to the USMC, the British Army, the Royal Marines, and the Canadian Army. They've all been Red-lined for so long that the machine is now breaking down, for real.

    ...

    The final reason for all this goes back to that famous quote from that story about Vietnam, where the one returned soldier says to his buddy beside him "It's not touching anybody." Just because Iraq and Afghanistan are constantly in the news just obscures the fact that society at home doesn't feel a thing, doesn't have to do a thing, and doesn't have to be involved one way or the other. It's the Military's War, not Society's. Society has simply opted out of the War.
    Great post and well said. I knew the Royal Army was in trouble, I didn't know the Canadian Army was also having issues. Is it simply OPTEMPO or does it have the "disconnect" issues being dealt with by the US Army?
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cavguy View Post
    Great post and well said. I knew the Royal Army was in trouble, I didn't know the Canadian Army was also having issues. Is it simply OPTEMPO or does it have the "disconnect" issues being dealt with by the US Army?
    In a word, both. Plus the fact that the Army had already burnt itself out in 10 years of non-stop ops in the Balkans leading up to A-Stan. The Army was not a shell in 2001, it was a husk.

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    Default Nano Seconds and Guerillas

    The fact of the matter is high tech has not reduced poverty, crime, mental illness, social unrest, corruption, inequitable distribution of goods and war. How much Officers per se have suscribed to technology as the real venue for attaining Utopia remains to be seen and it may be a variable previously unconsidered in this matter of attrition. Let's face it, you couldn't get a more severe existential dilemma then the shock 'n awe of high tech meeting IEDs and suicide vests. It has to be a real letdown for some, that amidst the usual bungling and incompetency and horrors of war, the failure of high tech to win the day comes raining down upon the weary shoulders.

  11. #211
    Council Member wm's Avatar
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    Default A Force Structure for 3-5 day Operations?

    In my Army of the 70’s and 80’s, we did this really stupid thing . Every quarter, we would go to the field to exercise for 3-5 days. We went flat out, balls to the wall, for those 3-5 days—no one slept and we all ran around with our hair on fire getting stuff done. On the last day, we would have some form of “war ending event” like authority to release nukes, declare ENDEX, pack up and roll back into garrison. For the next week or so, we would work at half time schedules recovering from the exercise. Then we would get ourselves geared up to do it again next quarter. It was rather pathetic to watch our performance degrade by the last day of these wonderful exercises. The bad news is that I do not think my senior leadership ever got it. They seemed to think that we would be able to maintain that 24 hour a day (with a few 5-10 minute catnaps) OPTEMPO indefinitely. I think our more recent efforts in DS and OIF went so fast that they confirmed to seniors that the 3-5 day exercise model that we had trained to really works in practice.

    Now, however, I think the chickens are finally coming home to roost. Our forces burn themselves out because they are trying to operate with a force structure developed to implement the “3-5 day push, then rest for a week” format. Long-term operations just do not fit that model. As an example, I suggest a look at the way Petain rotated forces through Verdun to get an idea of what it really takes to sustain a military force that is engaged in sustained combat operations. (I chose the French at Verdun in particular because even though we are involved in active offensive operations in Iraq, I contend that we are actually more like a besieged force.) Then, we might get a better picture of the force structure that we need.

    The really bad news for us right now is that, unlike the French and British in 1917, we do not have another nation waiting in the wings with a host of fresh troops to get us over the crisis.

  12. #212
    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by goesh View Post
    The fact of the matter is high tech has not reduced poverty, crime, mental illness, social unrest, corruption, inequitable distribution of goods and war. How much Officers per se have subscribed to technology as the real venue for attaining Utopia remains to be seen and it may be a variable previously unconsidered in this matter of attrition. Let's face it, you couldn't get a more severe existential dilemma then the shock 'n awe of high tech meeting IEDs and suicide vests. It has to be a real letdown for some, that amidst the usual bungling and incompetency and horrors of war, the failure of high tech to win the day comes raining down upon the weary shoulders.

    Actually I disagree with a few of those (see emphasis added). High tech jobs and the knowledge economy has created entire cities across the planet. In India, China, Malaysia, South Africa where there was desolate poverty now their are burgeoning high tech cities. Japan is a good example of a mixed industrial and high tech economy. Technology is nothing but tools and whether it is a tractor or a function call in "c#" building tools will always alleviate poverty, and build an economy. It is that act of creation that feeds the engines of commerce.

    Now as to waging war? A grunt in the dust is at some point going to have to stand on a piece of ground and say I claim this. I fear that COIN will always follow "shock and awe" and will always be doomed to failure. After reading much and thinking about what you all say about small wars and COIN I keep getting this nagging suspicion that COIN can only be successful if implemented as part of a larger diplomacy effort and not after a full on invasion. I have much more to learn but unless you are invited in by at least a less hostile government COIN seems to get expanded to general peace keeping and appeasement both tactics doomed to failure in a hostile nation.
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    I think maybe the spectacular growth variable of high techery (new word?) is negated, or at least checked, by the exponential growth of slums.


    http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/27/2139/

    "The shanty towns that choke the cities of Africa and Asia are experiencing unstoppable growth, expanding by more than a million people every week, according to the “state of the world’s population” report
    .................
    It maintains that over the next 30 years, the population of African and Asian cities will double, adding 1.7 billion people - more than the current populations of the US and China combined.
    .................
    In this new world the majority of the urban poor will be under 25, unemployed and vulnerable to fundamentalism, Christian and Islamic. "

    This might make COIN irrelevant, who is to really say, and conventional methods needed to deal with upheavals of this potential magnitude could bring about attrition rates higher than what we see now.

