- The Army is leery of "war termination" because politicians (rightly) consider strategic ends to be their purview, and have not recently done a good job of outlining how breaking the enemy's Army translates into a strategic endgame. Is that really purely an Army issue?

"An Army that cannot fight without the presence of thousands of mercenaries on the battlefield, subject to neither local law nor military justice, and so polluting American efforts."

I don't think this is true at all. The Army can fight just fine with what it has, and can even does OK with its own logistics -- though I would not call LOGCAP "mercenaries", regardless. There are pros and cons of contracting that be argued ad infinitum. FWIW, State was behind most of the shenanigans with Blackwater, etc. And generally didn't want to rely on DoD for security.

What the Army has trouble doing is occupying and forming the effective constabulary of a country without a huge contractor footprint -- including armed guards that you imply are mercenaries.

Why not? Lots of reasons. The first two that come to mind:
- Too small a force for occupation
- Unwillingness to enforce martial law

There is no question that the all-volunteer force has performed stunningly well. The concept was even able to sustain recruiting during an on-going conflict (though not without some difficulty and lowering of some standards).

But the casualty drain on the force was minimal even during the worst periods of the two conflicts. Even the November-December 2004 battles for Fallujah did not generate even a day's worth of dead and wounded compared to the Hurtgen Forest or any one of a dozen Pacific Islands in World War II (of course I say this with no intent of minimizing the loss and anguish of those casualties or their families).

So the unanswered question remains: How would the all-volunteer force stand up to high-intensity combat over time, and how will public opinion react? If daily casualty figures are in the dozens or hundreds and sustained for weeks, will the force bend without breaking, both in the short and long term? This quesiton doubles in uncertainty if National Guard or reserve forces are involved. How would American public opinion respond?

This question becomes pertinent when we start talking about a forced entry onto the coastline of Iraq, as per the CSBA analysis of a Hormuz scenario. Or when you contemplate the threat that Iranian (or more likely Chinese) submarines and land-based missiles pose to an aircraft carrier.

These are questions not answered in the past 10 years.

An Army that deploys and fights as a BCT central organization
The army learned how to more rapidly get items into the field, albeit it took a long time to learn this lesson. MRAPs and Rapid Fielding Initiate are a couple of examples of the two.
An Army that will never again move units around a battlefield in vehicles without armor.
An army that can fight jointly, and as a multi-national force
An army where every single unit that comes back from deployment will have a story of how successful they were while at the same time the war is going in the wrong direction
The army learned that taking risk in the generating will still have an impact on the operating force.
An army that still can not harness the power of social media, (e.g. crowd sourcing) while at the same time minimizing the risk that comes with it.
An Army that learned that part of taking risk in recruiting standards will allow for soldiers like PFC Green and Manning into the army
An Army that took 10 years to learn that the beret was a horrible idea.

Tom,

The post-9/11 US Army has had a stunning and ongoing inability to apply basic and core use of data and analytics to its operations both at home and deployed. The most stunning example remains the failure to accurately predict and get ahead of the IED events, deaths, and injuries with an effective and immediate counter measure. The MRAP and its variants was years late in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While IED counter-measures are the most obvious, the failure of the US Army to adopt an effective camouflage pattern to match its operational environment, the use of even basic survey data to see if the beret was a good uniform idea, the failure to use modeling to predict MRAP repair parts supply and quantity, problems with testing of body armor, and the ham handed approach to pick the next US Army rifle (carbine) are only a few examples. These failures in procurement, purchase, and testing go well beyond the DOD defense purchasing process and all point to failures in basic use of data and statistics to support what is best for the Army. In short, these failures in data are failures in leadership.

The failure to use advanced data and analytics in a simple, effective and repeatable manner to gauge the effectiveness of the US COIN approach in Iraq and Afghanistan is a more complex requirement that the Army should have led. The failure in the use of analytics to make effective core decisions in how the US Army leads, plans, and executes its military operations and its Title X operations (train & equip) ultimately is a failure of basic leadership. In this criticism, the US Army should be recognized for achievements in medical (trauma) care, the PEO Soldier program that has sped needed personal equipment to the battlefield, and the ability of Army & USAF Aviation to massively step up operations to reduce ground transportation to reduce IED deaths,

You mentioned Andrew Bacevich above. He gave the George C. Marshall Lecture on Military History at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association earlier this month in Chicago. Title: :The Revisionist Imperative: Rethinking the Twentieth Century" It's very provocative. Go here to read or watch: http://www.marshallfoundation.org/Bacevich2012MarshallLecture.htm

The Army has done quite well at bringing in new vehicles, technology, weapons and people through acquisitions and recruitment programs. However, that now appears to me a great setup before the fall. Under the auspices of "the urgent needs of combat," the Army was able to fast-track (read, "cut supervisory corners" on) weapons/vehicle programs and, when rationalized as expedient, purchase equipment from commercial off-the-shelf dealers. I don't know what the recruitment budget swelled to, but from "Army of One" to "Army Strong," the marketing research, airtime on networks and television film crews didn't come cheap.

