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Thread: Zero-Defects Mentality

  1. #41
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    Quote Originally Posted by Steve the Planner View Post
    (OK, so I date myself, but not some much that Ken's don't make me feel young and chipper).
    Young is very relative in the Army. At the age of 28, I was one of only a handful of people in my company who had used a PRC-77. Just me, the CO (when he was a cadet), 1SG, and the PSGs. Wow.

  2. #42
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    Shut up, Schmedlap, you're making me feel old with that PRC-77 talk. On the other hand, unlike a certain person the Army never gave either of us an M1 rifle or carbine or an M14. (I had to buy my own Inland carbine.)

  3. #43
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pete View Post
    Slapout, what you say about the Army as a developer of high-tech systems has an element of truth. Although the Cold War Army was dominated by the Armor and Airborne cliques, for a while in the late '50s and early '60s the Redstone Arsenal guys with their rockets and missiles gave the "I rode with Patton" and "I jumped with Ridgeway" factions a run for their money. Air Defense Artillery eventually became a branch of its own in 1968 when their tubes had been replaced by missiles. Maxwell Taylor's book The Uncertain Trumpet in 1959 argued that the Army had to get away from an over-reliance on massive retaliation and high-tech and get back to old-fashioned Infantry soldiering. In more ways than one that is what this forum is all about.

    With that having been said, what I want to know is whether Ken wore his Ridgeway cap with the brim stiffened or natural and wrinkled.

    It is all true, I grew up with it and watched it happen from the Cuban Missile Crisis on. A better book is War and Peace In The Space Age by General James Gavin. The Army never did believe it massive retaliation....They believed in "Bring The Battle Back To The Battlefield" and they also Believed that Special Forces were the people to handle the "The Brush Fire Wars of The Future" along with The Air Cavalry and the Marines. I see you are kind of new here so you may not have read all the previous posts on this subject (which has been discussed several times before). Which is why me and Ken rag each other so much, we already know what each other is going to say, except Ken never did learn the proper way to exit an aircraft without causing twists in his suspension lines.

  4. #44
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Wasn't that PRC 77 the radio that replaced the PRC 25 that

    replaced the PRC 8/9/10 that replaced the SCR 300 I used in Korea? Where I also used an '03A1 with a star gauged barrel and a 7.8 power Unertl scope, much less an M1. Also carried occasionally a BAR that fired semi-auto (will reveal secret to that for a small fee)...

    Note that Slap still believes all that foolishness they told him in Jump School in an effort to slow jumpers down prevent run out, high speed exit jumps which increase the possibility of hung jumpers -- that was bad juju for the boys in the Black hats who had a bunch of peacetime safety constraints.

    I didn't get twists after I discovered that keeping your Static Line UNtwisted was the key to keeping your chute untwisted. Body position and exit have almost nothing to do with it. If they did, you'd never see twists on a helicopter jump -- but you do...

    It's probably noteworthy that the old 101st Jump School at Campbell which normally conducted a Benning-like three week jump School ran two Wing awarding courses with three jumps instead of five and of only four total days back to back during the Lebanon crisis of '58. The Benning course is as long and dumb as it is in order to justify Instructor Contact Hours (ICH) which the Staffing guides use to determine the manning for TRADOC and Division / Post Schools. Said ICH are the real reason most Army schools cram a 40 hour course into three to four weeks...

    Solution to that problem is to do away with those really dumb staffing guides which are primarily job justification booklets for manpower survey teams. Just eliminating that staffing criteria and the survey teams can reduce the cost of training and that saving can be applied to better, outcome based training.

  5. #45
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    Note that Slap still believes all that foolishness they told him in Jump School in an effort to slow jumpers down prevent run out, high speed exit jumps which increase the possibility of hung jumpers -- that was bad juju for the boys in the Black hats who had a bunch of peacetime safety constraints.
    Good MoJo beats bad juju..... what is that they say about you cain't teach an old dog new tricks?



    82nd ran a jump school too....stopped sometime in 60's.....still had the old 40 foot towers down the street from 2/504 when I was there.

  6. #46
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default THEY say a lot of things -- mostly garbage.

    Quote Originally Posted by slapout9 View Post
    Good MoJo beats bad juju..... what is that they say about you cain't teach an old dog new tricks?
    No body at Benning ever had good mojo in my experience given half dozen each TDY trips and schools there...

