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Special Guest Post - Perhaps the Army Isn't Broken, But my Brigade Is
Comments from a friend of the blog, wishing to remain nameless. Not terribly apropos of recent posts, but still I enjoy being able to indulge others. Mostly, good to get a counterpoint to my "The Army isn't broken" spiel of recent days. I'll post the second half of my Draft Opus soon.
"I've been in Afghanistan for about 5 months now, about half of our deployment, in RC-South (about 20% of the country, lower in elevation, higher in excitement), deployed in a non-combat job in an Infantry Brigade.
This is my third combat Brigade, and by far the least ready to plan and execute missions. We failed at planning and executing our MRX prior to NTC. We failed to get a functional targeting cycle at NTC. By all rights we should probably not be here.
Our soldiers are doing well. They know what to do once we give them a mission. But my brigade cannot do it. We cannot plan and coordinate a mission more than, probably 4 days out.
I have seen field-grade officers who have the emotional maturity of small children. People who I do not trust. A lieutenant can sometimes be forgiven for neglecting to do an initial counseling. A Major cannot, especially when he gets furious because his expectations (never expressed) are not met.
You cannot tell a lieutenant, "Make and run a Battalion CUB," without giving guidance. We are supposed to train our subordinates - if you don't, their failures are entirely your own.
A company commander does not need to accompany every mission that sends two platoons outside of the wire. If you have more Majors than Platoons that leave the FOB, perhaps you should go home.
We have officers and senior NCOs that get moved jobs FOBs and raters, on a whim, via a message delivered third hand, without knowing that job they'll be moved into. Without so much as an explanation.
We have a massive EO [equal opportunity - Army for anti-descrimination] problem. Field grades say shit you'd be lock up a private for. Female officers and NCOs are NOT given the same opportunity as men - in gender immaterial positions.
We are flying, or falling, by the seat of our pants, more than half way through our tour. It isn't getting better. Every company grade officer I know in this Battalion is seriously considering getting out, changing branch, etc.
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1 Comments:
Sounds like a brigade I know that was always behind the battalions in their planning.
One other comment, as for sending a company commander out when 2 platoons are on the same mission...that just makes sense. Unity of command and all that. I'd rather the leaders be outside the wire being busy than back behind a desk making up shit for other people to do.
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