Zero-Defects Mentality

[Ken White]

directly to any other -- I won't. I will point out that lessons of Arab-Israeli wars are very narrowly applicable and we have not done ourselves any favors by trying to adapt Israeli TTP which are quite successful for their missions, opponents and terrain. Survival concentrates the mine quite nicely...

We do not as a nation get pushed into that survival mentality and we have to do many things the Israelis do not -- and we have to do them worldwide against a host of far different opponents and non-supporters.

I will also agree that Donn Starry was aggressive and a self starter. Period. Tom Tarpley was known as the "Ghost of Building Four" for some reason...

Bottom line is that Starry, DePuy and Tarpley were all part of the post Viet Nam problem and they had a lot of company in the upper ranks. The and the Army were pushed in that direction by then Chief of Staff Bernie Rogers who was a Rhodes Scholar, a smart guy and as Eurocentric as it was possible to be. The one guy that tried to fight it, Shy Meyer, who succeeded Rogers as CofSA, was ganged upon because he threatened too many rice bowls. The bureaucracy just waited him out..

John Wickham learned from Meyer's experience and tried to take smaller bites of the Elephant when no one was looking, he was fairly successful. Following Wickham were several non-entities who accomplished very little...

All that said, there is little doubt in this long term infantryman's mind that Infantry is the most hidebound and conservative branch though I will mention that Knox has it's laid back and unproductive cycles. All that leads to on point:

It's not the branch, it is people.

Put the wrong guy in a job and that organization will go through a bad period until he rotates out. Our personnel system is really our worst enemy. Until we learn that -- or rather accept and change it because most people know it -- we are doomed to mediocrity. Get used to it, it's a fact of life in the US Armed Forces.

[Pete]

The two quotations below regarding the individual training of soldiers are remarkably similar. The following is from General Paul Gorman's The Secret of Future Victories:

The American Army paid for this lacuna not only in World War II, but also in Korea and Vietnam. By mid-1944, the U.S. Army had been forced out of the business of training divisions, and had to concentrate on operating Replacement Training Centers. These became quite efficient, in a sausage-factory sort of way. When the Army went to war in 1950, and again in 1965, there were a few division activations, and some revisiting of the McNair Mobilization Training Program, but by and large the Army simply increased inductions under Selective Service, opened up additional RTC assembly lines, and thus assured a stream of individual replacements to maintain the strength of divisions fighting in Asia. This training was a great accomplishment in many ways, but it, and the overall personnel policy it supported, operated to the distinct disadvantage of the infantry platoons in those divisions, constantly being drained not only by casualties but also by rotations, both in-theater and homeward. The notion of teamwork within the squad was very difficult to instill and to maintain in such platoons, and as General Fry points out, the consequence was undoubtedly needless casualties.

From 1944 through 1974, the primary product of the Army's training base--as the CONUS service schools and training centers that grew out of the AGF institutions came to be called--was individual replacements. Individual and collective training in units was relegated to unit commanders, who were to be guided by a version of the AGF MTP called the Army Training Program (ATP). The Combat Firing Proficiency Test prescribed by the AGF, described in detail above, was virtually the same as the Field Exercise for a Rifle Platoon in the Attack, prescribed in 1973--an approach march, movement to contact, encounter with enemy fire, return fire, and assault--all via live firing at pop-up cardboard targets--followed by a meticulous umpire critique based on a list of 50 specific procedures (checked observed or not observed) within the platoon. Over all those years, 1943-1973, Army training for dismounted action at the point of the arrow remained formulary, complicated, and situationally vague.

