The neglected stuff

[Fuchs]

This forum has - on average - a strong interest in what's happening, understanding the enemy and in combat troops (or patrol troops or actively policing troops, or whatever).


I wonder a bit whether this neglects too much.

The logistics and tooth-to-tail ratio problems are crying out loud in AFG and de facto everywhere in NATO forces.
Imagine the ISAF and OEF troops needed only one quarter as much fuel and half as much other supplies per day. Imagine also that the share of troops who are meant primarily for off-base duties was 50% bigger.

Many other problems - such as road security and low force density - would be drastically reduced and the force in-country as a whole would be much more oriented in its minds at what happens outside of the camp.


Here's an article on differences in efficiency in different countries (ignore the title):
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php...60&c=EUR&s=TOP


Armies are huge bureaucracies. You need to shake them badly in order to keep the wastage in check.

[davidbfpo]

Fuchs,

I recall the UK only now considers such issues when "cuts" arrive or a defence review before "cuts".

There have been many comments on how top heavy the UK military are; the latest being this:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle6969921.ece

Which cited:

The Army is weighed down with top brass, according to figures showing that the number of generals and brigadiers has risen since Labour came to power in 1997.

Although the size of the trained Army has shrunk to about 100,000 soldiers, there are now 255 members with the rank of brigadier or above — or one for every 400 service personnel.

The issue has re-appeared on KoW as a cut will end a prized think tank:http://kingsofwar.org.uk/2010/03/mod...nose/#comments

I have asked before how will we, the UK & USA, deploy truly 'light' and particularly when far inland or with no friends nearby.

As for:

You need to shake them badly in order to keep the wastage in check.

Our history shows I fear that this only occurs after a defeat and when some insiders realise change is needed, e.g. after Dunkirk.

[Fuchs]

It's politically incorrect, but I admire the potential that the Reichswehr built and kept with a minimum budget and terrible legal restrictions.

Cuts are indeed the way to go if you want efficiency (unless you're busy occupying some place - that could end up terribly as with the U.S.Army of the late 40's).


This is actually the freaky part. There are many armies out there with small budgets. They know about the economic principle; given resources, maximum output. They can ask for more, but they won't get more - unlike some Western forces.
Some of them didn't procure much recently and won't be loaded with 90's technology in the 2020's because they had to replace some 70's technology with 2000's technology in the 2010's (remember the French arsenal of soixante-quinze modèle 1896 guns in 1940 while the Germans instead had new 105mm howitzers developed in '29 as standard artillery).


The lavish budgets inside NATO are probably more a threat to our security than lower budgets would be. This reminds me remotely of the laffer curve and other theoretical models with marginal rates turning negative (such as the exogenous growth model). We may have gone not only well past the optimum; we may also have gone beyond the maximum.

[Firn]

There are certainly some good points, but I'm a bit sceptical about some claims and premises of this article. It is pretty difficult to figure out how they defined the parameters.


Take the following:

McKinsey researchers conducted the study by analyzing publicly available records "on the quantity and type of military equipment, number and general classification of personnel, annual defense budgets disaggregated into key spending categories," the report states. Data was then converted into a series of ratios that measured actual outputs in the three areas.

"The United States and Australia are the lowest performing countries with regard to equipment output for every dollar spent," McKinsey concludes.

Washington and its Down Under ally both tallied scores of 17, worst among the 33 nations McKinsey examined.

Brazil gets the most military output per dollar spent, racking up a study-best 330 points, followed by Poland's 287 and Russia's 253.

How did they value the quality of the equipment? A pretty difficult task and a main variable. It is interesting how high Russia is in this category, and this shows IMHO a lot of leeway for the reviewers.

Perhaps even more difficult is the evaluation of the personnel.

The McKinsey study also determined that militaries that do things across their various armed services scored higher.

Within the 33-military sample, the highest level of "joint spending" was 68 percent (South Africa) and the lowest was 3 percent (Brazil, Portugal and Greece).

The United States ranked toward the low end on a chart in the report, with 16 percent joint spending. France, Taiwan and Australia were all midpack, with about 30 percent.

