Confessions of an Adjutant: the sausage-making of awards policies

I'm a few days late to this discussion, but I wanted the passion surrounding this Air Force Times article on awards to subside a bit before I wrote about it. A soldier may fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon - but that fighting isn't exclusively with the enemy. There are few things soldiers love to argue more about among themselves than awards and fight about it they will. It's such a personal topic, often shrouded in jealousies ("They gave that guy a BSM?!?"), nebulous guidance that leaves awards to commanders with different criteria, rank-based determination of awards, awards for merely doing your job, and the "everybody wins, everybody gets a medal" mentality.

With 6 years of active duty I held a few positions: tank and scout platoon leader, troop XO, assistant S3, brigade planner. I was even an Assistant Support Platoon Leader for two days (seriously - two very long days). But for an entire year I was a squadron adjutant (for you non-military types, think HR representative and administrative assistant to the CEO for a 500+ person organization) at the end of a deployment, through a redeployment cycle, and into a deployment ramp-up and that was the hardest year of my short military career. As the center cog of the awards sausage-making machine I think I can shed some light on why awards are so hard and why there isn't an easy solution to fix the problem.

We should begin by visiting Army Regulation 600-8-22, "Military Awards" which is the Army's user manual for awards. Section 1-12 tells us that "the objective of the Department of the Army Military Awards Program is to provide tangible recognition for acts of valor, exceptional service or achievement, special skills or qualifications, and acts of heroism not involving actual combat" and that "implementation of the provisions of this regulation is a command responsibility." Bottom line is that commanders award awards to recognize what soldiers do. The remainder of the regulation goes through approval authorities, time limits, revocations, and standards for each awards. Gripping stuff.

How does this work in the real Army, beyond the regulatory constraints of Human Resources Command? Well, awards policies effectively fall into three categories: peace-time achievement, peace-time service, and war-time achievement and service.

Peace-time achievement is the simplest to deal with. Commanders have the discretion to give awards for singular acts of excellence, the level of which award depends upon the commander's rank and excellence of the act. Giving awards out make commanders feel like they're really doing something for their soldiers and not merely for those soldiers trying to accumulate promotion points. Top tank at Table VIII gunnery? Here's an ARCOM for the crew. Chaplain's assistant organized a bad-ass Easter Egg hunt? AAM! For lesser achievements commanders can give challenge coins, which they tend to apply liberally. Basically, these awards are the commander's whim, they don't happen too often, and in spite of Ex's anecdote I've rarely seen officers receive them.

The next category - peace-time service awards - is where things start to get complicated. We can start with the fact that there are only so many types of awards - Army Achievement Medal (AAM), Army Commendation Medal (ARCOM), Meritorious Service Medal (MSM) - before we get into medals reserved for General and Flag Officers and their enlisted counterparts. The three awards mentioned are given in peace-time for one of two reasons: permanent change of station or retirement/resignation/end-term-of-service. Generally, retirees E-8 and under get MSMs for their 20+ years of service. Got it. Most units have a rank cut-off for non-retirement awards. For instance, E-4 Specialists and below get AAMs unless they were absolute studs - whether they were moving to a new duty station or getting out of the Army. E-5s to E-7s (maybe -8s) and O-1 thru O-3 get ARCOMs, unless you're coming out of a success command in which case it's an MSM. Etc. Basically there's a matrix for what you get and you know what your service award is going to be before you even start providing that service (unless you're a total stud or dud).

I imagine you're telling yourself a couple of things. First, that this systems isn't complicated at all. Second that for the most part these awards are virtually meaningless and that they might as well just give it to you when you sign in to the unit. The reason this is where awards get complicated is that the first two awards I mentioned, AAM and ARCOM, are the only two awards commanders give for achievement and also the bulk of service awards. The problem is that one soldier gets an AAM for something mundane and stupid and another soldier will get the exact same medal for 5 years of service to his nation. Between that and "everybody wins" a lot of people start questioning the sanity of the system. As an adjutant I had to explain to the commander why someone didn't deserve an award in accordance with our matrix in stead of substantiating why any soldier should get an award. It's ass backwards, it cheapens the system, and it makes soldiers disgruntled.

And that's all before we wade into the minefield that is war-time awards. Achievement awards in combat usually fall under the "heroism" heading (not always - sometimes an intel analyst will really make a breakthrough and the commander will award him or her). Each commander has different criteria for heroism, to include gradations of heroism, with approval for those determinations at the 2-star or higher level. This leaves a lot of room for the commander's whim. It also means that there is a lot of space - physically as well as time and perceptions of reality - between the point where the act took place and the guy who signs off on the award. This can obviously lead to problems. Silver Stars and above usually get thorough treatment and vetting, but criteria for Valor devices (a bronze "V" you pin to an award to denote it was for heroism) vary widely because they require (on the whole) lesser documentation and vetting. You also have problems with the fact that heroism isn't effectively defined in the regulation (how about that definition on page 183...). Beyond that, what delineates heroism deserving a Bronze Star Medal (BSM) with V device versus an ARCOM with V device? Entirely up to the commander. As an adjutant, I didn't take it upon myself to screen the award recommendations for content (that was a commander-to-commander issue) and merely just checked the admin blocks so that the recommendation wouldn't hit a bureaucratic hurdle. But I did lose count of the number of times the commander asked me "Why is this on my desk? This isn't heroic." Frankly, I didn't know what heroic meant when we're comparing completely different situations that occurred when I wasn't around.

War-time service awards are similar to peace-time awards (matrix solution by rank and position) except that MSMs are rarely given and everybody wants a BSM - wars end after all and it's a super thing to put on your resume. Our brigade's policy was Sergeants First Class and above were to be awarded BSMs unless an exception was made. Oh the fight over making sure those couple of young lieutenants who shouldn't have gotten one didn't - it would have been easier to get them Silver Stars than downgrade a recommendation from BSM to ARCOM. Command policy was unless ineligible everyone got an award and according to the matrix. Many of us wondered what the point of that was, especially as we already received combat patches and Iraq Campaign Medals for emitting enough brain waves to board a plane and do our jobs for a year. Why did we need another medal for the exact same thing? The best answer I had was: the commander ordered it.

Frankly, our Army gives out too many awards and too many of these are for simply doing your job. Some awards mean a lot to the people who received them - and you should be proud if you think you deserved it. On the whole - and here's really the crux of the matter - commanders give out the awards they do in the way they do because they want to do right by their soldiers. You don't want to be that major without a BSM going into a lieutenant colonel promotion board and your commander doesn't want to be the guy that ruins your career over a bit of colored ribbon. It's a broken system that awards mediocrity, but those awards mean a lot to the people who get them. And for those that don't deserve them, they know it and it doesn't mean anything to them. For that reason I'm not sure getting rid of all non-combat/heroism awards is the way to go (in spite of what I said on Twitter the other night). I'm proud of some of my medals, including non-combat, and not of others. Medals may cause many an argument, but why deprive commanders of their ability to recognize their soldiers because some admin or supply clerk got a Bronze Star? Life's unfair and that's okay - awards sausage-making has always been ugly. It's not like Brits a hundred years ago weren't bitching around the campfire about that dick from the next company over who got the VC because his uncle was in the cabinet. Or Romans on Hadrian's Wall having the exact same conversation (only about whatever awards they got back then). Soldiers bitch about medals. They always have and they always will and that's because it's important to them.

