Tom, this is the MENE. ARFORGEN is the beast that asks the Faustian bargain when it aligns with the POM. Gen Scales is wise and honest.

From an Army website:

Army Force Generation (ARFORGEN) is the structured progression of increased unit readiness over time resulting in recurring periods of availability of trained, ready, and cohesive units. These units are prepared for operational deployment in support of Combatant Commanders’ or civil authorities’ requirements. Units are task organized in modular expeditionary forces, tailored for mission requirements. They are sustainable and have the capabilities and depth required to conduct the full range of operations in a persistent conflict. Operational requirements drive the ARFORGEN training and readiness process.

MG Scales is absolutely accurate in his descriptions. I would also like to add that not only is intellectual capital weakened due to educational deferments, but the Army has had a challenging time of recruiting, training, retaining and developing "talented" officers in the first place...as evidenced by MG Scales' own institute (SSI) featuring a debate on officer strategy.
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/

As far as OSD gurus go, your point about service centric budgets hits on a larger point that (I think) OSD believes anything that comes from a service will inherently be biased in favor of that service....and if it wasn't we wouldn't need OSD.

Today General Scales was appointed to a House Armed Services review group that will examine next year's Quadrennial Defense Review:

Skelton Appoints Members to Independent Panel to Assess the Quadrennial
Defense Review

Washington, D.C. - Today, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike
Skelton (D-Mo.) announced the appointment of Major General Robert Scales
(USA, Ret.) and Dr. Richard Kohn to the Department of Defense's
independent panel to assess the 2009 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).

"I am honored to appoint General Robert Scales and Dr. Richard Kohn to
the independent panel on the Quadrennial Defense Review. The Quadrennial
Defense Review plays an important role in Congress' development of
national security priorities. General Scales and Dr. Kohn have the
analytical backgrounds and practical military experience to help
Congress evaluate the results and recommendations of the QDR," said
Skelton.

Section 1061 of the FY 2010 National Defense Authorization Act (P.L.
111-84) establishes provisions for the Chairmen and Ranking Members of
the House and Senate Armed Services Committees to appoint 8 additional
members to DOD's independent panel to assess the QDR. The law allows
Skelton, in his capacity as Chairman of the House Armed Services
Committee, to appoint 2 members to the panel.

The 2009 QDR is expected to be released in February 2010.
The independent panel's report on the 2009 QDR must be submitted to the
Secretary of Defense and to the Congressional defense committees no
later than July 15, 2010.

Biographies of General Scales and Dr. Kohn are attached:

Major General Robert Scales (USA, Ret.)

Retired General (Dr.) Robert Scales is a graduate of West Point and
earned his PhD in history from Duke University. Dr. Scales served over
thirty years in the Army, retiring as a Major General.

Scales commanded two units in Vietnam, winning the Silver Star for
action during the battles around Dong Ap Bia (Hamburger Hill) during the
summer of 1969. Subsequently, he served in command and staff positions
in the United States, Germany, and Korea and ended his military career
as Commandant of the United States Army War College. In 1995, he created
the Army After Next program, which was the Army's first attempt to build
a strategic game and operational concept for future land warfare.

Immediately after retirement from the Army, Scales was appointed
President and CEO of Walden University. He is currently President of
Colgen, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in issues relating to land
power, war gaming and strategic leadership.

Scales is the author of two books on military history: Certain Victory,
the official account of the Army in the Gulf War and Firepower in
Limited War, a history of the evolution of firepower doctrine since the
end of the Korean War. He has also written two books on the theory of
warfare: Future Warfare, a strategic anthology on America's wars to come
and Yellow Smoke: the Future of Land Warfare for America's Military.

Scales is a frequent consultant with the senior leadership of every
service in the Department of Defense, as well as Congress and many
allied militaries. He is also a frequent commentator for the American
and international media on issues relating to military history, future
warfare and defense policy.

Dr. Richard H. Kohn

Dr. Richard H. Kohn is Professor of History and Adjunct Professor of
Peace, War, and Defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill. Kohn was educated at Harvard (A.B. magna cum laude, 1962) and the
University of Wisconsin (M.S. 1964, Ph.D. 1968). He has taught military
history and national security affairs at City College of the City
University of New York, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Dickinson
College, and the US Army and National War Colleges.

