A Cold Warrior's Rant...

[desertswo]

Desertswo agreed the NAVY has this issue of not many people enrolling there, let alone the best

Enrolling where?

Naval Postgrad School?

Naval War College?

You don't get to enroll, you are selected by central bopards for attendance at these schools.

In the Army we used to have a course for captains called Combined Arms Services Staff School.

It was held at FT Leavenworth, KS, and EVERY captain in the Army had to attend sometime between their 5th & 10th year of service. The 10 week course was all about the military decision making process. It trained you to operate as a primary staff officer at battalion or brigade and as an action officer on division and higher staffs. Small groups of 10 - 14 captains were thrown together with a senior major or lieutenant colonel as their mentor to work through problems using the staff planning process. There was also a robust voleyball program to help build a team atmosphere...and a damn good officers club.

Some people claimed it was a waste of time but most found it to be a very good use of their time. That 10 weeks formed a core competency in our officer corps where we could communicate with each other by using a common language. I had a nurse, 2 signal officers, an MP for class leader, ordnance, quartermaster, Special Forces, medical service, infantry, armor, aviation and judge advocate general officers in my group. Even though I went in my 9th year and I had already been a primary staff officer at battalion and brigade level and served in a division G3 & G4 it was still a good course for me.


Somewhere at the end of the Cold War the decision was made synthesize that course and tack it onto the Advanced Course. Bad move. The Advanced Course was all about teaching you to be a Company Commander...it was all about the tactics needed in a combined arms environment within a company/battalion task force.

It was a move based on funding...bad move.

A parrallel course were battle staff courses for NCOs and warrant offiers taught at the Sergeants' Major Academy at FT Bliss. Excellent course for those who could attend. Usually the folks who went were the ones in troop units and wanted to stay in troop units. Unfortunately there were and are too many opportunities for support warrants and NCOs to avoid troop units for large swaths of their careers...much to the detriment of tehir being effective staff personnel later.

Yeah, I think there was a slight misinterpretation of my words. Which is not surprising. No, you don't have a choice in whether you are going to one of the War Colleges. You ARE going. That doesn't mean that there isn't a whole lot of whining going on because it takes one away from sea duty and to those traditionalists, that sea duty is all that matters. Personally, my ten months at the War College followed by three years on the Joint Staff in DC were the best four years of my 25. But then, I like to learn, so maybe I'm different.

[desertswo]

The Army of today is flat ass broken. We have forgotten how to do basic staff coordination. While I may be a DA civilian I still serve in the capacity of a staff officer. I manage a staff of 38 personnel (26 government 12/13 and 12 contractors) as part of an overall organization of approximately 125 personnel core to the organization. This excludes the lead contractor for our product and matrix support areas for support.

These 125 folks are divided into 4 divisions…one of which is the one I am an in. My branch is half of my division, which is half of the entire organization. We plan, coordinate, resource and manage fielding of our system to Army units both tactical and fixed base to the Active Army, Army Reserve and National Guard. Almost my entire workforce is retired senior logistics noncommissioned officers and warrant officers with a smattering of one or two commissioned officers. So you would think we would have our act together.

And I have to ask….who broke my Army? Every day and across the board I see multiple examples of plain shitty or nonexistent staff work. E-mail kills initiative and coordination. VTCs foster over interference by higher headquarters on units which are actually doing things. Large command headquarters are bloated with too many people with not enough to do. Not a day goes by that I do not get a query from the DA staff on something…which I blissfully ignore.

So here is my question….am I just a Cold War dinosaur, stuck in how we did staff operations in the 1980s, when we had huge formations, where junior officers and NCOs manned TOCs and managed battle formations from battalion task force through division, and everyone knew what was going on because we worked a plan and rehearsed it and made it work and I can’t adjust to this Net Centric, everyone is connected but no one does anything, “I sent an email” is the response to “Did you talk to him/them?” and we just make it up as we go along and I don’t need to coordinate anymore type of operations?

Or have we raised a generation of staff personnel who cannot follow the staff planning process to save their life, have no clue about doctrine and if it’s on a PowerPoint its true and gospel?

Because if that’s what we have become bring back the Cold War, leisure suit BDUs, end-to-end rotations at Graf & Hohenfels and USAREUR being the 7th US Army and not just a HQ with 2 brigades.

