Small Wars Journal

Unintended Consequences

Thu, 09/30/2010 - 7:39am
Very interesting Op-Ed in today's Washington Post by Eliot Cohen entitled 'Obama's Wars': The gang that couldn't shoot straight -- or shut up. His use of fictional monologues raise some serious concerns about possible unintended consequences resulting from Bob Woodward's book Obama's Wars.

Comments

Ken White

Sat, 02/14/2009 - 5:11pm

In the late cretaceous period, prior to 1975; there were Army Subject Schedules which were lists of tasks, enabling knowledges and skills (not the same things) in a logical order. These existed for all ranks, specialties and MOSC. They were fairly comprehensive but not dictatorial. There were protectively marked supplements that were the tests for each separate Subject Schedule. To my knowledge, the rumor that these Subject Schedules were eliminated due to the unfortunate abbreviation to be derived is not true.

There were also Army Training Programs; same thing once removed and designed to guide unit training. One was produced for each TOE. Comments above applies except for the test and the fact that 'ATP' was acceptable in polite company..

Then, there were Army Training test, the infamous ATT. These also existed for every TOE and they were developed as a result of WW II experience to include a demanding test of most actions a unit could be expected to perform. It was, in effect, the graduation exercise to be completed before the unit could deploy.

As an example, the Rifle Squad Test was a movement to contact, meeting engagement, withdrawal, hasty defense and hasty attack, consolidation and preparation for other missions. It took a little over two hours for a Company (usually with an Ad hoc committee of the Wpns Plat Ldr and NCOs with support and OpFor from the Wpns guys) to test each Squad. Thus, a Company could test all its rifle squads in two days and their Weapons Platoon Squads on a third day.

The Platoon test amplified that, took about 24 hours and was conducted by the Battalion with generally the Asst S3 as the Chief Umpire. Some units would run lanes, three Plat at a whack with the S2 and Asst S3 Air as additional umpires. Company Tests were three days or so and run by Regiment/Brigade, usually a whole Bns worth of Cos would be concurrently tested. Battalion tests were three or four days and run by Div.

These tests were generally all conducted by elements two echelons higher. This was done reasonably fairly but there were penalties for failures, unit dependent. Generally, platoon or company level failures just brought a 'fix it' and a retest unless there was a really bad error, then a new leader was possible. At Bn level, the penalty for error was more severe on the rationale that the more senior commander had less excuse for and less margin for error. Reliefs were not uncommon. This disturbed some...

The ARTEP was conceived post-Viet Nam in an effort to do four things:

- remove the peaks and valleys in unit training and readiness caused by the cyclical annual nature of the ATP schedules and the ATT conduct usually in late summer. The flaw in that logic was that the personnel system causes most peaks and valleys due to personnel turbulence. Others are caused by our flawed budget process and the vagaries of the US social calendar (which should not be an impactor but is)

- remove the punitive aspects of the ATT by replacing finite standards with amorphous condition dependent standards. This was done by emphasizing that an "ARTEP Evaluation was not a test..." It was done by a crew of young Captains working at Benning, a couple of whom I happened to know and was sold to the senior leadership (with the connivance of PersCom who objected to relief of Commanders -- that messed up the OPD rotation schedules...).

- remove the unit 'owning' the evaluated element from the process to 'insure objectivity.' the practical effect was to complicate the effort (at least in the early days)and increase the support load. This was done partly st the reuest of Congress who always wants 'more objectivity' -- they like numbers. Unfortunately.

- nominally allow more command discretion in training by allowing the Commander to design his METL. The obvious flaw in that was that METL design immediately got yanked up the chain; to wit: "You have to add these tasks to your METL." "Sir, I considered that and did not, I don't think I need to do those." "Well, I do. Add them." Thus, Bde Commanders (at a minimum) too frequently ended up telling Company Commanders and even Platoon Leaders what training they needed.

The Objection to the Subject Schedules was that they were too rigid -- not true, Commanders could modify them as needed. To the complaint about the ATP being too rigid and not all encompassing. Laughable. Take a given ATP /ATT and compare it to a like unit ARTEP today. Very little difference...

The ARTEP change came first and was largely personnel community driven (i,e. no reliefs for failure, no <u>implacably</u> finite standard). As an example of the flawed system, then LTC (later LTG) William S. Carpenter deliberately failed an ARTEP based Operational Readiness Test in 1974 simply to prove there was no penalty for failure.

The T.C.S process followed, with all its flaws.

The end result is that the Army used to test commanders and units and if you failed, you couldn't take that unit to combat. Now, no test, just go forth and do great things. That's a little simplistic, I know and neglects the CTC 'experience' (which is not an annual thing and which some Commanders will not have to undergo) -- but the basic point is valid, we do not test units for fear of their failure yet we will commit them to a war...

Schmedlap

Sat, 02/14/2009 - 3:51pm

I was never a fan of task, conditions, standard (when I was in the school house, I think they were trying to change it to "action", condition, standard - that was around the same time that they wanted to change METT-T to METT-TC and then rearrange it into a more logical MTETT-C). But, I did not realize that the TCS thing was a recent phenomenon. How did things work before that? Did the Army trust junior leaders to train their Soldiers and units and allow Battalion Commanders to develop their own criteria for whether their companies were "certified"?