"Regardless, all of these missions are legitimate, and all are challenges for any unit and commander."

Yes and no.

Are they missions that need to be performed?

Yes.

Are they legitimate missions for an artillery battalion?

No.

What they are are CS/CSS missions that should be performed by MP-constabulary/infantry/logistics-mobility units that the Army just doesn't have. The fact that FA units are being square-pegged into them is another sign that the Army is tapped out for useful bodies. Note that I say useful, since there are probably scads of boots walking around the Five-Sided Happy Farm who could be doing this stuff but are gainfully employed lobbying Congressmen for the FCS and similar Cold War goodies that - despite the fact that the realities on the ground in the Middle East are such that FA units are being cannibalized into ersatz MPs, grunts and convoy escorts - the Army is unwilling to let go.

For my money, I agree with you Phil, that this assignment says little or nothing about the fate of the officer involved. But it speaks volumes of the state of my branch. While I understand that the current thinking is that we will never need the kind of FA assets we used in WW2, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq War 1, IMO if that's the case we need to be honest about it and have the "Restructure the Force" argument now, rather than hiding from it.

Sorry to go so quickly off-topic, but you've hit a very raw nerve.

Yeah, FDChief, I hear you. I just come at these things from a different place, because I was an MP, and always taught that MP = "multi-purpose." My branch is used and abused for so many different taskings that I got used to it.

I think there are some very real concerns here though, including but not limited to:

- The general use of artillery for all things non-kinetic because hey, "effects based" operations are the same whether you're talking about artillery or civil affairs. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The targeting process (as conceived by the military) may be similar, but there is something fundamentally different between civil affairs/PSYOP work and artillery work.

- Atrophy of skills. I really do worry about the atrophy of kinetic skills in the combat arms. Sure, these lieutenants and sergeants are learning tons about combat leadership, but they're not practicing the fundamentals of combined-arms warfare. And though we talk a lot about how COIN is the graduate level of war, in fact, conventional ops are pretty complicated too. It takes a lot of skill/practice to be capable of synchronizing fire and maneuver on the modern battlefield. Every time you reflag an artillery or armor unit as provisional infantry or MPs, you degrade their ability to be artillery or armor.

- Reflagging. You can't just "shake and bake" MPs in a 90-day course. It takes years to learn how to be an effective law enforcement professional, whether you're working the streets or doing corrections work. I worry that someone high up in the Pentagon actually believes you can reflag artillery units as MPs and have them be comparable to actual MPs. Hardly. (And it wouldn't work the reverse (MP to artillery) either.) These "in lieu of" units do a good job, but they're not the same. Something to consider.

That said, LTC Yingling is a helluva officer who understands the human dimension of warfare. If anyone can improvise / adapt / overcome, it's him.

"And though we talk a lot about how COIN is the graduate level of war, in fact, conventional ops are pretty complicated too."

In the case of a battery FDO this is like saying that driving an Indy car is pretty tough to do.

An FA O-1 has perhaps the most technically complex job for his grade in the Army. I've worked with many, but served with few who I thought capable of handling the job in combat. Leading a rifle platoon is more tactically complex but has similar components whether you're fighting the Sons of Iraq or the Panzer Lehr. FA tasks versus guarding prisoners or escorting convoys aren't just apples and oranges, they're apples and hand grenades.

It's not a question of adapting and overcoming, rather it's a degredation and eventually the loss of an extremely complex, highly perishable set of technical skills. We're eating the FA seed corn in Iraq; the grain that fed us in the big wars of the Twentieth Century.

In the wider perspective, I think that LTC Yingling might be the first to argue that the kind of kinetic forces we needed for those wars may be as obsolete as the flintlock. But the point is that we're not HAVING that argument, we're simply sliding into the COIN-first mode by default, and the people who should be at C&GSC and the War College and on the Army Staff - like LTC Yingling - are instead hauling wood and drawing water in the latest of our splendid little wars, a racehorse harnessed to a donkey cart.

FDChief,

I agree with you here that having FA take on these assignments without a real analysis of how these off-specialty assignments effect readiness in the long-term is a bad idea. Given our current commitments to maintain troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, rotate units out of both theaters, and maintain some semblance of reserve, what choice is there? We honestly don't have the MP, infantry, or civil affairs personnel to do the jobs without "eating the FA seed corn".

One of the admittedly few things that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld got right is that we need to realign our forces to fight the types of wars we'll engage in. That means we may need to alter the balance among the combat arms, so that we have a higher proportion of the MP forces we need so badly in Iraq in addition to FA, armor, etc... It's unfortunate that we are in a situation that requires us to do both at the same time, possibly sacrificing the career development of folks like LTC Yingling along the way. Eating our young in that way will likely hurt us down the road, but what is the solution to the problem at hand? Given the mindset needed for COIN, I'd rather have LTC Yingling doing the job than someone less thoughtful and perceptive. Who better for leading the "strategic" corporals used to focusing on their big guns when they have to change focuses for a people-oriented, communication-based, security task?

"Eating our young in that way will likely hurt us down the road, but what is the solution to the problem at hand?"

The same solution that von Rundstedt gave to Keitel in 1944: "Make peace, you fools!"

The bottom line is and has alws been this: for a foreign occupier, the equation is get Roman or go home. No post-1945 Western occupier has won a foreign counterinsurgency outside of a handful of "special cases" like Malaya (where the British "won" by "losing", promising the Malays independence with one hand while the MLRA made mistake after mistake with the other) or Yemen. So the foreigner can win by making a desert and calling it peace, or he can slap up a local proxy, arm it to the teeth and then look away while the locals do the butchering needed to bring the rebels into the truce tent.

And, more to the point, why would a nation, founded in rebellion against foreign occupation, dedicated to the principles of liberty and political freedom, want to engage in more of these sordid little sectarian squabbles, backing Bosniak aainst Serb, Shia against Sunni (and Shia), warlord against warlord? Given the mindset needed for COIN - that is, that we know better than the dusky heathen what is good for them - ummmm, why would I as an American WANT my Army to develop that kind of mindset?

LTC Yingling's point was that the general officers of the U.S. Army did not provide the nation the military leadership it needed. They did not warn our nation of the geopolitical implications of smashing a corrupt tyranny in a semi-failed Ottoman state. They did not apprise the People of the true costs and true difficulties - impossibilities - of building the state we claimed to want from the reality of Iraq, circa 2003. They did not demand honesty and clarity from their political leadership. They saluted and moved out smartly. As their counterparts did for Germany in the 1940's, they won the military victory without a political result.

