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SECDEF's Comments
By Charlie
Lots of good stuff from the SECDEF’s recent speeches. I’ve already heard from some of my buddies referencing his remarks on the Air Force, so I posted the video:
This from the NYT:
Mr. Gates said that he had “been struggling for the last four months or five months” to bring more surveillance aircraft to the war zones, saying that more drones and other resources would mean that “lives are going to be saved.” In an interview, Mr. Gates also described in unusually blunt terms his frustration with what he called a tepid response to his pleas.The Air Force is singled out here, but I think that the rest of the services deserve some of the blame as well. The Army still has the same personnel system it had before the war started, which has a peacetime emphasis on garrison military-type career progression, and takes 0% of the counterinsurgency lessons learned over the last 7 years to heart. You want specifics:“I said I am really not, frankly, interested in what you can bring to the table two years from now,” Mr. Gates said in recounting what he said had been his message to the armed services. “We are in the war — now. This is a critical time in the war. We need more, and we need it now.”
In his speech at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, Mr. Gates did not single out the Air Force for criticism. He said the responsibility should be shared across the military and the vast bureaucracy that researches, develops, builds, buys and fields intelligence assets.
But the Air Force owns most of these airborne surveillance systems, and the message Mr. Gates delivered at the Air War College was clear — and especially painful to a service whose reliance on expensive, new jets can seem at odds with 21st-century counterinsurgencies fought in the alleyways of the Middle East.
-The Army still has its current promotion system, despite numerous lower-grade officers and NCOs performing the real-world jobs of higher billets. If an officer is a captain in a major’s billet, in theater, at war, promote him to a major. Or at least give him a brevet rank of major, and work out the details when his tour ends.
-Arabic language training has not intensified at all. We’ve been in Iraq since 2003, and I have not seen an Army-wide program to get language skills down to the soldier-level. With the new counterinsurgency doctrine, engaging the local populace is now just as important as knowing how to shoot a rifle. The language barrier must be overcome, but 5 years on we have not seriously emphasized this.
-Being embedded as an advisor to a Host Nation unit is one of the most dangerous and important jobs we can ask soldiers and Marines to do. This needs to be at or above “company command” in an officer’s career progression. Building the host nation forces is the stated mission in OIF and OEF, but examples 1 and 2 are making this vital piece of the counterinsurgency puzzle more difficult to solve.
So, yeah, the SECDEF gave the AF some lumps on not getting drones into theater. Each service has its problems, and at the root of most of them is the culture of a peacetime military that has been at war for far to long for any excuses to be meaningful. We ask the most of our squad members and team leaders who are on patrol every day in harm’s way. Why should we not demand the same from our military bureaucracy?
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Comments
Don't know how much it's being pushed, but if you go to My Education in AKO and then to the ArmyEd thing at Skilsoft, you've got two different Arabic Rosetta Stone courses available to you - one of which appears to be specially set up for the military.
The problem is not the AF, or Army or Navy or Marine Corps, per se. The average combat arms/combat pilot at the field or company grade, including enlisted, is fighting the war and applying lessons learned, because their lives are on the line. The is the beaurocratic side of all Services but that exists because it has to. The services have to fight and scrap for resources. While the SecDef screams for assets in theater 'Now!' if a service were to rush an immature program to war and it failed, they would be vilified by Congress and press. Industry woudl get things to theater as quickly as we paid them to because they are in this business for profit, not patriotism. That's just the way it is in the Beltway.
Charlie - I think you are off on the promotion issue. There are far more officers serving in billets for a lower grade than a higher grade. For example - there are far more Captains serving as platoon leaders and XOs, I've seen a lot of Majors serving in Captain positions as well. In fact I know of several Captains who were frocked to Major overseas when they filled an O4 liaison billet- the Army has regs that allow for it.
In addition, the Army has implemented new promotion guidance that emphasizes combat experience. A few years ago, HR Command told us that combat experience would outweigh evaluations.
Regards,
Eli
I think the point about Arabic not being pushed is incorrect, at least as it applies to the advisors. Beofre I went to Afghanistan in 2004, I had zero Dari training. When I got called up in Nov 2007 for this tour, I got Arabic classes and lab (with the "tactical Iraqi" voice recognition software). I got more Arabic instruction at Kuwait and more at Taji before I even got to my final destination.
My experience was not unique, it is what anyone in a MiTT or other type of advisory team gets.
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Agree substantially but culture change follows the people and the leaders are changing. I recently observed a promo board and officers who served outside the wire received credit regardless of whether they were US unit leaders or allied advisors. This was because many of the board members had right shoulder patches. Sadly, 5-sided building turns like an aircraft carrier and issues there often turn on one issue "do you have money"...