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To: quadrant
One of our major bitches before I retired was the introduction of high tech for the sake of high tech. One great example was the LACV – 30.
Someone in Army procurement thought we needed it. – and as it was off the shelf we got it. It is a high speed air cushioned vehicle for amphibious operations. Jet turbine engines required a lot of maintenance and were susceptible to damage from salt and sand, as were the propellers that drove it. They were made to use in Alaska on ice, not in warm salt water on sandy beaches. These craft had more down time than operational time – as I remember, it was about 25 hours maintenance for every hour of running by the book, but they seldom were up that much. The Future Combat Systems sounds similar – high tech for the sake of high tech. A high “Gee Whiz” factor.
Hopefully some of the in house problems will disappear in the next decade. Many of our highest ranking Generals came up when officers who wanted quick promotion earned degrees in business administration and political science, not military history. The legacy of McNamara’s Best and Brightest. Today it is different – military history is again a favored degree for the rising young officer.
370 posted on 01/04/2006 3:45:09 AM PST by R. Scott (Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your Intelligence to buy a drink.)
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To: R. Scott
You may be right, but unlike the Marine Corps the Army is an institution.
It is very difficult to change the culture of institutions, as long as personnel policies remain in place.
For example, recently, I saw a photograph of Col Frederick L Borch, a member of the JAG corps and the chief prosecutor for tribunals that will try the detainees at Gitmo. Col Borsch wore the wings of a paratrooper.
Since its reasonable to assume that the colonel has spent his entire career in the JAG corps and will never command an parachute brigade, I cannot understand why anyone in the personnel branch would approve his application to attend jump school. He has no need for such training.
This badge earning mania - I've been told the Army jargon for it is "stations of the cross" - by people who have no direct or demonstrable need for them is a symptom of an
institution that has lost control of its function and is doing things for institutional reasons and not for mission reasons.
There are other examples: the mandatory and idiotic rotation of officers from command to staff, a practice which might have had validity when instituted but is now little more than a fetish; the almost universal requirement that officers have advanced degrees, not from need but as a prerequisite for promotion; or the transfer of officers into and out of billets every couple of years. This practice was carried to its absurd end during the Vietnam War of requiring officers to spend six months at command and six months in a staff job.
Of course, the Army may have changed since the Vietnam War, but from the blogs I read personnel practices haven't changed that much.
Again, you may be right that the high-tech fetish has run its course, but I doubt it. Institutions tend to get vested interests in projects and are loathe to abandon them, despite evidence of uselessness. The colonels who are the project officers involved with the FCS will run the Army one day, and they are not likely to abandon willingly this boondoggle.
It is sad that the Army has come to such a state. Perhaps this was to be expected. Given the inertia within armies, it requires a major defeat to get them to abandon outmoded practices. Thankfully for the country, the Army has never suffered such a defeat, but the consequences for the Army (and for the country) will be tragic, one day.
371 posted on 01/04/2006 7:18:55 AM PST by quadrant
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