From 1981 to 1991, Kohn was Chief of Air Force History and Chief
Historian for the United States Air Force, responsible for providing
historical advice and services to the Air Staff and Secretariat, and
functional management of history as a staff function throughout the
world wide Air Force.

From 1992 to 2000, Kohn headed the Triangle Institute of Security
Studies, and from 1992 to 2006, he chaired the Curriculum in Peace, War,
and Defense, an undergraduate major in the field in UNC's College of
Arts and Sciences.

Kohn served two terms as president of the Society for
Military History, served on the Advisory Board of the U.S. Air Force's
Gulf War Air Power Survey and the Air University Board of Visitors, and
served as a member of the National Security Study Group, which assisted
the US Commission on National Security/21st Century (the Hart-Rudman
Commission).

A specialist in American military history and civil-military
relations, Kohn is the author, editor, or co-author or co-editor of some
ten volumes in the field, including Eagle and Sword: The Federalists
and the Creation of the Military Establishment in America, 1783-1802
(1975) and The Exclusion of Black Soldiers from the Medal of Honor in
World War II (1997). His most recent book is an edited volume with
Peter D. Feaver, Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and
American National Security (2001). He is currently working on a study of
presidential war leadership in American history.

the scary hand in the Daniel chapt. 5 story inscribes
"mene, mene, tekel upharson"

It was not the encrypted content, but the disembodied hand doing the inscription that caused the Babylonian king to lose bowel control, on the eve of losing his empire.

Unless the officers at TRADOC are staring at goats again, the invisible hand I worry about is the one picking pockets in the financial markets. More than one way to screw up in Babylon, and fall prey to those pesky Persians.

First, I believe MG Scales accurately defines the problem that currently besieges the US Army. My only quibble is that he only touches on the "training" portion of the deficiency. In the first post on this topic, as well, Mr. Ricks really touched on how doctrine is written by contractors.

In my assessment, the problem is the reliance by the US Army in contracting out not just wartime jobs, but garrison duties from personnel, finance and, most egregiously, training and intelligence jobs. I recently started the Military Intelligence Captain's Career Course. Many of our instructors are civilians, and countless people on our post are contractors either training the force or writing doctrine.

As a result, and it was touched on by MG Scales and most of the other commentators, TRADOC is universally despised. Not just by students frustrated by the courses, but cadre and trainers as well.

My solution is simple, but impossible. We must acknowledge that the size of the US Army is too small. If we cannot fight our wars, train the force and conduct intelligence without military contracting, then our force is too small. Our leaders frequently say that it costs a million dollars to deploy a soldier, and a same amount to train a general, then how much do we lose in dollar terms when a Soldier leaves the force?

Some concrete solutions: increase the size of the military to recognize the true size we need, implement stronger regulations that prohibit ex-military from conducting even similar jobs in the civilian world and continue to increase the benefits for active duty soldiers to compete with the private sector (as Mr. Ricks mentioned on an earlier post).

I'm not entirely a fan of the unified command structure, but there does seem wisdom in the division of labor that has the war-fighting commanders fighting wars and the Chiefs of Service providing forces, seeing to the present and future readiness of their Service. I think that division is being ignored or downplayed by the Army leadership: everyone wants to be a fighter and the long-term health of the Service - the Army - is ignored while these Smokey-The-Bear types run around looking for the next fire to stomp out with their bare feet.

Would be nice if the various flaws and foibles of current Army were one-off, isolated, minor, easily fixed. But this blog has floated a whole host of major issues suggesting deep origins, flowing, I would argue, from an on-going eagerness to fight the fight of the moment while forgetting about the mission of the Army and its need for readiness in all its aspects.

FM-1 says this: "Specifically, the Army mission is to provide to combatant commanders the forces and capabilities necessary to execute the National Security, National Defense, and National Military Strategies." Clearly that includes training and educating its officer corps for higher duties. Clearly that includes attending to the maintenance and advancement of the best doctrine for the wars now and in the foreseeable future.