The doctrinal novelty of "Prevent, Shape, Win"

Or not.

Here's an excerpt from the 1993 revision of FM 100-5, Operations (which was the Army's capstone doctrinal manual until it was re-numbered as FM 3-0), under the heading "The Role of Doctrine":

Doctrine is the statement of how America's Army, as part of a joint team, intends to conduct war and operations other than war. It is the condensed expression of the Army's fundamental approach to fighting, influencing events in operations other than war, and deterring actions detrimental to national interests.

Sounds an awful lot like WIN, SHAPE, and PREVENT, huh?

P.S. Three principal roles, folks, not principle. Geez.

BG Richardson, DCG 1CD: Good for the Army, good for women in the Army

As we've been talking of late about women and their role in the military, I would be remiss if I didn't mention BG Laura Richardson's nomination as the Deputy Commanding General for the 1st Cavalry Division. She is the first female general officer to be nominated as a division DCG. As I've mentioned before, aviation branch will lead the way in providing an avenue for women into the highest ranks of the Army. BG Richardson is proving that assumption correct. As her bio notes, she was a UH-60 driver and held a number of command and staff positions with aviation battalions, including command of 5th Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment. Frankly, I thought it would take a little longer for a move like this to occur, but here we are. She has also held a number of positions in her career that portend that, while division command is unlikely (she did not command a brigade - but I may be wrong here), she will continue to rise within the Army: military aide to the Vice President, assignment to HQDA G-3/5/7, command of the garrison at Forts Myer and McNair, and Army Liaison Officer to the Senate. This is the kind of career track that GEN Petraeus would love and is the kind of background the Army will be looking for in the coming years. And I don't want to hear that this is all about her being a woman - really read her bio. I wish most of the DCGs I've met had this kind of experience.

Congratulations to BG Richardson for breaking this very important barrier in the Army and for doing so based on a track record of excellence. I wish her all the best in this new and challenging endeavor.

Defense-defenders are lying again: ground forces are not "stretched beyond their limits"

Tom Donnelly and Gary Schmitt have yet another whine-piece in The Weekly Standard today, telling us how they're just mad as hell about defense budget cuts and they're not going to take it anymore!

It’s time to say “enough” and to refuse not only sequestration but also a deal that avoids automatic reductions by substituting “just” a couple of hundred billion more in defense cuts. These are “savings” the nation cannot afford.

It's not clear to me just exactly how that would happen, considering, you know, the law and all. But more interesting is the loony explanation for why such cuts are unacceptable.

The fact is that the United States has been in an extended “defense drawdown” since the end of the Cold War, reaping substantial “peace dividends” throughout the Clinton years, during the Obama years, and now under the Budget Control Act.

Wonder what that ol' drawdown looks like in graphic form?

One hell of an "extended drawdown," huh? Maybe they were reading right-to-left

UPDATE: If you want to see it adjusted for inflation (as if we don't already know how that one looks, too), check out the first graphic in this pdf from CFR's Center for Geoeconomic Studies.

UPDATE 2: And here's another one adjusted for inflation (a little bit tougher to see because it's not appropriately time-limited and defense spending isn't the only thing on here, but pay attention to the green bit, specifically on the right half of the graph), direct from the one and only Wikipedia:

Maybe one more, prompted by Mike Few's comment, in case you wanted to see what defense spending looks like as a percentage of total government outlays (data from this pdf of FY11 historical budget tables):

Still not good enough? Ok, just for the unconvinced, I've created a new chart showing defense spending as a percentage of total outlays only from 1990 (just before the end of the Cold War) to the present, with a trend line in green:

Notice that the line isn't going downwards. Which is how it would look if we were in fact in an "extended defense drawdown since the end of the Cold War."

And how about this canard?

Consider the personnel strength of the Army and Marine Corps. Even with 771,400 soldiers and Marines on active duty, both services remain stretched well beyond their limits.

This is simply false. There is just no other way to put it. The Army and Marine Corps are not "stretched well beyond their limits." They're not even stretched to their limits, or really even very close to their limits. We've talked about this before; while the idea of going to a greater than 1:2 or even 1:1 BOG-to-dwell ratio may not be very attractive to anyone involved, that's what we're talking about when we use terms like "stretched to the limit."

When will the defense-defenders stop trying to BS the credulous?

Junior officer cage matches: blocking returns

Who's ready to talk Army officer evaluation policy? Because there was a big change announced on Friday that was brought to my attention on Twitter (James Joyner, Mike Lyons, Jimmy Sky, Crispin Burke, and RB Stalin). And it all stems from this media release from the Army's Human Resources Command. Firstly, I think it's funny that HRC would put out a "media release" on this topic - they might as well just fax a copy to the Army Times as I don't imagine anyone else will be covering this story (What? You're not interested NY Times? Why ever not?).

So here are the two major changes from this release:

1. Junior Officer check boxes. Back in the day all officers were "blocked" against each other (rated as above center of mass, center of mass upper half, center of mass lower half, below center of mass) and senior raters could only allocate so many officers to the top block as a percentage of the number of officers he senior rates of that rank (i.e., if a LTC battalion commander senior rates 15 lieutenants, only 2 could get top block). The limitation was a hedge against the "everyone's great" mentality of the zero-defect Army of the 1990s.

The Army did away with this type of blocking for lieutenants, captains, and the lower ranks of the warrant officer corps in 2004 or so because it didn't much matter anymore because of pressing personnel needs in higher ranks. With promotion rates to captain over 100% every year and rates to major in the high 90s, it didn't matter if you were a shitty platoon leader. You were needed as a captain (some guys still didn't get promoted, but it was mainly because they broke the law). There were other reasons involved - allowing LTs to take some risks and not be punished for it; LT evaluations are all masked from promotion boards once you've made captain so it didn't much matter anyway.

So what does this mean? It means the Army is getting serious again about effectively and honestly evaluating its junior officers. It means that captains are being truly evaluated again for their company command time - a massive indicator of competence for battalion command. It starts weeding out the weak early and is hopefully an indicator that promotions (and the commensurate increases in responsibility) won't be automatic anymore. It gives junior officers something to strive for: to get that top block to work towards earlier promotions and more responsibility. If you can't tell, I think this is change for the better.

2. 360 assessments. I had no idea the Army had started doing this, but the evaluation form will force the rater to indicate if the reviewed officer has had a 360 degree assessment done in the past 3 years. The assessments are apparently not part of the review, accessible only to the rater, and only for self-development of the reviewed officer. For now. There's been a lot of talk over the years to introduce actual rating by this method to smoke out "toxic leaders" and this is a step in that direction. I have conflicting views on idea of subordinates evaluating their leaders, but I can honestly say a terrible assessment from my subordinates when I was a cadet was a real eye-opener for me. I doubt I would have been a very successful officer at all without it. So this is probably a good change as well - or at least a good step in the right direction for holistic evaluations.

This all suggests that Army is about to get much more serious about evaluating its officers. It could be to get ready to cull the herd once austerity measures are put in place. It could be a response to the toxic leadership surveys. It could be some general just wanted to do it. It could be all of these. Whatever the reasoning, these are good changes and I hope the Army makes more of them.

Lies, damn lies, etc.: "The Army is Tapped Out"

An interesting post ran this afternoon on Time's "Battleland" blog, entitled "The Army is Tapped Out." I've noticed it's getting a lot of attention on Facebook and Twitter, so I wanted to clarify some stuff about the "two really interesting things" that its author, Ron Capps, claims to have learned from a recent RAND report (pdf)  on Army deployment data for OIF and OEF.