LTC Yingling's current assignment isn't a story of personal loss and personnel policy. It's a symptom of a malaise of geopolitical strategic moronity that feeds the roof beams into the fire because we cannot think of a better way to hunt roaches than by burning the house down.

Lets not leave the other services out of this expeditionary calculus. The Army in general and specifically the Military Police 'should' be conducting detention ops. However, given the current mission saturation for MPs, the Air Force and the Navy are providing a huge portion of the DetOps manpower. When I was at Camp Bucca last year, the only positions that the Army held were battalion leadership staff and some support functions (commo, supply, DFAC). Almost all 'hands-on' with the detainees was conducted by Air Force and Navy personnel. This is not meant to complain about the "in-lieu-of" mission that I was tasked with, actually quite the opposite. As an Air Force member my deployment was only 7 months, my Army counterparts did almost 14. I only want to point out that not only are non-MPs doing MP jobs, non-ARMY are doing MP jobs. >

:-)

As an Air Force Security Forces officer (the USAF equivalent of an MP) I had worked with the MPs on previous deployments and led a combined (MP+SF) LE flight in Germany. I was, however initially concerned about the working with the Navy since they had brought all different "rates" (MOS/AFSC) with them. It pains me to say that there were a number of Naval Submariners and Nuke Officers that handled detainee ops better than my SF/MP brethren.

Detention Ops is a strange beast. We used to say "You can't win the war in the TIF, but you can sure as hell lose it."

@FDChief: in the eloquent words of the Bloodhound Gang, "The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire..."

FDChief is on a roll, and I'm lovin' it. I agree with every word he's written. I like this topic. It gets to the heart of what military professionals should be discussing. This saga begins with Phil Carter not really taking a position regarding Mr. Gates's pretty noteworthy comments--first time in living memory, Phil--and then attacking his pal Fred Kaplan for suggesting that maybe a certain LTC is being taken to the woodshed for daring to note that the emperor (Army generals) has no clothes.

FDChief then takes Phil to task, noting that there are an awful lot of good reasons why putting a field artillery unit to work the way Yingling's unit is going to be employed is really kind of stupid. Phil then backs up and agrees with FDChief, but lamely concludes, "well, it's really OK, because Yingling is a hot-shot guy and he can handle whatever's thrown at him."

So Phil's post turns into an endorsement of Yingling, which neither he nor we needed, and not a searching examination of: (1) the crying need for a total structural scrub of the Army in light of what now appears to be a laser-like focus on COIN to the exclusion of the Army's more conventional national security mission; (2) just how the typical PFC cannon cocker is equipped to do the mission (keeping in mind that Yingling will not be there to hold his hand); and, (3) whether or not this assignment for Yingling is punitive in nature and that he's being set up to fail in a mission that's "absolutely critical for counterinsurgency."

Phil, I wonder why you're not a little more curious as to why a unit that's not in any way qualified to conduct a mission that's "absolutely critical for counterinsurgency" is being assigned to such a mission. I wonder why you don't see the implications inherent in this, a true indicator of scraping the bottom of the barrel. Is it your position that MOS, training and background of the troops are immaterial so long as the commander is a water walker?

And then there are the implications for the Army as a whole. What good is a cannon-cocker who hasn't done his tables for years? A tanker who hasn't done gunnery in years? Might as well do away with these arms rather than maintain the fiction that they're ready to do their jobs in the event of a true threat to the nation.

Boy, what a grand adventure this has all turned out to be. Look what the Army's given all these boys who'd otherwise be bored to tears in those Lawton gin mills. Be all you can be, indeed.

FdChief is not the only one concerned. There was a recent memo sent to the Army C/S by three active duty colonels that claims less than 10% of artillerymen are currently qualified due to nine out of ten being assigned out of their MOS.

Brought to you by the National Journal via d-n-i.net. See http://www.d-n-i.net/dni/2008/04/25/ready-aim-misfire/

I know there some out there who say that we will not fight another conventional war. Maybe so or maybe not, but the point is now that we no longer can. IMHO that is criminal negligence.

It looks like General Casey allowed this to be published. Perhaps he is finally starting to see the light and is sick of the atrophy of our National Security capabilities by the Bush administration???

mike

The American version of the French Foreign Legion - that is what America has come to?
Bring back the draft. Eliminate the entire professional military. These folks are trained to fight and fighting is what they do. They have a built-in interest in making certain that war is continuous. After all, only through war can promotions move more quickly. Only through war can the military machine continue to consume the biggest chunk of resources. Only through war can we be subjected to idiotic discussions about whether or not some dude is being screwed by the Army brass by assigning his unit to guard prisoners. This is an illness that can only be cured when every citizen is subject to military conscription and the professionals are given the boot.
Americans want war to be sanitized, fought elsewhere and not spoken about. The professionals are happy to accomodate the lazy American public because then they (the pros) can have the field to themselves. Then they can create the necessary conditions to keep the war machine thriving. When the draft replaces the pros, Americans will once again be faced with having to think more carefully about going off to a shooting war just because our incompetent president thinks we ought to.

Why does the Army want more counterinsurgency units. Whose insurgency are we countering and why? An insurgency is a civil war waged by small units in an asymmetric manner. In other words more kill for the buck. Currently we are fighting in Sadr City and Basra in support of one Shia faction over another, while building a Berlin wall to "protect" the citizens. The Army in Iraq is stuck in an intractable position with more permutations than can be planned for.

A thread on "Retooling the Artilleryman" at SWJ

http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=4438

One of the great things about our military is that we can be utilized for a variety of missions and that we aren't pigeon-holed into just doing "one thing" as some organizations are prone to do. That's what makes the DoD the option of choice for our government when it comes to any crisis. Domestic or overseas, as a senior NCO, the one thing that I can't stand coming out of anyone's mouth is "That's not my job". Well, I've got news for you, in the military your job is "What ever the mission or CO calls for", that's why it's called "Service" and not some narrowly defined job description that you can go running to your shop foreman and cry about. Also, I believe the cross-training that has gone on (I am in Civil Affairs, so I know how much our branch has had to reach out) just shows you what can be accomplished. Let's face it, good old Infantry skills can be imparted into other MOS's, no disrespect to the 11B's, but with good solid training why can't an Artillery BN perform decently when assigned to foot patrol an area? It goes back to the basics, like the Marines always say "Every Marine a Rifleman". Just my thoughts.

