David W. Barno: The Army’s next enemy? Peace.

Retired Lieutenant General David W. Barno, writes in Washington Post about the challenges facing the force in the coming years that lack the intensity and demands of combat. I never thought that I’d agree with a fellow of the Center for a New American Security, but here I am. General Barno writes from the experience of being an infantry company commander in the late 70s. At about the same time I was a young infantry squad leader.

I’ll be the first to admit that I was probably the worst private in the Army to ever wear the rank, but I was the product of one of the brightest things the Army ever did. The Ranger Battalions were initially formed, not as an elite fighting force that they became, but rather a continuing education project from initial entry training. We had specially-selected officers and NCOs. Nearly every NCO above the rank of Buck Sergeant were Vietnam veterans, some company commanders and most of the staff had survived the war, too. The plan was for that cadre to pass on the lessons that they learned and pass it on to young privates who would rotate out of the unit after 18 months. I learned more about how to train soldiers in those 18 months than I did the rest of the time I spent in the Army – from the heroes of the last conflict.

I was insulated from the rest of the Army during that time while the rest of the Army was wrestling with the social changes and garrison regulations after Vietnam. It made me a little arrogant when I left the 1/75th and went to an airborne company in Panama, but it was because I was better trained than many of the NCOs in my new unit. Not to disparage them, but just stating a fact. I guess that arrogance made me a terrible private.

What I learned in the Ranger Battalion experiment stayed with me and made me a better NCO when I finally made that rank. But General Barno says pretty much the same thing in his Washington Post piece;

The Army’s senior leaders of the 1970s had endured the trials of Vietnam as mid-grade combat commanders, and they understood that the traits required for battlefield success — bold decision-making and individual leadership — would be quickly stamped out in a peacetime, rule-focused force. So they took action.

In 1979, the Army chief of staff, Gen. Edward “Shy” Meyer, advanced the controversial idea of “selective disobedience” as a way to empower junior leaders in the face of stultifying Army bureaucracy. His comments sparked a furious debate in the force, but as a young infantry company commander at the time, I knew exactly what he meant. He did not mean that we should ignore laws or violate ethical standards. But in a peacetime Army, the demands of burgeoning policies, regulations and requirements vastly exceeded the time available to comply, so leaders were empowered to set priorities and make choices. We could say no — we were even expected to say no. As I recall Gen. Robert Shoemaker telling us in a 1980 speech to leaders of the Army’s 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii: You will impress me, he said, if I come to your training site and you tell me what parts of my guidance you have chosen not to follow. You will really impress me if you have already told my staff and explained why.

It’s doubtful that any Army Chief of Staff in the next few years will have a policy like General Myers (who, by the way, is universally hated by many airborne troops, tankers and Cav guys for taking away their distinctive head gear when he took over the ACoS job). As they advanced through the field grade ranks, those Vietnam-era officers understood the value of a force that was essentially run by squad leaders who weren’t afraid of making training decisions and taking responsibility for the readiness of their small units.

Most of the NCOs from my age group flourished under the loosened restrictions, while others fell by the wayside. Units that didn’t give NCOs authority and responsibility to lead their units paid for it eventually. The unit that I went to Desert Storm with fired no fewer than seven Sergeants First Class before the opening shot was fired because they couldn’t adjust to the stress of being in charge without an officer looking over their shoulders.

This Army, that we have today, seems to be hell-bent on driving out the experienced veterans. For example, the new tattoo policy that came out of no where. And now, the Sergeant Major of the Army released guidance on what boots the Army will allow, and I’ll be damned if I can tell what the hell Smadge is talking about.

The same shit happened after Desert Storm, too, believe it or not. My battalion sergeant major would co-opt our weekly “Sergeants’ Time” for sales pitches from USAA and the NCOA. Nothing gets a force ready for combat like a car insurance sales pitch. The lessons from Desert Storm should be that training wins wars – the war with Iraq was only 100 hours long because we’d been training for that war every day for more than ten years. Well, that and the fact that the politicians didn’t have gumption to follow through on our gains.

But, I don’t see this crowd running the Army today to have the courage to let their junior leaders make decisions on how to train and prepare their small units even though it makes sense as budgets and resources shrink in this administration’s rush to balance the budget on the back of readiness for the next conflict.

Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.

Category: Big Army