Here are the two "interesting" revelations:

1. Despite making up only 50% of the Armed Forces' active-duty end-strength, the Army is responsible for 75% of the individual deployments to the Box. This apparently surprises some folks, in spite of the fact that those deployments are in support of two manpower-intensive land wars. You know, the sort the Army is designed to fight.

2. "Second, and more importantly," according to Capps, "the Army is operating at full capacity... So the Army can't do more unless it deploys the Corps of Cadets." This is a serious misreading of the data. Let me explain.

First of all, this report was published last year at the request of the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army. One problem: the VCSA requested it in 2008. The data used in the study is only accurate up to December of that year, so keep that in mind.

Second: the report is about individual soldier deployments. It's not about unit deployments, and it's not about rotational readiness. It's about how many of the actual individual soldiers in the Army have deployed to a combat zone, how many times they've done so, how many folks haven't gone, and so on. It's not about readiness.

So where did this "full capacity" conclusion come from? Here's how the RAND report finishes up:

Since the beginning of OIF, the active-duty soldiers who have deployed have operated at a BOG:Dwell ratio of approximately 1:1. Almost 67 percent of the soldiers in the Army in December 2008 had deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of these soldiers were working on their second or third year of cumulative deployed duty. 

Most of the remaining soldiers (about 20 percent) were new to the Army and still engaged in individual, collective, or unit training. Of the remainder, 7 percent are in key specialties supporting current operations or are deployed to Korea or Europe. Therefore, the active-duty Army is almost completely (about 94 percent) utilized and therefore retains very little unutilized capacity to deploy additional active-duty soldiers.

As you can see from the text, we're dealing with a semantic issue here. I'm not sure if "unutilized capacity" means something specific in some particular academic context, but here it's wildly misleading, and it's easy to understand how Capps made this mistake... if he hadn't just read an entire report dealing with individual deployments.

What the 94% figure represents is the portion of the force that either has deployed, has not deployed as a result of a specific set of operational or professional circumstances, or hasn't been in the Army long enough to deploy with a unit. When the report's authors write that "the Army is almost completely utilized and therefore retains very little capacity to deploy additional active-duty soldiers," they mean that there's no massive uniformed pool of active duty, never-deployed fresh meat available for the Army's needs. Which, frankly, is not a terribly useful statistic, and doesn't tell us much of anything meaningful at all. The only thing "the Army can't do more" of is go through the rolls, find more than about 31,000 "unutilized" soldiers -- those who have never deployed and don't have a particularly good reason -- and stick them on the next plane to the Box.

As I noted on Twitter when I first read the post (but before having taken a look at the cited paper), the Army can, in fact, do a whole lot more from a readiness perspective... even without deploying the Corps of Cadets. It would require taking on additional risk, bypassing standard operating procedures, and shortening the train-up time that units receive prior to deployment, but it could be done. Here's how.

Army brigades train, deploy, and reset on a rotational cycle called Army Force Generation. (Check out the reg (pdf) if, uh, that's your thing.) In optimal conditions, that's a 36-month cycle with what's called a 1:3 BOG to Dwell ratio: nine months available for deployment; at least six months resetting equipment, turning over personnel, and reacquainting with family; and then 18-21 months in the Train/Ready phase getting set to be deploy (or at least be available for deployment) again. At present, the Army's just working on getting to 1:2 (12 months deployed, 24 months dwell time), which represents the service's capacity to surge forces to meet the needs of higher operational tempo.

What this means is that only one-third of the Army's pool of modular brigades is in the "available" phase at any one time, while the other two-thirds is resetting equipment or going through the training cycle. In the steady state -- normal, non-surge circumstances -- the Army can make available one corps headquarters, four division headquarters, 15 Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), and about 75K enablers. In a surge scenario, that goes to 1/5/20/90 -- a yield of an extra five BCTs, or about 17,500 extra combat troops.

Ok, who cares, right? Well, nobody had a rotational cycle in World War II. We pretty much fielded everything we had, with units rotating out of the line for a few weeks at a time to rest and reset. The ARFORGEN cycle spits out a third of the total Active Component brigades as "available," which means they've had the requisite amount of training to deploy at full capability. But if the balloon went up and all of a sudden we were in The Big One, there are 30 more combat brigades -- more than 100K combat troops -- at some stage of readiness. (Remember during the Iraq surge, when deployments were extended to 15 months instead of 12? That was to keep units in the "available" phase of ARFORGEN for longer so as to be able to field more brigades at a time. If the Sovs come through the Fulda Gap, the Army would solve the problem of force availability with 48-month "deployments.") And we haven't even talked about the Reserve Component, which brings another 28 Army National Guard BCTs to the table.

All of which is a long way of saying: I know the whole thing about West Point was a joke, but let's not start talking about the Battle of New Market, ok?

Effects of Grand Strategy without Grand Enemies on Budget Debates: GS/GE Part III

I'm going to just label this topic thread GS/GE (Grand Strategy / Grand Enemy) because I'm getting tired of typing it out. I had another post in this series planned in my head, but thanks to twitter I'm going to jump on a target of opportunity: budget debates without a grand enemy.

In short, these debates lack rigor. The budget aspect of grand strategy is essential as it limits a state's ability to react or project itself towards its interests. What else is the administration of government than this distribution of its assets? The defense sector likely among the largest and most critical (for both security and by the impact of it being among the largest). Sure, there are battles of ideas on defense budget issues in times of peace and war as well at times when there is a clear enemy and when there isn't. I'm sure the folks in the Pentagon are conducting rigorous analyses on the programs and monies under their control. But in the public sphere, this debate is becoming ludicrous.

In general, the disparate camps (with regard to defense budgets) could probably be classified as doves (we should spend less on defense, more on aid and domestic issues), "pragmatists" (what a strong defense, but understand that spending has to be limited at some point), and hawks (who would have a hard time ever finding a limit in order to have the strongest defense money could buy). While there are many bad arguments in each of these groups, I am going to pick on defense budget hawks today, and Max Boot in particular.

This afternoon, Mr. Boot linked via twitter to a column he wrote for The Weekly Standard Magazine. In it, he makes the following points:

1. The U.S. Army had a strength of 710,000 troops in 1991.
2. The U.S. Army has a strength of 566,000 today.
3. This reduction was a really bad idea and led to our not doing so well in Iraq and Afghanistan.
4. The Army intends to cut another approximately 50,000 active duty positions starting in 2015.
5. This is also a really bad idea and the President should provide explanation and assurances on what this bad decision for further cuts should happen.

Oh my. Firstly, I'm not terribly sure what on earth U.S. Army personnel strengths in 1991 have anything to do with our strength today. Those numbers were based on the strategic realities of 1991 (and the likelihood of a ground war in Europe - which we considered vital to our national interest). Secondly, point 3 is just ridiculous statement that is not just inaccurate, but not argued at all. Rumsfeld didn't use more troops in the invasions of Afghanistan or Iraq because he felt that it should be done quickly with a small footprint as a matter of principle, not because there weren't enough forces. The reason both conflicts went/are going so badly is because of piss poor planning assumptions and intelligence, not active duty strength levels.