Stupid question . . .

I was an S2-type 96B before 9/11 and I took part in enough FTXs where our training was tailored to our strengths and preferences rather than what the enemy might actually do, especially a smart enemy who's schooled on our strengths and preferences ... as well as our weaknesses and aversions. For a troop whose ostensible job it was to think about the enemy, that was frustrating (one reason so few 96Bs re-enlisted). So now, we are in a messy real war, rather than a custom-designed FTX with an end-ex, and I still see the same insular mentality.

My question: if before the War on Terror and its other-than-Arty missions, our Arty troops acquired their skills in training rather than actual battlefields, why can't Arty skills continue to be preserved during training when our Arty units are away from today's real-world battlefields?

Despite my question, I can empathize with the frustration of Arty soldiers. Like I said, it was frustrating for me as a S2-type 96B before 9/11 because I felt like I was always doing everything other than what I was trained to do and signed up to do. I often worried about how I would keep my PVTs and myself trained up on 96B go-to-war skills when our real-world (peace-time) job demanded everything but from us. I had to accept that being a soldier is more fundamental than being a 96B. I wouldn't be surprised if many Arty soldiers, like many 96Bs before 9/11, left the Army because they couldn't do their job. Unlike my MOS, though, Arty soldiers by and large work for Arty commanders who can advocate for their MOS and find the space and time for their troops to train in it.

Anonymous NCO:

The concern is that as a result of using a FA Bn to perform non-FA tasks like this, we will have one less combat ready FA Bn in the force structure for the duration of its tour plus probably another year as it retrains. Spread that out across all the units that have been tapped to perform non-MTOE rotations, and that doesn't leave an Army at C-3 or higher readiness for anything other than Iraq.

The issue is not whether soldiers should obey lawful orders and be multi-purpose willing. The issue is a leadership, or more accurately, a policy decision that has reduced our Army to a one theater, one tactic capability.

If we don't need that FA Bn in the force structure, then reflag it as something else and change the force structure. Otherwise, have the courage to increase the structure to get the job in Iraq done while still having the ready and trained units for our other potential missions.

This is a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, an approach which typically fails.

Aviator47:

I'm a fan of Tom Barnett, who advocates for a follow-on dedicated "SysAdmin" force that takes over the post-war from the "Leviathan" or war-fighting force.

Is that the answer? Or do we merely increase the size of CA, MPs, and other MOSs more commonly associated with the post-war?

Eric:

Barnett has all manner of modernist ideas for the US military. However when you separate the wheat from the chaff, his bottom line is "Constant coalition armed meddling in the affairs of the duskies who do not, at the present fit into the Globalist scheme of things."

Iraq and Iran now, Nigeria tomorrow. The Chinese aren't stupid, they are establishing a foothold in Africa to ensure future resources; hence the US Africom.

Future administrations will have to decide if the Barnett template is the way to go, since it buries the founding fathers' ideas of what we are about. Also, the American people, writ large, are way too doofus to understand the topic nor its' implications. Just look at their reactions as to the causes of high gas prices.

"why can't Arty skills continue to be preserved during training when our Arty units are away from today's real-world battlefields?"

It depends on what you call "Arty skills".

The 10-level tasks are fairly straightforward and can be relearned pretty quickly by individual gunbunnies. The difficulty is that simply firing an artillery piece quickly and accurately is one of the most complex crew drills in the Army. From the gun chief through the gunner, number 1 man all the way down to the ammo handlers, everyone has to execute their portion of the task with terrific speed BUT be completely accurate - and I mean two-decimal-places accurate - ALL the time. One time - once - setting the fuse to 1.7 seconds rather than 17 seconds and you get an airburst right over the perimeter of the FOB rather than downrange. Get it?

And even worse is the loss of skills in the fire direction center. If my BCS/AFATADS operator is walking point and not processing missions, my charts-and-darts guy is pulling security, not setting up his plotting board, my FDO is planning ambushes instead of clearing fires or checking calcs...all of these skills are degrading. And fire direction is a tremendously perishable task. If you don't do it - A LOT - errors creep in very quickly. And errors in fire drection mean blue-on-blues. They mean enemy attacks not disrupted, enemy defenses not destroyed, infantrymen dying because the fire support they need isn't there.

What this reminds me of is the Wehrmacht in the latter days of WW2. Air defense units, ground crews, sailors, all cannibalized to become galvanized infantry. Why? Because each of the German services was jealous about holding onto their own people rather than accept that what the strategic situation needed was landser instead of ground crews and battleship sailors.

ISTM that this entire conversation is predicated on several errors:

1. That what we're currently doing in Iraq and Afghanistan is what we should be doing in the future.

In point of fact, Afghanistan should have been a punitive expedition. We have no business still there trying to turn a tribal wasteland into EPCOT Center and will not be successful without a level of blood and treasure that would make the fattest Republican country club armchair warrior blanch.

Iraq is a mess; a mess we should have stayed out of. We're now stuck in the tarbaby and are pretty much screwed. But saying thet because you jammed your dingus in the electric fan you need to work your dingus instead of avoiding rotating blades in the future is somewhere between stupid and masochistic.

2. Conventional Western force is the solution to Third World problems.

And this is because...mmm...why, again? Listening to people like Bob Kagan - who has been consistently wrong on every issue he's pontificated on - would make you think that lots of people around the world want Americans to invade and straighten their lives out. But think about it - how happy are you when the police kick your door in every time you have a fight with your wife? And whay if you're the cop? No words chill out a cop like "domestic dispute" - everybody is gonna come away pissed off, or injured, or dead.

3. We need to rejigger our military to do more of this stuff.

See #1 and #2 above.

If we want to become the Imperial Rome or Victorian Britian of the 21st Century, we need to have the discussion at the national level. Because the costs - the political, economic and social costs - could be huge and the rewards very small. Or not - I could be wrong. But I'd want to think that we went into the thing with our eyes open, knowing the alternatives and the costs and potential risks and rewards for each one. Because I'd hate to get e-mails from my son fighting in southern Mexico in 2022 describing how he was up to his ass in alligators without having debated whether it was worth jumping into the swamp in the first place.

As FDChief says, it's all about collective training to the standard. Corporate types used to call it synergy. The Army spent years training and grooming units to function, to the standard, for the mission they were organized and equipped to perform, so that when it was time to perform that mission, they would do it to the same standard they trained to. This gave us the finest Army possible.

