Quote Originally Posted by RJ View Post
Originally Posted by AlexTX ret

Responce by William F. Owen.

However, how to apply weapons capability in support of a platoon, should not be something that worries the 2nd Lt. If it does, then something about the training, organisation and communications is very wrong.

From RJ

After 7 years of war, I suspect that any well trained Marine Coproral could be capable of handling the details of a fire mission describe above.

(snip)

I have a sense the young men in the fight are a lot more capable of any group we may have belonged to or worked with, if we have been retired or seperated from the Armed Forces for more than 10 years.

If the Marines are comfortable with Reserve artillery units firing support missions for their infantry units, I doubt they would allow them the responsibility they have given them with this new to the Marine Corps weapons system. (I assumed the "un" in uncomfortable already
I added both quotes because both bring up good points.

I bow to people who are invoved in military operations in the here and now because the last conflict I was in was Gulf War 1. I retired soon after that.

However, I have reservations about the fundamentals from listening to present day veterans.

After observing my boy's training, I feel it is much more situation oriented. The training I recieved was better suited to WW2, Korea and the plains and forests of Europe. Not exactly the thing I needed leading a Airmobile rifle platoon in the Vietnam.

But no matter how long I've been out, the fundamentals haven't changed. A unit leader is about leading soldiers into combat. If you have a good noncom supporting you, the better you're able to accomplish your mission. However,
your whole reason for being is to lead. It's your butt that will end up in a sling if something goes bad. Of course "fragging" is not an option lower ranks have to voice their opinion of your abilities.

The more a unit leader is straddled with optional assets that have to be dealt in "real time", the more he is distracted form his primary mission which is to lead.

The modern day soldier is much more motivated and mission focused than any that I saw in my time in service outside of such groups the airborne, rangers or their earlier bretheren, LRRPS. This can only be a good thing though I have heard of failures do to leaders overreaching their mission parameters or simply getting over their heads. This is where experience becomes more important than ever.

However, I've observed an exercise or 2, and the walk through that I witnessed was impressive. Nevertheless, I saw experienced officers abducating a lot of their responsibilities to lower leaders as they managed the extra tasks their positions required them to attend to. The one thing that I learned as I rose through the ranks was to simplify my job as much as possible. Not run away from responsibilities, just attach priorities to what must be done and then do it. The more missions we give our leaders to do (a leader has a finite amount of attention span to acomplish the tasks he needs to fulfill) the less he's there to accomplish is primary mission which is fighting his unit.

As far as calling in a fire mission, present day protocals have made it so simple that possibly a girl scout with a bit of brains could do it. Also, be it tube or rocket batteries, the Fire Control Officer position, while more and more important, has been stream lined so that he can more easily deal with multiple fire missions. I personally wouldn't be afraid that my artillery assets were reservist. I think that RA and NG/Reservist get basically the same training, so a reservist battery ability lies less with training and more to do with experience. However, the major component is the soldier who called in plotted the target position and called in the mission.

Also, I can accept that as I rose in rank, my focus changed as to priorities I used to evaluate my unit. In my opinion, unfortunately, it wasn't the better leaders that got my attention, it was the leaders that failed to live up to the Armies expectation of what their job performance should be. For in the end, I couldn't get rid of them so I had to find was to make them as competent as possible. And anything that weakened their already weak situlational awareness was something to be worked around not welcomed.

I'm sorry for such a long post. I've probably shown my age as many younger officers thnk of me as some sort of dinosaur. (However, "Barney" I am not) Also, I realized as a young officer, I had a great failiing, I couldn't keep my mouth shut. Why it didn't affect my performance reports I'll never know.