Zero-Defects Mentality

[Pete]

It made me think that our BN CDR, who was a great man that I really like, didn't consider the attack as a defeat; instead he was "institutionalized" to react only to the myriad of things that could have gotten him in trouble with the BDE Commander, i.e., Soldiers not wearing seatbelts, eyepro, etc. If that was his first concern, then obviously our success (defined in terms of quelling violence in our geographically assigned area) wasn't top priority. It seemed that he was more concerned about Force Pro and not mission success. And from my observation, this is not unique. It seemed very common.

So, we had a clash of cultures. LTs and CPTs were concerned primarily with mission success. The leaders were concerned with Force Pro and not getting into any "trouble."

I've gotten the impression that the emphasis on Force Protection is something that sneaked into TTPs from peacekeeping in the Balkans in the 1990s and safety during peacetime field exercises--somehow it became "the way we've always done things." I really doubt that was something that was promoted at Fort Benning as a central tenet of infantry operations. In around 2000 I was at a meeting at Fort Detrick on the development of a vaccine where a female O-5 in the Medical Service Corps explained in all seriousness how a Risk Analysis is conducted for everything the Army plans to do, with emphasis put upon developing measures to minimize identified risks. Offhand I can think of few things that are more risky than infantry combat.