That's always scary...

All in all not a bad review though my antennae twitch in frenzied disagreement at the way he's pointing. He says early on; "While the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and future military operations may indeed require that Army leaders be “pentathletes,” it may prove to be an unrealistic expectation that the majority of Army NCOs and officers will attain this extremely high standard of performance." That's garbage, the Officers and NCOs can handle it, all the Army has to do is train 'em right. He pronounces the soft bias of low expectations -- and he very subtly continues to head that way.

All the while ignoring one simple fact -- a volunteer Army and its costs today can only be so big. With an Army of a given size, if you over specialize, you decrease your capability in all specialties and I question whether we can afford to do that. We have no guarantee that we will conduct any COIN or stability operations in the next few years and we have proven that we can adapt to do that if required. We do generally agree that we can afford to bobble COIN -- we cannot afford to lose a major conventional war. Ergo we have to be prepared for the big one and cope with the smaller ankle biters.

One thing of interest; "For example, the Army’s Command and General Staff College (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, used to include only about 30 hours of counterinsurgency course work for the majors attending the year-long course but now includes 200-plus hours of counterinsurgency core courses and another 40-plus hours of counterinsurgency electives." Don't know whether that's true or not but it would seem to directly contradict something said on the topic only last week on this board.