Monday, October 29, 2007
NTC
So, we're going to NTC this week for the entire month of Nov. NTC is the National Training Center on Ft. Irwin, near Barstow, CA. It's a desert training facility where most troops en route to Iraq go to train. We'll be there for a month, learning tactics and movements, traffic control point procedures, concerted movements of our offensive tactical vehicles and hopefully, watching New England vs Indianapolis in a week. I heard there was a tv there. The past few days we've been putting all our vehicles (tanks, bradleys, humvees, tanker trucks etc) on the train so it can go there ahead of us. As we were doing this, I was struck by how heavy, slow and inefficient the Army is. It took us 2 days and 20 hours, and 1000 people aided by 100 contractors to put 300 vehicles on the trains. That might seem quick but believe me, it wasn't. And it all got me to thinking: If the US Army was tasked with fighting and winning a two front war, a REAL two front war, could we? If Transformation is the wave of the future, why are we stuck on these heavy, cumbersome unarmored armored vehicles? Where is the swift lethality, the lithe ferocity, the hungry lightning? I think Transformation is the wave of the future. In 20 years, our Army will have farmed out all but Infantry jobs and Civil Affairs jobs. And those jobs will be run by troops with Special Forces level skills. In other words, as Transformation occurs, to be a soldier in the US Army, one will have to have the skills of a Special Forces Soldier. Indeed, all soldiers in the Army will be Ranger, Airborne or Special Forces soldiers. This is Transformation. Light, lethal, hungry, efficient, and pure. This will be the Ultimate Government Job.
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Special Lips,
I agree that Transformation is a good idea. In my opinion, to be truly transformative one must be:
1. ALWAYS seeking better ways to do the same old things;
2. ALWAYS determining if the same old things still need doing, and;
3. ALWAYS adapting to the new things that inevitably catch one with one's trousers around one's ankles.
Can we ever truly know what is coming next? In some cases, certainly, while in other cases (combat among them) not necessarily.
What we can know, or seek to know, is to at least identify what we don't know, and what we should know.
In this way, we can be ready to Transform at the appropriate time.
Where is the Army in all this? While it appears that the Army has definitely caught the bug, it remains to be seen if Transformation will become contagious within the organization.
As you well know, any large body of folks - especially one as large as the Army - does not change overnight. It takes consistent, concerted efforts by all levels of leadership - starting at the top - to ensure adoption of the desired change.
There is definitely a great deal of talk about Modular Force Conversion, Full Spectrum Operations, Future Combat Systems and the like, but at the end of the day, success usually hinges on one thing: the tired, smelly grunt.
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