Over reliance on officers has been a weakness in many military organizations throughout the world and history. The solution to our problems today is NOT more officers and more micromanagement which is what will you will get by adding more officers or pushing them down to lower levels of command like squads. Doing that will weaken the NCO corps and no professional army can afford to do that. One of the best assignments I had on the conventional army was as an infantry fire teamleader in 1/509. The is the OPFOR at JRTC. During the Low Intensity Combat phase of each rotation the each fire team would be given its own sector where the teamleader would have significant autonomy. We would be given specific missions from time to time particularly toward the end of the phase but mostly we just had a commanders intent and specific parameters to work within. My point is that many of those E4 E5 fire teamleaders excelled in that situation. There is a tendency in the conventional army toward group think and a strict adherence to very specific guidelines. Initiative is encouraged but only in certain directions. In other words a subordinate leader may be expected to take the initiative to do what his higher would have told him to do anyway but not to do something on his own. Part of what makes SF good at what they do is the training that they receive, of course, but also it is the mindset. In SF the ability to work autonomously with little guidance is not only encouraged, it is required. I believe that in part at least, the NCO corps has lost focus. NCOnet is a prime example of this. If you go to the COIN forum there you will find a few topics with generally few replies whereas in other forums you can find long scholarly discussions about whether or not pens should be visible in the ACUs or detailed discussions on the minutia of uniform regs. Not all NCOs are like this by far but there are enough in influential positions that I believe that there has been a shift in the culture of some organizations from NCOs as trainers and leaders first to NCOs as guardians of the regulations first. This is what fosters the strict adherence to the letter of the reg rather than its intent and the unwillingness or inability to act autonomously. That is what we need to fix, not Lieutenants as squad leaders. That's my opinion anyway.

SFC W