Units are not just a bunch of individuals. They are carefully designed collections of soldiers who have been trained in a skill. Then they are trained to apply their skills within a unit to achieve unit objectives. Each successive level of leadership is experienced in the craft and trade of his role in the unit in order to be able to not only lead but mentor and train his subordinates. We don't just put any Lt Col in command of an arty Bn. We select those who have the demonstrated skill, experience and ability to command an arty bn. And in commanding that arty bn, he will gain a major piece of the skill to command a higher echelon arty unit.

Now we toss out what made us the finest and accept less. Much less.

Dangerous and foolish.

FDChief,

Thanks. Point taken that a MOS that demands a high level of precision and coordination, where a small error can be disastrous, requires continual upkeep. The purpose of a standing Army, like we have, is to be ready to go to war at any time, yet as things stand, if we go into combat tomorrow that demands traditional FA, our FA won't be ready. In addition to your example, I'm reminded of the tragedy of the occupation soldiers, ie, Task Force Smith, we sent into a total war in Korea a mere 5 years removed from the same military defeating two of the great military powers of the world. We can get it back, but a break in readiness can be very costly.

On the other hand, even if we remove peace operations from our missions and focus on war, assuming we win, that still leaves the post-war as part of war. One of my main pet peeves when I served is that we seemed to ignore the post-war in our training and planning, so the difficulties we've encountered during the War on Terror haven't surprised me. The need to use Arty troops the way we do today is a result of the aversion to OOTW. Moving forward, should we train and plan for the post-war, which looks a like peace operations, so that Arty (hopefully) can stick to Arty even in a post-war, or do you think it's wiser for the military to ignore the post-war in order to avoid the risk of peace opeations?

Eduardo:

Barnett is also big on winning the wars we've got, rather than insisting on the wars we want. That said, Desert Storm gave us the confidence (or hubris) to attempt a peace operation in Somalia. I doubt that OIF and OEF will give us a similar push into operations outside of our most pressing security and economic interests.

Of course, as you brought up with the China in Africa example, what we don't considering pressing now may well come back to hurt us in 10-20 years.

"Future administrations will have to decide if the Barnett template is the way to go, since it buries the founding fathers' ideas of what we are about."

Agreed. We're making decisions now that are setting the path to what we'll be in the 21st century. Back in the day of the Founding Fathers, we were a dependent part - a client - of the British global (economic) empire, Revolution or no Revolution. With all due reverence to the Founding Fathers, a lot of things have changed since then.

Eric Chen: "Back in the day of the Founding Fathers, we were a dependent part - a client - of the British global (economic) empire, Revolution or no Revolution. With all due reverence to the Founding Fathers, a lot of things have changed since then."

Eric, I don't think you're giving our Founders the credit they deserve. Nothing has changed the historical verdict that this was the most intelligent and farsighted grouping of men in our nation's history. Recall Kennedy's famous toast to the assembled Noble winners back in 1962 or so: "The greatest collection of brainpower to ever dine in this house (the White House) since Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

The Founders knew what they had. They knew they had this huge continent just waiting for them and their descendants to settle it. As Englishmen who were well aware of what a tiny island had done in dominating the world, they knew America would eventually surpass England, Spain, France, and all of the other powers. Note Jefferson's grab of the Louisiana Purchase.

Our Founders knew we would be the preeminent world power, and that's why we should heed their words regarding foreign entanglements. They didn't want their future world power to get entangled with the old, tired Euro battles. They were not meek, nor were they pacifists. They knew wars were inevitable, thus the Constitutional authority to Congress to raise armies. But they didn't want stupid wars; they didn't want us regressing.

And what did we do in the 20th Century? WW1 and WW2, Korea and Vietnam. WW1 was actually avoidable for us, but we chose to participate. OK, but then we blew it in going along with the old, tired Euros at Versailles, thus helping sow the seeds for the unavoidable and inevitable WW2. Based on the history that had gone before, Korea was probably unavoidable. And then we fell into the Euro trap with Vietnam, siding with the vestiges of colonialism. The 21st Century has seen the same: Iraq is merely a continuation of old Euro colonial battles. We're now enmeshed in a civil war and we don't even understand that we're still fighting the colonial wars.

What's this got to do with Phil's post? Everything, because it's proven impossible to properly structure our armed forces given the backdrop of colonialism and unwise entanglements. We are busily remaking our military, the crown jewel of the nation, the ultimate guarantor of our freedoms, into a foreign legion, an agent of conquest. Military conquest was never part of the equation. It was all supposed to happen peacefully, with the better idea being spread around the world. As noted, our Founders were not pacifists, as the Barbary Pirates learned. As best as I can tell, their operating philosophy was something, you leave us alone, we'll leave you alone. But if you hurt us, we'll hurt you back big-time. The Founders would have approved of an Afghanistan punitive expedition. They would not have approved of the follow-on there, and they would have violently disapproved of Iraq.

Bottom line: if our military leadership thinks it necessary to have artillery men and tankers because the skills are needed in light of perceived threats to the nation, then those soldiers should be the very best in the world at what they do. This costs a lot of money, but if that's what it takes, then so be it. So we have to ask ourselves why it is that our military leadership doesn't bat an eye at assigning these highly skilled individuals to positions where those finely honed skills will atrophy, so that they can be half-assed infantrymen and MPs, jobs that also call for highly trained individuals.

So from where I sit, our military leaders are just a bunch of liars. They told the American people they needed to spend a lot of tax dollars in making these troops the "best they could be," but they don't seem to bat an eye at placing them in positions where skills degradation is a given, and where they can't perform as well as a properly trained infantry, civil affairs, intelligence or MP soldier can.

We should ask ourselves how it is that, without much protest at all, our military leaders find themselves leading an ill-trained force off to fight in what's called an essential war for the nation. And also without doing the hard work to restructure the force if that's the bottom line. Conclusion: Good Germans. Good button men.

If the deep political and military thinkers believe that we should have a foreign legion, the least they can do is be honest about. Maybe then we can stop spending the money on the training and hardware that's all intended for use in the "big one" that they clearly don't believe will come. If they feel that secure, if they feel that sophisticated threats are not on the horizon, then I think the American people would appreciate some honesty. But why would they? As it stands now, they have the best of all worlds: they're raiding the national treasury to fund an ill-trained foreign legion, while in the meantime maintaining the fiction that they're ready to counter those serious threats they've been wailing about for years.

