Beliefs vs. Reality

It's been a given for decades: the U.S. has the mightiest military machine the world has ever known. But like many of the assumptions people are operating under nowadays, the facts don't necessarily match the beliefs. Take a look at the following recent reports and decide for yourself whether the epithet still applies:

"General Sounds Alarm on U.S. Army Training" (McClatchy Newspapers)

WASHINGTON — The Army's ability to train its forces is "increasingly at risk" because of the nation's protracted commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan, the general in charge of training has told the Army's chief of staff.

In a Feb. 16 memo to Gen. George W. Casey, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the commander of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, says that the Army has lost thousands of uniformed trainers because of troop demands in Iraq and Afghanistan, has had to put junior officers in charge of some key training functions and has delayed initial instruction for nearly 500 pilots because it doesn't have enough trainers.

Only 30 percent of the instructors at Army training schools are in the military, Dempsey says, with the Army increasingly dependent on outside contractors.

"We are behind in integrating lessons learned, developing training and updating doctrine," Dempsey wrote in the memo, a copy of which McClatchy obtained. "We are undermanned in our efforts to design the future Army."

"Army Sees Sharp Rise in Unfit Soldiers" (USA Today)

The percentage of soldiers who are unavailable for combat has risen sharply during the past three years from 11% of each brigade in 2007 to 16% this year, Army records show.
Repeated deployments and health problems have driven much of the increase in soldiers listed as non-deployable, said Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the Army vice chief of staff. A brigade has about 3,500 soldiers.

"These are folks who had a knee problem after the first (combat) rotation," he said, "and then, finally, after the third one of humping a rucksack in Afghanistan at 10,000 feet, the doc says, 'I don't care if you're going to deploy again, the fact of the matter is you're going to (stay back until you) get your knee fixed.' "

Nearly 70% of the Army's current roster of 460,000 enlisted soldiers have been to war — half of them once, nearly a third of them twice, 13% with three combat tours and 4% deployed four times.

"Study: Fake Military Parts on the Rise" (Politico)

Already heavily taxed by two wars and repeated worldwide deployments, the U.S. military is facing yet another challenge: the increasing intrusion of counterfeit electronics and other parts into its supply lines.

And a new Commerce Department study finds the Pentagon is barely addressing the problem.

The study of contractors, subcontractors and Defense Department agencies tracked the rise in counterfeit electronics entering the system since 2005 — from 3,868 incidents then to 9,356 in 2008. The Navy’s Air Systems Command asked for the study, suspecting that many more counterfeit and defective electronics were finding their way into the Pentagon’s vast supply chain in ways that could affect the reliability of weapons.

The study found many flaws within the system: The different organizations, contractors, subcontractors, manufacturers, distributors and agencies themselves don’t talk enough about the issue. There’s a lack of accountability within organizations. Recordkeeping about instances of counterfeit parts is limited. And most organizations don’t know whom to contact in the government when confronted with fakes.

Most Pentagon organizations, the report also found, don’t have policies in place to thwart counterfeit parts.

"Vanishing American Air Superiority" (American Thinker)

When WWII began in the Pacific, the Japanese possessed a world-class air-superiority fighter in the Mitsubishi A6M Zero. American forces attempted to challenge the Zero with a variety of low-end, often obsolete aircraft such as the F-4F Wildcat, the P-39 Airacobra, and the P-40 Warhawk. (And that says nothing the pathetic Brewster F-2A Buffalo, which didn't even belong in the same historical epoch as the Zero.) The result was a savage, year-long battering ended only by a complete revision of tactics. It wasn't until 1943 that a crash program involving direct flyoffs against a captured Zero resulted in the F-6F Hellcat, which outmatched the Zero in all factors and at last turned the tide in our favor.

Similarly, the Soviets, with the help of the British labor government that sold them the rights to the Rolls-Royce Nene engine and the Rosenberg spy ring who helpfully provided swept-wing wind tunnel data, made a dramatic technological leap in the late '40s with the MiG-15. Over Korea, USAF pilots were forced to contend with an enemy aircraft that was as fast as theirs and more maneuverable at altitude. Only superior U.S. training kept communist air forces at bay until, almost by accident, the new model F-86E Sabre, fitted with hydraulic controls, at last overcame the MiG advantage and handed air superiority to U.N. forces.

We'll be facing such a situation again, and sooner than we'd like. One of these days, over the Taiwan Straits or Central Asia, we will learn that eternal air superiority is not guaranteed to the United States as some kind of codicil to Manifest Destiny. American air forces will inevitably suffer a whipping unlike any they've endured in decades, and American troops and sailors will have to learn how to operate in conditions where we lack air superiority, something unheard of since 1943. (Heads up, Ralph Peters!)