    Only good thing at Benning is the Cafeteria in Building 4 where you are guaranteed to run across some folks you know...
    82nd ran a jump school too....stopped sometime in 60's.....still had the old 40 foot towers down the street from 2/504 when I was there.
    THEY shut it and the 101st BAC down in 1962 and sent everyone to Benning for the greater glory of TIS.

    Uh, them was 34 foot Towers, ol' Dawg. I done tole you a hunnert and fifty million times not to exaggerate..

  7. #47
    Council Member Pete's Avatar
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    What would be the point of having a BAR that fires in the semiautomatic mode? An M1 would would be lighter to carry around.

  8. #48
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Uh, that you could fire at some one or some thing without giving

    Quote Originally Posted by Pete View Post
    What would be the point of having a BAR that fires in the semiautomatic mode? An M1 would would be lighter to carry around.
    away the fact you had an automatic weapon. As issued, the BAR had a slow rate (~350 rpm) and a fast rate (~550 rpm), you could easily modify it to keep the fast rate and change the slow rate to semi-auto. Most Marines did that, most in the Army did not, relying on trigger manipulation to crank off a single round to avoid disclosing the auto capability from defensive positions, particularly at night when the BAR man might be the only one that saw something. Trigger manipulation worked but it wasn't reliable and you could inadvertently crank off two or three rounds and give your location away, particularly if you were dead tired.

    Yep, M1 is half the weight. However, it's an absolute bear to modify it to fire full auto -- and then you only have eight rounds (unless you go the BM 59 route, hard to do in most units without a machine shop...)

  9. #49
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    Uh, them was 34 foot Towers, ol' Dawg. I done tole you a hunnert and fifty million times not to exaggerate..
    I couldn't help itI was watching about the 82nd going to Haiti and got excited.
    Last edited by slapout9; 01-14-2010 at 09:10 PM. Reason: stuff

  10. #50
    Council Member Pete's Avatar
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    Thanks, Ken. There's a lot that I never learned about infantry tactics. It was "Fire an M16A1"; "Fire an M60 Machine Gun"; and "Emplace a Claymore Mine" in MOS 13B One Station Unit Training at Fort Sill in 1977. Branch-immaterial OCS at Fort Benning the same year went into it in a little more depth, but not much. I always thought terrain appreciation for small unit ops was neglected, as in "put your perimeter here, not there."

  11. #51
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default That is a very observant and trenchant statement...

    Quote Originally Posted by Pete View Post
    ...I always thought terrain appreciation for small unit ops was neglected, as in "put your perimeter here, not there."
    It shows today in Afghanistan (it did not in Iraq to as great an extent due to the heavily urban character of the effort there) and I see some clips and stills of US troops, Army and Marines that make me scream "Nobody can be that #&#*@%$ ignorant!"

    But they are. They aren't stupid, they're good kids and they're busting their tails -- they're just half trained...

    You also highlight the big flaw in the Task, Condition, Standard process. Bunch of discrete tasks but no one really tries to tie 'em together to do jobs or missions...
    Last edited by Ken White; 01-14-2010 at 11:50 PM. Reason: Added last paragraph

  12. #52
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    The following is from American Military History, Volume II, U.S. Army Center of Military history, 2005. The book is a survey history intended for junior officers and NCOs that doesn't go into a lot of detail. Here's what it says about the founding of TRADOC and FORSCOM.

    At an impasse between the Parker Panel and CONARC recommendations, Westmoreland in September 1971 directed his Assistant Vice Chief of Staff, then Lt. Gen. William E. DePuy, to begin a separate Headquarters, Department of the Army (HQDA), study to examine ways to streamline CONARC’s organization and resource management processes. DePuy concluded that CONARC was unwieldy, unresponsive to HQDA and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and slow to adapt Army school curricula to incorporate doctrinal innovations coming from CDC. In February 1972 DePuy obtained the Secretary of Defense’s approval to break up CONARC and CDC and reassign their functions. Arguing that the collective training and maintaining of the readiness of active and reserve component Army units in the United States was a full-time job for any commander, DePuy recommended transferring all these functions from CONARC to a forces command. He further recommended consolidating CONARC’s schools with its combat developments functions from CDC into a doctrine and training command.
    The book is available online at the link below:

    http://www.history.army.mil/books/AM...index.htm#cont

  13. #53
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    Default That's official

    Unofficially, it created two large staffs with a slew of Field grade and GO spaces to replace one large staff with the same thing. Advantage - PersCom.

