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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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To: quadrant
This badge earning mania - I've been told the Army jargon for it is "stations of the cross"

In my day it was called “ticket punching”.
Inertia is a product of bureaucracy, and our Army, due to its size is a prime example.
372 posted on 01/04/2006 7:51:16 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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