We are involved in the mother of all liars' contests.

Eric:

"That said, Desert Storm gave us the confidence (or hubris) to attempt a peace operation in Somalia."

I got a simpler reason, We landed in Somalia in December 1992 (one month after Bushie père found out he was the lamest of ducks and out of a job) This self besotted fool thought he was going to do a quickie meals on wheels before bill's inauguration, in order to be crowned with a Nobel prize (as did the equally feckless Clinton with the attempted Palestinian-Israeli peace pact.

Barnett speaks of alliances to do the Sys-Admin work, so our Somalia/Balkanistan era military would have been peachy keen for such activities. Bushie the Lesser's excellent adventures have diminished the pool of allies willing for us to lead the way in such endeavors in the future (unless the operations prominently feature goat rapine).

In the 21st century, regardless of who is president, we, and our competitors will be seizing a lot of territory laden with needed resources and installing our SOB's on the natives (just like in the cold war).
Not too much fun for the natives, but isn't that why they were put on this earth?

One small problem for Barnett and his high tech sponsors, Enterra (TM); where will we get the soldiery and "A" personality, State type humanoids for this Sys Admin work?
Conflict-avoiding types like Max Boot suggest we should press gang hordes of Furriners for the mission. How about MS-13?
they could teach the waiverable wannabe lawbreakers we hire now a few tricks.

Sorry, forgot to put my name on the last post.

Publius:

"The Founders would have approved of an Afghanistan punitive expedition. They would not have approved of the follow-on there . . . "

This leads me the same question I asked FDChief: Moving forward, should we train and plan for the post-war, which looks a lot like peace operations, or do you think it's wiser for the military to ignore the post-war in order to avoid the risk of peace opeations?

My opinion is that you can't do war and not do the post-war, and if the post-war becomes doctrine, then the debate about restructuring the military becomes settled, even if the debate over how the military should be used is not.

"So we have to ask ourselves why it is that our military leadership doesn't bat an eye at assigning these highly skilled individuals to positions where those finely honed skills will atrophy . . . "

That's not new. Army leaders, at least in my experience, shift around bodies as a common solution. They get away with it most of the time due to their soldiers' professionalism and ability to adapt and overcome. Mission not matching training isn't new in my experience, either. Sans war, my main job in S2 was unit security manager and you better believe my go-to-war 96B skills atrophied. Train for unit security manager? Heck, no one in AIT even mentioned it. Near my ETS, I attempted to do an end-run around my Chain of Command in order to get one of my soldiers into real MI training rather than another driver/courier detail (TS-SCI clearance = driver/courier detail) - got caught, and just as I feared, he was stuck on a driver/courier detail. Sans fire missions, it looks like Arty soldiers are being stuck, too.

"And also without doing the hard work to restructure the force if that's the bottom line."

I think you're pointing to the root of the problem: 6 and 1/2 years since 9/11, our military leaders haven't decided if current ops are a one-off aberration (the prevailing attitude about OOTW when I served) or a trend. Our civilian leaders of either stripe don't seem to be pushing the debate, either. My take is that before the 'surge', the debate was just about settled: likely not under this President, but definitely under the next one, CA would be put back in the box and we'd pull out of Dodge. Now, we're back to the same indecision about fundamental direction while a military purposely not designed to do what it's doing becomes increasingly strained by that contradiction.

Correction:

After sleeping on it, perhaps I should take back my earlier comment that "... General Casey allowed this to be published."?? Too many other possibilities for the source.

And as far as LTC Yingling, wouldn't the Army Chief of Staff have to sign off on the 1st Battalion, 21st Field Artillery (Yingling's Battalion) to serve in a detention ops role in Iraq? Or at least you would think that he was apprised of it. But then maybe not - maybe the Chief of Staff has no visibility below division or brigade level?? But with Yingling's notoriety, why wouldn't Casey's staff advise him of the situation? Just thinking out loud here, this is all Greek to my never-served-in-the-pentagon brain. Maybe some former puzzle palace guys have some insight.

mike

Eric -

I think you are talking apples and oranges with the driver/courier analogy. Unfortunately, that happens all the time on an individual level. Think of what the issues would be if it was done on a large unit level instead of an individual soldier. What if the Army took an entire 1500 man Military Intelligence battalion and made them all into a messkit repair battalion?

mike

I haven't here for awhile. I was logging on to see what the 'Early Warning' dimwit was whining about...when imagine my pleasant surprise...I find that he no longer exists here. Thanks WaPo for finally seeing the light that he was a small-minded, harpy of an idiot and totally underqualified to write about national defense. I can't even remember his name which just accents how totally uninformed and insignificant he was.

I read with increasing relief how Carter seems to actually know something about the US military and the fine people who serve. It's refreshing to read an authotr who seeks to inform rather than reflexively denigrate.

>>>My opinion is that you can't do war and not do the post-war, and if the post-war becomes doctrine, then the debate about restructuring the military becomes settled, even if the debate over how the military should be used is not.

E.C.

100% agreement with the first phrase...but after that I want to fold in other departments that need to shoulder some of the load. Foreign action should not be the sole provice of DoD. It has it's role...war...but post-war isn't it's speciality. (Really the war part ought to be last resort because all other measures have failed or we don't have the luxury to make them work). If we're going to nation build (rebuild?)...and we shouldn't be in that business except where it is unavoidable for national security, then there needs to be thinkers and do-ers that help indigenous governments construct their vision of a viable, post-conflict infrastructure...winning the peace. The fact that we did the first very well and failed to think through and plan the second screams out for, not a restructuring of the military, but a restructuring of how we plan foreign interference with all our major muscles...not just the 'right arm' that throws the knock-out blow. The current over-reliance on DoD as the pre-eminent 'do everything' department when the President decides to get the nation tied up in some far away land just doesn't make proper use of all our elements of national power and we are wasting the brain power of the departments when we don't consider the whole foreign adventure from initial threat to desired end state. If we're going to talk about entrance and exit strategies then that shouldn't make everybody automatically think about troops. It ought to make everybody think about the total desired end state.

Panhandle Willy:

"Foreign action should not be the sole provice of DoD. It has it's role...war...but post-war isn't it's speciality."

