JC,

Can we say that the investment in technology and equipment hurt our ability to invest in people?
I don't know. I've been on the end where I've seen first hand how technical advances make life easier (Rifle CO CDR in a SBCT) - I've been on the end where I've witnessed how industry tries to manipulate things (working FCS) so that their solution become our requirements vs. our requirements driving their solutions. I've also seen the need for good people in all those aspects and how the thin green line makes all the difference.

We need investment in good tech, but not at the expense of good people. I'm not sure its all or nothing - but it does mean knowing when what you need is better then paying for what you want. This has to be based with a reasonable prognosis of how short, mid and long range problems will effect each other. Example - building a requirement for something like a BCT to deploy in 72 hours assumes those air frames will be available to support it, if you have worked with some logisticians they'll give you the nuts and bolts - but its ugly - there is a 2002 or so RAND study that spoke to strategic deployment and the costs. So building something that does everything equally - means that it probably does nothing very well.

There are however lots of good COTS type investments - look at the different MRAP vehicles purchased by EOD - but what happened - when Industry smelled opportunity it immediately said we'll build you a better one - what happened when GM initially tried to build cars like the Japanese - they came off as bad American cars and bad Japanese imitations - took us about 30 years to get good at that one.

I had the opportunity to work on a DARPA program that Industry shunned - they were scared of DARPA - since DARPA gets its own money they are much more candid about shortcomings and faults. That was the bright spot about that job. In the end Industry could not come close, and wound up adopting the DARPA project as its own (DARPA does not have a horse in the race per se - they bring it a long to a certain point and turn it over to a PM)

As MG (ret) Scales has said (para-phrased) - "good technology and equipping our force with the best is essential and we owe it to them." However, we must be judicious and not let our alligator appetite for "perfect but indefinite over runs" out run our hummingbird resources for "good enough" an right now.

Take Stryker and the SBCT (or EOD and the Buffalo, Cougars or RGs) and I think you have a good model where slightly modified platforms have been married with good C4ISR and other available tech - along with well trained (and resourced) people with good leadership and you have a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield.

We have to balance our tech investments with our people investments - but with the understanding that good tech without good people is a dead end (think monkeys and football)

Phil b

There is a kind of Catch-22 in all of this: in wartime people don't want to stay in because there are too many deployments, but in peacetime people don't want to stay in because there are no real world deployments and it's just a lot of bs.
I agree to a certain point, but it does not change the problem that we are losing people at the same time we are trying to expand, and that the COIN doctrine we are supporting says that talent is everything. Our problem is how do we retain more, recruit more of the "talent" portion in a period where more then just the numbers who would have moved on are saying "their cup runneth over"? Its not just about what that individual planned to do with their life anymore - they have additional obligations in their families that are increasingly weighing in their decisions. There are already allot of guys on their 3rd and 4th year plus deployment.

Yes, money is not everything (there are allot of other benefits that need to return), but it sure helps if it means taking some stress off of the families so when Joe is away, or just back, the family is comfortable and Momma is not trying to just hand the kids off because she has had enough (she cannot begin to imagine what Joe has been through - in fact she has had her brand of hard times). We are not solely talking about Joe buying a Lexus, we are talking about an increased standard of living that compensates the servicemen and their family for their sacrifice to protecting the country.