Also here there are a couple of things to say. What is "joint spending" and which variables influence this calculation? A hard look at South Africa's military could answer perhaps why it is a "pocket of best practice".

Tooth-to-Tail

On personnel, the study examined the nations' so-called tooth-to-tail ratios. The tooth is defined as the military strength "in the front lines." Non-combat tasks such as procurement, maintenance, accounting and others were placed in the tail category.

Norway had the largest tooth-to-tail ratio, with its personnel breaking down as 54 percent tooth, 36 percent non-combat and 11 percent combat support. The United States was second-to-last with 84 percent of its personnel in non-combat or combat support positions.

The average was 26 percent tooth, 63 percent non-combat and 11 percent combat support.

In this case you can see that it also heavily depends on the tasks and roles the polititics defines for it's military.

Once again numbers without context. However such a study can trigger closer looks at the bureaucracies called armed forces.


Firn

[Fuchs]

Studies are never perfect, and short articles about studies even worse - nevertheless there's food for through in it.

In this case you can see that it also heavily depends on the tasks and roles the polititics defines for it's military.

Probably to a lesser degree than you think.

An expeditionary ground force doesn't need to have a worse tooth:tail ratio than a home defence militia. The former merely needs to learn how to get what it needs locally.

[Kiwigrunt]

We touched on the officer to enlisted ratio here, starting post 62.

Half the reason for excessive spending is probably the fact that many of these high ranking officers need to justify their existence by creating ‘stuff’ that doesn’t need to exist……….(the other half would be the officers themselves). We see a lot of that outside of the military as well, just replace Fuchs’ ‘armies’ with ‘bureaucracies’, and ‘huge bureaucracies’ with ‘self-expanding’:

Armies are huge bureaucracies. You need to shake them badly in order to keep the wastage in check.

And add this quote that someone recently posted (can’t remember who):

Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. (Oscar Wilde)

Question is, when caught in that spiral, who’s gonna do the shaking?

As davidbfpo says:

Our history shows I fear that this only occurs after a defeat and when some insiders realise change is needed, e.g. after Dunkirk.

And provided that those insiders can put the ‘common good’ above their egos and agendas (which may include greed).

[Dayuhan]

Cuts are indeed the way to go if you want efficiency (unless you're busy occupying some place - that could end up terribly as with the U.S.Army of the late 40's).

I've noticed that in civilian government agencies the response to a budget cut is generally not to trim fat and increase efficiency, but to cut the most important, popular, and visible programs. The managers who pull this stunt are not interested in increasing efficiency, they want to generate protests and build pressure to get "their" budget restored.

Does this also occur in military organizations? I'd almost be surprised if it doesn't, it seems a well-entrenched feature of the bureaucratic mind...

[SJPONeill]

My gut response is 'whatever' and more so after seeing the rating that Russia got in comparison to the US and Australia. A 'study' like this has limited value unless directly related to how those forces actually perform in their core roles i.e. war-fighting...I don't think that anyone is exactly quivering in their ballet pumps at the thought of taking Brazil on...

This study and its ilk will be seized upon by the bean-counters in their ongoing mindless drive for efficiency and with total disregard for the effectiveness of the force. Yes, outsourcing MAY save money right up to the point where you need something now, now, now and find yourself at the back end of a six month waiting list - what are you going to do? Ask the bad guys to take a break while you resolve your supply/maintenance/distribution issues...?

The simple fact is that we all know that we could outsource every competency that is not purely military which would leave us just with the combat arms and maybe one of two specialists wandering around the missionspace...OK, show of hands now...a. who would want to be in that uber-efficient force? and b. who thinks it could beat any force larger than the Cook Islands?

[William F. Owen]

The tooth-tail ratio is nothing to do with need or operational requirements. It's a choice to be inefficient, so as to build resistance into the system, and to keep the budget flowing in the right way. It's not just S4 functions but HQs as well. If you have lots of base rats, you get to build big bases.

If you designed units and formations from the ground up, based on what we actually know, they would look very different.