I agree and I think folks up and down the line agree, too. Soldiers are pretty darn amazing, but they aren't magical creatures we should expect to cure everything. However, we've learned that the pivot on which everything else in the post-war depends is security. Remember all the agencies and orgs that entered Iraq during the heady, war-still-popular-and-righteous days after regime change? Then, how the insurgency cycled up and they were chased away from the people they had promised to aid, blaming the US all the way home? Back in the day, we used to call this insurgency stuff "low intensity conflict", no big deal, just something we lumped with the rest of OOTW and didn't train on. Well, when LIC means the military is left holding a job it doesn't want to do and isn't prepared to do, but will decide the success or failure of the entire venture, and LIC kills exponentially more soldiers than major combat, then LIC becomes a very big deal.

So, if security is the common denominator upon which all else depends and insurgency has proven to be a custom-designed security threat in the post-war, we need to either militarize (harden) non-military post-war agencies and orgs so they can confidently relieve the military, or we need to integrate hardened post-war operations into the already-hard military. That means someone - either the military or civilian aid agencies and orgs - needs to radically restructure, change budgets, and alter culture. Not easy - we're talking about revolutionary, probably irreversible, changes, more so if you subscribe to the theory that capability guides intent.

As contentious as the debate is on the military side, I wonder how the debate is going on the civilian side, GO and NGO?

Mike:

"I think you are talking apples and oranges with the driver/courier analogy."

Well, my point is that for Army leaders, in my experience, it's not viewing available manpower as apples and oranges so much as different species of apples or oranges (apples, I guess, cuz they can be healthily green) - interchangeable, to a point.

I can definitely see an MI unit used for a non-MI tasking, if it's viewed as an essential mission, there isn't a better suited unit available to do that tasking, and the MI unit doesn't have an essential MI mission to fulfill. After all, soldiers in an MI unit would be expected to fix bayonets and charge an enemy strongpoint, if it came to that, and if that's plausible, less extreme jobs become plausible, too.

Like I said earlier in this thread, I learned to accept that being a soldier is more fundamental than being a 96B. I used personal examples, but I believe the interchangeable mentality is ingrained in Army leadership.

Eduardo:

"One small problem for Barnett and his high tech sponsors, Enterra (TM); where will we get the soldiery and "A" personality, State type humanoids for this Sys Admin work?"

True. He's asking for a leap. First and easiest thing to do for SysAdmin would be to expand CA. Beyond that, I guess we can go mining the military and other orgs, like USAID, for people who fit the profile, but long term sustainment and with the numbers needed? I don't know.

A start would be to improve civil-military relations, especially rapprochement between academia and the military that results in full-spectrum cooperation, relationships, and exchanges. (Students = young/fit enough to militarize and with education/training in advanced SysAdmin functional areas.) Given the highly publicized start-up troubles of just the small and experimental US Army Human Terrain System, it seems like we have a long way to go before we have the pieces in place to build a SysAdmin force.

Shortly after the end of WWII many of out greatest Military minds believed there would never be another amphibious assault and questioned the need to have a Marine Corp or Navy. Inchon proved the need shortly there after, and the more recent NEO of Lebanon proves the need today. It won't be long before the current generation of officers will have their stars and they will want to continue fighting the "war" that they are comfortable with. The challenge we face is the unknown, we need troops to be smart, flexible and well trained in the fundamentals of combat. From that base we can fight guerillas or a mechanized army. The idea of dropping Artillery Battalions from the Army because we are not using their specific skill set today is a mistake. The Korean War would have turned out much differently if Military Leaders did not struggle to maintain some level of the fighting skills they had honed in battle in both Europe and Pacific theaters. General Walker and all the soldiers defending the Pusan perimeter would have been lost without amphibious assault at Inchon. Losing Indirect Fires on today's battlefield is much the same.

Acres and acres of (word I can't get the machine to post) and no one sees the deeper point.

Since the beginnings of the draw down in Viet nam, the battle Cry of the strong on defense Republicans has been "More Teeth, Less tail" Originally that meant higher proportions of Combat Arms in the force organization tables. Now it apparently means more canine teeth and fewer molars. We have reduced, contracted out, or done away with logistics, transportation, supply, finance, medical, dental, Signals Intelligence, Military intelligence, (they aren't even remotely the same thing), PsyOPS/Civic Action/Revolutionary Development, and Combat Engineers, and now Artillery is getting farmed out to other arms because we don't have enough MP's (not that I haven't been declaring that lack since we got into this farce).

The Republican Party has been profligate in buying military systems that don't work or don't actually fill any particular need, but are stunningly expensive, (Like the anti missile system George thinks we need to waste so much money and diplomatic standing on) while cutting the basic Army, and turning it into an unusable goulash of strangely mixed units that are so complicatedly tasked organized that not even their top commanders have the breadth of experience they might need to properly utilize their force. (Especially at Division Level)

The Army is so constituted because Donald Rumsfield, the twentieth century's equivalent of Hannibal, Julius Caesar, and napoleon all rolled into one barely qualified naval Aviator, said he was a military genius and this is what we needed.

Of course that military genius read too much Heinlein (another navy type who thought he was a great infantry expert.) and not enough SLA Marshall.

You can Teach a grunt every thing that can be TAUGHT in about two months. Everything else can only come by doing. You Can TEACH a cannon cocker everything that can be TAUGHT in about the same amount of time. Again, everything else worth nowing comes from doing. You can teach Cav "Death Before Dismount" in about two days, after which all you can do is let him drive around blowing holes in the countryside until he learns how to calibrate his Tank. A combat arms type, (MP's excluded) can ONLY learn by doing. (JUST Law of Land warfare is far more complicated that basic fire team tactics, and the applications thereof thereto are graduate school class room work before you contemplate asking an MP to go out and retake Cholon from the VC.)

We need real, Triangular Divisions in Triangular Corps, probably in Tr5iangular Armies, Not the Pentonomic with spurs and studs divisions that clutter the current force charts. What's more, if we need one active duty special division, (say, mountain) we need three such divisions. to go with them we need fully constituted support and combat service support units, like Transportation Battalions (with gun trucks, etc, ala Highway 19 from Pleiku to Kontum. Right up to quad forty MM dusters mounted on semi trailers for added ambush dissuasion.)

We need a real Army, made up of real Corps, made up of real Divisions. The current "Cost Effective" collage just isn't moderately capable of getting out of its own way, THROUGH NO FAULT OF ITS OWN.

