By Nick Francona

Best Defense guest columnist

After reading Rajiv Chandrasekaran's article about the Sept 14, 2012, attack on Camp Bastion/Leatherneck, I wanted to respond to comments made by Maj. Gen. Gurganus. 

There is an apparent attitude that this attack occurred because of a failure of British and Tongan troops to secure their side of the perimeter near the Bastion airfield. It may well be true that Tongan troops would sleep on post, however, this does not excuse Marine commanders from inspecting and enforcing rigid standards. Force protection is the responsibility of the commander and because Maj. Gen. Gurganus had hundreds of troops stationed on the Bastion side of the base, he is responsible for overseeing a solid plan to protect his Marines and his aircraft. It is unacceptable and beneath a Marine general to chalk this up to a Tongan failure. 

I have spent time at Leatherneck and Bastion as a transient, on the way in and out of parts of rural Helmand. It was obvious to even a casual observer that many of the posts were unmanned and were comically left with a "green Ivan" silhouette target as a half-hearted attempt at deterrence. The fact that there was dead-space around the largest U.S. military installation in the province is a fundamental failure and simply unacceptable. Additionally, it was widely known that there were issues with undocumented TCNs (third-country nationals) on the base that represented a major counterintelligence challenge. It was naive to think that the enemy would be unaware of the existence of unmanned towers. 

From the article:

"You can't defend everywhere every day," Gurganus said in response to a question about the attack. "You base your security on the threat you've got." He said the Taliban caught "a lucky break."

"When you're fighting a war, the enemy gets a vote," he said.

While it is indeed impossible to mitigate all risks, even on large bases, I vehemently disagree with Maj. Gen. Gurganus' assertion that you can't defend everywhere every day in this context. It is indeed understandable to have VBIED and suicide bomber incidents at entry control points (ECPs) of bases, but it is another story entirely to have a dismounted assault penetrate your perimeter and stroll onto your airfield. His claim that you base your security on the threat you've got is the root cause for the environment of complacency that enabled this tragic event to occur. His statement about the enemy getting a vote is absurd in this context. Indeed the enemy does get a vote, but so do you, especially when it comes to defending nearly all Marine aviation assets in the region and a large concentration of personnel. Precisely because the enemy gets a vote, he has an obligation to anticipate and counter the enemy, and act like it is a war zone and actively defend his men and assets. The enemy's "vote" is not akin to a hall pass to stroll onto the base. 

The most offensive of his statements is coining the attack a lucky break. The attack only occurred because of an egregious failure in basic infantry practices. The enemy may have been lucky to exploit these failures, but neglect was the precondition that set the stages for this attack. Intelligence analysts should not have to issue a warning of an impending frontal assault on a major military base for the base to be prepared. 

There is an appalling lack of accountability and introspection that is evident in Maj. Gen. Gurganus' comments about this incident. It is painfully obvious that this attack would not have been successful, or likely even attempted, if not for multiple security failures at Leatherneck/Bastion. This single episode highlights a much larger problem of accountability in the Marine Corps. It is nearly impossible to get fired for incompetence.

We need to stop treating the Marine Corps like a teachers union and demand excellence and accountability from our officer corps. 

Nick Francona is a former Marine Corps Ground Intelligence Officer with 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines in Twenty Nine Palms, CA.  He served as a Scout Sniper Platoon Commander in Helmand Province in 2011.

On Saturday I dropped by the Korean War Veterans Memorial. (No, I didn't see Justice Breyer fracture his shoulder.) I hadn't been there before. I kind of liked it. It is hyper-realistic, a real contrast to the Vietnam memorial just on the opposite, north side of the National Mall's Reflecting Pool.

As I walked around it I counted 19 statues of soldiers, of which several appeared to be carrying radios. (As in this foto, 3 appear to be carrying.) Why so many radios?

Nineteen also struck me as an odd number -- kind of midway between a squad and a platoon. I asked a docent and he said that the number, when reflected in the black rock, signifies the 38th parallel. I dunno.

I mention in another item today how much I liked the McKinsey interview with General McMaster. I was less taken with another article in the same issue, about what defense companies should do to weather the current decline in Pentagon spending. 

The article is laden with phrases that apparently carry great meaning for the authors, but might not be so evident to the reader. They recommend "reimagining the business portfolio." They want executives to "redesign the talent strategy" -- but they don't say what that means. (I am guessing it means hire different sorts of people, but who knows? And what sort of people?) They also call for "appropriately managing incentives." Why does no one ever call for "inappropriate" steps? Those might be more fun, and certainly more interesting. 