Maybe Putin will do us a favor….

Back in 1998, I wrote a thesis that got published in some of the trade mags concerning advanced C4I and what it would do to decision making. That thing is still making the rounds (the Chinese love it for some reason), even though 17 years behind the times, and I wish I had fleshed it out a bit more, because it seems I pretty much predicted what you (what we all) are now seeing both in the military and the business world.

[Maxor]

I think we are also simply seeing a break down of formal communication by traditional means world wide. There have been new electronic methods to move information created and adopted on a near universal level in the last 2 decades, and they have not yet developed the centuries and decades of order, regulation and tradition that the older methods had. Add in a structure adoption on the military where we are now very top heavy and meant to be fleshed out by reserves, and recruits if something major and long term should happen and you have a case where to someone who was used to dealing with the much more formalized structure of the cold war could view what is currently in place as very chaotic and inefficient.

[Albany Rifles]

Maxor,

I believe you may be missing my point.

The problems are not with us Old Dogs knowing how to work in a chaotic environment...been doing it for decades. We could ACT on a small amount of information and flex as we go.

What I see in personnel 2 military generations removed from the Cold War ( a military generation is generally seen as 10-15 years) is an inability to react and make decisions if it isn't spoon fed to them on a computer screen. And I am not talking about junior personnel, I am talking CW3s/4s/5s, O-4s/5s, E-7s/8s/9s.


What is being passed all over the place is massive amounts of data. It is not information until it is formatted into a manner where it helps a human make a decision.

[Doktor]

But they can read the maps. So there is a hope.

[Tamara]

Maxor,

I believe you may be missing my point.

The problems are not with us Old Dogs knowing how to work in a chaotic environment...been doing it for decades. We could ACT on a small amount of information and flex as we go.

What I see in personnel 2 military generations removed from the Cold War ( a military generation is generally seen as 10-15 years) is an inability to react and make decisions if it isn't spoon fed to them on a computer screen. And I am not talking about junior personnel, I am talking CW3s/4s/5s, O-4s/5s, E-7s/8s/9s.


What is being passed all over the place is massive amounts of data. It is not information until it is formatted into a manner where it helps a human make a decision.

Maybe it is the way people are now being taught on how to think.

When I was going through a course on, I think, psychological testing in the 90's, there was some thing in the lesson that made me question "working theory". It was probably a teacher's comment that without proper experimentation, one does not have a theory. Maybe. I remember more the conversation afterwards than what generated it.

Anyhow, I asked about a "working theory" and related the scenario in "Alien" where they are formulating plans to off the bugger. My teacher said that working theories still had a place, that often with a patient, you are trying one thing, seeing if that works, and modifying it as you go along.

My approach to critical thinking can be based on at least two things. One, I do logic by analogy. I know a lot about a lot, I can mentally process a problem from both ends (I call it expanding ripples; see where those ripples intersect, cut down the steps.

Before it became a popular party game, I was doing 7 degrees of Bacon as a way to keep alert on long flights......and I did it with strict rules of only movies (pilots counted) and only people who shared scenes together or there was strong evidence that they were both on the set that day together. So linking the voice on the Mission: Impossible tape with Mariana Hill because both were on ST:TOS (but in different episodes) doesn't cut it for me. That's too easy, not a challenge, what's the point, why bother in trying.....................

My point is that it seems these days for the sophisticated means we may have developed for thinking, people have turned them into a mockery where anything goes.

Another aspect to this way of thinking is that to solve a problem, I'll work out a procedure. The first pass may generate a bunch of steps and I'll whittle it down from there. Now whether this comes from an engineering background or having to go to the board and work out a problem through many, many steps, it is the way I am..........................and maybe when we got rid of the "chalk" boards, we really shot ourselves in the foot. (Ask me another day about computer programming, editors, and chalk boards)

EDIT: Back when I was programming and we actually had chalk boards, I would occassionally take over a class room and use all the boards to track, see where a program was going. Go from module to module.

An error I made before a prof a few years before I started doing this was just making module after module by copying a section, adding to to steps, and essentially, moving the program in a very long vertical straight line. It was easy and I had forgotten to write small programs that had few functions that transfer values.

