FAOs
With all respect Dave, you may be right on advisors but you are dead wrong on this one. Most "operational FAOs" who worked 3rd world were paper FAOs and lacked any indepth understanding of their regions. You don't get credibility as a FAO because you were an S3 in a line battalion; you get it because you develop the rapport necessary to do the job. I met any number of those "operational FAOs" and either had to help them learn or sent them packing. As for operational jobs as a FAO, if you look for them you can develop a different type of credibility, one based on real world operational experience. That is one of the reasons I went to Lebanon. Point of fact, some of the best FAOs I worked with over the years were AG officers who wanted to break out of the mold that the personnel system has trapped them in. For the most part they did quite well.With all due repsect to our great FAOs out there one of the drawbacks (to the Army program) is the single tracking of FAOs from Captain onward. While this is great for personnel management, career development, and education, the loss of "operational" FAOs (those who rotate between operational and FAO assignments) means we are going to have future attaches and security assistance officers who know the FAO and Security Assistance business inside and out (read foreign military sales, etc) but who have no real credibility with their military host nation partners because they have not been in an operational assignment (combat or not) since they were Captains. Our "adviser corps" will be the same way.
I have heard your argument going back well before we went to the current system. I saw an memo sent from FAO Proponent Office to the then DCSOPs LTG Reimer and CSA GEN Vuono. Reimer wrote on it--"this is a great memo". It was but it was pure Kool Aid because it assumed most FAOs were combat arms and would be given an opportunity to compete more or less on an even footing. The reality was that at least for the 3rd world programs, FAOs who like me got started early got sucked in early and regardless of dual track memos ended up single track. I was somewhat unique because I earned two ASIs. I was also one of the two FAOS that GEN Sullivan cited in his memo in late 94-early 95 when he ordered DCSOPS to fix the program because too many FAOs were dropping like flies through promotion boards.
Finally note that in my counter-argument I have used 3rd world FAOs; I believe that the the European and the Soviet progarms were very much like you espouse and worked quite well, at least up until the Balkans begain to unravel and the Wall came down. Old Eagle ws was a Euro guy and got to command. What I would leave you with is the suggestion that there are varying degrees of truth. Advisors maybe a bad idea as a pemanent entity. That depends on how you define advisor just as how you define FAO. What we do not have right now as best I can tell is a selection process beyond having a pulse.
Regards,
Tom
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