Their bottom line: "History shows that the time to act is in the depth of the downturn." My translation: "Buy low, sell high." In other words, what you need to do is simple: Just be the Warren Buffett of the defense industry. Any stockbroker will tell you this is easy to say, hard to do. 

This court finds the authors guilty of aggravated assault on the English language, and sentences them to remedial readings of Strunk & White, and then George Orwell's essay on clear thinking and clear writing.

Here are the results of our survey of good books of military history that aren't about the U.S. military.

There were so many British books mentioned that I moved them into a second category. The first part here is genuinely foreign books -- not necessarily written by foreigners (though most are) but about wars in which the British and Americans were not major players, or at least not written from the Anglo-American perspective.

Most of these mentions were in the comments, but about 10 percent came in by e-mail.

I offer them in no particular order. Not even cleaned up -- just pasted in. For details on the books, go back to the comments section -- lots of explanations there about why a particularly book was nominated.

David Glantz, When Titans Clashed

Rommel's Infantry Attacks (2 nominations)

Counterinsurgency in Africa: The Portuguese Way of War 1961-74

Zhuang-zhi

Epictetus

Martin Van Creveld, everything but especially Command in War

Michael Oren, Six Days of War (2 votes)

Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah, and the War in Lebanon

Alistair Horne's The Price of Glory

Noel Mostert's The Line Upon a Wind

Patrick Rambaud's The Battle

Roland Perry, Sir John Monash: The Outsider Who Won a War

Larteguy's The Centurions and The Praetorians (3 nominations)

Harold Parker's Three Napoleonic Battles (short treatments of Friedland, Aspern-Essling, and Waterloo, with observations uniting all three)

John Elting's Swords Around a Throne (the Billy Yank/Johnny Reb treatment of what it was like for soldiers, leaders, and specialists in Napoleon's Grande Armee)

David Galula's Pacification in Algeria

Legionnaire, by Simon Murray

B.H. Liddell Hart's Caesar: Man, Soldier, and Tyrant

Colonel Saburo Hayashi, Kogun: The Japanese Army in the Pacific War  

Hoito Edoin, The Night Tokyo Burned

No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War, by Hiroo Onoda

The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919, by Mark Thompson

The Franco Regime, by Stanley G. Payn

Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa, by Peter Godwin

Sean Maloney's three-volume history of the Canadian experience in Afghanistan (Enduring the Freedom, Confronting the Chaos, and Fighting for Afghanistan). He also did a narrative of the first eight or so years entitled War in Afghanistan: Eight Battles in the South.

Ivan's War, by Catherine Merridale (2 nominations)

The Reluctant Admiral, by Hiroyuki Agawa (Yamamto)

Vasily Grossman, A Writer at War

Bernard Fall: Memories of a Soldier-Scholar, by his wife Dorothy with an introduction by David Halberstam

Quotations of Chairman Mao Tse Tung

Either The Code of the Samurai or The Hagakure or The 47 Ronin

Heart of Darkness for anyone about to do an AFRICOM rotation. (And one de-nomination.)

Lester Grau, The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan

Alistair Horne's Savage War of Peace

Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom

Avigdor Kahalani, Heights of Courage

Rabinovich's Yom Kippur War

On the Banks of the Suez: An Israeli General's Personal Account of the Yom Kippur War, by Avraham Adan

Forgotten Soldier, by Guy Sajer (2 nominations)

All Quiet on the Western Front, and the lesser known but just as powerful sequel to the book, The Road Back, both by Erich Maria Remarque

Ernst Junger's Storm of Steel

Coalitions, Politicians and Generals -- Some Aspects of Command in Two World Wars, by Dominick Graham and Shelford Bidwell

Strange Victory, by Ernest May

Julian Jackson's The Fall of France

Witness to Surrender, by Brig. Siddiq Salik

The Way It Was, by Brig. Z.A. Khan

In the Line of Duty, by Lt. Gen. Harbaksh Singh

Guerrilla Warfare, by Ernesto "Che" Guevara

Afgantsy, by Rodric Braithwaite

The Jungle is Neutral, by F.Spencer Chapman

The War in Paraguay: With a Historical Sketch of the Country and Its People and Notes Upon the Military Engineering of the War, by George Thompson

On British military -- listed separately because more familiar

Keith Douglas, Alamein to Zem Zem

George MacDonald Fraser's Quartered Safe Out Here (3 nominations)

John Masters, first two volumes of his memoirs

Emile Simpson, War from the Ground Up

Keegan's Face of Battle

The Dambusters

William Slim, Defeat into Victory (4 nominations)

The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command, by Andrew Gordon (4 nominations)

Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of The Great War, by Robert K. Massie (4 nominations)

The Last European War: September 1939-December 1941, by John Lukacs

How the War Was Won: Factors that Led to Victory in World War One and The Killing Ground: The British Army, the Western Front & the Emergence of Modern War 1900-1918, two volumes by Tim Travers

Churchill's Generals

The Story of the Malakand Field Force, by Winston Churchill

Churchill and Seapower, by Christopher Bell 

J.F.C. Fuller's Strategy

Donald Morris, The Washing of the Spears (Zulu Wars)

Gordon Corrigan's Mud, Blood, and Poppycock (attempts to bust many of the popular myths about WWI on the Western Front)

Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War (doorstopper-sized analysis of WWI)

Andrew Roberts' Masters and Commanders

The Tizard Mission: The Top-Secret Operation That Changed the Course of WWII, by Stephen Phelps

Not Mentioned in Dispatches

18 Platoon, by Sidney Jary

The Defence of Duffer's Drift, by Maj. Gen. Ernest Dunlop Swinton.

Brazen Chariots, by Robert Crisp

My War Gone By, I Miss It So, Anthony Loyd, ex-British soldier in Bosnia.

The Swordbearers

Forgotten Armies: Britain's Asian Empire and the War with Japan, by Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper

The Great Crusade: A New Complete History of the Second World War, by H. P. Willmott

Battle for the Falklands, by Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins

Poetry

Sassoon's The War Poems

The Dark Hills, by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Bingen on the Rhine, by Caroline E. Norton

By "One Gone Cat"

Best Defense guest columnist

I thought of offering to write an essay for you that gave my own reasons or that made my own arguments for how the officer corps can be improved to retain the best and the brightest, but thinking about it just made me angry. It made me angry because I knew it would not make any difference, just as the countless opinion pieces written by disgruntled junior officers and NCOs or concerned senior officers and NCOs won't make any difference. The military is too inflexible, the senior officers are too comfortable with the status quo, human resources command believes too strongly in whatever crazy algorithm they have determining entry assignments, and the civilian leadership is too intimidated by a bunch of men who just lost two wars to force a change.

Writing about my experience won't make a difference because senior leaders will look at it and say that it's an anomaly, or that I don't have the ability yet to see the big picture, or that I cannot reflect and see how things actually work very well, or maybe that I got the career I deserved based on my abilities. I understand that they cannot understand me, because I don't understand them.

• I don't understand how the military can go on pretending that we didn't lose the war in Iraq or that we're not about to lose the war in Afghanistan. Withdrawing with honor can still be losing. Lee withdrew with honor at Gettysburg. He also lost. He lost because the conditions on the battlefield as he withdrew were not in his favor, but they were in the favor of his enemy. The same is true of Iraq today. They might argue that the American people did not support the resources needed to win in Iraq or that the politicians made errors that could not be overcome by military genius. I do not know if that is true, but if it is true, we still lost -- we just should not blame generals.

• I don't understand how senior officers can avoid feeling ashamed that we seem to have no idea how to have a smaller budget without damaging training and readiness. I guess the Marines really are the best branch of service. The rest of us were simply propped up with ever-increasing budgets, and we wasted more of the taxpayers' money during the wars than anyone will ever know (no one will ever audit the amount wasted on things like the rent-a-captain program).

• I don't understand how the chief of staff of the Army can have a plan for decreasing troop levels that relies almost entirely on natural attrition without any discussion of a plan to ensure that our best stay and our worst are separated from service.

• I don't understand how they can waste so much money on education for officers through ROTC, and then show no desire to use the skills gained through specific degree programs. They should get rid of scholarships at every private school in the country. Hell, get rid of scholarships for everything but the cheapest state school in every state. The military doesn't care if you learn anything in college, right? They have no interest in recruiting and retaining officers with an intellectual bent. The military might be right that the elite, highly selective schools are no better than any other institution of higher learning. But I do know that the private sector and the rest of the federal government want the elite college graduates very badly, so let the kids go where they are wanted to work for employers interested in developing their passion and offering them direction.

Sorry for the rant. I had to get it out there. You seem like the right person to send it to, since my mentors wouldn't appreciate the tone very much. It probably figures that a bunch of guys trained in an Army that didn't want to admit it lost Vietnam are pretty schooled in the art of self-delusion. But I became an Army officer because I wanted to be among the best, not because I wanted to be part of a group so adept at making excuses and criticizing anyone who doesn't want to stay in for the glorious pension at the end of the rainbow of mediocrity.

"One Gone Cat" is, for a bit longer, a U.S. Army officer. But guess what? The views presented here are his own and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. Army or the Defense Department. 

