Quote Originally Posted by Sargent View Post
This is why I limited the critique to combat service support. ... But where the bullets are flying, the only people you are going to get to work amidst them are soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen. The contractors won't do it.
True, to an extent; you'll always find a few but they'll cost big bucks -- that's why I say the key is to design our systems, organizations and equipment to minimize the contractor requirement * .
..."Join the Navy, scrape barnacles!"
It was paint that got scraped and the Navy got smart and bought a better quality of paint that needs replacement less often -- so the contractors in the Yards do it when the ship cycle through (as in * above)...
It might be worth looking into whether the system they have for Marine officers might work with enlisted personnel.
That's done to an extent but it doesn't answer the CSS dirty work problem. My bet is that if you offer a lot of combat arms NCOs the unrefusable option of alternating between a CA and a CSS job; they'll leave the service. I would have.
This is why you make everyone be a combat arms person first...
I agree -- unfortunately, the Air Force and Army personnel folks don't; "inefficient" they say. As if there were anything more inefficient than a war. Even bigger problem is my guess would be about half (+ or - 10% or so) the CA enlistees wouldn't go for the CSS rotation. NCOs as a body differ from Officers in a number of respects. Most do not want to be generalists or multi spectral.
The Rev War wasn't so long ago that the lesson doesn't bear remembering.
True -- and WW II, Korea and Viet Nam with all their systemic ineffectiveness, logistic cock-ups, outright failures (which got covered up by the brass and didn't make the papers as contractors did and do -- but the Troops affected knew) crookedness and black marketing by folks in uniform were even less long ago. Balancing both lessons and applying them to tomorrow is the problem.
No, but if we don't even bother looking for one, then there are no solutions.
Agree. See above *.