As for points 4 and 5, my question to Mr. Boot is: after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan draw down to minimal footprints, how many soldiers do we need? What would they all do? Mr. Boot asks for certainty and assurances on the assumptions used to substantiate the draw down and then states that such assurances cannot be given. I ask Mr. Boot for certainty and assurances that we'll need to intervene in Pakistan, Yemen, or Somalia in the foreseeable future that would substantiate, not only the maintenance of current personnel levels, but likely the return to 1991 levels. Oh right. Such assurances cannot be given. In fact, I'm more inclined to take assurances that we won't be trying to do regime change/governance and state building / general meddling with large numbers of boots on the ground any time soon without a really, really good reason. Mainly because we've been doing it for a while and it's taking a toll on the military and our country. If a war of necessity does arise, that's what the Reserves and National Guard are for - they don't get that drill pay to play soldier, they get it so they're ready when they're needed. If you account for them in possible deployable numbers, we're talking just under a million potential pairs of boots.

While this post is dragging on longer than intended, just one more points. Saying that defense spending is "only" 20% of the USG's budget is misleading, considering how much of the total budget is non-discretionary (social security, etc.). It's 50% of discretionary spending - half of the money the USG can spend on things it chooses to. And we're still spending half of the world's budget on defense. Half. How much would be enough?

The bottom line for me, here, is that Mr. Boot isn't making an argument that we need to stop making cuts or even increase spending. He's making the same type of non-arguments that his opponents (who support the cuts) are making. No one has any idea what type of threat the United States should be preparing for - we have no idea what or who our enemies are or will be. Not even an inkling of an idea. Yet, pundits are waxing poetically from all sides of the budget debate without laying out realistic strategic foundations that would justify such a budget (yes, I know, it was an article in a newspaper...). I'm picking on Mr. Boot today, probably unfairly as he certainly is not the only one on any side doing this. But I am adamant that I am not at all interested in any budgetary ideas based on preconceived political ideologies devoid of strategic substantiation. And no Mr. Boot and others, naming countries that just really piss us off sometimes is not a strategic substantiation - it does not make them grand enemies for which to build a grand strategy.

"Cheating" for acquisition cost savings? Or: Contested procurement -- An allegory

Dumb, tl;dr allegory here. Skip ahead for the actual news.

Because composing idiotic, overly drawn-out metaphors at 0100 is a way better idea than going to sleep, I want to share a story with you today. (Seriously, fight through it, and at least fake a chuckle.) Once upon a time, there was a family with two sons. The older one -- let's just call him "Army" -- has gotten a lot of good gifts in the last few years, as his folks have been making good money and wanted to spoil him. The younger one -- I know it's weird, but his name is "Air Force" -- gets plenty of good loot, too. But he's the younger kid, and we all know what happens with younger kids: sometimes you have to settle for hand-me-downs.

Seriously, though: Army and Air Force have pretty generous parents. The kids get all kinds of toys and clothes and balls and bats and whatnot, but on top of that, they even get an allowance! "Do whatever you want with it," their folks say, with the usual warnings about spending it all in one place. But what happens when you spoil your kids? Well, you know how this goes: the kids spend their money like damn fools. They buy crap that's too expensive. They buy crap that doesn't work. They buy crap that never shows up in the mail. Basically, they buy a whole bunch of crap, but Mr. and Mrs. Congress -- that's the parents, weirdly enough -- they just keep on bumping up that allowance.

Then one day, completely out of the blue, disaster strikes: Mr. Congress loses his job. Worse yet, summer's coming, and  Army and Air Force are wee little ballplayers. Army's been at it for a couple years, so he's got all the gear, but you know kids -- he's looking for the flashy new model. And Air Force is growing up quick, so he can't even get his little tyke's paw into last year's glove, and he definitely needs a new one. Rough timing, though, with dad getting sacked and all. But those crazy kids managed to stash some cash away in their piggybanks, so they're off to the sporting goods store.

Momma didn't raise no fools, and you just wouldn't even believe the price tag on a Mike Young Hot Corner Synthetic Leather Web Gem Special these days. But Army's got an awesome idea: "hey little bro, I've got this perfectly awesome glove that I don't even really want anymore, and I'm getting a new mitt anyway. And look, this glove is WAY TOO BADASS for some little joke t-ball league, and it's probably a little bit too big for you, and man, Air Force, you little t-ball kids don't even catch the ball with your gloves anyway! But I've got a deal for you: gimme your allowance, and I'll give you my big boy glove. It's a hell of a deal."

This sounds pretty good to Air Force. Sure, Army's right: the glove is way too big, and it's way too fancy for a t-baller. But he'll grow into it, and it saves him spending all day in the mall trying to find a glove he can afford with his meager savings. (No, obviously, he didn't use the word "meager." He's a kid, FFS.) Plus, mom and dad are gonna love this, right? Two allowances, two gloves, no old, unwanted gloves get thrown in the trash.

But then you're never going to guess what happened: DAVID AXE CAME ALONG AND CALLED THIS INNOCENT LITTLE T-BALL KID A "CHEATER" FOR BUYING HIS BROTHER'S OLD GLOVE AND SAVING IT FROM THE TRASH HEAP WHEN ARMY WAS GONNA GET A NEW ONE ANYWAY. And he puts pressure on Mr. and Mrs. Congress to continue needlessly enriching the sporting goods store, because after all, they haven't bought and replaced enough expensive crap from that joint already, and good god, can you even imagine how much more cash they're going to drop in there when these kids get old enough for football? But the parents relent in the face of media criticism, Air Force gets spanked for "cheating," he learns the lesson that it's a bad idea to try to keep your cash in the family instead of pouring it into the sporting goods racket, and the natural order of things is restored when Mr. Congress gets a new job and spends a silly sum on 83 sets of Callaway X-24s for Air Force to play China Golf and Country Club when let's be serious, the damn kid doesn't even like golf in the first place.

Semi-serious, reasonably legitimate content below this point.

Acquisition folks can't win for losing these days. Programs must adapt to unstable, shifting requirements. They fall behind schedule, run over cost, and don't perform up to expectations. Some buys get slashed or cancelled altogether. (Some get shitcanned even without cost/schedule/performance problems when Capability Portfolio Reviews [pdf] decide that the capability on offer isn't affordable in present circumstances.) In light of expected budget stasis, the SECDEF tasks the services with figuring out ways to squeeze out a few extra bucks, pledging that those savings will be applied to the modernization accounts that are likely to get short shrift as a result of reduced topline budget growth. You get criticized for spending time and effort on systems that aren't tailored to the specific challenges of ongoing conflicts. You get criticized for wasting money on crap that doesn't work. You get criticized by industry for not spending enough time, effort, and money on crap that's useless for today's fight, but might come in handy when the balloon goes up with China. Put it this way: It's a hard-knock life if you're in the business of developing or acquiring new weapon systems.

So if you're a senior Air Force acquisition official, it must be particularly galling to click around the interwebz today and find that your efforts to satisfy mission requirements in the most effective legal manner are being described like this: "U.S. Military Cheats Gets Creative for Cost Savings." Defense News covered this in a more charitable manner a couple of weeks ago, but here's the basic story: the Air Force needs to replace some old helos that it uses to monitor its own ICBM sites from the air. Typically, when the military makes a major acquisition, the law mandates that requirements be specified and bids solicited from a number of competitors so as to ensure that the best system is procured for the lowest price -- that is, that the government is getting the best value for the taxpayers' dollar. (There are exceptions to this, but that's the general idea.) In this instance, it seems the USAF is going to take advantage of a 1932 law that allows government agencies to do a sole-source -- that is, noncompetitive -- acquisition if it's filling its need with goods from another government organization. Makes perfect sense, right? One agency gets rid of unwanted gear, another satisfies a requirement, there's a minimum of fuss and delay, and everybody's happy (except the industry guys who feel entitled to pitch their system any time a new buy is made), right? Seems like it to me, but David Axe feels differently.

