Reflective Belts and General Officer Billets

In critiquing the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, junior officers and enlisted personnel often cite the overuse of reflective belts and other restrictive bureaucratic personnel policies implemented on forward operating bases in country.  While this can be construed as soldiers and marines complaining, it might be a valid measure to determine the correlation of top-down, bureaucratic and centralized operations in modern warfare.

For instance, instead of complaining about reflective belts, measure the amount of general officers billets in any given theatre.  This number (along with associated higher headquarters, staff, and resources) will provide the analyst with a measure of the military means of the strategy.  In Iraq and Afghanistan, we have spent a lot of money and resources to achieve our goals.

When we start look at ways, the approach to how to solve the problem, one must acknowledge that the ways are driven by the means. 

In other conflicts, the military footprint was much smaller.  In some cases, we had less military advisors than we currently have general officers and reflective belt policies in theatre.

Before we try to transcend COIN, FID, SFA, and IW and move towards strategy, we may want to confront our structure problems. 

If we want to start moving towards a more indirect approach, then start by minimizing the higher level staff not telling platoons and companies to work with the locals and local security forces.  The boys on the ground figured that out a long time before the think tanks in DC.

This post is another way to visualize the concept of Less is Often More.