The Army could not perform to win in Vietnam (Bud Zumwalt: "We got our ass kicked - militarily"). It failed again both in the planning and the execution of operations after "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. It did nothing in Afghanistan from 2003 until very recently. It can't decide COIN or main-force. And, it seems, it can't even execute its excellent education program for mid-grade and senior officers below flag rank. Army would be a good stock to short, but though it's 'publicly held,' the stock can't be sold. We citizens are stuck with it: maybe it's time for new management.

Maybe take a page from the Marine Corps who make it a stated practice to send their best officers back to the school house to be instructors in their officer basic course and to be company commanders at recruiting depots in San Diego and Parris Island?

In fact, when I went to FA OBC at Fort Sill as an Army 2LT my gunnery and fire support instructors were both Marine Corps captains and it was evident they were "top notch" officers. (Yes, I had Marine Corps officers teach me to be an artillery officer at Sill; the Army artillery captains were likely, in MG Scales' words, being fed to the ARFORGEN beast).

Probably the only place in the Army where "top notch" officers come back to teach/instruct is at West Point--both the academic instructors and TAC officers. Maybe SGIs (small group instructors) at the career courses, who like those who teach at West Point are post company command captains, offer similar real world deployment experience with, presumably, highly rated OERs.

Unlike the Marine Corps, though, this "back to school" track isn't really emphasized in the Army. Seems like if you're a good company grade Army officer, you need to be back in the deployment chute as soon as your dwell is up. Maybe I'm wrong, though?

His book "Certain Victory" has some insight. It seems Generals were afraid of "Screaming Norman" Schwartzkopf and sent in false position reports to keep the screamer happy at their progress. This became a problem when Bush and Powell wanted to declare a 100 hour victory. What few people know is that Saddam had agreed to pull his forces our of Kuwait two days before the deadline and Iraqi forces began withdrawing before the ground offensive began, which is why it was move up by one day. This is why almost no Iraqi units stood and fought. Senior officers took cars and raced home leaving units confused.

Anyway, Norman's map showed the Iraqis were cut off from escape and told the President it was okay to announce a ceasefire. A few hours later, Norman learned his forward forces were a few miles short of cutting off the Iraqis and the Iraqi Republican Guard was peacefully marching in columns back to Iraq.

Screaming Norman was mad, and the book lays out how a very ambitious and amoral MGen Barry McCaffery, CO of the 24th Mech, ordered his units forward during the ceasefire "to look for abandoned equipment". As they approached one Iraqi unit, a soldier fired some warning shots in the air, so McCaffery announced they and been attacked and sent his forces forward to wipe out Iraqi units marching home with tanks in trailers. They sometimes show Apache attack helo video from that "war" on TV and in some of their attacks you see Iraqi tanks on trailers in column.

The secret Army war crimes investigation revealed the truth, but that what swept under the rug and the White House eventually promoted McCaffery to four-stars.

After years of defeat and utter failure, we need to get used to the fact that our general officers are dumb and lazy. The Army is broken. Our own idiot generals broke it, and are too stupid and ignorant to fix it. TRADOC can not change this problem. Corruption is hard to root out of any system, especially the Army.

To answer Mr. Ricks I think that GEN Scales is correct and only we (the Army) have the power to fix this. The only way to increase our intellectual capital is for senior leaders to make the sometimes extremely difficult decision to look a hard charging officer in the eye, the guy they absolutely want with them on the next deployment, and tell them that it's time for them to "take a knee" for a year. I know that GEN Dempsey (TRADOC CDR) hates that term but it is what it is. Forcing some of these officers to slow down, sit down and get as much as they can out of the seminar environment at Leavenworth could be at least a bandaid on the leaking intellectual capital in the Army.

But ARFORGEN is the beast that needs to be fed and it has quite an appetite. However it's a leaders responsibility to develop our officers and that includes their education.

A note to Murph - do not confuse teaching at the any of the tactical courses as increasing an instructors intellectual capital. While you may have been impressed with undoubtably outstanding Marines there are many of those Marine officers who look at the Army and are extremely jealous of our REAL educational opportunities like fully funded graduate school - something that does not exist in the Corps.

