Actually, I think it's 4 stars--remember the two deputies in each vivision?
On American ineptitude at R&S, I think Norfolk hit the nail on the head when he noted our penchant for recon by fire. If one sends out troops to do a sneak and peek mission, the likelihood that some of those folks will come back hurt or not at all is a distinct possibility. Why would one want to risk that when one has the ability to let "your indirect fire do the walking" (to paraphrase an old Yellow Pages ad). During its more recent struggles (at least since WWI), the US has had the luxury of having plenty of ammo and large calibre, long range bullet launchers, which has allowed us to choose the materiel R&S solution of indirect fire over the personal touch of eyes on the target.
Ken,
Maybe if we couldn't/didn't build up such an iron mountain behind us, we might be able to dispense with that Division HQ, which we both acknowledge has to be around to enable our log and comms efforts. (BTW--IMHO, a large piece of the comms issue is related to IT infrastructure needed to support log function.) But, all those staff weenies would then just migrate down to the brigade TOCs, as they already apparently are doing. What's a force developer to do?
Bookmarks