The Army We Need

[jmm99]

seems a logical extension from "exercise of tact" by soldiers, or anyone else.

I recognize the shorthand use of "that crew of Lawyers that constitute our Congress", so long as you keep in mind that "Lawyers" in the congressional context means "persons who happen to have law degrees". There is a notable lack of what I consider "Good Lawyers" in those hallowed halls.

[Ken White]

...There is a notable lack of what I consider "Good Lawyers" in those hallowed halls.

their parsing skills only, I presume the majority have no lawyerly skills or they wouldn't be in Congress. Hmmm, maybe skill is a bad word -- perhaps penchant for paralyzing parsing would be better...

[ODB]

It seems to me that in many aspects over the past 7 years we have blurred many lines. Everyone wants a piece of the pie and not "their" piece of the pie. Those many levels above my "boots on the ground" are jumping on whatever they think will be the next big thing, punching their "ticket". Maybe I'm a bit of an old school crusty bastard but it's kind of like the old stay in your lane and trust those to your left and right. Having done tours on both sides of the fence conventional and SF, I see things from both sides. Right now IMO there is a lot of confusion in the Army today. Seems everyone wants to do everyone elses job. I know everyone has their own experiences good and bad, unfortunately when personality conflicts take priority over mission accomplishment we get where we are today. Maybe I'm naive or too simple minded when I look at things, but to me it is too easy. We have multiple organizations all with specific skill sets and purposes yet we continually forget how or when to use them or do we simply just think "Hey, I got a great idea let's create a new unit that does this, yeah that's what we need.". As I read many of the comments posted there are multiple thoughts and opinions, but I ask this: What gets us to where we need to go to be successful in MCO and COIN? Why is that the step we need to take, what quantifies that as the solution? Is it as simple as properly employing all the assets available to the US gov't. Stop the political infighting for bigger budgets. Stop showing what else it is you think you can do and actually do the job your organization was created to do. IMO we need to somehow figure out how to come together to fight and defeat the common enemy and wish I knew how to make that happen, it is the million dollar solution. Unfortunately we have too many who put their own personal agendas before everything else.

The last thing I want to touch on is Army Training Sir!!!! RTK hits some major points. Many years ago when I was a young SGT and looking starry eyed at my big, bad green beret neighbor he told me something interesting. He said "Do you know what makes us look so high speed when we do things?" He simply stated "We do the basics to perfection, it just looks like we are doing something high speed". Fast forward many years when I made the jump to SF, let's just say I was shell shocked. After years of losing focus and concentrating on DA, we lost track of how to do the basics. Fortunately we had a smart company SGM who saw this and forced us back to them. Nothing like seeing ODAs in the Aug heat conducting react to contact, squad attack, and break contact live fires. We had lost what made us so good. There are more schools out there to teach you new techniques and to enhance your individual skills but it still comes down to the basics shoot, move, and communicate. I remember as a Private when we started our training cycles it was always with individual weapons. On those ranges every soldier in the company would be there. If it was an M60 range every soldier was there conducting concurrent training on that weapon system. We were all taught how to disassemble, assemble, zero day/night, crew drills, range cards, field expeident emplacement. Every single soldier in the company could effectively employ all weapons systems. Only then would we move onto maneuver LFX (Live Fire Exercises). We started with buddy teams, then fire teams, squads, etc... We built up to Battalion sized LFXs. I want to know what happened to individual skills training. Who decided we no longer needed CTT(common tasks training)? If I remember correctly collective tasks are nothing more than individual tasks put together. If every soldier is taught and trained his individual tasks then collective tasks are a breeze. Like I said earlier maybe I'm too simple minded and just an old crusty bastard, but this is how I was taught and it has worked for me for years. Learn it right the first time you spend the rest of your life doing it right, learn it wrong the first time you spend the rest of your life trying to do it right. Lastly, the best thing that could happen to the Army would be to outlaw Outlook, get back to seeing what your men are doing, get out from behind the desk!