This is your Army

This morning on the Army's website, one of the lead headlines reads as follows:

WORLD WAR I VETERAN RECEIVES PURPLE HEART 101 YEARS LATER

Hm, that's curious, I thought, considering that WWI hadn't even started 101 years ago. Intrigued, I clicked on the link. Maybe it's a different World War I. Like, World War Eye, or something, not World War One.

In April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson called on Americans to face the freezing, muddy trenches and deadly chemical weapons of the Great War in an effort to make the world safe for democracy. With courage and bravery, American citizens left the peaceful U.S. soil to engage an enemy thousands of miles away.

Cpl. Gus Bishop, then a 20-year-old Kentucky native, chose to fight beside his fellow countrymen. He was severely injured by gunfire during the Meuse-Argonne Campaign, Sept. 26, 1918.

Hm, guess not.

To be fair to Specialist V. Michelle Woods, the article text gets is right: in one place it's "nine decades later," and in another "more than 92 years after getting wounded." So it's just the headline writer at army.mil who thought that World War I was more than a century ago.

(I'm surprised there wasn't a bigger party.)

Seriously though, this is a cool story. Kudos to MAJ Donald Woods, who tracked down the documents and got his grandfather awarded a Purple Heart nearly a century after he sustained his wounds.

Maj. Donald Bishop, officer in charge of communications, 1st Sustainment Brigade, grandson of Cpl. Bishop, said he began searching for his grandfather's military records in an effort to find out about his military history.

"A couple years back I started digging around trying to find his records", said Donald. "I didn't get them for the purpose of getting him a Purple Heart. It was something I wanted, just to try and dig in and try to find some stuff about him."

Through the help of the Kentucky Department of Veterans Affairs, Donald said he was able to obtain Gus's records.

The records stated Gus enlisted in the Army in September of 1917, and arrived in France in May of 1918. He was attached to the 39th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division and Company E, 318th Infantry Regiment, 80th Infantry Division.

He was credited with serving in the Fort-le-Fere engagement, Battle of Saint Milhiel and the Meuse-Argonne Campaign. He left France in May of 1919, and was honorably discharged in June of 1919.

Donald, a Kentucky native, said while going through Gus's records, he realized Gus was not awarded the Purple Heart for his injury.

This tale strikes a familiar note for me: after my grandmother died three years ago, my dad came across a stack of my grandfather's mementos from his time in North Africa and Italy back during the second war. My dad's dad died when I was nine, so the time I spent flipping through his diary and trying to match up bits of colored ribbon with the proper medal helped me learn more about his wartime service than I'd ever known before. My own dad wasn't particularly fluent with the details of his father's units and campaigns, so I'd always wondered things like why (for example) a kid from the South Wales valleys served in the Irish Guards. Turns out pretty much the whole town enlisted in the same regiment, and that's the one they ended up in.

Anyway, neat story. And SPC Woods did a good job with it, even if her editor didn't!

Firing officers who deserve it (or: I agree with Tom Ricks!!)

While reading it certainly violated my New Year's resolution, I thought Tom Ricks' op-ed in the Times was actually pretty good. After some cogent analysis on the events of the past day, he talks about an important issue: the Army doesn't fire enough people and really should do so more often. I imagine the Army's reluctance to do so stems from the old "zero defect" Army and how it destroyed morale up through the mid-1990s. And like most large institutions, their reaction to changing that culture was an over reaction. But the fact remains that bad officers (or officers promoted beyond their capabilities) don't get fired.

The other side of Ricks' argument, how failure to remove ineffective senior officers prevents talented junior officers from progressing, will become more of an issue as general officer careers are extended to 40 years. There are, after all, so many GO positions in the Army. If Iraq and Afghanistan are any indicators, too many senior officers are being kept on beyond their capabilities while extremely competent subordinates could easily replace them. This, too, will (and in some cases already has) caused morale problems in the middle ranks of the officer corps.

I would, however, be wary of anything like the anecdote that Ricks mentions about GEN Marshall promoting a major because he was doing a general's job. While there should probably be changes to the promotion system to streamline the advancement of our best officers, a system should still be used. Otherwise, there would be greater opportunity for abuses of patronage.

All in all, good work Tom.

Friday photo of the day (UPDATED)

So yeah, it's cool that U.S. troops are marching in the Victory Day parade in Moscow today, etc etc. Security cooperation, building bridges between past allies, remembering our mutual sacrifices in the destruction of the Nazi specter and so on and so forth. But easily the awesomest thing about this whole story is this picture of U.S. TROOPS MARCHING ACROSS RED SQUARE.

If you don't watch it, Russkies, next time they'll be serious!

(Ok, not really. (Well, probably not.))

UPDATE: Two more pictures from the day of the parade. First from the NYT...

...second from Danger Room (thanks to karakapend in the comments for this one).

Awesome.

On the bright side, at least these weirdos at MPRI don't know who we are

So apparently the U.S. Army pays contractors to surf the internet looking for blog entries that mention the service. (Because that's not creepy or anything.) If the government wasn't so damn stupid, they'd just have some E-5 reading Small Wars Journal.

Danger Room reports:

You’d think all the criticism from left-wing websites like the Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and Salon would royally piss off the Army. But at least one Army report finds the sites’ posts to be consistently “balanced.”

Every week, the defense contractor MPRI prepares for the brass a “Blogosphere and Social Media Report,” rounding up sites’ posts on military matters. It’s meant to be a single source for top officers to catch up on what’s being said online and in leading social media outlets. Items from about two dozen national security and political blogs are excerpted, and classified as “balanced,” “critical,” or “supportive.” The vast majority of the posts are considered “balanced” — even when they rip the Army a new one.

But let's get to the important part, and the question you're all asking yourselves: How often do they talk about Ink Spots?!

Well, never, now that you ask. And I don't mind telling you that I'm sort of pleased at that fact. Friends of the blog Abu Muqawama and Armchair Generalist aren't so lucky, nor are SWJ, Attackerman, Michael Yon, Blackfive, and some of your other standard big-timers. (Oh yeah, and Danger Room.) So just in case you think we've gotten too big for our britches, the Army is still blissfully unaware of our existence.

(OK, I'll admit it: me calling the government "stupid" is a really thinly-veiled effort to get included in the "Critical" section of the next one of these things.)

300K Sikhs in the U.S., and now there's one in the Army

News to me, but the Army has apparently started granting waivers to personal grooming policy for the first time in a quarter of a century, allowing Sikhs -- complete with uncut hair, turban, and beard -- to serve without sacrificing the tenets of their faith.

Capt. Tejdeep Singh Rattan, a 31-year-old dentist, graduated Monday at Fort Sam Houston after the Army made an exemption to a uniform policy that has effectively prevented Sikhs from enlisting since 1984. "I'm feeling very humbled. I'm a soldier," he said, grinning after the ceremony as other members of the Sikh community milled about nearby. "This has been my dream." Rattan had to get a waiver from the Army to be allowed to serve without sacrificing the unshorn hair mandated by his faith. An immigrant from India who arrived in New York as a teenager, Rattan said it was important for him to serve a country that has given him so many opportunities.