This is from Major Herbert's Deciding What Needs to Be Done:

As DePuy looked at the Army's training establishment, for which he now had responsibility, he saw an institution that was still planning for a mass mobilization similar to that of World War II. He did not see an institution that was attuned to the new strategy or adequate to the current needs. DePuy recalled from his own training in the 1940s that, because of the rapid expansion of the Army, the necessity to deploy troops quickly, and U.S. superiority in manpower, soldiers received the minimum essential training before they joined their units and went overseas. As a result, units often performed much as the 90th Division did before it became experienced. Given enough soldiers, this was a politically acceptable price to pay at the time. This World War II training experience set the mold in which postwar training was cast. While the Korean and Vietnam Wars did not require mobilization on the scale of World War II, the training experience for soldiers in both conflicts was much the same as for their World War II elders: large numbers of conscripts being hustled through a series of exercises in which minimum competence was the goal. Such training undoubtedly accomplished important socialization but not much military skill.

[Ken White]

What was your point? Since you posted those quotes, one can presume you have one.

What Paul Gorman though has little bearing, what Herbert though has less. what you think is of interest

[Pete]

I was making the obvious point that when we discuss Army training we're talking about a system that was originally designed to train the maximum number of men in the shortest possible period of time. Although it was suitable for the emergency of WW II it probably wasn't a good process to leave in place unmodified after the war.

In an Army course I took 20 years ago as a contractor it was said that no hours of instruction can be added to basic training without taking away an equal number of hours. That explains the remarkable decline in the time spent teaching rifle marksmanship.

I've wondered to what extent Lesley McNair modeled the WW II training system on the schools set up in France during the First World War. Except for the 1st and 2nd Divisions and some National Guard units most of the Doughboys who went to France were trained over there and not in the States. I read that some believed the school system set up over there siphoned the best officers and NCOs away from troop units.

[selil]

In an Army course I took 20 years ago as a contractor it was said that no hours of instruction can be added to basic training without taking away an equal number of hours.

That assertion is simply bunkum. The concepts of education and training allow for substantial increases in the relevant skills attained in shorter periods of time than previous generations. It's the solved problem. Once you solve something that took months or years it is easy to replicate. jeepers. We've been here before and can get past the linearity of educations philosophy.

[Ken White]

Not a perfect medium for communicating -- I'm over wordy mostly in an attempt to get past the lack of nuance and visual clues that we'd have in a face to face conversation. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes things that seem obvious to us as we write do not come across as obvious to others.

The fact that the US Army training system is modeled after the WW I mobilization training process which was slightly modified for WW II had been discussed here numerous times. Here are just a few recent threads: LINK, LINK, LINK. A search will turn up more. Generally, it's a good idea here to run a Search before posting a 'new' thought; probability is someone else has already mentioned it. That is not said to deter posting but really to encourage it -- just with some knowledge of what might previously been said on the topic.

The current task, condition and standard foolishness is also a good mob / low IQ effort -- it is totally inappropriate for a professional force.

Basically, many here seem to agree that our training is broken and fortunately, a number of initiatives are underway to fix a lot of that. We're still training a low IQ conscript Army when we actually have a high IQ Army of volunteers that are fairly professional. The bad news is that the personnel system is in even worse shape than our training. I think the training will be improved, I'm not as hopeful on the personnel aspect...

Re: Rifle marksmanship -- that's getting fixed (LINK), (LINK), (LINK). That "nothing added without something being taken away" was from the 1980s and 90s, a time when we 'trained' (poorly) to budget, not to standard for all the lip service paid to standards. That's changing, not rapidly enough nor adequately but it is improving. Your comment re: McNair is spot on.

Selil is right, bunkum it is -- we're supposed to be smarter than that now...

[Pete]

I was fortunate to have received my first marksmanship instruction in Boy Scouts in 1964. Our Scoutmaster taught it the way he'd been taught M1 rifle marksmanship, which was really a recycling of the old M1903 POI. That was back when the loop sling, hasty sling, and sitting position were still taught. The Army gave us weekly access to a 50-foot indoor range at Fort Belvoir and it also lent us a half-dozen Springfield .22-caliber rifles, either M1922A1 or M2, with Lyman rear peep sights. My Army marksmanship instruction in 1977 consisted of a 50-minute lecture on the "Eight Steady Hold Factors" before we zeroed. I believe the abbreviated approach was mainly to save time.