Phil Carter a few thoughts on Rumsfeld v. The Army, along with some excellent background:
"I'm not sure the SecDef's vision is entirely right. Transformation is great -- it's a wonderful thing to be able to see yourself, see the enemy, and see the terrain. Total situational awareness -- and the ability to precisely hit the enemy -- enable the U.S. to dominate any foe on the battlefield. But warfighting isn't the only thing the American military does.... Most of these missions are decidedly un-high tech; they rely on well-trained people more than high-tech gadgets. Secretary Rumsfeld and his team may have a great solution for winning America's wars in record speed. But the Army establishment may know something about transformation too, and their voices shouldn't be discarded so ruthlessly."While I'm a big advocate of military transformation, experiences in Gulf War II and by Israel in Jenin made a case for both lighter forces (special forces, satellites, IBCTs and other expeditionary forces would have helped a great deal in the North and along the supply routes) and "legacy" combat punch (armor in Jenin and 3ID's wild balls-to-Baghdad ride, carriers, the B-2 bomber). I'm a big fan of Rumsfeld's for his willingness to kick in the windows of a broken procurement process, and hope the level of vision and ruthlessness required to drive real change in an organization like the Pentagon doesn't slide into blind ideology and disrespect for those who wear the uniform. Phil's caution strikes me as wise amidst my happiness that transformation is gaining renewed and sustained momentum.
Gulf War II also highlighted the importance of another oft-neglected aspect of our military debate: personnel and training. It's the most invisible aspect of a peacetime military, and the most visible when the shooting starts. The U.S. Army has become astonishingly fearsome because its training has become a bloodless replica of battle, and its battles live replicas of its training.
That comes from leadership, doctrine, willingness to improvise, and an institutional willingness to offer and take criticism in order to learn the appropriate lessons at both command and unit levels. No large organization is ever truly excellent at these things, but if you've worked for a few you know there's a difference - and that the differences make all the difference (vid. Arab armies' dismal record). By those standards the current American Army is exceptional even by the competitive standards of corporate America, a source of organizational lessons as well as a recipient. The transformation since the late 1970s has been little short of remarkable.
In "Technology Beyond Belief", Maj. Donald Sensing (ret.) explains further. He concludes with an appropriate thought:
"...let other potential enemies stand in awe of our technology. 'Tis good they do so. But if they think that technology is the main thing we have going for us, so much the better. They'll focus only on ways to counteract our technology and remain vulnerable to the rest of our strengths.Indeed.
UPDATE: James Pinkerton adds a few thoughts of his own on the "Starship Trooperization" of the American military.
Joe,
Your comments "By those standards the current American Army is exceptional even by the competitive standards of corporate America, a source of organizational lessons as well as a recipient." actually understate the situation.
I retired from the US Army in 1996. My first private sector job was with a relatively small information technology provider as a manager and a project management consultant. I not only saw what went on in my company but in a number of other fortune 500 companies who were our customers. I now work for a large regional financial services company that is growing into an international competitor. I am also active in a local professional organization where I meet a good sampling of people from all over the Pittsburgh area business community.
I can tell you categorically that the average US Army or Marine Buck Sergeant or their Air Force or Navy equivalent has more general management, project managment and leadership training and experience than the average corporate executive.
Armed Forces training is not only extensive, it is generally performance oriented. Every training program is composed of a series of individual and collective tasks. Each task has objective observable standards. Servicemembers and their units must demonstrate that they meet the standards by actually performing the tasks. If they fail, there are consequences.
Further, the training system is tied to the personnel managment system...to be anything from the rawest rifleman to a tank commander or aircraft pilot or helmsman on a ship to being the Division Commander or the Captain of the ship you have to perform a hundred or so individual skills to standard and prove repeatedly that you can lead teams to perform their collective skills to standard.
I have not seen or hear of anything remotely equivalent in the private sector. Your readers who do not have military experience simply cannot really grasp just how powerful this system is and how difficult it is to duplicate it and the incredible levels of performance we get with it.
I fear that without some real knowledge of previous wars and the "standard of play" of even the best units in the best armies up until the 1990's they won't truly understand the magnitude of what our armed forces have achieved in the last 15 years.
And that could lead to problems because this standard of performance is highly perishable and it is the result of a system that cannot be easily tied to line items in the budget.
Training exercises and training facilities are only part of the equation. When the size of the total force shrinks, the first tendency is to try to cut "fat" out of the school system, the training base and the administrative structure so that we can preserve "trigger pullers". Over time we can't update manuals as often and mayber their quality isn't what we would like.
Next, training dollars get reprioritized to spend on operations and that means that units not deployed don't fire as many bullets or drive, fly or sail as many miles. ( I remember having a tough time in '92 and '93 getting C-141's to maintain our jump proficiency because we flew them so hard in 1991 and the ACR on the same post had to scale back their maneuvers because of lack of money for fuel)
Also,what most people don't know is that in many respects, active combat operations actually degrade a units proficiency. That is because units in combat tend to perform a couple types of operations over and over again, and don't train on other types of operations. And while combat imposes its own discipline it is not the same theing as performing the tasks while being observed and graded. And you don't always have the time or facilities to do the annual qualification testing (and training for it) that you do in peacetime.
Also there is actually less supervision in combat than in training. In peacetime commanders can visit a subordinate unit by getting in a HMVW and just driving over there. In combat, that is a potentially life threatening operation. So as soldiers and leaders get tired and begin to cut little corners or forget how to perform certain tasks, leaders may not notice as quickly.
Units also may not be able to send as many folks to the individual schools as they normally would. They often don't get a chance to do physical training or marksmanship taining. The training simulators and training ranges and facilities that help us train may not be available. It may sound bizarre, but a tank crew that has been in Iraq for a year may not be able to pass their gunnery tests unless the Army goes to the trouble to build ranges over there and then pull units out of their "real life" duties to go through gunnery training in theater.
That is why, if you want to maintain one division forward deployed on active operations (whether Bosnia or Afghanistan or Iraq) you need at least one other division (preferably two) fully devoted to training so that they can rotate over to relieve the deployed folks. If you have less than that you can operate pretty well for a while, but over time your proficiency will decline and the type of performance we just saw will become more difficult to do.
I think those calculations can easily get missed as we move forward with transformation.
Yet another comment that, with a little polishing, deserves to become a full guest blog.
No one today writes science fiction like RAH or maybe it's just that anyone who writes that way today doesn't get published.
Their drills were bloodless battles, their battles were bloody drills.
Josephus the Histrian on the Roman Impreial Army
Circa 1st Century A.D.