The other day a couple of commenters discussing innovation in the military mentioned one change (fwiw, the company-level intelligence cell) as a big reason why "we won in Iraq."

Hmm, I thought: Did we actually win that war? I am not sure. It doesn't feel like it. Yes, we got out with our shirts on. But win?

I thought about this again when I read this thoughtful comment by Lt. Gen. James Dubik in the May issue of ARMY magazine:

America is confusing "withdrawing from a war" with "ending a war." The two are very different. A war ends when strategic objectives are met or an enemy is defeated and recognizes its defeat. In Iraq, the war continues -- albeit at a level that the Iraqi security forces are, so far, able to handle and the Iraqi government can manage.

A major in the 101st Airborne suggests that we do a reading list of modern military books that are not about the American military experience (and not the usual classics). Three of his suggestions are The Dambusters, Defeat into Victory , and Churchill's Generals.

To that start, I'd add Keegan's Face of Battle and Alistair Horne's Savage War of Peace. What else? I'll allow histories, memoirs, novels, and poetry.

The January-March issue of ARMOR magazine offers an article provocatively titled "How to Eat Steak with a Knife and Fork! A Return to the Core Competencies That Make Our Maneuver Force Indomitable."

Let's call it "HTESWAKAF" for short.

I am all for being competent. But I also am for winning our wars. I worry that we are not trying to do both. In other words, is the new emphasis on "core competencies" a way of turning away from the lessons of the last 12 years of our wars? Like, what if the enemy isn't serving steak?

Overall, I am a bit puzzled by such a focus on tactical abilities, because I think our biggest flaws in the post-9/11 wars have been strategic, with generals neither able to recognize the nature of their conflicts or to adjust to them. Yet I see little work being done there. And one lesson of Iraq 2003-06 was that good tactics won't fix bad strategy.

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

I came across a series of photos of Wilbur, a U.S. Marine Special Operations dog, taken over the last few weeks in Afghanistan by Marine Corps photographer Sgt. Pete Thibodeau. The collection of images follows Wilbur through Helmand Province -- working security, encountering livestock, playing fetch in front of an idle Humvee, and watching a group of children, his ears pricked in earnest attention.

Today's post title (and the use of the word "adventures") isn't intended to be flippant -- Wilbur is a Special Ops dog, which means his job is especially taxing and dangerous. But Thibodeau's photos show the non-violent side of combat-zone living from Wilbur's point of view with its own kind of wonder and whimsy -- a view worth seeing.

More photos of Wilbur are after the fold but first a couple of War-Dog Announcements:

60 Minutes will be airing a segment on MWDs this Sunday, April 21, called "Sniffing Out Bombs." The show sent a correspondent out to Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, home to the nation's premier pre-deployment course run by the USMC and Gunnery Sgt. Kristopher Reed Knight and his crew of experienced handlers. (I spent two weeks there last year.) Longtime readers of this column are likely to see the faces of those written about here on the CBS news show this week.

For DC locals (and supporters near and far): The Third Annual Annapolis 5K Run & Dog Walk is raising funds for America's VetDogs -- an organization that "provides service and assistance dogs, free of charge, to disabled veterans." The run will kick off at 9 am this Sunday at Quiet Waters Park in Annapolis, Maryland. Looks like early registration has closed but walk-ups are welcome, as are dogs -- leashed, of course. 

Read on

By Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, U.S. Army

Best Defense guest columnist

I recently had the opportunity to speak to approximately 1,400 majors attending the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Ninety-eight percent of the U.S. Army majors at CGSC are combat veterans. Over 80 percent have more than one combat deployment, and nearly 40 percent have deployed three or more times.

But for all the hardships they've endured over the past decade, the next few years will be still be challenging, but in a different way. Our active-duty Army will trim nearly 70,000 soldiers from its ranks, with over 24,000 being involuntarily separated. Those who make up our formations may become frustrated as training resources dwindle, and as soldiers spend more time at stateside bases performing duties that just a few years ago none of them would have even had time to do, like picking up trash and mowing the grass.

However, this cycle is nothing new. I first experienced it 37 years ago, as a second lieutenant fresh from West Point. In 1976, I joined an Army which had just emerged from a painful war in Vietnam, and was beginning to transform from a large conscript force of nearly 1.5 million soldiers to a smaller, volunteer Army roughly half that size. Many predicted that the All-Volunteer Force (AVF) would be an absolute failure; yet, by the time I was a major, our volunteer Army had won one of the most overwhelming victories in military history.

What made the difference? We did have great weapons, but our ultimate success was the result of the quality of our men and women in uniform. After Vietnam, we made leader development our top priority, investing in our people, and in their education and training.

