Admiral "reassigned"

[Brett327]

There's an important distinction to be made regarding the Goldwater-Nichols service chiefs, whom I would argue benefit much more from the MBA/management kind of leadership than a COCOM does. Even so, the size of a CENTCOM or PACOM, and their huge staffs makes them a big, unwieldy organization to manage. A task in and of itself that is equally important to the war fighting aspect of a COCOM's responsibilities. Managing a big organization doesn't replace WWII era combat oriented leadership, but it's ultimately just as important in accomplishing the mission.

 

[Catmando]

From the JCS Chairman, FWIW....

"The speculation that General Carter Ham is departing Africa Command (AFRICOM) due to events in Benghazi, Libya on 11 September 2012 is absolutely false. General Ham's departure is part of routine succession planning that has been on going since July. He continues to serve in AFRICOM with my complete confidence."​

​

​

 

[BigRed389]

No, but I also think you're looking at it in a vacuum. These types of leaders aren't put in both scenarios overnight. Just like the type of leaders we have doesn't change overnight.

A WWII leader today might be an admin failure. A leader today placed in WWII might also fail miserably in the type of dynamic and authoritative position he would have been placed in that type of combat.

The point is that these types of leaders are created by the service culture and military culture that is fostered over years and decades. They are a product of their upbringing. So during times of transition, there needs to be a purge. What worked for 20 years of peacetime is NOT going to work during a transition to a very volatile political climate and wartime. Likewise, after a long period of war, there will need to be a down-sizing and refocus of efforts (as was the case post-WWII). Some will adapt, many will not.

Part of the problem, in my own ignorant opinion, is the entrepreneurial paradigm-shift of the military's leadership over the last few decades. Suddenly all officers O-4 and above (gross exaggeration) have an MBA and seem to think they can cut their teeth in leadership by employing the methods they read in their post-graduate texts, which really are often misplaced within the military context. We aren't a corporation. We're a military. This isn't about board-meetings, focus groups and surveys. This is about getting the goddamn mission done.

Great point.

However, the list of wartime WW2 heroes we laud is also full of products of the peacetime military: Doolittle, LeMay, Halsey, Nimitz, King, Vandegrift, Patton, Ike, Bradley, McNair, Marshall, and so forth; if they were senior wartime leaders, they cut their teeth and succeeded in the peacetime military first.

I also take issue with the idea peacetime prep doesn't work for a transition to war. If our current peacetime preparation means we can't go fight and win a war at sea tomorrow, efficiently and effectively, we fucking suck and have been wasting taxpayer money in our big grey flying and sailing club. Especially for those of us Navy-Marine Corps types that exist to get called on to make it happen...we spend a shitload of money to train to deploy and be on station to rapidly transition to any number of tasks on the LOAC continuum.

I'm not saying we couldn't do things better...if anything I think we collectively have a lot of room for improvement with perfection being the standard. And I'm not saying we wouldn't uncover some senior leaders that aren't the right fit for their responsibilities in war.

But it's a reach to say that the same guys that would succeed in wartime wouldn't hack it in peacetime. Unless you think Mattis and Petraeus wouldn't have made senior command in peacetime. Except they did. Before OEF.
If anything, we need to keep guys with wartime mindsets around in peacetime to ensure we keep our priorities straight.

 

[BACONATOR]

Great point.

However, the list of wartime WW2 heroes we laud is also full of products of the peacetime military: Doolittle, LeMay, Halsey, Nimitz, King, Vandegrift, Patton, Ike, Bradley, McNair, Marshall, and so forth; if they were senior wartime leaders, they cut their teeth and succeeded in the peacetime military first.

I also take issue with the idea peacetime prep doesn't work for a transition to war. If our current peacetime preparation means we can't go fight and win a war at sea tomorrow, efficiently and effectively, we fucking suck and have been wasting taxpayer money in our big grey flying and sailing club. Especially for those of us Navy-Marine Corps types that exist to get called on to make it happen...we spend a shitload of money to train to deploy and be on station to rapidly transition to any number of tasks on the LOAC continuum.

I'm not saying we couldn't do things better...if anything I think we collectively have a lot of room for improvement with perfection being the standard. And I'm not saying we wouldn't uncover some senior leaders that aren't the right fit for their responsibilities in war.

But it's a reach to say that the same guys that would succeed in wartime wouldn't hack it in peacetime. Unless you think Mattis and Petraeus wouldn't have made senior command in peacetime. Except they did. Before OEF.
If anything, we need to keep guys with wartime mindsets around in peacetime to ensure we keep our priorities straight.

I think you and I are mostly in agreement, and I hope you understand my devil's advocate arguments being what they were. They were black and white arguments in a world of (more than 50) shades of grey.

