Electronic Publications

[patmc]

My favorite, from the MRE heater, in case you cannot find a rock, something is always an option.



Many FMs/TMs now include CDs or are just on digits to begin with. Including digital programs or features should be feasible. My boss in the MI Schoolhouse was working with a game development office to create some instructional videos/animation for use at OBC and CCC to illustrate different topics. Don't know if TRADOC or Army as a whole are moving this way, but some shops have started it.

A digital / self-completing 5988E would be nice, but the issues of computers, power, etc in Motor Pool are always constant. PDA, Crackberry, I-Phone, etc... maybe. In theory, a supervisor should always helps clear up paperwork, but PMCS was always more complicated than it should be, no matter how much leadership or CoC were down in the MP.

And that diagram you posted is clearly too robust and lacking in synergy. It needs to be more proactive, with synchronization and jointocity.

[OfTheTroops]

paper. I love books. You cant crack the screen. It doesnt have batteries and a million other reasons. It is near impossible to have a FM Library with the Army's rate of change and such. A kindle ebook reader might be nice. Reading from desktop/laptop is the worst. Wait one worse an audio-FM of your favorite instructors.... torture.
I do believe animation could be useful-ish. It would be a better way to go as you said the figures make little difference unless you are stealing one for a ppt. Then again it probably would not be worth whatever we would pay for it.

[Cavguy]

I'm with the others, PMCS seems the obvious choice for digitization. Get a PDA/Iphone, and have an interactive set of checks (with videos, if needed) Enter the results digitally and sync it w/the motor pool

Would require updating the MS-DOS ULLS-G system after thirty years though!

[OfTheTroops]

Let us not forget netcommand? Wireless on installation? in the motorpool? Eventually I would hope. You have my vote.
And i would like the e-reader with all applicable pubs preloaded and automatically updated.
Can you imagine the mess when the pda's go down? haha! bad enough when you cant print out the 5988e.
Do we have a strategic reserve of hardcopies for Y2K when all computers stop working? What shall we do?

[Schmedlap]

Can you imagine the mess when the pda's go down? haha! bad enough when you cant print out the 5988e.

No ####, there I was. In the middle of a 2-month rotation at NTC as a mech inf XO. Six months prior, I ordered all new turret and hull TM's. They arrived just before we put our vehicles on the rails. Every crew had the latest TM in mint condition. Then along comes my Bn XO one day in the middle of the central corridor and says, after spot-checking maintenance, "XO, you're all dicked up. None of your crews know how to do PMCS because none of them have TMs." Well, my quick response was, "sir, they don't know how to do PMCS, but it's not because they don't have TMs. I just got 28 new ones prior to deployment!" Well, that was not what the crews had told him. Irate, I then gathered up all of the crews and let loose with a solid minute of expletives in which I think I managed to touch every base in accusing them of violating DADT, insisting that they had feces in lieu of brains, and directing them to perform an impossible carnal feat. Then I went back to what I was doing with my Bn XO in tow, asking, "that's it?" Yup. That's it. They all "found" their TMs.

Games like that were commonplace. We don't have 5988Es. We don't have TMs. The mechanics are lazy. I annotated this fault, but the part isn't on order. But if the TM were a serial-numbered e-reader that would merit a FLIPL if lost, then no more claims of "my chain of command didn't give me the pubs I needed to do my job." If the 5988E were incorporated into it, then no more "we can't do maintenance because we don't have 5988Es." And if it's all electronically tracked, then when a fault disappears from the 5988E the XO can check to see why and then explain to the crew, "yeah, you dumb####, that was deleted because the fault you wrote down wasn't actually a fault - you just wrote it down to obtain another part to hoard." Of course, then I guess the risk is that they'll deliberately break the e-reader to avoid PMCS.

[William F. Owen]

Let us not forget clear and effective writing! - an art sadly dead and gone in the US Armed Forces recent manual and most actual writing on the subject of war and warfare.

Maybe we need to "leverage our information domains, in forms cognoscente of the networked information environment" - some such rubbish.

Sloppy writing = sloppy thinking, = sloppy ideas.

[Ken White]

Schmedlap

Too often similar occurrences are due mostly to the system deciding that the NCOs are incompetent and bypassing them by having an Officer do 'stuff.' That trend started in Viet Nam in the late 60s and is endemic. The symptom that hurts is that the NCOs perceive, rightly or wrongly that they aren't trusted and the reaction of most is to get their feelings hurt say 'No prob, I can sit on my a$$.' The solution is to let them do their jobs. Not make them, most want to do their job but they're human, can be lazy and are generally very practical -- they see no sense in doing a job themselves if you're going to do it for them. There's usually a sharp, go-getter around somewhere, find him and use him to get the others rolling. It is simply making the entire Chain of Command work, not just selected pers...

That is not a criticism of anyone and particularly not of Schemdlap -- it is, as I said, a systemic fault, societally induced in the US Armed Forces that is inimical to decent performance.

Like our badly flawed training system, this process was dumbed down in the 20+ year block from the early 70s until recently. It must be corrected.

Wilf:

an art sadly dead and gone in the US Armed Forces recent manual and most actual writing on the subject of war and warfare.

That too is a systemic fault and societally induced.

The easy way to fix it it have TRADOC 'authors' stop cutting and pasting stuff from old manuals and adding current day fluff plus their Bosses expressed (or, more often, presumed) positions to make it look new.

And, yes, that is a leadership problem. High level -- but leadership.