Fred Kagan: Army Promoting the Right Officers

By Charlie

Most of today's Army generals rose through the ranks during the Cold War as armor, infantry, or artillery officers who were trained to fight large-scale, head-to-head battles against enemies of comparable strength—for instance, the Soviet army as its tanks plowed across the East-West German border.
The problem, as many junior officers have been writing over the last few years, is that this sort of training has little relevance for the wars of today and, likely, tomorrow—the "asymmetric wars" and counterinsurgency campaigns that the U.S. military has actually been fighting for the last 20 years in Bosnia, Panama, Haiti, and Somalia, as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Kagan writes on the dramatic departure that the recent Army General Officer promotion board has taken by including GEN Petraeus and taking into account COIN and asymmetric warfare experience vice traditional peacetime Army "check the block" career progression.

Interesting:

At least eight special-operations officers are on the list (though not all of them are identified as such), as well as the unit commanders of various "light" forces—in Stryker light-armor brigades or the 10th Mountain Division—that have tended to be ignored by the Army's "heavy"-leaning armor and artillery chiefs.

The article also mentions a MP Intel Colonels getting bumped to one star as well. Both of those disciplines, as well as civil affairs and SF, are vital to the current conflict that we are (and will be) engaged in. Having a future flock of flag officers who understand the new threat dynamic is absolutely essential in a security environment where wars are increasingly being fought within -not between- nation states.

August 5, 2008 04:28 PM Army