One of the major failings of American politics involves its short-time horizon. American voters and politicians simply cannot grasp that actions taken today can have consequences years and decades down the line, and that, in a majority of cases, there will be no second chances. Barack Obama has proven to have far more limited foresight than even the average American pol. The F-22 cancellation is a clear example of this. There will be plenty more to come.

"Mattis: Obsolete Thinking Worse Than Obsolete Weapons" (American Forces Press Service)

The only thing worse than obsolete weapons in war is obsolete thinking, a top U.S. commander cautioned in remarks on revitalizing America’s military officer corps.

Marine Gen. James N. Mattis, commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command, yesterday emphasized the role education plays in enabling military officers to adapt quickly to strategic and tactical changes they encounter.

“It’s opening the aperture,” he said, describing the value afforded through education. “Once you stretch the mind open, it’s hard for it to go back to how it was before.”

Mattis delivered his remarks at an event hosted by the Center for a New American Security, a policy think tank, in conjunction with a study by the center on improving the way military officers are trained, evaluated and promoted.

“The U.S. military must develop a model that trains and educates officers for the complex interactions of the current threat environment while being agile and versatile enough to adapt to a swiftly changing world beyond,” contributors John Nagl and Brian Burton wrote in the CNAS study published ahead of yesterday’s panel discussion. Mattis underscored the importance of complementing experience operating as part of a coalition on a battlefield with study of history and wars of the past.

“Through education built on an understanding of history and through experience gained on joint coalition operations, and probably commencing earlier in officers’ careers,” he said, “we can create an officer corps at ease with complex joint and coalition operations.”

Mattis stressed the need for a new “strategic reawakening” among military officers, making an apparent reference to the design in place before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

“By setting the problem first and spending a lot of time up front getting it right, you don’t invade a country, pull the statue down and say, ‘Now what do I do?’” he said, in an allusion to the iconic image of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein’s likeness being pulled down by a U.S. military recovery vehicle.

Focusing on the culture of the senior military officer corps, Mattis bemoaned that senior-ranking military members aren’t allowed ample time to reflect critically on important issues.

“I believe the single primary deficiency among senior U.S. officers today is the lack of opportunity for reflective thought,” he said. “We need disciplined and unregimented thinking officers who think critically when the chips are down and the veneer of civilization is rubbed off -- seeing the world for what it is, comfortable with uncertainty and life’s inherent contradictions and able to reconcile war’s grim realities with human aspirations.”

Comments

[roger]

Motivation is the key ingredient,it supersedes equipment and training
Beliefs vs. Reality: all societies are under the illusion that they
have the best fighting men

[Fred]

What gives a crap about the Army preparedness to fight illegal undeclared unConstiutional wars in Iraqistan? We shouldnt be there AT ALL. So those that go, I have no sympathy, after all this is a VOLUNTEER army. Boohoo about their bad knees. If theyre lucky they wont get them shot off.

[Buffalo Soldier 9]

Keep telling that history:

Read the novel, Rescue at Pine Ridge, "RaPR", a great story of black military history...the first generation of Buffalo Soldiers.

How do you keep a people down? ‘Never' let them 'know' their history.

The 7th Cavalry got their butts in a sling again after the Little Big Horn Massacre, fourteen years later, the day after the Wounded Knee Massacre. If it wasn't for the 9th Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers, there would of been a second massacre of the 7th Cavalry.

Read the novel, “Rescue at Pine Ridge”, 5 stars Amazon, Barnes & Noble and the youtube trailer commercial...and visit the website http://www.rescueatpineridge.com

I hope you’ll enjoy the novel. I wrote it from my mini-series movie of the same title, “RaPR” to keep my story alive. Hollywood has had a lot of strikes and doesn't like telling our stories...its been “his-story” of history all along…until now. The movie so far has attached, Bill Duke directing, Hill Harper, Glynn Turman and a host of other major actors in which we are in talks with…see imdb.com at; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0925633/

When you get a chance, also please visit our Alpha Wolf Production website at; http://www.alphawolfprods.com and see our other productions, like Stagecoach Mary, the first Black Woman to deliver mail for Wells Fargo in Montana, in the 1890's, “spread the word”.

Peace.

[Independent Accountant]

MO:
I read the American Thinker article too. I have posted a few times about America's diminishing air superiority and the fate of the F-22. It seems you are the only other "financial" blogger who has a serious interest in military affairs.