Initial Officer Selection

[Bob's World]

Perhaps in the next conflict, when a savvy enemey kicks the plug out of the wall on all of the cyber/space-based capabilities, leader reliance so heavily to maintian 24/7 audio/visual contact with small units much of this will change.

Things have "progressed" much in a very short time. When a handful of ODAs linked up with the Egyptian Ranger Brigade (first unit to arrive) in a sparse bit of desert just south of Western Kuwait, my communications requirement was to make one morse code HF contact per day (and that was more a matter of SOP than necessity). That was September 1990. Our mission was "simple": Make contact with Arab forces closing in country and build a coalition. I saw the Major rarely, and BN CDR came out once or twice. I relied on my men, and my men relied on me. We figured it out.

There is no putting the genie of high tech capabilities that have resulted in nannie cam leadership of late back in the bottle, but we need to make damn sure we are building a force that is ready to be just as effective when someone takes that genie away, bottle and all.