The thing is that between not being able to see the big picture anymore and being confined to seeing information on just one screen, perhaps this another way we have lost in being able to process information. END EDIT

The second element of my critical thinking is that it draws a lot on concepts seen but not necessarily spoken or spoken in detail in the movies. Back to Alien. Ash comes out with the tracker that keys on "minute changes in background". I've used that concept for at least two things such as conspiracy debunking and detecting living mannequins. In the latter case, look at their outline and a point beyond them, see if the background changes.

On conspiracy debunking (for lack of better terms): Airliner crashes, popular theory says the Navy shot it down. Okay, who would benefit if this theory is true? Lots of countries who don't like the Navy off their coast. Are they complaining, jumping on the band wagon? No? Then that is probably not it.

Don't address the theory directly but see how the surrounding world supports or doesn't support it. What are the changes in the background?

Okay, perhaps longer than I wanted and perhaps more later..............................but I need to do some tax paperwork, so I better get to it.

[Maxor]

I was trying to make a pair of related points.

The first one is that information is passed in new ways, there isn't anywhere close to the traditional assignment of information hierarchy developed for many of these newer sources and communications compared to what used to be there. It is the job of the person being given the decision making power to choose which data sources they wish to use and how to prioritize it. Which in part leads to the second point.

Second is that in today's active duty military has been forced to be much more aware that even junior officers are entrusted with assets that are expected to last pretty much for their entire adult lifetimes, and compared with a few years ago, that decision maker is controlling a more significant portion of the overall forces.

This leads to a organizational realization that while initiative is still very important it is perhaps more important to make the right decisions early on than simply start moving and react as you go. I'm not going to say one way or the other is better they are differences in style of leadership.

The US prides itself on information gathering and sharing. Our personal are constantly being harangued to make use of the information available to them. What you may be seeing is personal who have been told that they will have better more complete info than their opposition, why wouldn't they wait to make use of it?

In a non tactical situation, essentially staff work, getting complete information is essential! Why wouldn't a decision maker want to get as much as possible from nearly every source when time isn't of the essence especially since we are projecting our current weapons systems to have near infinite lifespans.

As for your people and many other commands people being spread into questionable structures. That is a different issue and comes from massive budgetary drawdowns and a "plan" in case of major conflict to expand those commands to being fully fleshed out and much more independent.

[bigross86]

Just gonna drop this here, even though I'm sure most folks here have seen it already:



There's such a thing as TOO MUCH information. If you ask me, at many of the lower levels (infantry squad, tank platoon/company, etc...) there is no need to know more than the intel needed for the higher level's mission. To explain: A tank company is given a certain objective, as part of the overall mission of the battalion. The soldiers in the company need to know what the battalion's mission is, what their obstacles are, what the intel is, etc... They don't need to know anything more than that. Soldiers that are a part of the battalion force, such as battalion HQ and others, should know the info on the brigade level, so as to be able to pass on that intel to the Company level, if it's needed, and so on. Soldiers in the brigade force should know the mission and intel on the Divisional level, Division should know the intel on the Corps level, etc....

Information should be monitored, and each element only given as much as they need. Giving every element ALL the intel available only leads to them being bogged down.

[Officer of Engineers]

This leads to a organizational realization that while initiative is still very important it is perhaps more important to make the right decisions early on than simply start moving and react as you go.

This gets to me. It has been drilled into us old timers that a bad decision is better than no decision. A bad decision at least tells you what you are doing wrong and at least gives you the chance to disengage. No decision surrenders the initiative to the opposing force and they get to shape the battlefield to their liking.

[Albany Rifles]

Maxor,

I appreciate all you say....but how do you explain a workforce who believes staff planning and coordination begins and ends with...."Well Sir, I sent them an e-mail...."

And I am not talking junior officers....I am talking senior NCOs/CWOs/LTCs. Out of a work force of 39 my 2 best are a retired FA LTC and a POL SFC. The rest I have had to train on basic staff coordination....ie you do not commit us to a set course of action until you at least check with appropriate stakeholders that resources are available.

Very frustrating to have to teach what was a matter of course back in the day.


Ben,

Again, anything that confusing is data, NOT information.


As for the rest of you, get off my grass!

[Stitch]

Ross - I think you hit the nail on the head; there is a fine line between too much information and not enough.