That's all the setup. Here comes the fall. Once again, the New York Times reports the Army set a new record for suicides in 2011, this time on the active duty side. I used to feel buoyed whenever I heard Chiarelli pound his fist and holler "this is unacceptable." I'm beginning to wonder if that's really him saying it or of the Army was also able to procure a Chiarelli robot with fist-pounding action and kung-fu grip for just these occasions. We also ran our helicopter and humvee fleets into the ground out there. That's to say nothing of the electical, HVAC, personal weapons, night vision devices, and other equipment that's absolutely trashed.

Anyone remember Operation Total Recall? How many hundreds of thousands of helmets and kevlar vests simply went missing? How many times did we hear the phrase "this is why we can't have nice things?"

We have an Army that is exceptionally good at taking a 19-year-old private, training him to be sensitive to Pashtun tribal culture, call for fire, use laser sighting to coordinate a GPS-guided bomb, and fly a UAV. We are not good at changing the oil in the truck, or remembering to unplug the external power cable from the UAV before launching it (think of one of those paddles with the rubber ball tied to it). We obviously don't sit together and spend serious time cleaning our weapons with that 19-year-old private either, or else we'd know more about what's going on in his life and might be able to keep him from blowing his brains out more often.

The Army is good at getting new things. Lieutenants who invaded Afghanistan in 2001 will be getting their battalion command within the next five years. You have a group of people who spent their platoon and company XO time being told "just buy whatever you need, we have the money" and "go ahead and kick 'em out quick, because we'll get priority for new recruits." As these people fulfill Brigade XO and Battalion command slots, they'll be in an Army that says "make do with what you have." The biggest problem is that many in these year groups believe that's what they've been doing all along. They have no idea how painful it can get. There are going to be some painful lessons.

As a soldier who joined in 2000 I cannot express the number of times I have seen waste, fraud and abuse at every level of the military. The moment I realized that this military was going to loose billions of dollars was the day that my replacements showed up in OIF I. We we're a reserve water company with two, million dollar pieces of water purify equipment. (yes i have seen in the army now). Our equipment worked perfectly for the entire 3rd ACR for 11 months on Al Asad. Our replacements, marines, brought older equipment that still could provide the same level of water supply for their marines. There was debate up until a few weeks before we left on whether or not we would leave our equipment for the marines and the final answer was no. I thought it was because the marines felt like their equipment could do the job and nobody wanted the hassle of a transfer of property between an army reserve unit and an active MEU. However, neither of these was really the reason. The reason was that their were contractors who brought their own equipment to supply water. While their equipment was based on the same principle as ours it was clearly poorer quality than the equipment we had. I asked the contractors how much their rig cost and they informed me that it cost the army 1.5 million and then after some more discussion I found that the four contractors we're each making 100K a year. To make matters worse these gentlemen came to me, an E-4, to help them figure out how to get their equipment up and running. I knew then this was happening all over Iraq. The military has the trained personnel and the equipment to do a job but we're going to pay a single contractor three times the amount of one soldier and pay for new equipment. WTF! Who makes the decisions. I cannot fathom the billions of dollars pissed away on contracts like this. Shame on the senior leaders of the military for letting this go on for so long and shame on the US congress for allowing it to happen. No wonder we can't get printer paper and ink for our offices.

Tom,

I can't speak for the Army, but here's what I've seen in the Marine Corps:

*We've pushed leadership decisions down to the lowest possible level. I routinely saw Lance Corporals acting like Sergeants and Sergeants acting like Lieutenants. Unfortunately, our promotion system is still broken and that only applies in-country. As an NCO, I sometimes filled in for my Captain at briefings. But when I was later transferred to a non-deploying unit, I found it extremely hard to readjust to old top-down system.

*In Iraq, but especially in Afghanistan, the company has replaced the battalion as the lowest command element: One of our contractors, who was a Marine in the Eighties, complained that when he was in, and a battalion commander said 'jump', everyone said 'how high?' Nowadays, battalion has become just another higher echelon to ignore and companies are where everything gets done. Even then, last year we had most of our squads out at their own little partnered patrol bases basically operating on their own.

