I would not say old - that relates too easy to words like "musty" or "dated"- how about I just say say that at 44 years service you have at least twice the institutional knowledge I do - and having seen something come around a time or two, you also have "professional wisdom" - (I don't think I even got any common sense till I hit 30 - now approaching 40 with 4 kids - that is still in doubt
Thanks for answering the question in depth - I wondered how it went down, I think it also has bearing on the problem we are discussing.
Yes and no. A BDE is focused on training the advisers, but the taskers still cut across big Army. Its getting better in terms of training I think, but it still has the challenges of an organization built to do one thing, but executing another. The folks running it are doing some great things (the training has improved greatly from when I went through down at Hood), the question is do we want to commit to something permanent and different?Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the 1st ID supposed to be headed into that advisory role???
I agree with you there. I had the good fortune to be resourced extremely well and left alone for a long time as one of the two Stryker rifle companies to do the IOT&E in 2003. Our BN and BDE CDRs had a great understanding on how to extend those benefits to the rest of the BN. Since so much depended on how well we did, we were lavished with time, ammo and personnel - they made sure we had everything we needed in terms of resources to succeed. I took away from the experience that the big difference was that with the right resources, we could damn near do anything! Joe is capable of moving mountains, he just needs training and leadership (and some autonomy and opportunity to succeed!).A decently trained Infantry Battalion can do anything a Ranger battalion can do -- and at far less cost; give any Battalion the training time, gear and money a Ranger Battalion has and he'll be close enough in capability for government work.
Best Regards, Rob
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