Contractors Doing Combat Service Support is a Bad, Bad Idea

[Uboat509]

It would take a lot more explanation than is feasible here, but I think the biggest problem is the lack of balance. FOBs with steak and lobster and five flavors of ice cream contrasted with small units outside the FOB with very little is not a particularly good set up. If I were in charge of logistics, I would start with the pointy end and work my way back -- nobody gets steak and lobster until everyone can get a decent meal. For the guys at the very edge of that pointy end, the best answer is for military personnel to handle the food preparation.

The issue is not that someone has made a decision to feed to feed the CSS guys before the CA guys. It is a matter space and facilities. The big dining facilities are on the FOBs because that is where there is space and facilities to put them. That also happens to be where the majority of the CSS guys are. Ergo, they get the good dining facilities. Those same FOBs have at least some CA guys and they eat at those same facilities. Many of the CA guys are not on the FOBs now, however. They are at smaller posts such as combat outposts and the like. Small posts like that have neither the room nor facilities for dining facilities. Often they barely have room for the troops that they house. That is just the reality.

And I did not inadvertently -- or otherwise -- "malign" anyone. You all provided a set of facts regarding the average combat arms soldier. I drew a conclusion from those facts -- perhaps a harsh one, but certainly a defensible one. It may not be anything anyone wants to hear or contemplate, but I can't help that. If you want to change the facts that you assert, then I can arrive at a different conclusion. But if you provided that set of descriptors about a generic individual or group, I doubt anyone would come to a different conclusion. Let's not allow our thinking to be clouded by a false loyalty.

I disagree completely. I think that you have drawn the conclusions that best fit your idea of how things should be. Comparing men who have voluntarily chosen to do the most demanding a dangerous jobs there are to petulant children is not "blunt," it's insulting.

As to my use of the Marine officer as an example... I am aware that the Marine Corps and the Army are different institutions and comparisons are made at one's peril. I was not comparing the institutions, I was comparing attributes of individuals. As such, I do think that if it's possible to achieve such an end with Marine Corps officers, there is certainly room to consider that it's possible to achieve the same thing with enlisted soldiers.

As to how the A/B billet rotation works, I was not intending my idea to be an exact copy of how the Marine Corps runs it, but rather was suggesting a model from which to build a similar system with different specifics and ends.

I would also point out that you can't really make these kinds of comparisons between officers and enlisteds. Officers in the Army do similar rotations called branch detailing. That does not work for enlisted. As ken stated, officers are generalists. They are concerned with the employment of the unit as a whole. It is the enlisted who work the many parts that make up the whole that the Officers employ. I doubt very much that Marine Corps CSS units are staffed with 0300s on two year rotations. They are staffed with the guys who's career has been spent in that MOS. Just like the Army, or virtually any organization for that matter. Take the auto industry for example. You can take the manager for the welders and make him the manager for the electronics section and there will be a short adjustment period but he will pick it up fairly quickly. Management is management, to a degree. On the other hand, you are not going to take a a trained welder and throw him into the electronics section. He will have to be completely retrained, as will his replacement in the welding section, and he may have neither the interest nor aptitude for the job. This is an imperfect comparison but I think it illustrates the point well enough.

SFC W