In 1974 only 61 percent of recruits had a high school diploma. During the latter years of the draft -- as well as the early years of the AVF -- crime, drug use, and racial tensions ran high. To fix the force, we had to concentrate on recruiting and retaining quality people. We instituted a zero-tolerance policy towards drugs, eliminating nearly a division's worth of soldiers for substance abuse in the early 1980s. Instead of relying on draftees -- committed only to a few years of service -- we developed a skilled, professional Army. To grow such a force, we had to invest in programs which helped keep soldiers in uniform for a lifetime, such as increasing pay and offering re-enlistment bonuses. We also began to institute family support programs and child care services, making the Army a family-friendly institution. Today, 60 percent of the active-duty force is married.

The new Army required recruits with the education, intelligence, and motivation to operate its new high-tech equipment. We also discovered that the best predictor of successful adjustment to Army life was a high school diploma. Today, over 99 percent of our active-duty Army has a high school diploma or its equivalent, and recruiters are excluded from signing up those who score within the bottom tier of their mental aptitude tests.

Finally, the Army underwent a revolution in training, establishing its Combat Training Centers, starting with the National Training Center in the California desert in 1980. There, entire brigades could participate in large-scale mock battles with a fully-equipped Soviet-style opposing force. The training was so rigorous that many felt that a rotation through NTC was actually harder than the Gulf War.

Having spoken to the most battle-tested group of officers our Army has ever produced in my career, it's clear that we must retain the last decade's worth of talent and experience, all while cultivating the Army's future leadership.

Leader development begins with a focus on making leader training our number one priority. However, during peacetime, professional development is especially difficult. Units may be manned at less than optimal levels, and commanders may be tempted to "hang on" to a stellar performer, instead of allowing them to attend the developmental opportunities they deserve. It will be easy for many to justify short-term success for their organization at the expense of the long-term health of our Army. Our future leaders must be able to think strategically, understanding how their actions affect the Army at large.

They'll have to reflect upon, and write about, the lessons learned from the last decade of war, and they'll have to apply those lessons or principles to future conflicts. At the same time, they'll need to realize that future conflicts rarely resemble the last one. Our adversaries have noticed how reliant we are on digital communications -- and are trying to hack our computers, jam our signals, and neutralize our satellites. When these systems fail, we'll truly appreciate the value of leader development. Mission command can only succeed if the next generation of leaders is trained to think strategically -- "two levels up," as we say. We need leaders who can fight and win with minimal guidance. To do that, we must afford them the opportunities to learn and grow, and to capitalize on their unique experiences and knowledge.

LTG William B. Caldwell is currently the commander of U.S. Army North (Fifth Army) in Fort Sam Houston, Texas. He will retire in July, after 37 years of active service, to serve as the president of Georgia Military College.

By Roxanne Bras

Best Defense department of innovation

If you're in the military and have a good idea, do you know where to go? As recent debates erupted over whether the military encourages innovation and retains talent, I asked friends this question. Many had vague notions about programs at Leavenworth/IDEA Program/Quantico, but not a single person said he had confidence in this process. Now the plural of ‘anecdote' is not ‘data,' but in the absence of a survey about junior leaders' confidence in senior echelon responsiveness, I'm going to venture a guess that the low confidence exhibited by my peers is not spurious.

But we've debated this before, practically every month. Compare all the junior officer blog posts saying that good officers are frustrated with a geriatric bureaucracy to all the senior leaders' assurances that everything is fine. What do you get? I don't know, because these discussions quickly become personal, distracted by red herrings, and unsupported by data.

So is the military encouraging innovation? We can write about it, or we can test it by reaching out to emerging leaders and listening to their ideas. A group of junior officers has come together to try and do just that. We're organizing the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum (DEF), a three-day conference at the University of Chicago, because we believe that our peers have great ideas, strategies, and inventions that can make our military better. And we hope that senior leaders will work with us in this process; this conference is developed in a spirit of duty to our military and its continued improvement, not disloyalty or arrogance.

(Un)fortunately, this conference couldn't be better timed: The military's run out of money. Now it must really think. DEF hopes to provide a place where junior leaders can come together to propose new ideas, network with people from different services and ranks, and learn how to translate ideas into action. General officers and civilian entrepreneurs are also attending, keeping us from just preaching to the choir.

And so you don't think we fully drank the Kool-Aid, we'll admit it: Slogans and buzzwords about innovation and change can sound starry-eyed. But the process of moving from brainstorming to actionable innovations is messy and hard to capture in a bumper sticker. That's why we want to move this conversation to a physical space where we can get together, discuss ideas, and help create road-maps for implementation.