The key (for anybody, any situation) is to determine what is mission-critical information and what is fluff; we are bombarded at all levels (and even the CIA/NSA will admit this) with (as Albany Rifles calls it) data; the key is (at all levels) to determine what is information and what is data (there IS a difference). THAT will be the key in the 21st century.

Bottom line: What is relevant, and what is not? What is wheat, and what is chaff? YOU decide . . .

[DonBelt]

This is similar to ADD. If anyone here is familiar with how ADD works, you'll understand. I'll give a brief synopsis for those who don't. Most people have in their heads a kind of filter or traffic cop that functions automatically and filters input from our bodies senses. It prioritizes and amplifies sensory inputs that need immediate processing and mutes others of less import. For instance, sensory inputs such as extreme localized heat or your body being in an awkward position receive immediate action- you withdraw your hand from the heat, you move to regain your balance. Other inputs like commonly heard noises that aren't associated with danger may be muted to be processed at a later time. People with ADD lack this and cannot easily filter sensory input and thus get overwhelmed. They may miss priority inputs and be awkward or distracted by things of low importance that receive the same attention as important things, they may look for priority inputs that don't exist.
It almost sounds like we have a system similar to that. All input with no "traffic cop" to filter it or put it in order.

[Stitch]

This is similar to ADD. If anyone here is familiar with how ADD works, you'll understand. I'll give a brief synopsis for those who don't. Most people have in their heads a kind of filter or traffic cop that functions automatically and filters input from our bodies senses. It prioritizes and amplifies sensory inputs that need immediate processing and mutes others of less import. For instance, sensory inputs such as extreme localized heat or your body being in an awkward position receive immediate action- you withdraw your hand from the heat, you move to regain your balance. Other inputs like commonly heard noises that aren't associated with danger may be muted to be processed at a later time. People with ADD lack this and cannot easily filter sensory input and thus get overwhelmed. They may miss priority inputs and be awkward or distracted by things of low importance that receive the same attention as important things, they may look for priority inputs that don't exist.
It almost sounds like we have a system similar to that. All input with no "traffic cop" to filter it or put it in order.

This can probably be boiled-down to a one word phrase: triage. The ultimate goal is to determine what is critical information, and what is not.

[desertswo]

This is similar to ADD. If anyone here is familiar with how ADD works, you'll understand. I'll give a brief synopsis for those who don't. Most people have in their heads a kind of filter or traffic cop that functions automatically and filters input from our bodies senses. It prioritizes and amplifies sensory inputs that need immediate processing and mutes others of less import. For instance, sensory inputs such as extreme localized heat or your body being in an awkward position receive immediate action- you withdraw your hand from the heat, you move to regain your balance. Other inputs like commonly heard noises that aren't associated with danger may be muted to be processed at a later time. People with ADD lack this and cannot easily filter sensory input and thus get overwhelmed. They may miss priority inputs and be awkward or distracted by things of low importance that receive the same attention as important things, they may look for priority inputs that don't exist.
It almost sounds like we have a system similar to that. All input with no "traffic cop" to filter it or put it in order.

You know, as a survivor of 12 years of Catholic education, and having taught high school history for six years, I long ago came to the conclusion that there ain't know ADD that an Irish nun and her ruler can't cure. Just sayin'.

[Tamara]

This is similar to ADD. If anyone here is familiar with how ADD works, you'll understand. I'll give a brief synopsis for those who don't. Most people have in their heads a kind of filter or traffic cop that functions automatically and filters input from our bodies senses. It prioritizes and amplifies sensory inputs that need immediate processing and mutes others of less import. For instance, sensory inputs such as extreme localized heat or your body being in an awkward position receive immediate action- you withdraw your hand from the heat, you move to regain your balance. Other inputs like commonly heard noises that aren't associated with danger may be muted to be processed at a later time. People with ADD lack this and cannot easily filter sensory input and thus get overwhelmed. They may miss priority inputs and be awkward or distracted by things of low importance that receive the same attention as important things, they may look for priority inputs that don't exist.
It almost sounds like we have a system similar to that. All input with no "traffic cop" to filter it or put it in order.

How curious..............for this is similar to one of my pain control techniques.

Figuratively speaking, I turn on ALL THE SENSORS so pain is just one thing in a wall of information to be lost in.

Now, physiclogicailly speaking, I'm probably using Gate theory.