 

[Fog]

From the JCS Chairman, FWIW....

"The speculation that General Carter Ham is departing Africa Command (AFRICOM) due to events in Benghazi, Libya on 11 September 2012 is absolutely false. General Ham's departure is part of routine succession planning that has been on going since July. He continues to serve in AFRICOM with my complete confidence."​

​

​

I hope that statement is true, but the current JCSC isn't the most confidence-inspiring person ever to hold that job.

 

[Brett327]

I hope that statement is true, but the current JCSC isn't the most confidence-inspiring person ever to hold that job.

Why do you believe that?

 

[scoober78]

I hope that statement is true, but the current JCSC isn't the most confidence-inspiring person ever to hold that job.

Easy with it...

As to the whole peacetime administrator/wartime leader argument...it's really wasted breath. You are trying to prove something has or hasn't happened in the absence of evidence. When we go to war, wartime leaders will rise, thrive and be recognized. Some of them may be folks who've nearly run ships aground (from the cloth of Nimitz) or, contrarily they may also be admin superstars just like Ike, who thrived at both. Wartime leadership doesn't carry a stigmata...if it did, we'd clearly know who to keep. The battle ready will run to the fight when the guns start booming, just like they have throughout history.

 

[scoober78]

Just for clarification of the above, of course we as a Nation are at war. My comment above was meant to suggest war as large, state on state war of survival type war. I would submit that the Army and Marine Corps are probably finding out who their combat effective leaders are to a much greater extent than the Navy and Air Force. Further, part of the problem I think we are stubbing our toe on is that the type of warfare we are engaged in now does not equate to the leadership incubators you guys are talking about...WWII, WWI etc...

 

[wink]

Great point.

However, the list of wartime WW2 heroes we laud is also full of products of the peacetime military: Doolittle, LeMay, Halsey, Nimitz, King, Vandegrift, Patton, Ike, Bradley, McNair, Marshall, and so forth; if they were senior wartime leaders, they cut their teeth and succeeded in the peacetime military first.

I also take issue with the idea peacetime prep doesn't work for a transition to war. If our current peacetime preparation means we can't go fight and win a war at sea tomorrow, efficiently and effectively, we fucking suck and have been wasting taxpayer money in our big grey flying and sailing club. Especially for those of us Navy-Marine Corps types that exist to get called on to make it happen...we spend a shitload of money to train to deploy and be on station to rapidly transition to any number of tasks on the LOAC continuum.

I'm not saying we couldn't do things better...if anything I think we collectively have a lot of room for improvement with perfection being the standard. And I'm not saying we wouldn't uncover some senior leaders that aren't the right fit for their responsibilities in war.

But it's a reach to say that the same guys that would succeed in wartime wouldn't hack it in peacetime. Unless you think Mattis and Petraeus wouldn't have made senior command in peacetime. Except they did. Before OEF.
If anything, we need to keep guys with wartime mindsets around in peacetime to ensure we keep our priorities straight.

Largely agree, but the peacetime military of the 20's and 30's's those guys grew up in was nothing like the peacetime admin/garrison military we have had in the last 20 years.

 

[scoober78]

Largely agree, but the peacetime military of the 20's and 30's's those guys grew up in was nothing like the peacetime admin/garrison military we have had in the last 20 years.

Ok...I'll bite. Why?

Further, you could argue that we haven't had a "peacetime" military in the last 20 years. Desert Storm, Somalia, Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya...While these certainly aren't conflict on the WWII scale, they certainly are on the Vietnam continuum...All of which begs the question, is it peacetime that's changed so much or wartime?

 

[Brett327]

Both, and we're never, ever going back.

 

[wink]

Ok...I'll bite. Why?

Further, you could argue that we haven't had a "peacetime" military in the last 20 years. Desert Storm, Somalia, Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya...While these certainly aren't conflict on the WWII scale, they certainly are on the Vietnam continuum...All of which begs the question, is it peacetime that's changed so much or wartime?