Please take few minutes and check out www.def2013.com, then register and come to the conference! If you have an idea, no matter how random, technical, or high-level, submit it to our Ideas Competition. We'll be picking the best innovations, and the winners will be able to share their ideas at the conference. We've also arranged for an excellent series of speakers, and lots of time for small groups and informal discussions. Sign up for more information, tell us what you think on our Facebook page, get involved, and we'll see you in Chicago.

Roxanne Bras is a captain in the U.S. Army, and a member of the DEF board. The views expressed here are her own and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

He may be retiring, but he remains quotable: "It's not an easy course. It's not designed to be. We're not here to get you in touch with your inner child."

By Lt. Col. Robert "Butch" Bracknell, USMC

Best Defense department of personnel reform

The Department of Defense needs to advocate for and implement certain reforms to ensure the Department is getting maximum return on manpower investments. Most notably, the 20-year retirement permits officers, including senior noncommissioned officers, to request placement on the retired list in the prime of their careers, denying the Department of Defense an opportunity to reap the benefits of 20 years of development and experience.

Smarter manpower management would find a way to extract additional value from a retirement-eligible servicemember by incentivizing his retention, perhaps in a reserve status, until service limitations.

In 2010, the Defense Business Board issued its report "Modernizing the Military Retirement System," recommending comprehensive restructuring of the military retirement system. The report concluded that comprehensive reform is warranted, and that a new retirement system based on an annual contribution model like the Thrift Savings Plan could contribute to military retirement sustainability. Citing unsustainable rises in costs, fairness to servicemembers who separate prior to retirement vesting, and the relative generosity of the military retirement system compared to civilian retirement systems, the board's Task Group that executed the study recognized that the "binary nature" of the system "creates a strong incentive for personnel to leave shortly after 20 years." The authors observed "in some areas of specialization, military servicemembers are only then reaching their peak performance."

After their initial service obligation, typically four to five years, and occasionally up to 10-12 years or more, active duty members take one of three options: (1) they remain on active duty, (2) they move to the reserve component of their service, or (3) they resign or allow their enlistment contracts to expire and separate from the armed services permanently. Active servicemembers can retire from active service after 20 years, which entitles them to 50 percent of their base pay as pension, where "base pay" varies in terms of calculation depending on the statutory retirement calculation system that applies to a servicemember's pay entry base date ("Final Pay", "High 3", "Redux", etc.).  Each year served above 20 years raises the pension by 2.5 percent. Thirty years is the normal maximum career limitation, entitling the servicemember to 75 percent of his base pay in retirement (at 30 years, the usual "service limitation"). In unusual circumstances, certain colonels (with specific and unique qualifications) and general officers can continue to accrue 2.5 percent "bumps" in retirement pay up to a 100 percent base pay retirement benefit.

Reserve servicemembers who elect to continue participating until they have satisfied reserve retirement eligibility criteria obtain the same retirement benefit based on years of accrued service, participation "points," mobilization time, etc., but the benefit generally is deferred until the retired servicemember reaches age 60. A typical career path for one of these servicemembers is to serve four to eight years on active duty, then move over to the reserves to complete a reserve military career while pursuing a "primary" civilian career.

As I contemplated my own retirement from active duty at year 21, I realized I could be ready for new professional challenges. Simultaneously, I realized not only that I had not completely whetted my appetite for military service, but also that I had developed expertise and skills that could still benefit my nation in uniform. I explored my options; my manpower managers informed me that I could move to the reserves, just as if I had only completed four, six, or eight years of military service (an initial service obligation, or an initial obligation plus one or two assignments thereafter). The problem with this plan is that I would be sacrificing completely a $45,972 pension (based on 2013 retirement at O-5 with 21 years) for the privilege of continuing to serve. I love service as much as any Marine who ever wore the uniform, but my family cannot afford to forfeit a vested $46,000 annuity so that I can continue to serve as a reserve Marine.

The stark choice between an active duty career beyond 20 years and a reserve career that only makes financial sense if the servicemember moves to the reserve component earlier in his career, rather than later, counsels that there ought to be an accommodation for servicemembers caught in the middle. A the retirement-eligible officer with specialized skill, experience, and training, who is willing to continue serving as a reserve officer should be permitted to do so, without incurring a substantial financial penalty for the privilege.