*CAVEAT: Techonology has also given commanders the ability to micromanage their units. There were plenty of times I saw commanders use their GBOSS system to spy on units outside the wire, or Regiment/Division give us a stupid training requirement that they expected us to complete in several days (in the middle of combat operations!). Basically, the worse your communications system was, the more independence you had from higher headquarters.

*The personnel system is still on a peacetime footing. Rotating people out of units every three years may be great in peacetime, but in war it gives combat units the institutional memory of a goldfish. I watched plenty of officers and Staff Non-Commissioned officers rotate into a unit for a deployment, and then move on as soon as they got back. Does this give them a wider range of experience? Yes. Does it build unit cohesion or a good 'lessons-learned' mentality? No. We also still base our promotions off Military Occupation Specialty (MOS) availability, as opposed to leadership ability. I keep running into intelligence analysts and communications Marines who are E-4/E-5 but have never deployed, as well as infantry squad leaders with two combat tours who are stuck at E-3.

*We've lost our ability to be expeditionary. Secretary Gates wasn't exaggerating when he said we were in danger of becoming a second 'army'. Everything about today's Marine Corps, from our MRAPs, to our body armor, to our massive computer systems, to the palatial chow halls I keep seeing at battalion-level FOBs, require a ton of infrastructure to support and maintain. In 2008, 2nd Battalion 7th Marines (one of our desert warfare battalions from 29 Palms) was dumped in the middle of Afghanistan by themselves with no support network and got their asses kicked. This should be our starting point for figuring out where we went wrong.

That's just at my level. If you want the junior enlisted perspective, go look at the webcomic Terminal Lance (http://terminallance.com/), run by an Iraq veteran.

Tom says "The all-volunteer force has proven remarkably cohesive and resilient under the resulting stress." Yeah sure, but it has also proven that it cannot win even small wars ... against ill-equipped ragtag irregulars ... though given unrestrained resources.

Nor has the interplay of the draft with the political decision to even go into these wars of choice been at all explicated and explored.

The failure of the AVF is THE readiness issue of the day. Yes it's ready ... as long as the definition of readiness avoids any mention of actual success. But if these ten years of combat are to be judged as trial by combat, the AVF is surely found guilty, of failure, fecklessness, and an abject disregard for costs and outcomes. Bankrupt, I'd say, and the US Army at the center of it all, the AVF it's bastard child.

It seems to me that there is something more fundamental running through most of these comments and the original post, and this applies to all the military services, not just the Army. Truth is not seen as being important. If it is not important there is no need to recognize it and even less need to actively look for it. If it shows up by accident it may upset something or other and hence it is to feared and if it is to be feared it is something that must be kept away and suppressed.

We cannot win like this against anybody anytime. We should be thanking the fates that the 9/11 wars have highlighted this so we can fix it. But, as Tom mentions, we are ignoring it or as SoldiersDiary says we are telling ourselves we won when we have lost.

There is nothing in man's endeavors that more cruelly penalizes failure to see the truth than war and we won't see it.

a materiel binge was initiated and sustained by QRCs, JUONS and Supplemental appropriations. Army became a distributor of treasury wealth to Congressional patrons, Army and civil service family....every means from affirmative action, minority set asides and special research programs became Madoff like tools to fleece. For OEF, this will continue through the likes of CECOM, REDCOM and AMC as the last raid contunes with JUONS that bypass the acquisition laws and regs. All oversight remains blind or just....

I think we've learned to do a lot of individual Soldier things better. Shooting, for example. I might be wrong, but I don't think anyone is still "rodding" people on and off the range, nor is anyone still using a clearing barrel. People carry their weapons at the range the way they would in a combat zone. I think a lot more units are also doing reflexive fire, live-fire shooting and moving, transition (M4 to M9) drills, etc. instead of just shooting stationary targets from the prone position. Then there is the Combat Life Saver or Tactical Combat Casualty Care program. We are all walking around now with at least one tourniquet in our pocket at all times. The importance of having it and knowing how to use it has been drilled into everyone with the data on combat deaths collected over the last 10 years.

In the rotary wing aviation world, we've become extremely good at power management (operating in high, hot environments with heavy loads), taking off and landing in dust, and operating at night with zero illumination.

I'm afraid that what we lack now as an organization is the ability to deal with real hardships in war. Everybody has deployed, and everybody probably knows someone who was killed or wounded, but this experience has obviously not been like the wars of the past century. Most of the Army has become accustomed to having internet, cell phones, a gym, laundry service, hot showers everyday, and steak and lobster every Friday. Random mortar rounds landing on the FOB is the most violence that many of us have seen. I can't even imagine us fighting an enemy that attacks in large numbers with weapons and training comparable to our own, capable of inflicting real mass casualties or damage. I don't know what we'd do if we couldn't have AH-64s, F-16s, blimps, and UAVs loitering overhead at all times with complete freedom. I don't know what we'd do if the level of violence didn't permit the presence of at least one LOGCAP contractor per Soldier to support us. I don't know what we'd do without the infrastructure to support tens of thousands of computers all networked together to send email, build Powerpoint slides, or track everything on various spreadsheets and databases.