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To respond to several of the commenters,

We are doing internally to our Army what we can to educate ourselves. Yes, TRADOC has a responsibility, but the individual officer and non-commissioned officer does as well. Each officer has a college education – and many master’s degrees – and thus can develop their own (and their unit’s) education plan.

To Starbuck and my friend Chris Danbeck – yes, there is a selection process for some branches to teach in career courses. It’s internal to the schoolhouses. Some (infantry is the one that I know) are very formal while others are not – some rely on assignment officers at HRC to do the work. The batch is mixed. There are a lot of discussions about improving the quality of instructors with a selection process, but like every other discussion on manpower, the question becomes “where do I accept risk?” Is it training centers, USMA professors, CCC instructors, warfighting units? Something has to give.

While I do think that our fully funded graduate programs are awesome (and as Chris says, envied by the Marines – and Navy from what I have seen), many officers are not able to take advantage of them for deployment (on or as Chris says “taking a knee”), timeline, or other reasons. I wish that we could, but we must focus not only on the future, but also on the war that we are fighting now (and that means feeding the ARFORGEN beast). I do have to disagree with Chris on one point - teaching in a tactical course (or doing anything else for that matter) can be a very educationally rewarding experience IF those in charge of that instructor group are able to manage the time of the instructors and allow them to do some research and reflection. Teaching in a tactical course can increase intellectual capability.

There are plenty of other things that we can do to educate ourselves. Surely the piece on GEN McChrystal in Time Magazine (http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1946375_1947252,00.html) shows what commanders can do to influence the education – not the training, the education – of their formations. We owe it to our Soldiers and leaders to take a little time each day to reflect on what we are doing and maybe read a little.

It’s that second and third leg of education – self and unit – that are so important to the development of our officers, non-commissioned officers, and Soldiers as a precursor to the TRADOC experience. The one piece that is missing from the TRADOC experience (was a small group instructor at the US Field Artillery Captains’ Career Course for two years) is the ability to allow students to reflect. We spend too much time focusing on the inputs and not enough allowing students to have time to reflect on what they have done and what we have taught them. That’s another function of the budget and proving that we are giving our Citizens what we promised them. More in = better officer, right?

There are plenty who will point at CGSC and call it sub-standard for the following reasons: retired and out of touch instructors, dated material, deferments, etc. The problem only partially lies with the institution. It also lies heavily with the individual officer and his/her performance – and that means rigorous study and reflection. We don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The TRADOC institutions just need some tweaking.

This is not the mene (just the fact that many of us know what this refers to should point to something), it’s just the cycle that we are in right now – and it’s not nearly as bad as the post-Vietnam Army. We aren’t doing as bad as many of those in the “think tanks” say.

As far as the War Colleges go - isn't the 21st-23rd year too late to start educating an officer on strategy? I know that MG Scales calls the War College a “pre-retirement exercise” for deferred officers, but isn’t the more important issue the fact that we make officers strategists based off their tactical performance? I graduated from Leavenworth in Jun and have seen what they teach and know that my next formal Army educational experience is in 9-11 years - so how are we as an Army working to ensure that we have “generalist” generals and not “tactical” generals?

Scott

I believe that Scott Shaw said it best with regards to the reflection portion of learning. Historically speaking, the Army's philosophy of funneling students through rigorous educational programs in a timely manner has been desribed as "all over the place" as far as educational retainment is concerned. It produces the effect of dumping a pot of water into a soda bottle. Dump it too fast and the effectiveness of the task becomes useless (less water in the soda bottle) and if often repeated, it becomes redundant with no justification. If time and patience are allowed, then more of the knowledge will be retained.

Army doctrine is more often then not a perfected educational system, it is just the institutions and methodology of introducing the materials that need to be tweaked. If more material is retained, the purpose of a military classroom knowledge becomes pragmatic.

Without sounding like I am slamming the Army's method of providing education and/or professional development, reflection is essential in retainment and re-usage, for any career field. I believe that upon given reflection and research time, you are taking the some of the responsibility away from the instructor/institution and putting it more upon the student, which allows them to grow as a professional.
Ty