Assuming my post-military career prospects are such that I am not going to remain on active duty to year 28 or 30, if I retire and walk away, taking my O-5/21 year/52.5 percent benefit with me, I am also depriving the Marine Corps of 21 years of accrued active duty expertise, nearly four years of cumulative post-9/11 overseas and deployed experience, and a substantial investment in my graduate education and fellowships. If I move to the reserve component, I forfeit a vested $46,000 pension. No rational economic actor would take this deal. As a result, if I retire this year, some other agency or company will reap the benefit of the Marine Corps's investment in developing me as a senior leader and technical expert for the past 21 years. There is no middle ground that would allow the military to reap that benefit, instead of some third party entity.

Moreover, the current system encourages the services to fill their reserve ranks with relatively inexperienced personnel -- an average officer who serves as an active infantryman for four years and as a reserve officer for 12 years is almost always less experienced and less competent at his military trade than an average officer (with similar intellect, talent, etc.) who spends all 16 of those years on active duty. Similarly, the officer who spends 25 years on active duty is deprived of the rich experience of life in the private sector or in another government agency. The absence of post-military experience may yield a less mature business sense for finance, logistics, and process management when compared to a reserve component peer officer who spends four years on active duty and 21 years as a chief financial officer or production manager at General Motors or Boeing. These two communities might be bridged by allowing career active officers to retire and continue service in the reserve component, as a career active duty/career reserve "hybrid." Such officers might represent the best of both worlds: abundant active duty experience, augmented by post-retirement private or other government sector experience that would benefit the third "tier" (the last 10 years) of the officer's combined active and reserve military career. Perhaps there ought to be a third "hybrid" personnel category that allows this to happen.

When an officer vests at 20 years and becomes retirement eligible under this notional system, he might have 3 options, instead of only 2 (stay on active duty or walk away). Those three options would be (1) stay on active duty, (2) walk away, (3) a hybrid option in which the board-selected officer could continue post-retirement as a reserve component servicemember while being paid the active duty pension already earned. In a case like mine, for example, once selected by a combined, proportional board of active and reserve officers, the officer would retire at year 20 and begin immediately to collect his "normal" (50 percent) pension. He would continue to serve for another 10 years as a reserve component officer while starting his second, post-active duty career. At the end of that 10 year reserve portion of his career, the retirement benefit would be adjusted incrementally and proportionately to account for the additional service beyond the 20 year mark. In fairness to those who stay on active duty, any increase to the hybrid officer's ultimate retirement pension would be fractionally adjusted; a smaller accrued benefit would vest in comparison to the hybrid's active duty counterpart who stays on active duty until year 30. At year 30, he would be eligible to collect 75 percent of his base pay, and the hybrid who retired from active duty at year 20 might collect some smaller amount -- perhaps only 57.5-60 percent at year 30 (0.75-1 percent premium per year served, rather than 2.5 percent per year). This would account for the 50 percent the hybrid would have already earned, plus some marginal additional compensation for the willingness to commit another 10 years in the reserve component. The formula might be adjusted to compensate for periods of mobilization; for example, if within that 10 year period of reserve service, an officer is mobilized for a major theater conflict for 2 years, then his active retirement would plus up to 55 percent, and the other 8 years of his reserve career might be compensated in retirement at the "normal" 0.75-1 percent rate. This notional officer eventually would retire with 22 years of active service (55 percent) of base pay, and his benefit would increase at age 60 to account for the other 8 years of reserve service (0.75-1 percent over eight years, for a 6-8 percent plus-up -- equaling 61-63 percent of base pay retirement annuity).

Purists may intone: "Bah, humbug. Pick one or the other. This is waffling. This is indecisive. This isn't the way we do things." Duly noted. But if the goal is to maximize return on investment, and to extract more value and service out of high-value, well-trained experts -- COIN experts, counterterrorism practitioners, logisticians, engineers, foreign area officers and regional experts, resource managers, aviators, strategists, cyberwarriors, physicians, etc. -- who have earned the right to walk away through 20 years of service, then we need a new paradigm for doing so. Modifying force management statutes and regulations to permit a new category of "hybrid" officer would improve the experience quantum in the most senior reserve ranks and would temper the loss of institutional knowledge and expertise when exceptional officers retire at year 20. There likely are multiple ways to realize additional return on our institutional manpower investment that fit each service's unique needs for manpower capabilities. This is but one of them.

Providing a third "hybrid" option in the future that makes financial sense to the servicemember while retaining talent for the total force is a win-win proposition. As we look forward to figuring out how to lean out the services and get the most return on our defense investment, it is clear the Department of Defense wastes an inordinate amount of human capital by allowing it to walk out the door at year 20 without providing any option for continued return on that 20-year investment. Proposing authority to Congress to modify the military retirement scheme to allow a 20-year retirement plus reserve continuation permits the Department to honor the "20 year deal" while extracting additional service value out of officers during the last third of an officer's potential 30-year career.