The article I've linked above has a picture of CPT Rattan at his graduation and contains a little bit of info about uniform modifications and wear:

During training, Rattan wore a helmet over the small turban, which he doesn't remove, and was able to successfully create a seal with his gas mask despite the beard, resolving the Army's safety concerns, said Harsimran Kaur, the Sikh Coalition's legal director. Rattan worked with an Army tailor to create a flash, the insignia patch worn on soldiers' berets, that could be affixed to his black turban, she said.

But the way I first found out about this whole story was coming across this picture, which is totally badass, and shows Rattan in ACUs and a Universal Camouflage Pattern-ed (UCP) turban with captain's bars on the front. Awesome.

I wonder if he carries the kirpan, the iron bracelet, and the undergarments, too? (As an aside: when I spent my fabulous summer in Quantico, a Mormon guy in my platoon got an unbelievable amount of crap from the Sergeant Instructors over his wearing of what's apparently called the Temple undergarment. Nonconformity + military = fun & yuks.)

Seriously, though, I think this Sikh thing is pretty awesome. Sikhs have a long and distinguished history of military service: while they make up only two percent of the Indian population, they account for nearly one-third of the Indian army's officer corps. The British military has managed ethno-linguistic/sectarian nonconformity in personal appearance for centuries, so you'd figure the U.S. military can sort out a way to create an effective gas mask seal around facial hair. This is a good-news story for the country and the Army.

"Campaign continuity" and the specialization of the force

Yochi Dreazen of the WSJ reports today that the Defense Department is embarking on an initiative that will send Army and Marine units to the same AORs repeatedly, hopefully allowing those units to retain some of the geographic, cultural, and human terrain knowledge that contributes to effective operations.

The Pentagon is revamping the way it deploys troops to Afghanistan, putting in place a new system that will return units to the same parts of the country so they can develop better regional expertise and closer relationships with local Afghan power brokers.

Senior military officials say the “Campaign Continuity” initiative will determine the specific provinces and regions where many of the 30,000 soldiers and Marines who are being sent to Afghanistan as part of the Obama administration’s retooled war strategy will end up serving.

The plan represents a significant change for the military, which has long rotated its combat forces through both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Under the new system, the Pentagon will essentially be assigning responsibility for the Afghan war to the same small number of Army and Marine units.

“They’ll be going back to the same place and seeing the same faces, so they won’t need to relearn everything from scratch,” said a senior military official familiar with the plan. “It will allow for continuity of effort in a given location.”

The new system is the latest example of the military’s continuing effort to remake itself for the long war in Afghanistan.

I find this move really interesting, if only because the argument has been consistently made over the last decade that specialization is objectively bad for the total force. There's something to that argument, I think, which has usually been made in opposition to the creation of specialized units for training and advising foreign security forces.

As we've discussed here in the past, the Army is adopting a model that treats the training and advisory (or Security Force Assistance) mission the same as every other mission that a combat brigade engages in -- which is to say major combat operations, COIN, stability operations, etc. Units being sent to do SFA are identified at the beginning of their ARFORGEN cycle, provided with a brief period of specialized training, an augmentation of three- to four-dozen additional field grade officers to lead training teams, and are ready to be sent on their way to perform any SFA mission in the AOR of the COCOM to which they've been made available. Then when their "Available/Deployed" period is up, they go back into the ARFORGEN cycle as a regular old combat brigade, doing a year of Reset, and then training up for a "traditional" deployment.

This model is being developed for a couple of reasons, which the Army hasn't stated expressly but which are still pretty obvious: 1) to retain force structure by using the SFA/training mission as a means to justify the continued existence of a large number (in this case, 45) of Active Army brigade combat teams, and 2) to retain flexibility in the force, by allowing a brigade that spent all of 2012, say, doing SFA to deploy to Freedonia for combat operations in 2015. The unit maintains the capability for full-spectrum operations, and so do its individual members.

So what does this have to do with "Campaign Continuity"? Well, for one thing, you're tying up a certain number of brigades on a certain mission and a certain piece of terrain for an intederminate period (that is, the rest of the war). You're also making those units unavailable for what we've identified as high-priority training missions elsewhere in theater, and even beyond. Brigades from the 101st Air Assault and the 82nd Airborne divisions, for example, have performed or have been tapped to function as SFA brigades (or AABs in Iraq). If we assume that those two divisions will be assigned pieces of terrain in RC-East, then we lose those brigades to the training and advisory mission.

All of which means that there's a smaller pool of available units to pull from when picking SFA brigades, which means that that mission will rotate through a pretty limited number, which means, at least in some sense... specialized advisory units. (Except not that specialized.)

I know this is gonna sound crazy, but I... [I don't know if I can do it!] I agr... [Seriously, I just can't write this down!] I AGREE WITH TOM DONNELLY AAAGGGHHH!!!

Thomas Donnelly, a defense analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said Gen. McChrystal “clearly has the strong personal backing” of Defense Secretary Robert Gates as he presses for initiatives like the Campaign Continuity plan.

“It’s no longer a question of adapting a previously existing force for a different kind of war,” Mr. Donnelly said. “At this point, it’s a question of restructuring the entire force for Afghanistan.”

[Man, that was painful.]

I'm sure there's someone on this, but we ought to be thinking about whether all these great ideas about Afghanistan are 1) reducing our flexibility in that war, and 2) foisting limitations on the force that will make it less useful in the future. I know this is the root of the back-and-forth that's been taking place on a grander scale over the last several years -- win the wars of today versus prepare the force for future contingencies -- and I think we all know where I generally come out on that one.

But isn't the point of the ARFORGEN model creating a flexible, rotationally deployable force that can be tailored to specific mission sets? I know you can't develop "campaign continuity" in a 12-month train-up period, but how much tangible positive effect can we expect from this? And are we working towards something like the Vietnam model, where we had "campaign continuity" by unit but individual replacement rendered that unit-level continuity completely irrelevant (and had a number of other pernicious side-effects)?

Look out, Afghanistan! Here come the Campaign Continuity Language Training Detachments!

In response to GEN McChrystal's November 2009 directive that each platoon-sized element in Afghanistan have "at least one leader that speaks Dari at least [sic] 0+ level, with a goal of level 1 in oral communications," the Defense Language Institute and the Army have collaborated to develop specialized language-training detachments to offer pre-deployment classes to troops at three major Army installations.

Soldiers at Fort Campbell, Ky., and Fort Carson, Colo., are now taking language courses that will better prepare them to meet the demands of operations in Afghanistan.

Since Feb.1, more than 70 Soldiers at Fort Campbell have studied either Dari or Pashto in advance of their upcoming deployments to Afghanistan. At Fort Carson, 270 Soldiers began learning Dari, March 8. It's expected some 70 Soldiers will begin Dari instruction in early April at Fort Drum, N.Y.

The three installations now host "Campaign Continuity Language Training Detachments." The detachments are the result of a partnership between the operational Army and the Defense Language Institute. The pilot program is a direct response to requirements put forth by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan, to put more "language-enabled" Soldiers on the ground there.

"His goal is to have one leader in every platoon or platoon-sized element that will
interact with the Afghan population who is familiar enough with the Dari language to go beyond the 'hellos' and 'thank yous' and platitudes -- but to instead have rudimentary conversations," said Lt. Col. Stephen J. Maranian, executive officer for the Army training directorate, G-3/5/7.