UJunk the Rumsfield Army and go back to the Taylor/Westmoreland/Abrams Army. Fukll size and with most of those key posts we gave away, like Presidio of San Francisco, Fitzsimmons Army Hospital, Fort Ord, Fort Sheridan, back in Army possession and use.

Then when an idiot like George gets us into a mess like Iraq, at least the Army would be constituted to try to deal with the mess properly.

Stop making the Armed Forces of the United States a profit center for Haliburton or Blackwater.

"Moving forward, should we train and plan for the post-war, which looks a like peace operations, so that Arty (hopefully) can stick to Arty even in a post-war..."

Eric: sorry I took so long to get back to this - we've been drywalling all weekend and I hate ****ing drywalling.

Anyway, here's my take on this:

1. Any major war requires a post-war, pre-peace transition phase. So of course, you have to plan for it. We began planning for post-fighting WW2 in 1942! And had occupation-specific constabulary and military government outfits ready to stand up the minute the last Volkssturm grandpa threw down his Kar98. We - or, rather, the SecDef - specifically did NOT plan for th one, because any rational assessment of the demands it has made on our treasury as well as our armed forces would have made it instantly recognizable as the sort of "victory" that Pyrrus got his name stuck to: "One more such victory and we are utterly undone".

So, in a "plan" for that sort of post-war, the Arty sticks to being Arty because immediately after the shooting stops it heads to Grafwohr or Giessen and starts practicing hipshoots and FA Table VIII. The MG and constabulary and MP and CA and psyops people take over for as long as it takes to get the local cops and border patrols and, eventually, the Army up and running.

In this case, of course, there WAS no rule of law, no tradition of uncorrupt and unbiased government, no professional police and an Army run mostly for the benefit of a kleptocrat and his homies. So in point of fact the ONLY method of ruling the country was by force majeur. Colonially, in other words. This was NOT the "official" plan, and the problem was that since it wasn't, we couldn't do what it would have required to do it (whether we should have is a whole 'nother story, but we'll pass on that for the moment).

SO - the problem wasn't that the plan was wrong and the gunbunnies ended up as galvanized 11-bullets. The problem was 1) there was no plan, and 2) no "plan" could have produced anything like an acceptable result without a WW2-like mobiization.

"...or do you think it's wiser for the military to ignore the post-war in order to avoid the risk of peace opeations?"

So - we've covered the whole "ignore the post-war" issue. The other buzzword I'd like to address is this whole "peace operations" thing. ISTM that there are legitimate, do-able "Operations Other Than War" that the U.S. Army can do. Disaster relief. Advisory and technical assistance to a state under internal attack. Peacekeeping (where the is a legitimate peace to keep, as in the Sinai, rather than faux-peacekeeping in failed states like Somalia).

I take issue with the idea that fighting sectarian wars is part of this. I felt that Kosovo, for exmple, was a sham. If we wanted to support independence for the Albanian Kosovars we should have said so, faced down the Serbs and their Russian allies, and gone in alongside the KLA. Instead we backed in buttocks first and ended up with a still-unsolved problem. Darfur is the same sort of thing: it's not just a question of riding into town and shooting the evil gunslinger. Darfur and Somalia and Iraq and the other Third World tarbabies are what they are because of a stew of racial, tribal and religious animosity, bad government, screwed-up history, colonial incompetence and malfeasance and poor sanitation.

Getting involved in "peace operations" in places like that is like trying to produce healthy marriages in a polygamist Mormon compound. You're gonna get frustrated, they're gonna get angry and everyone is gonna get screwed (probably the 14-year-old-girls first, but, whatever...).

So, plan for post-war? Yes. But pick your wars - and your "peace opertations" carefully? Also yes.

IMO we had a legitimate punitive expedition in Afghanistan. Go in, behead the Taliban, find an acceptable puppet, arm him, leave. Anything further is breaking the historical Law of Afghan Wars: there are two kinds of military operations in Afghanistan: raids (punitive campaigns, smash-and-burn, shock and awe, call them what you want)...and failures. The occupation of Afghanistan has been and will be a foolish pursuit of an impossibility. Afghan was, is and will be a lawless tribal hellhole until the Afghans - not us - decide otherwise.

Iraq was foolish from the start. Period.

Therefore, if we are remaking our ground forces based on the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq we are, in effect, taking our lessons from fools.

Wow, I was going to comment here but FDChief has it covered top to bottom. Sensational discussion, gents.

FDChief for the next administration's SecDef!!

>>>Then, how the insurgency cycled up and they were chased away from the people they had promised to aid, blaming the US all the way home?

This might not have happened the way it did had there been more thorough planning prior to the invasion. It seems like the invasion planning was step A. The remaining steps went something like...'and then some other stuff happens.' Adds more weight to my opinion that the planning should not just involve DoD. More thorough planning would have helped focus DoD planning better too...perhaps altered some of their objectives or timing or force structure. I'm pretty sure DoD planning was centered on force-on-force planning and not so much on post-conflict planning. Believe me...the planning required for the former was plenty to do.

One small problem for Barnett and his high tech sponsors, Enterra (TM); where will we get the soldiery and "A" personality, State type humanoids for this Sys Admin work?

Thank you. Barnett's glib magic-thinking never withstands scrutiny once you cut all his obfuscating jargon away. The only trouble is, not enough people do it. Barnett may be the first charlatan in history who prospered not because of the merits of his "ideas", but because of PowerPoint.

There are a lot of issues being discussed here. First is FDChief's discussion of the pitfalls of becoming involved in "peace operations." Certainly, they should be chosen carefully. But the reality is that such operations are becoming increasingly important strategically; our interests are more likely to be implicated in situations throughout the world where we may need to conduct such operations.

This reality is the result of a couple of factors: increasing globalization of the economy that increases our dependence on regional stability, and the fact that other nations look to the US, with all of our power and wealth, to act the part of the global power. We cannot ask other nations to commit their resources to stabilize a situation while refusing to do so without jeopardizing any moral authority we may have remaining. Right or wrong, if we want to maintain our position as a--perhaps THE--world power, we will have to be ready to commit ourselves to stability operations in the future, as distasteful as they may be.

Afghanistan is a case in point. It certainly could have been conducted as a punitive operation, as you suggest. However, that would not have accomplished anything, strategically speaking. It would have quickly regressed into a failed state and again become a sanctuary for terrorist organization to train and grow. More importantly, such a "punitive operation" would have provided fertilizer to a whole crop of young muslims who had once again been humiliated by the west and who would be hungry for a way to strike back. Once again, we would have gone into an area, caused a whole bunch of damage and chaos and left without any effort to clean up the mess. Not exactly a great strategy for winning friends, or at least avoiding making new enemies.