    It also reflected DePuy's penchant for excessive centralization and control -- it carried Bruce Clarke's "An organization does well only those things the boss checks" mantra to the Army. Unfortunately.

    Hacksaw mentioned the same philosophy -- he's right, so was Clarke. The problem is that gets transmuted, literally, to mean higher echelons must check things subordinate bosses are responsible for. Which was not the intent at all.

    That said, no question that TRADOC and a FORSCOM like command are better than was CONARC or any single command with two very diverse missions -- but the rationale was as much or more about spaces (and faces) as it was about efficiency and it had little to do with effectiveness.

  14. #54
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    From time to time the debate over COIN mentions the "Fulda Gap" emphasis of Army doctrine from the end of the Vietnam conflict until recently. Indeed, Fulda Gap can these days be a term of derision. The quotation below is from a 1988 paper by Major Paul H. Herbert at the Combat Studies Institute entitled Deciding What Has to Be Done: Gen. William E. DePuy and the 1976 Edition of Field Manual 100-5, Operations. This is as close to anything I've read to an admission that the Army deliberately turned to armor and mech infantry doctrine after Vietnam. Perhaps instead of COIN what we really need today is an infantry renaissance.

    General DePuy had several reasons for this decision. He believed that responsibility for any single activity could not rest coequally on two agencies, especially if some product was expected quickly. The Arab-Israeli War had been a mechanized war in which the primacy of the tank had been confirmed with only some qualification. Certainly, the tank was central to the defense of NATO Europe, and it now appeared to be central to any conflict in the Middle East. To DePuy, the wars for which the Army must prepare were tankers' wars, and tankers should lead the effort.

    DePuy was also inclined to give Fort Knox the go-ahead because of the personality of its commander, Major General Donn A. Starry. Starry was a protégé of General Abrams, and DePuy was "confident that [Starry under-stood] tactics" to a degree superior to most "other people of any rank in the Army." Starry was aggressive and enthusiastic in his efforts to bring the doctrinal lessons of the Arab-Israeli War home to the armor community. During Starry's first weeks at Fort Knox, he bombarded DePuy with personal telegraphic messages outlining new initiatives, proposing changes in priorities of missions, and seeking support in controversies with other Army activities. DePuy was not always pleased with his Pattonesque apostle of tank warfare, but DePuy knew that Starry was a self-starter who would spare no effort to get things done.

    The climate Starry created around Fort Knox contrasted sharply with that at Fort Benning. Major General Tarpley was as competent as Major General Starry, but neither Tarpley nor his colleagues at Fort Benning were quite as ready to step to the steady drumbeat of mechanized warfare that the Arab-Israeli War provoked. Even had they been, it is unlikely that they could have readily overcome more than a decade's intense experience preparing officers and soldiers for the infantry-dominated war in Vietnam. Both personal and institutional experience placed Fort Benning in the unenviable position of advocating consideration of the lessons of the last war at a time when the Army was consciously trying to avoid that perceived bugaboo and gird itself to fight and win the next one, a war heralded by the events in the Sinai and on the Golan in October 1973. "I wanted the Infantry School to get away from the 2 1/2 mph mentality," said General DePuy years later, "but they were in the hands of light infantrymen ... they didn't do the mech infantry well at all. They didn't understand it. . . that is why I took these draconian measures with them. To shake them out of that lethargy."
    The entire paper can be read using the link below:

    http://carl.army.mil/resources/csi/Herbert/Herbert.asp
    Last edited by Pete; 01-17-2010 at 09:43 PM. Reason: Correct typo

  15. #55
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default I could point out that the lessons of any war may not apply

    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.

  16. #56
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    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.

  17. #57
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default All true and but little changed.

    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

  18. #58
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    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.

  19. #59
    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pete View Post
    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.
    Last edited by selil; 01-19-2010 at 02:47 AM.
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  20. #60
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Wink If it was obvious, why did I have to ask...

    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...

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