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. “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 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: -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?
saved byMoultrie Creek on 2008-04-23