So such operations are important. But what Mr. Carter talked about, and the point of LTC Yingling's article, is that we need to acknowledge that fact. And even if you or I don't agree that it is desirable for us to engage in stability or "peace" operations, we don't get a vote. Not even the generals get a vote. Such a decision is a political one. The generals' job is to envision what types of operations that military is likely to be called on to conduct and prepare for it, and to tell the political leadership what the costs and strategic probabilities associated with any particular action may be.

Based on the past 50 years of our history (even without becoming embroiled in the so-called "Long War"), we might find ourselves engaged in some form of stability operation. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, that prospect has become even more likely, even after our current foreign adventures are concluded. Unstable regions, failed states, and the like, foment unrest and resentment, and provide safe havens for terrorist organization to grow and to recruit and to train. Again, see Afghanistan...

So our military leadership must acknowledge that fact and begin to prepare for it. That they did not see that trend after Vietnam, or Lebanon, or Somalia, or the Balkans, and still have not moved to make the necessary changes to force structure even six years after 9/11, is pretty good evidence that they are still wedded to the hope that they can soon get back to preparing for the "good wars" like WWII. (As an aside, I think that the U.S. military's success in WWII became so ingrained in its culture that it blinded it to any thoughts about war as a political act)

In fairness to the generals, however, there is some reason for caution in making wholesale changes to the remaking of the Army. While we are more likely to face assymetric threats in the future than conventional ones, in the interests of deterrence, we still need to prepare to fight the traditional state-on-state war. This is where the danger with regard to FA eating its young is so pronounced. We have an entire generation of soldiers who have prepared for nothing other than Iraq. FA officers who have had very little experience leading a platoon in the field in an FA task. Tankers who have been going every other year without conducting gunnery. And the list goes on....

When was the last time a unit larger than a battalion (or even a company) conducted a combined arms exercise? Can we even conduct a conventional, coordinated combined arms operation above unit level? I have no idea, but I haven't heard of this type of operation being conducted, especially since the CTCs have been converted to "All Iraq, all the time."

Anyway, my point is that the problem is very complicated. There is no easy answer. The complaint is that, by and large, the generals haven't even raised the question of how to balance the force. It does seem that they would prefer to move ahead with FCS, treating the current operations as a one off. On one level, there is an argument for this mindset, but I think it is more a product of generals not being able to think outside of their experiences throughout their careers--all of that training to fight the Soviet hoard. So Gate, and Yingling, argue for more realistic thinking. And Carter hopes that such maverick thinkers are rewarded.

So do I.

BTW, there are those who seem to think that any unit can do 11B tasks, it depends on how deeply you think about what 11B tasks actually are. Yes, any unit can conduct patrols and react to contact, etc. However, just as FA has a particular institutional knowledge about the technical aspects of its job that every unit has to draw on, infantry units likewise have the same type of institutional knowledge. This knowledge is created by the collective experiences of all of the artillerymen or infantrymen (or tankers or logisticians or MI, etc.) that have gone before and who have passed down their experience. Being an infantrymen is not just carrying a rifle and being able to shoot, or even just knowing small unit tactics (which, I concede, are pretty easy to learn). It is also understanding how to employ different weapons systems in the most effective way, the effects that particular actions will have on the enemy and your own soldiers and how the enemy might react, and understanding how a units actions fits into the bigger picture. It also means understanding the capabilities of your own unit. That level of understanding can only come through experience, both personal and collective. But unlike the techical skills of other branches, COIN operations have a certain amount of overlap with traditional infantry operations so that the infantry skills are less likely to be perishable.

At the risk of giving you guys big heads, I've got to say these comments are awesome. The level of intelligence and civil discourse is a quantum above that of other comment sections in WaPo online. My compliments and gratitude.

FDChief, Al, et al:

I agree w/ y'all to a certain extent about the "perishability" of collective skills. However, that "collectivity" was pretty hard to maintain back in the days of individual replacements, and the units still functioned more or less okay in the field.

Back in the days of individual replacements in the active duty, you were always having new people and losing old people on your gun crews, FDCs, et al. So whenever you had your crew drilled to a fine edge, it's time for somebody to PCS.

So my point is, yes, collective skills are hard to maintain, but it was just as hard Back in the Day (tm), when you had all those tables to shoot.

At least we now have "Unit Manning", and that the SNCOs still have a hazy memory of how Right(tm) is supposed to look like.

"Afghanistan is a case in point. It certainly could have been conducted as a punitive operation, as you suggest. However, that would not have accomplished anything, strategically speaking. It would have quickly regressed into a failed state and again become a sanctuary for terrorist organization to train and grow. More importantly, such a "punitive operation" would have provided fertilizer to a whole crop of young muslims who had once again been humiliated by the west and who would be hungry for a way to strike back. Once again, we would have gone into an area, caused a whole bunch of damage and chaos and left without any effort to clean up the mess. Not exactly a great strategy for winning friends, or at least avoiding making new enemies."

Not sure how you regress a failed state into a failed state. More to the point, how do you regress a failed state that never WAS a state other than in the fantasies of imperial cartographers. The British tried every option to change this collection of tribes with flags: war, peace, bribery, threats, subversion...it didn't work for them, and they were the best imperialists since the Romans. Why - in the name of God - WHY! - do we think we can do better.

Afghanistan will remain what it is until the Afghans, or AN Afghan, decide differently. To send our soldiers to fight and die for this impossible, fruitless chimera of a mission is to forget that a truly wise geopolitical policy realizes that there are some aims, however laudable, that are simply not achievable, or at least worth the blood and treasure needed to attain them.

Or, as the Afghans themselves might sing: "There's a boy across the river with a bottom like a peach. But, alas, I cannot swim."

"However, that "collectivity" was pretty hard to maintain back in the days of individual replacements, and the units still functioned more or less okay in the field."

Horsepuckey. The FA units functioned more or less okay in the field because they trained more or less on FA tasks more or less 90% of the time. When your gun chiefs become squad leaders and your gunners team chiefs for a freaking year, those skills are GONE. Finito. Pining for the fjords. Ex-skills.

Either argue that having artillerymen walking patrols is a good thing, or don't. But don't waste our time with this sort of Jesuitical causistry.

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