{"id":2850,"date":"2008-09-05T02:26:58","date_gmt":"2008-09-05T02:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=2850"},"modified":"2008-09-05T02:26:58","modified_gmt":"2008-09-05T02:26:58","slug":"reader-response-on-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=2850","title":{"rendered":"Reader Response – On Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"

From time to time, an email or\u00a0comment by a reader is so good it deserves a post of it’s own. The following is by Seerov<\/strong>, a regular commenter, who was responding to the new JFCOM insights doc post<\/a>. He hits all the right notes, in my view:<\/p>\n

Some of you have brought up the very important point of what happens when the networks go down or the censers stop working.\u00a0 This is correct to point out, and military personal will still need to train on “the basics” in case this happens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But networks or not, the most important aspect of any kind of military organization is leadership.\u00a0 We need leaders who can make decisions and accomplish the mission no matter what situation they face.\u00a0Instead of a network-centric military, we need a leader-centric military.<\/p>\n

During OIF I we had terrible intelligence and really had no idea of the real enemy situation during most of the war.\u00a0 During the train up in Kuwait, we were preparing to fight a mechanized force with tanks and APCs.\u00a0 While some units did face this kind of force, most engagements were against small teams of infantry and militias.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I thought this lack of information was just how it was at the small unit level.\u00a0But after reading the book “Take-down: The 3rd Infantry Division Twenty-One Day Assault on Baghdad” I realized that no-one really knew what waited for them the next town over.\u00a0 In Al Samawah, there was literally a parade planned for the unit moving there (This information came from a CIA officer that was in country weeks before the war).\u00a0 When the unit got there, it found itself in one of the fiercest battles of the war.<\/p>\n

And this is how it was during the whole run to Baghdad.\u00a0 We would receive a FRAGO on the next objective and no-one had any idea what kind of enemy we would face.\u00a0 There were some units in 3rd ID that were literally minutes away from being over-run.\u00a0 The Iraqis were more than willing to die and had no problem throwing waves of men and trucks at 3rd ID.\u00a0 Despite what some might think, air support isn’t always available.<\/p>\n

While we did have the technological edge, what stuck out in the book was the decision making and leadership of the officers and NCO’s.\u00a0 This was especially true of the Company Commanders, Battalion Commanders, and Senior NCOs.\u00a0 Because I seen the war at such a micro-level, this book literally opened my eyes at how important leadership\u00a0was for our success.\u00a0 Many people have said our success was due to\u00a0technology.\u00a0 But these same people forget that US forces were literally out numbered\u00a0at least 5 to 1 on the ground and even more important, we were fighting on the Iraqis “home turf.”\u00a0 Its also important to remember that we held the technological edge in Vietnam and it didn’t really matter.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

While it may sound cliche, I just can’t emphasize enough how important it is for our military to have\u00a0well trained leaders.\u00a0 And this is especially true since\u00a0small unit leaders will be expected to do more and more.\u00a0\u00a0Today, a squad is counted on to do what a platoon did in Vietnam and what a company did in WWII.\u00a0 Because of this, we need squad leaders who are as competent as company commanders were 70 years ago.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Major Vandergriff\u00a0<\/a>has probably done the most to\u00a0address the quality of leadership in the Army in the last 10 years.\u00a0 Most of his ideas are geared towards officers so we also need to think about NCO’s and solders.\u00a0 The military needs to attract the best talent this country has, and this isn’t going to be done by paying privates\u00a0$900.00 a month.\u00a0\u00a0Attracting the best talent, and then giving them the best training possible is much more important than any weapon system we have.\u00a0 There’s no reason why an E6 squad leader in the Army shouldn’t be making\u00a0$60.000-$70,000 a year?\u00a0\u00a0Right now, the military\u00a0has dropped its standards and my connections on Sand Hill (Infantry Basic Training) are telling me that it shows.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

I could go on but I think you get my point.\u00a0\u00a0I’m not saying we shouldn’t go net-centric but we need a leadership-centric force first.\u00a0 Remember what John Boyd said:<\/p>\n

<\/strong>“Machines don’t\u00a0fight wars, people do, and they use their brains to do it.”
\n<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From time to time, an email or\u00a0comment by a reader is so good it deserves a post of it’s own. The following is by Seerov, a regular commenter, who was responding to the new JFCOM insights doc post. He hits all the right notes, in my view: Some of you have brought up the very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reader-response"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}