The core mission of any Army is to have it's soldiers kill people and break things. That is what Armies do best. the farther you stray from those core competencies the worse off the fighting force becomes. I have posted about this many times before but here is the most recent idiocy:
"Army civilians will become multi-skilled civilian leaders of the 21st Century who personify the warrior ethos in all aspects, from war-fighting support to statesmanship, to business management." (emphasis mine - GW)
I assure you that there will come a day when we will actually need distinct lines between fighting forces and civilians serving under pogue rear echelon officers who want to pretend that they are "warriors leading warriors". That day will likely come too soon.
If you are managing a server farm you are not a warrior and neither are the civilians your are nominally in charge of.
I think the KBR Sri Lankan laundromat guys and Pakistanis (Tell them I said Aye jay and donyabad (hello and thanks)!) in the chow hall totally exemplified the Army values and the warrior ethos. I would not want to go to war again without them.
Our sergeant major was a true example of the battle captain, and was a vital part of the team. I dare say he might have served even better in a Army civilian position. Hooah!
I agree. War without KBR and company would suck massive balls.
Well I can tell you what happened here and HW will probably agree with the key points:
(bullet points for bonus Army-ness)
o The promotion system radically changed in the early 90's (maybe another article there)
o The drawdown prompted a massive exodus of experienced personnel which continued on even after the first Gulf War
o The result was an upended hierarchy where the top of the enlisted food chain were inexperienced and unskilled in their primary fields
o Now with no one to mentor incoming troops training became a check-the-block affair that taught almost nothing while standards for testing were lowered every calendar year since 1990
o Let the above ingredients simmer for 15 years along with a huge wad of resentment for Swartzkopf's cadre of officers from the first Gulf War (most left shortly after the war and few are left at all) and...
o You get Gen Shinseki and his ilk (along with a looooong string of eunuch Sergeants Major of the Army) whose crowning military strategy was to "make the whole Army an elite force" by giving them a different hat
o The contracting came about because the level of professionalism in the Army has fallen so low that we can't even rely on the cooks to cook! Much less the so-called tech MOS soldiers to actually do anything technical. Shit, I was regarded as a SME in SIGINT and I didn't know a fucking thing (after 13 years too!).
Shinseki's ideological sycophants were still running the show even into the first half of the Second Gulf War (thankfully we are fighting some of the least organized morons on the planet) but are slowly being replaced by Petraeus's cadre.
This is a good thing but without a massive event (huge loss of troops, lost battle, lost war) there simply isn't any way that Petraeus will ever have the political capital to make the changes necessary to bring the Army around.
If you ever need to make a quick check on Army culture you just need to walk into the III Corps HQ, look at the carpet by the parade field doors, and see if soldiers are allowed to walk on it. No = bad and Yes = Good.
An over used Limbaughism.
I assure you that quote was around long before Limbaugh. Probably originated with Gengis Khan.
The problem here is that we aren't really talking about the combat arms brances as much as the the bloated wreck that supports them.
The grunts are still in good shape but they are massively outnumbered by the support Army. Support "culture" is leaking rapidly into the Combat Arms branches and it is dramatically weakeneing them.
If we want support troops to do complicated technical jobs witht the same level of expertise as a civilian contractor would then they need to devote the same percentages of time to training those tasks under *expert* instruction.
More appropriate is to stop trying to do anything other than kill people and break things with soldiers and just let the damn contractors corps do the rest. They are doing all anyway and the "support troops" are doong it in name only while wasting gigantic amounts of money and Army time.
This also generates wads of idiot support officers who can't swallow the fact they they arn't a combat leader or even the next Patton. these chumps dilute actual combat strcutres and culture through aggressive denial of their own poguedom and then branch transferring into CA as a mid-grade officer (waaay more common that it used to be).
Leave the stuff handling, intel gathering, and commo to people who do it for a living and leave the shooting to the soldiers. Mixing that up just fucks up both sides of the equation.
Indeed the Divisional Wedge of the Army is just ridiculous.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
