Open Thread – Which US DoD Dinosaurs Would You Slay?

[Schmedlap]

Speaking as someone who never served above the battalion level (I don't mean to brag)...

Get rid of all of those ankle-biter company-level programs, like safety officer/NCO; just a waste of time that gets pencil-whipped prior to command inspections and takes leaders away from more important things (like time with their Soldiers) so that they can attend 40-hour courses on whatever additional duty they are "responsible for" and fabricate a 3-ring binder full of paperwork.

Those programs exist and have company-level personnel responsible for them because that is what Army Regulation dictates. Change the regulations. It is a tremendous drain upon companies that forces them into one of two alternatives: 1) obey the regulation and suffer the consequences of leaders being distracted from their work or being absent to attend random 40-hour courses -OR- 2) disobey the regulations in order to sustain actual readiness (versus paper readiness).

[patmc]

I agree they are a drain on manpower, and often an annoyance, but what does not get checked, does not get done. As an XO during a Corps ORA, and then the BN OIC for a BN CI, most of these regs are not followed to the letter, and are too much detail for a BN to track. If company level reps didn't take the courses, do the paperwork, and "enforce" the regs, it definately would not get done. I don't know a better alternative, other than eliminating regs, but like most things in the Army, they probably exist for a good reason. Just because leaders are not enforcing the regs does not mean they don't serve a purpose. I hate the term eat the elephant one bit at a time (due to overuse in my unit), but if leaders actually worked their areas over the course of the year, not just during inspection prep, it would not be overwhelming. Units probably waste/lose more time going into inspection prep where all other training ceases.

Don't know if it is a dinosaur per se, but stop changing uniforms for no good reason. The backlash against the new blue Army uniform continues, but doubt it will change anything.

Speaking as someone who never served above the battalion level (I don't mean to brag)...

Get rid of all of those ankle-biter company-level programs, like safety officer/NCO; just a waste of time that gets pencil-whipped prior to command inspections and takes leaders away from more important things (like time with their Soldiers) so that they can attend 40-hour courses on whatever additional duty they are "responsible for" and fabricate a 3-ring binder full of paperwork.

Those programs exist and have company-level personnel responsible for them because that is what Army Regulation dictates. Change the regulations. It is a tremendous drain upon companies that forces them into one of two alternatives: 1) obey the regulation and suffer the consequences of leaders being distracted from their work or being absent to attend random 40-hour courses -OR- 2) disobey the regulations in order to sustain actual readiness (versus paper readiness).

[reed11b]

I agree they are a drain on manpower, and often an annoyance, but what does not get checked, does not get done. As an XO during a Corps ORA, and then the BN OIC for a BN CI, most of these regs are not followed to the letter, and are too much detail for a BN to track. If company level reps didn't take the courses, do the paperwork, and "enforce" the regs, it definately would not get done. I don't know a better alternative, other than eliminating regs, but like most things in the Army, they probably exist for a good reason. Just because leaders are not enforcing the regs does not mean they don't serve a purpose. I hate the term eat the elephant one bit at a time (due to overuse in my unit), but if leaders actually worked their areas over the course of the year, not just during inspection prep, it would not be overwhelming. Units probably waste/lose more time going into inspection prep where all other training ceases.

Don't know if it is a dinosaur per se, but stop changing uniforms for no good reason. The backlash against the new blue Army uniform continues, but doubt it will change anything.

After some thought, I think I agree with patmc on this one even if though I really like what schmedlap is saying. I think what would really help would be allowing officers to spend more then a year in a position Nowhere in the real world are you mandated to get a new job title every year.
Reed

[Schmedlap]

I agree they are a drain on manpower, and often an annoyance, but what does not get checked, does not get done.

I would further assert that what gets checked also, often, does not get done. It just gets fabricated. I'm not defending it - I'm just pointing it out.

If company level reps didn't take the courses, do the paperwork, and "enforce" the regs, it definately would not get done. I don't know a better alternative, other than eliminating regs, but like most things in the Army, they probably exist for a good reason.

You and I part ways at the word "probably." I think one can see why they exist by reading the article linked in this thread. Someone gets a bright idea and the authority to implement it to its fullest and they get so focused on their specific issue that they start to think it is the most important issue out there. Suddenly you've got someone in the Pentagon dictating the implementation of some administrative nightmare that reaches its tentacles all the way down to the company/battery/troop level.

