I arrived at my first active duty station back around October of '91. The unit was Patriot missile battalion back when Patriot was still the darling of the military owing to its reletive effectivness vs. Scuds. Our battalion commander was one of the biggest micromanagers that I have ever had the misfortune to work for (he would personally review all physical profiles in the battalion wach morning to ensure no one was malingering). He was apparently just another in a long line of micromanagers. One day young PV2 W, was in the orderly room and overheard a group of CPTs talking about why the BCs that they had had in this unit were such micromangers. One of the CPTs had a theory. He noted that because Patriot was heavily automated, the BC could sitin the BN TOC and get the same information that the Battery Commander was getting. Furthermore, he had direct control over individual launchers anywhere in the BN. The temptation to micromanage everything must have been enormous. I often wonder if that is not happening to the Army as a whole. As commanders get more and more information available to them, particularly real-time information, I thnk the temptation to micromanage becomes ever greater. This isn't a new phenomenon, I'm sure Ken had to deal with "the great squad leader in the sky" problem when he was in Vietnam, but I suspect that recent technological advances are exacerbating the problem greatly.

SFC W