The three detachments were built with funding from the Joint Staff from the overseas contingency operations budget. Maranian said money is allocated already for fiscal years 2011-2015 to expand the program to more installations.

The first class at Fort Carson is only seven weeks as a result of time constraints, but future courses will last 16 weeks. Here's what the article has to say about the relationship between course duration and desired end states:

Most students in the past who have taken a 16-week language course ended up with a "0+/0+" level of language capability -- a rating that refers both to speaking and listening capability -- but many have achieved the higher 1/1 goal.

Clare Bugary, the director of operations at DLI, said the 16-week course will meet the 0+ requirement set by McChrystal, but for Soldiers to exceed that and achieve the goal of a level 1 skill, they will need to push themselves."The key is motivation," she said. "If they want it, they can get there. And what we are seeing at Carson and Campbell now is a motivated group of Soldiers who are applying themselves."

Bugary said to guarantee higher levels of language proficiency, students will need to spend more time in class. The DLI's normal Pashto-basic course is 64 weeks long, for instance. "There's no way the Army can send everybody through that.""It's an issue of time really," she said. But she added that the 16 weeks the Army is committing "says a lot" about their willingness to have Soldiers learn both the language and the culture of Afghanistan. "It's a big commitment for the Army to do that, and it's very
encouraging that the Army takes the steps to incorporate language and cultural training. It's going to have a positive effect."

Bugary said the language skill levels, "0+", or "1", for instance, are defined by the Interagency Language Roundtable. On the scale, a level 0 learner has "no ability whatsoever," while a level 0+ learner is "able to satisfy immediate needs with learned utterances." A level 1 student is "able to satisfy basic survival needs and minimum courtesy requirements."

(Here's some more information about skill level descriptions from the Interagency Language Roundtable's website. And here's some related video from DLI.)

It may be that I'm not reading closely enough, but I don't see any mention of how many classroom hours this training entails. Courses on-site at DLI are intensive and take up the bulk of the day, so I'd assume that's the model they're transporting to these other installations. But if this is a one-hour-a-day deal, then that's an entirely different story. You can't really expect people to learn a complicated and very foreign language without a serious commitment to the process, commitment that involves not only time but also centrality of focus. This really can't be something that you're doing alongside your other duties and training modules.

That being said...

Sam G. Garzaniti, director of the Campaign Continuity Language Program at Fort Campbell, said the classes focus first on basic listening and speaking skills before moving on to more practical applications for Soldiers in theater. Maranian added that counterinsurgency doctrine makes it absolutely essential to be able to communicate with village elders about such things as governance, economics and security."After a month, they know alphabet and basic phrases," he said. "In the coming weeks, they will learn social, economic, and military vocabulary to assist them when partnering with and operating amongst the Afghan people."

...are you effin' kidding me? A month to learn the alphabet and basic phrases? That's about how long it took the language retards in my Persian class to learn the alphabet and basic phrases... except we had class one night a week for two hours, and all other study was self-directed (and not really expected)!

I'm not an expert in philology or anything, or in memory, or in syllabus design or human cognition or pretty much anything relevant to this subject (or in pretty much anything at all, now that we're right down to it), but this strikes me as a shockingly un-ambitious learning plan. If you're doing five hours a day, then the first month involves 100 hours of exposure to the language. The entire sixteen week course of study makes 400 hours! As far as I know, Pashto and Dari are both State Department Category II languages, which are meant to require 1100 classroom hours for "minimal proficiency." I see that designation as being considerably more advanced than "basic survival needs and minimum courtesy requirements," mastery of which is what's necessary to demonstrate Level 1 speaking ability.

Does anybody else know anything about this program (particularly the length of the class day)? Has anyone learned a Cat II or Cat III language at DLI or the Foreign Service Institute? How long do you think it should take to be 0+ or 1 in Dari or Pashto? I'd love it if Lil would chime in here, as she's actually taught a language to USG personnel. Maybe I'm being a bit over-ambitious here.

Now this is a totally hilarious quote

Ok, so here I am this afternoon just minding my own business when I see this tweet from @USArmy:

U.S.-Afghan operation in Marja is, "the greatest in the history of counterinsurgency" http://bit.ly/bvx8V6

Uh, ok. So I click on the link, which takes me to an article on army.mil from someone at the American Forces Press Service called Jordan Reimer. The piece starts with this:

The ongoing U.S.-Afghan operation in Marja, Afghanistan, probably is the greatest in the history of counterinsurgency, the United States special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan said in a weekend television interview.

The United States made a concerted effort to introduce combined units from the U.S. and Afghan militaries, the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and Afghan government officials to the area as part of its "clear, hold, build, and transfer" policy, Richard C. Holbrooke told CNN's "GPS" host Fareed Zakaria.

Hmm, ok. No quotation marks. Is this a direct quote, or what? And if it is, what the hell does it mean for something to be "the greatest [operation] in the history of counterinsurgency"? A little more digging and I find the transcript from Holbrooke's appearance on Zakaria's show, and then this:

ZAKARIA: How would you describe the operation in Marjah and how would you particularly describe the - the transference of authority from American forces to locals? Do you think that the Afghans who are likely to take charge are going to be able to hold the territories that General McChrystal clears?

HOLBROOKE: Well, that's the test, and I would agree with General Petraeus' comments to you last Sunday on this program. Clear, hold, build and transfer is the shorthand for the strategy. That's why we made a major effort, probably the greatest in - in the history of counterinsurgency, to bring in with the military forces, as soon as the area was secure, civilians. The U.S. government, the State Department, AID put together a small but very high quality team that's been moving into Marjah and, most importantly, accompanied by Afghan officials.

A little more context here. What it looks like Holbrooke is saying is that Operation Moshtarek included the most significant effort in history to emplace follow-on civilian administration after the AO was cleared of insurgents, which makes a hell of a lot more sense than saying that the operation was the "greatest in the history of counterinsurgency."

Hell, it's probably even true.

(Man, that guy who thinks the sole purpose of this blog is to criticize other people's writing is really gonna hate this one!)

Army announces switch to MultiCam for troops in Afghanistan

Our long national nightmare is over: the Army has decided on a new camouflage uniform for Afghanistan. Starting with troops deploying this summer, the Army will issue MultiCam, a commercially-available pattern that a lot of people who know about this crap seem to think is pretty good. I've written about this debate here and here.

Here's the DoD press release:

The secretary of the Army announced today that the Army will provide combat uniforms in the MultiCam pattern to all soldiers deploying to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, starting this summer.

This decision follows a rigorous four-month evaluation and reflects the Army's commitment to giving soldiers in Afghanistan the most effective concealment possible.

Soldiers deploying to Afghanistan this summer will receive fire resistant Army combat uniforms in MultiCam, along with associated equipment including body armor, rucksacks, and helmet covers.

The Army's selection of MultiCam for soldiers in Afghanistan culminates phase III of a four-phase plan to thoroughly and deliberately evaluate camouflage alternatives.

The Army took action in fall 2009 to provide two battalion-size elements in Afghanistan with uniforms and associated gear in patterns other than the standard-issue universal camouflage pattern (UCP).

One unit received uniforms and gear in MultiCam, and the other in a variant of UCP known as UCP - Delta.

In addition, the Army deployed a team of experts to Afghanistan in October to gather extensive data and photos on the diverse environments of Afghanistan, where soldiers often travel through multiple environments in a single mission, from snow to woodland to desert.

