Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
Ture but adjustments will be made...Your premise is of course totally correct but the latter part is not true in this case. They're successfully working on the fourth year of rotations and not as door stops. Most there are totally aware that if the Army functioned as it was supposed to, they would not be needed. They are also regrettably aware that they are needed. They also know that even if they went away today, company intel cells and a number of other things they introduced are in fact embedded in the organism...I disagree. Strongly. Not that ad-hocery is inefficient, it sometimes is (it is also sometimes wonderfully efficient) -- but with the implication that ad-hocery is bad. I suggest that a minimal reading of US military history shows a rich and effective tradition of ad hocery. Bureaucracy is not a 21st Century invention... That's true but that also is not the total answer. Hidebounditis and turf protection also come to mind as equally salient reasons why the system cannot or will not tell the difference between a genuine need to adapt versus a bump in the night...Is that akin to this?
I was not referring to AWG as door stops, rather literal boxes... as for Company Intel team... that isn't permanent until it is reflected in MTOEs... permanence being a relative term... again has its place, but it would be far better if the MTOE of Companies reflected the reality of the requirement as opposed to a temp fix (temp being relative as well)...

I don't think I characterized ad hoc(ery) as inherently bad.... rather that in comparison to fixing the base reason for the ad hoc(ery) is generally preferred... and at the institutional level ad hoc(ery) is TERRIBLY inefficienct... for the simple reason that it spends half its time defending itself

That's why ad hocery has a place.... as I noted in an earlier post in this thread, I'm actually a genuine critic of TRADOC... mostly for its hidebound tendencies... but I can't tell you how many times I had a GO tell me he wanted to work relatively routine actions (extra-ordinarily) because they thought the process to hidebound, but in fact they understood very little about the process they criticized...

Again, I'm not a fan... but some critics... especially the Tom Ricks of the world are ill-informed and unwilling to learn...

As for AWG... intent wasn't to take a crack at AWG... it fills a role that you could argue TRADOC should, but maybe it shouldn't... it's role is better filled by an Ad Hoc organization (this being its proverbial place)...