    I'm certainly not suggesting a return to lance and sword warfare but I think there is a psychological factor of attrition when too much dependence is placed on high techery, something we don't fully understand and something not adequately addressed to date. In my time, there was some logic to the loss of a man dying from shock and blood loss because the medevac choppers couldn't get there fast enough. Is the loss in any way magnified when on-the-spot, state of the art responses fail? I don't know, maybe not, but I'm nagged by the discrepancy of IED/AK/RPG/suicide vest V nano seconds/satellites/real time/smart weapons and what it adds to PTSD.

  14. #214
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    Another new article on the slow decay of the Officer Corps. Not a good sign at all.

    http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/fea....tilghman.html
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    No, it's not; and it's just going to get worse.

    McCaffrey's AAR called for a 800,000 man active-duty Army. Unrealistic, of course, but there it is. They just approved a 90,000 man (or was it the 74,000?) increase.

    All of which is, as Gen. McCaffrey said, persons with drug use histories, moral waivers, low education or mental capacities, etc., who should not be in the Army.

    Couple that with a loss of good officers, and I think the recipe is for disaster.

    Matt
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    Even if Iraq "stabilizes" sufficiently within a couple years to allow a drawdown to 50,000-100,000 troops, the sheer strain of that will just continue to aggravate things. Within about 2 years, I imagine, we will have a pretty good and fairly solid indication of what we can expect for the next 20-30 years with regards to the circumstances and qualities of the Army's Officer (and NCO) Corps.

  17. #217
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    Quote Originally Posted by MattC86 View Post
    No, it's not; and it's just going to get worse.

    McCaffrey's AAR called for a 800,000 man active-duty Army. Unrealistic, of course, but there it is. They just approved a 90,000 man (or was it the 74,000?) increase.

    All of which is, as Gen. McCaffrey said, persons with drug use histories, moral waivers, low education or mental capacities, etc., who should not be in the Army.

    Couple that with a loss of good officers, and I think the recipe is for disaster.

    Matt
    Add in mission creep, legislative "silver bullet" mentality, highly restrictive ROE, and massive contractor capitulation.
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  18. #218
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    Quote Originally Posted by selil View Post
    Add in mission creep, legislative "silver bullet" mentality, highly restrictive ROE, and massive contractor capitulation.
    Not to worry folks.

    Blackwater has offered to fill the leadership vacuum with the folks it is having to send home for killing dogs belonging to NYT reporters and being involved in other assorted "drive by" shooting incidents. CACI is going to do all the intel and EPW handling duties for a mere pittance of what we now spend for ASAS-Lite and the various versions of DCGS. And the Air Force's new cyberwarfare inititiatives will so paralyze any enemy's C2 systems that future wars will become impossible to conduct.

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    Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
    Not to worry folks.

    Blackwater has offered to fill the leadership vacuum with the folks it is having to send home for killing dogs belonging to NYT reporters and being involved in other assorted "drive by" shooting incidents. CACI is going to do all the intel and EPW handling duties for a mere pittance of what we now spend for ASAS-Lite and the various versions of DCGS. And the Air Force's new cyberwarfare inititiatives will so paralyze any enemy's C2 systems that future wars will become impossible to conduct.
    Now we know what really happened to the roman empire.
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  20. #220
    Council Member wm's Avatar
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    Default LTC Nagl is departing uniformed service

    High-Profile Officer Nagl To Leave Army, Join Think Tank

    By Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post Staff Writer

    One of the Army's most prominent younger officers, whose writings have influenced the conduct of the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq, said he has decided to leave the service to study strategic issues full time at a new Washington think tank.

    Lt. Col. John Nagl, 41, is a coauthor of the Army's new manual on counterinsurgency operations, which has been used heavily by U.S. forces carrying out the strategy of moving off big bases, living among the population and making the protection of civilians their top priority.

    A Rhodes scholar, Nagl first achieved prominence for his Oxford University doctoral dissertation, which was published in 2002 as a book titled "Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons From Malaya and Vietnam." The introduction to a recent edition of the book was written by Gen. Peter Schoomaker, at the time the Army's chief of staff.

    Nagl led a tank platoon in the 1991 Persian Gulf war and served in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 as the operations officer for an Army battalion in Iraq's Anbar province. "I thought I understood something about counterinsurgency," Nagl told the New York Times Magazine in January 2004, "until I started doing it."

    After serving in Iraq, he became an assistant to then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz. Next, under the stewardship of Gen. David H. Petraeus, now the top U.S. commander in Iraq, he helped produce the Army's counterinsurgency manual. He then became the commander of a battalion in Fort Riley, Kan., that teaches U.S. soldiers how to train and advise Iraqi forces. He has continued to have a high profile, with interviews on National Public Radio, "The Charlie Rose Show" and "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart."

    Nagl said in a brief telephone interview yesterday that he has filed his papers requesting retirement. "I love the Army very much," he said, but he added that he decided to leave after discussing his future with his family. "It's not the strain of repeated deployments," he said, but "a belief that I can contribute perhaps on a different level - and my family wants me to leave."

    He said he plans to become a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a centrist think tank recently founded by Kurt Campbell and Michèle Flournoy, Clinton-era Pentagon officials. Nagl said he looks forward to working with them. "I hope to focus on national security for the remainder of my days," he said. "Obviously you don't have to do that in uniform."

    Nagl's departure is a serious loss for the Army, said retired Marine Col. T.X. Hammes. "He's a serious student of warfare, he's smart, he's articulate, he's successfully led troops in combat, and he's worked at the highest levels of the Pentagon," said Hammes, himself the author of a book on contemporary war. "The Army just doesn't have that many officers with his set of qualifications."
    Fred Kaplan has a story on Slate as well

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