Somethings I worry the Army has become too accustomed to in the past ten years largely deal with the ability to receive entirely too much information and not process it properly at BN and above HQ level.

1. Predator Porn Effect- HQ and various other elements are obsessed with having FMV on any major operation, TIC, or other point of concern before making a decision a subordinate may be reporting on. There have been way to many times I've seen commanders and senior FGOs insist on keeping a UAV footage on our own friendly forces to see what our own forces were doing

2. Storyboards: while most people acknowledge that powerpoint is pure evil, the desire by HQs and various other actors to have storyboards on every event form a KLE to a major operation is creating useless staff and leader work for generally useless information to a commander

3. Hardships: I think @timwalsh has a point about real hardship. With the exception of some OEF/OIF 1 actions, the majority of large units have not had to operate under real hardship conditions for pro-longed periods of time. Many squads-companies have occupied some hellish terrain/cop's and operated in rough situations but the ability for a BCT to conduct a BCT attack or defense would be severely reduced from the past

4. Grand Tacticians: from the COMISAF tactical directives to GO level command instructions on how to perform tactical missions and individual soldier skills is getting insane. Focus on the big picture and leave tactics and individual soldier standards at the appropriate level.

5. 15-6s: Stop launching an investigation into unimportant details, more useless staff churn along with storyboards.

6. Radio Discipline: Haven't had to operate in radio disciplined conditions in the big Army in a while.

From big(F35) to small(body armor/ACUs), the Army is embarrassing bad at acquisitions. Look at the body armor. Guys talk about RFI success, but I barely see it. The IOTV is so big, bulky, and brutal when compared other vests tested, modified, retested, and employed by SOF. Then came the big Army plate carrier; another lousy injection of piss poor acquisition assistance for a product already field tested, commercially availible, and employed by SOF. The Mollie Ruck should be destroyed and taken off of the Army books. Good thing RFI issued us ACU colored ivy cover and gray sleeping bags weighing 2x as much as commercially available counterparts.

Congress and the lobbyists(and senior officers and NCOs looking for a post retirement cush job) are always going to screw up big acquisitions. Maybe in the future we could do a little bit better resourcing the guys on the ground with the smaller aquisitions. Look at the advancement in NVGs for the average rifleman, oh wait there was none trillions of dollars and a decade later but that rifleman had 15 entrée choices at Camp Victory and rode around a vehicle costing as much as 4x Bentley's. But we ll invest and line corporate pockets with massive $$$$ to give that squad a 2000 lbs robot to carry those shitty Mollie packs.

Why doesn't the big Army just field SOF equipment already readily available and battle tested rather than asking some PFC or dinosaur senior enlisted who hasnt been on a tactical mission in years about what plate carrier or vest or sling etc are the best. Save $$, faster issuing, battle proven, sounds terrible can't imagine why we would want to listen to SMU E-8s who have been and continue to be operational on actual missions.

The Army seems to go through cycles of feast or famine in terms of joint doctrine. During the 1950s, it took a back seat to nuclear bombers, before the US joined the war in Vietnam. After that war, it tried to make itself viable once again in AirLand Battle. During the 1990s, we once again tried to take ourselves out of peacekeeping missions, and center on NCW/EBO and other such nonsense, before we became embroiled in Iraq and Afghanistan.

AirSea Battle? No more troop-intensive interventions? Give me a break. Like it or not, this too shall pass.

The Philippines Insurrection comes to mind as a sustained overseas war fought with a volunteer army. We have long had a precedent of being able to fight sustained wars overseas exclusively with volunteers, it's just that we had a century of really big industrial ones that all had conscription running in parallel.

When I saw this post by Ricks I got all excited, because I knew comments would ensue. But I realize now that our system is so messed up that it would take me hours just to get all the points here listed. So right now I am shaking my fist at the computer screen and saying dang you current Army and your lack of professional education!!!

Our recent "wars" are like sending an NFL football team to play a local high school team. Now we are evaluating lessons learned, where some think the performance of our NFL team was "stunning."

I am happy to see Mr. Ricks use the proper term of "mercs" for civilians hired to fight alongside soldiers, even in support roles. If we face a real foe, expect most of these mercs to run for the rear when things look bad, because dying is not worth $100,000 a year.