The COIN/conventional debate seems to assume that we are not able to train on both, due to time constraints and limitations on how many trades jack can be a master of. I think we far exceed those limitations when it comes to administrative programs. Just because we ensure that one NCO and/or officer in each unit is an "SME" on a program, that doesn't mean that the Soldiers in that unit will be any more capable of processing the slew of rules and regulations foisted upon them. It just means that 50 "SMEs" will be bugging them about 50 sets of rules that they cannot possibly remember. I don't see how you can get adequate enforcement of those volumes of regs without taking away from mission-oriented proficiency. I also don't see how we expect Officers to faithfully execute the 8 to 10 additional duties that they are saddled with, without detracting significantly from their other more important work. Realistically speaking, they don't. And I've never seen a commander get upset about it.

"Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember that time I took a home wine making course and forgot how to drive?" - Homer Simpson

[Cavguy]

I agree they are a drain on manpower, and often an annoyance, but what does not get checked, does not get done. As an XO during a Corps ORA, and then the BN OIC for a BN CI, most of these regs are not followed to the letter, and are too much detail for a BN to track. If company level reps didn't take the courses, do the paperwork, and "enforce" the regs, it definately would not get done. I don't know a better alternative, other than eliminating regs, but like most things in the Army, they probably exist for a good reason. Just because leaders are not enforcing the regs does not mean they don't serve a purpose. I hate the term eat the elephant one bit at a time (due to overuse in my unit), but if leaders actually worked their areas over the course of the year, not just during inspection prep, it would not be overwhelming. Units probably waste/lose more time going into inspection prep where all other training ceases.

Don't know if it is a dinosaur per se, but stop changing uniforms for no good reason. The backlash against the new blue Army uniform continues, but doubt it will change anything.

But here is the problem identified by Shmed ...

Dr. Lenny Wong "Stifled Innovation?" Strategic Studies Institute, 2002. A MUST READ if you haven't before.

Of the 365 days in the year, approximately 109 days are unavailable for training due to weekends, federal holidays, payday activities, and the Christmas half-day schedule. This results in a total of about 256 available days for company commanders to plan and execute training.

Requirements for mandatory training at the company level riginate from Army Regulation 350-1, Army Training, policy letters, command training guidance, and other directives. Scrubbing all levels of command down to the Brigade level, to include Department of the Army, Major Army Command (MACOM), Corps, Division, and installation level, for anything that generates a training requirement results in the identification of over 100 distinct training requirements. Table 1 shows a partial listing of the requirements.

... Note that, as expected, most directedmission-related training requirements come from Division-level or below. More importantly, most directed nonmission-related training requirements originate from DA and MACOM levels. This is critical since policy actions may be most effective in reducing the DA and MACOM requirements.

Incorporating the amount of time necessary to execute each directed training requirement (for example, training on “The Benefits of an Honorable Discharge” takes about 60 minutes a year) results in approximately 297 days of directed training.

Of the 297 days, about 85 percent (or 254 training days) is mission-related training and 15 percent (or 43 training days) is nonmission-related training.

The number of days required by all mandatory training directives literally exceeds the number of training days available to company commanders. Company commanders somehow have to fit 297 days of mandatory requirements into 256 available training days.

When you do this, and the chain of command expects it all done, you get integrity problems. I too shared Schmedlap's late 90's experience of personally observing flat out falsification of reports to meet this unattainable standard. It was a big reason for the exodus of CPTs in the 94-97 year groups before 9/11, given in the Army's 2001 study on officer attrition.

Unfortunately, It took a war to get this shoved out the window. (for now)

[82redleg]

But here is the problem identified by Shmed ...

When you do this, and the chain of command expects it all done, you get integrity problems. I too shared Schmedlap's late 90's experience of personally observing flat out falsification of reports to meet this unattainable standard. It was a big reason for the exodus of CPTs in the 94-97 year groups before 9/11, given in the Army's 2001 study on officer attrition.

Unfortunately, It took a war to get this shoved out the window. (for now)

I agree with Schmed & Cavguy (I'm a YG 97 officer, so a near contemporary of Cavguy). Most of these regulatory requirements exist to cover someone's 4th point of contact, not "for a good reason" (Patmc).

I think that most of "good reasons" are better dealt with through good leadership, and if you don't have that leadership, find a leader that does. A simplified example is the "Safetygrams" that come out regularly and are required to be posted on the unit safety bulletin board. Does a piece of paper that troopers don't read on the bulletin board make them less likely to misuse their equipment in ways that get them killed? Or is it more likely properly planned and executed training, supervised by competent NCOs?

This almost goes back to our "green army" and our "tan army" (although this doesn't work so well in the world of ACUs. In CONUS, tactical situations are "canned" and the BN or BCT level, with almost any important decision made there. Down range, we have PLs and PSGs (mostly), sometimes SLs and section SGTs, outside executing, with the full power to do everything up to employing lethal force- heck, most of the time, even that decision is made by either a E1-E4 gunner, or at most, the SGT vehicle commander in charge of the HMMWV. We trust them there, with life and death, but not here, with a whole multitude of things that are relatively less important.