Well, that is why I also specified "garrison". I don't think a grunt who patrolled the Tigris or Afghan poppy fields would say their war was much different from and rifleman before. While there has been plenty of war and conflict, it sure seems to me that if the America has been at the mall, much of our military though out the conflicts you list was at the PX. I was active for Panama, and Grenada. If you weren't feet dry in those countries, you weren't at war and the military acted as such. As a Reservist I was on the bubble for recall for Desert Storm, and the Balkans. I worked up with my augment squadron for DS. There was nothing different about Fallon. They deployed on schedule even. Logistics/supply types worked their asses off, but for most of the military it was business as usual unless you were in the sand box. Sad but true. I dare say, same can be said for every other conflict you list. The affect those wars have had on our military, probably 75% , is purely op/pers tempo. The pointy end of the spear is still very small. So when those brave folks do come home from OEF/OIF, nothing about FT Bliss, Camp Pendleton or Norfolk has changed. It was that way throughout my active and Reserve career. You had a military in theater getting shot at and a military at home requiring ORM chits, sexual harassment training, dayglo vests for motorcycles, helmets for bicycles, standardized flight suits, Breathalyzers for watch standers, stress timeouts, and all number of forms and reports I couldn't even name that no one reads, and if they do, has no bearing on the war effort or supports the guys in harms way. I bet some of you could argue that those things have even compromised support for the war fighters because it takes valuable training time away from them. Reading my history, talking to my father in law who joined in 1946 retired in 1976 and was initially led by men who were in the pre WWII Army, the Army of the 20s and 30s had their share of bureaucratic foolishness but nothing like we have now. Non combat/MOS training was a minimum. WWI had truly mobilized the nation and the professionals left in the military remembered it. Their country did not give them the resources to be best prepared for the coming world war, but the military trained hard with what they had, and it was military training, not BS. That influanced the officers of that era who would lead WWII. I know great NCOs and officers have come back from OEF/OIF and want to pass on what they have learned. To train hard and realistically. But I am afraid too often they end up harnessed or worse, neutered, by that part of the peace time military that rolls on generating more paperwork, more non war fighting requirements, more social experiments. In my opinion, it wasn't that bad in the 20s and 30s. It isn't that "peacetime" has changed. It is that it hasn't changed when it should have.

 

[phrogpilot73]

If our current peacetime preparation means we can't go fight and win a war at sea tomorrow, efficiently and effectively, we fucking suck and have been wasting taxpayer money in our big grey flying and sailing club.

The following peacetime preparations have absolutely nothing to do with fighting/winning a war:

Trafficking in Persons
Careless Keystrokes
DoD IA version x.x
Global War on Error
Personally Identifiable Information
ATFP Level I
Annual Audits of your SRB/OQR, which you have to do when you log onto MOL - but then you get the double whammy of reverifying what you just verifyed when you walk into the squadron and are greeted by S-1 telling you that you need to also do the audit with them... Talk about a waste of time
Pre/Post Deployment Health assessments.
Annual Gas Chamber (even though the mask doesn't change that often, and we have been gassed exactly ZERO times since WWI)
Basic Riders Course, followed up by the Experienced Riders Course, and the Sportbike Riders Course. Every 3 years. Even though MSF has no expiration date - but hey we're the DoD - we're SAFER!
MCMAP requirements regardless of MOS. Because how much hand to hand combat does a squadron S-1 clerk really get into?

Then you throw in all the other training that might not be annual, but always has a "you're late, even though the due date is in 3 months" email attached to it:

All this crap is fucking worthless fluff that doesn't accomplish the intended goal because Seaman Snuffy/LCpl Bennotz is so burned out by hearing it over and over, and seemingly just yesterday. And it all takes time away from he/she developing tactical and technical proficiency in his MOS. Unless you require him to do it in his off time, which is usually what happens. Which, leaves even more time on the schedule to do even more bullshit training. So let's add more, because a lecture will reduce the mishap rate, implying that at some point we'll get the mishap rate to zero. Which will NEVER happen (well, it might happen ONE year, but it will never be a persistent trend), unless we start recruiting a different type of person. You know, the non type-A personality that is drawn to military service.

Both, and we're never, ever going back.

I don't think you can say that, if I read your message right (about warfare changing). To me - the biggest change to warfare is twofold: most of what we're going to do is counter-insurgency vice conventional warfare in the near future. We don't know if we're ever going to return to conventional warfare, but I'd say it's still a possibility. WWI was supposed to be the war to end all wars, and following WWI we had: WWII, Korea, Desert Storm, OIF. I would classify them all as conventional wars.

If you're talking about the nature of warfare shifting to the huge information feed up to HHQ, and coming close to a dangerous shift to centralized command and control (vice centralized command and decentralized control), then I'd say you're mostly right. No one knows what the future holds, and don't underestimate the capabilities of China, N. Korea, et. al to intercept/jam/hack the various command and control networks that exist. Again - not knowing what the future holds, an EMP device would fucking lay waste to our current construct of digital everything...

It's entirely possible we'll go back to the old ways. No one on this board (myself included) is capable of seeing the future. No one.

 

[squorch2]

Grenada, that horrific war. Let us never speak of it again.

 

[phrogpilot73]

Grenada, that horrific war. Let us never speak of it again.

Don't discount someone else's service with a flippant comment like that. Or I'll point out that JoBoy has more experience in theatre as an HSC pilot than you do.