What is an Army but the Soldiers? Summary of Personnel Reform work in last year

This is the best summary of one of the missions I was doing this year. I had the honor to work with a lot of great people, including the author of this article in Military Review, LTC Scott Halter. Scott’s article sums up best what we recommended to the Secretary of the Army and the personnel system on where the personnel system should go in the 21st Century.

Click to access MilitaryReview_20120229_art007.pdf

Don

Read Full Post »

Afghanistan war logs: Shattering the illusion of a bloodless victory

It is not as if the disaster described below, in the Afghan war logs released by Wikileaks to the Guardian, the New York Times , and der Spiegle, was not foreseeable.   For example, my close friend and mentor Chuck Spinney wrote an Op-ed for Defense Week in April 2001 What Revolution in Military Affairs? , well before we began the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  I also told comrades about the disasters that would await us if we tried to occupy and convert Afghanistan into a democracy (trillions and years later, still no progress), and later when we invaded Iraq (and I describe in my 2002 book Path to Victory: America’s Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs (Presidio Press)) regarding the failure of occupations by foreign armies. I prescribe to the doctrine of 3-3-3 (described by William S. Lind in http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/parameters/Articles/1995/lind.htm .

 

And I was hardly alone or invisible.  Readers familiar with the work of reformers Colonel John Boyd, Pierre Sprey, Colonel James Burton, Colonel Mike Wylie, Colonel GI Wilson, Colonel Bob Dilger, Bill Lind and Tom Christie, among others, will know that they have been highly visible canaries in the high-tech coal mine since the late 1960s.  For those unfamiliar with their critical analyses, I refer you to  James Fallows’ National Defense (Random House 1981), and Robert Coram’s Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War (Little Brown, 2002), or The Winds of Reform, Time (7 March 1983).

Read Full Post »

Hostility between British and American military leaders revealed

The deep hostility of Britain’s senior military commanders in Iraq towards their American allies has been revealed in classified Government documents leaked to the Daily Telegraph.

By Andrew Gilligan

Telegraph
Published: 10:00PM GMT 22 Nov 2009

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/6631239/Hostility-between-British-and-American-military-leaders-revealed.html

In the papers, the British chief of staff in Iraq, Colonel J.K.Tanner, described his US military counterparts as “a group of Martians” for whom “dialogue is alien,” saying: “Despite our so-called ‘special relationship,’ I reckon we were treated no differently to the Portuguese.”

Col Tanner’s boss, the top British commander in the country, Major General Andrew Stewart, told how he spent “a significant amount of my time” “evading” and “refusing” orders from his US superiors.

Related Articles

• Colonel attacks ‘arrogant, bureaucratic’ Americans 
• Stability Operations in Iraq report in full 
• Iraq war inquiry ‘will not be a whitewash’ 
• Extracts from Operations in Iraq report – land perspective analysis 
• Operations in Iraq report – more land perspective analysis 
• Secret papers reveal Iraq war blunders 

Read Full Post »

The Personnel System at War…(What have I been saying?)

For nine years, since my chapter “Culture Wars” has come out in Bob Bateman’s Digital Wars in the Frontlines, I have been touting this same theme with ample evidence. It is always nice when others echo what one believes, especially as prominent as Bob Goldich, who I interviewed for Path to Victory back in 1998.

A View from the Generation at the Tip of the Spear by Robert Goldich, Small Wars Journal Five junior officers, all veterans of combat, recently came together for a day-long dialogue with current and former senior manpower and personnel officials from the Department of Defense. Their major assessment was that an “industrial age” personnel system is being used to fight an “information age” war.

Read Full Post »