This option is far superior to letting talented, capable officers simply walk away at the 20-year mark with an annuity and a gold watch, taking 100 percent of their abilities and experience with them to a new employer.

"Butch" Bracknell is a Marine lieutenant colonel on active duty, but perhaps not much longer.

I like this list below. First, it is a good summary of the wisdom and humor in one military field.

Second, it is typical of a military genre -- the grim but humorous compilation of hard-won knowledge. I've seen multiple copies of a similar one on infantry ("Friendly fire, isn't"), but would like to see other examples you might have.

EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO KNOW IN LIFE I  LEARNED AS A HELICOPTER PILOT IN VIETNAM. 

1. Once you are in the fight, it is way too late to wonder if this is a good idea.

2. It is a fact that helicopter tail rotors are instinctively drawn toward trees, stumps, rocks, etc. While it may be possible to ward off this natural event some of the time, it cannot, despite the best efforts of the crew, always be prevented. It's just what they do.

3. NEVER get into a fight without more ammunition than the other guy.

4. The engine RPM and the rotor RPM must BOTH be kept in the GREEN. Failure to heed this commandment can affect the morale of the crew.

5. Cover your Buddy, so he can be around to cover for you.

6. Decisions made by someone above you in the chain-of-command will seldom be in your best interest.

7. The terms Protective Armor and Helicopter are mutually exclusive.

8. Sometimes, being good and lucky is still is not enough.

9. "Chicken Plates" are not something you order in a restaurant

10. If everything is as clear as a bell, and everything is going exactly as planned, you're about to be surprised.

11. Loud, sudden noises in a helicopter WILL get your undivided attention.

12. The BSR (Bang Stare Red) Theory states that the louder the sudden bang in the helicopter, the quicker your eyes will be drawn to the gauges. The longer you stare at the gauges the less time it takes them to move from green to red.

13. No matter what you do, the bullet with your name on it will get you. So, too, can the ones addressed "To Whom It May Concern."

14. If the rear echelon troops are really happy, the front line troops probably do not have what they need.

15. If you are wearing body armor, they will probably miss that part of you.

16. Happiness is a belt-fed weapon.

17. Having all your body parts intact and functioning at the end of the day beats the alternative.

18. If you are allergic to lead, it is best to avoid a war zone.

19. It is a bad thing to run out of airspeed, altitude, and ideas all at the same time.

20. Hot garrison chow is better than hot C-rations which, in turn, is better than cold C-rations which, in turn, is better than no food at all. All of these, however, are preferable to cold rice balls, even if they do have the little pieces of fish in them.

21. Everybody's a hero...On the ground...In the club...After the fourth drink.

22. A free fire zone has nothing to do with economics.

23. The further you fly into the mountains, the louder those strange engine noises become.

24. Medals are OK, but having your body and all your friends in one piece at the end of the day is better.

25. Being shot hurts and it can ruin your whole day.

26. "Pucker Factor" is the formal name of the equation that states the more hairy the situation is, the more of the seat cushion will be sucked up your ass. It can be expressed in its mathematical formula of S (suction) + H (height above ground ) + I (interest in staying alive) + T ( # of tracers coming your way)

27.The term 'SHIT!' can also be used to denote a situation where high Pucker Factor is being encountered.

28. Thousands of Vietnam Veterans earned medals for bravery every day. A few were even awarded.

29. Running out of pedal, fore or aft cyclic, or collective are all bad ideas. Any combination of these can be deadly.

30. There is only one rule in war: When you win, you get to make up the rules.

31. C-4 can make a dull day fun.

32. There is no such thing as a fair fight -- only ones where you win or lose.

33. If you win the battle you are entitled to the spoils. If you lose, you don't care.

34. Nobody cares what you did yesterday or what you are going to do tomorrow. What is important is what you are doing -- NOW -- to solve our problem.

35. Always make sure someone has a P-38. Uh, that's a can opener for those of you who aren't military.

36. Prayer may not help...but it can't hurt.

37. Flying is better than walking. Walking is better than running. Running is better than crawling. All of these, however, are better than extraction by Medevac, even if it is technically, a form of flying.

38. If everyone does not come home, none of the rest of us can ever fully come home either.

39. Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your HONOR.

40. A grunt is the true reason for the existence of the helicopter. Every helicopter flying in Vietnam had one real purpose: To help the grunt. It is unfortunate that many helicopters never had the opportunity to fulfill their one true mission in life, simply because someone forgot this fact.

If you have not been there and done that you probably will not understand most of these.