Yes, there is an alert because someone is blowing smoke up our ass.
The Army wants to eliminate almost thirty thousand solider positions while at the same time adding another infantry division. This makes no sense at all ... unless the Army is providing smoke to cover the movement of career opportunists who want to protect their cushy jobs.
The backbone of every army since before the Romans has been the non-commissioned officers. They're the ones who really get the job done and help maintain unit cohesion. If you start slashing the non-coms, you are hurting the ability of the Army to accomplish its mission. Now let's see how the Army tends to handle this decrease...
WASHINGTON -- Budget cuts may make the U.S. Army lay off 29,000 enlisted soldiers and officers, a Pentagon official said as GOP lawmakers sought to restore defense funding.
"I hate to throw out numbers, but I have seen numbers that will approach the enlisted category perhaps as high as the mid-20s -- 23, 24,000," Thomas R. Lamont, the Army's top personnel official, told the Senate Armed Services Committee's personnel subcommittee Wednesday.
"And on the officer contingent -- again these are very rough numbers and all based again on assumptions and attrition rates -- officers may go up to 4,500, maybe 5,000," said Lamont, assistant Army secretary for manpower and reserve affairs.
"There will be some officers -- and there will be some very good non-commissioned officers -- that will want to stay in the Army and will probably not," added Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, Army deputy chief of staff.
From Army.Mil
JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. (April 26, 2012) -- Joint Base Lewis-McChord will soon be home to the headquarters of the 7th Infantry Division, Secretary of the Army John McHugh announced today.Joint BaseLewis-McChord has had problems with soldiers being accused of murder and other crimes as well as a high suicide rate. Per the Seattle Times:
The two-star headquarters, which will oversee the training and readiness of five of the installation's 10 brigades, will fill an administrative layer between those units and I Corps. The division headquarters will not be deployable, McHugh said.
"The I Corps headquarters has been very, very busy. It's only reasonable, it seems to me, to provide that layer of close-on command support just as we have at virtually every other similar-sized base," McHugh said in a press conference on the installation.
The intent is to install a new level of leadership and oversight to support those units, and ensure that Soldiers are properly trained, equipped and mentored.
McHugh's announcement comes after a period of massive growth for JBLM. Since 2003, the installation has grown by roughly 15,000 Soldiers and seen a military construction program totaling $1.75 billion, putting it among the largest bases in the United States.
[...] The 7th Inf. Div. is scheduled for activation on Oct. 1 of this year, and a commander is expected to be announced in a few weeks. Personnel will begin arriving in early summer.
"The base has grappled with other tough issues, including a surge in suicides to a record level in 2012 and complaints by some soldiers that doctors had reversed their diagnoses of post-traumatic stress. There also have been acts of violence in the Puget Sound area involving the base's soldiers or former soldiers."First, reducing the number of deployable forces is not going to solve a thing. If post traumatic stress is the problem, throwing these poor men back into combat is like chumming shark infested waters. It's as if they want to make a bad situation worse.
"Base officials have said that any community the size of the base is bound to have its problems and that its reputation has been tarred by 'a small number of highly visible but isolated episodes' that don't accurately reflect the remarkable accomplishments of its service members, including their work overseas and the creation of programs to support retiring soldiers."
Second, throwing a bunch of politically correct, career officers at a problem never solved anything. If you want something done, get the non-coms involved. Oops, can't do that, they're being escorted out the door.
Welcome to Obama's Army.
12 comments:
Yeah, after knowing some soldiers that are on their fourth or fifth deployment, more non deployable soldiers is not what they need.
Ordering a couple less jets a year will pay for these guys. Or ... How about a couple less union favors?
What would be the purpose of non-deployable soldiers (which I assume means overseas)? What would they be training for?
- Breaking with the Posse Comitatus Act?
- Health-care enforcement should it be struck-down by SCOTUS?
- The confiscation of legal weapons?
- Round-up of citizens outraged by Obamas refusal to leave the White House when he loses?
etc.,,,
Welcome to Obamas Army indeed.
Craig - Four or five deployments is nothing to sneeze at. The emotional stress on them and their families must be unbearable.
Odie how about a few less Wookie vacations?
I have no idea how big the 7th ID HQ will be, but if it mostly Capts., Maj's., and above at a training facility, I don't think there is cause for alarm. They're on cruise control.
So it won't be the open admission of gay recruits that sinks our forces. Nor will it be having multiple deployments due to reduced numbers. It isn't likely to be a steady alienation from their civilian counterparts.
Nope, when it happens it'll be due to a bunch of professional chair polishing cube apes in uniform who will second guess, belittle and denigrate any front line vet that is unlucky enough to come under their command. It's already happening, before retiring in '93 I spoke to a number of former shipmates unlucky enough to endure recruiting duty after implementation of the Career Recruiting Force whose sole purpose in life was working administrative billets related to recruitment.
This involved overseeing the efforts and results of many guys fresh from the fleet.
Can you say "culture shock"? In many cases there would be a sailor who was AJ-squared away, a positive leader and role model who suddenly found himself abused and excoriated by some landlocked fool who in many cases was his junior in paygrade but not position. Miss your quota by one body, forget to dot enough "i's" and cross enough "t's" and what had been an exemplary career suddenly nosedived like a mud-seeking missile.
Since the onset of hositilities in Iraq & Afghanistan I've read of many similar incidents. The problem didn't go away, it only grew.
So we see another nail driven into the coffin of what was once undeniably the best military in the world.
Glad I've got my guns, in coming times they may be needed.
And this is actually clinton's decimation of the military part II
Subvet - career recruiting force? This cannot be a Good Thing™. I thought that guys were rotated every so often whether they liked it or not.
Kid - yes. Shades of Al Gore and his re-inventing government bs.
Sig94, here's a link to an article published when the Air Force went over to the idea. Note that it wasn't the first service: http://www.stripes.com/news/air-force-makes-career-recruiter-an-official-job-1.70923
As I said, I've known guys who ran afoul of these professional recruiters. One was an E9 who had his liberty cancelled by an E5 due to the fact the junior man didn't feel he could let my former shipmate leave his office. My shipmate ended his shore duty over that one, he felt he didn't need to answer to some glorified cube ape who got seasick watching a urinal flush.
Subvet - Amazing. Simply amazing - and not in a good way.
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