The Army incorporated the information gathered into a photo simulation study it then administered to nearly 750 soldiers who had deployed to Afghanistan. The study asked them to compare six patterns against eight different environments. The results, along with surveys of soldiers in the two battalions who received alternate camouflage, formed the basis for the Army’s decision on MultiCam.

The Army will now implement phase IV of its plan for camouflage, which is to evaluate long-term Army combat uniform camouflage options for all soldiers.

Camouflage alternatives represent one facet of the Army’s ongoing efforts to improve the Army combat uniform. The Army has made more than 26 improvements to the ACU since it was first fielded in June 2004.

And finally, here's a link to some photos of dudes wearing MultiCam uniforms alongside other camo patterns (from Strike - Hold!, which is really where you should be going for Camo Talk).

Jenio firing update

John Ramsey of the Fayetteville Observer is all over this story. As the initial speculation indicated, this isn't an operational issue. Here's the news as of Saturday:

A racially offensive PowerPoint slide meant as a joke led to the removal of two 82nd Airborne Division leaders from their positions in Afghanistan this month, an Army official has confirmed.

Lt. Col. Frank Jenio and Command Sgt. Maj. Bert Puckett were in charge of the 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, which is part of the 82nd's 4th Brigade Combat Team. The team has been in Afghanistan since August.

Jenio and Puckett were relieved of command on Jan. 13 after an investigation that was prompted by a slide shown during a command briefing, according to an Army source with knowledge of the investigation and to a friend of Puckett. The two spoke independently and on condition of anonymity.

The slide - a parody of ubiquitous motivational posters - shows a picture of Michigan State University basketball coach Tom Izzo with his arm wrapped around point guard Mateen Cleaves. Izzo is white; Cleaves is black. The text below the photos reads, "Slavery Reinstated," with smaller letters adding, "Catch yourself a strong one."

According to the Army source, the decision to remove Puckett and Jenio came from the top of the 82nd Airborne Division, which is commanded by Maj. Gen. Mike Scaparrotti.

To be honest, I'm not that interested in this story now that it's clearly about something that's more about Army politics than operational effectiveness. (That's not to say that I don't think this is a fireable offense, or that this isn't a big deal, or that it's just "PC nonsense," or anything like that. I just don't want to spend a whole lot of time going round and round with people on the subject of political correctness, because it's boring. And also not gonna change, no matter what you or Bill O'Reilly wants.) So I offer this as a sort of administrative update to the original story rather than a meaningful contribution to the discussion about Afghanistan.

My one substantive comment is that this ought to remind us that we'll all be a little bit better at our jobs (and a lot less fireable) if we remember four simple words: don't be an idiot.

U.S. cavalry squadron to reinforce Canadian-led TF Kandahar

According to the Calgary Herald, 1st Squadron, 71st Cavalry Regiment, 1st BCT, 10th Mtn will be assigned to Task Force Kandahar in RC-South when 1/10 arrives in country in March.

As Afghan President Hamid Karzai extended an olive branch to Taliban fighters and warlords to lay down their arms in return for money at an international conference in London, another U.S. army unit has received orders to join the war as part of the Canada-led "super brigade" in Kandahar.

The 1st Squadron, 71st Cavalry Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division is to be placed under Canadian command in March when it arrives from Fort Drum in upstate New York.

"Their arrival is key for us because they will help us to finalize the ring of stability around Kandahar City," Canadian Brig.-Gen. Daniel Menard said in an interview. "2010 is the year that we have to make it happen. The only way to do that is to stop talking and to go out and protect the population so they have an alternative to the insurgency."

The incoming unit — between 400 and 500 troops — is to be one of the first U.S. army formations to deploy from the U.S. as part of a surge of 30,000 additional forces that President Barack Obama announced late in 2009.

The Valcartier, Que.-based commander of Task Force Kandahar declined to say exactly where the new U.S. troops would be deployed within his battle space, which includes the provincial capital and three heavily populated adjacent districts.

Three other U.S. battalions (a squadron is the cav equivalent of a battalion, for those who may not be aware) are already serving under Menard's command: 1-12 Infantry (3/4 ID), the 97th Military Police Battalion, and 2-508 PIR (4/82 Abn) [the article mistakenly identifies the battalion as 1-502 PIR, which is actually part of the 101st Abn; if you've been reading here, you know it's actually Frank Jenio's old outfit in the 82d].

h/t to The Torch for this one.

Ryan Phillipe ain't the only one pissed off about stop-loss

(Just for the record, I had to Google to see who was in that movie. I thought it was Timberlake. It probably would've been funnier if I'd written it that way.)

The AP is reporting that a kid from Fort Stewart has been arrested after rapping about how getting stop-lossed was gonna make him shoot up a bunch of people with an M-4, including his brigade and battalion commanders.

Angry that the military planned to send him back to Iraq past his date to leave the military, a Fort Stewart soldier recorded a hip-hop song that blasts the Army and describes going on a shooting spree, an act that led his commanders to decide that the soldier posed a threat to his unit.

The infantry soldier, Spc. Marc A. Hall, has been jailed on criminal charges in Liberty County, Ga., for the past month for a song and other statements that one of his lawyers insists were simply a form of protest.

"They're saying it's a threat. We're saying it's a fantasy," said Jim Klimaski, a Washington civilian attorney who has talked to Hall about the case. "He's mad, but he's not stupid. He's not violent."

The article doesn't say how old Spc. Hall is, but I figure he's probably 21 or 22, considering his enlistment date. Let's be serious: 21-year old kids are dumb. And as Schmedlap has noted, 21-year old kids in the Army like to bitch about everything. Now don't get me wrong, getting stop-lossed will cramp your style, so this isn't just like complaining about the food. But dude, didn't it occur to you that six weeks after a shooting rampage on an Army base probably wasn't the best time to rap about a shooting rampage on an Army base?

Hall posted the song, called "Stop Loss," on his Web site. Klimaski said he also played it for many soldiers in his unit, the 2nd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division.

On the recording, Hall denounces the Army for the policy used to keep thousands of soldiers in the ranks beyond their scheduled dates to leave the military. He also raps about opening fire with his military-issue M-4 rifle.

"I got a (expletive) magazine with 30 rounds, on a three-round burst, ready to fire down," Hall raps on the recording. "Still against the wall, I grab my M-4, spray and watch all the bodies hit the floor.

"I bet you never stop-loss nobody no more, in your next lifetime of course. No remorse."

I wonder how that remorse thing is going now.

Seriously though, even considering the Hasan thing, how do you feel about the way that the Army's handling this? It's probably a little reactionary, yeah, but can they afford to take chances with stuff like this? He's mad about still being in the Army, and about being in Iraq again, and he's armed and has the freedom to use weapons, and that could pose a danger to his fellow soliders... but doesn't that go for a number of guys who are equally pissed-off and just never vented about it on YouTube? Dude's life is gonna be pretty well ruined whether he goes to the slammer or just gets dishonorably discharged without further punishment, and all because he got pissed off and went all Eminem on everyone. Fair?

Gunslinger, did laying down an angry track ever occur to you when you got stop-lossed? I guess the kid should've just blogged about it.

UPDATE: Whoops, I am dumb and Madhu is very smart. Turns out this guy is 34 -- it says so in the article -- and he's just acting like a retarded 21-year old. My bad.