A few keyboard warriors certainly aren't going to influence my thinking merely by repeating a dogmatic statement over and over.
Particularly not certain posters who have repeatedly demonstrated on other threads that they do not really grasp the concept, importance and methodologies for providing logistical support for field units.
Their assertions are tenuous enough, but the posting history of many of them casts a pall of dubious value to any critique they offer about military matters.
It's not likely due entirely to being a lifelong civilian, I have met too many officers who somehow got into the command structure without a real grasp of logistics either.
“...It’s not likely due entirely to being a lifelong civilian, I have met too many officers who somehow got into the command structure without a real grasp of logistics either.” [MrEdd, post 184]
It pains me to admit I found the state of consciousness of a dismaying number of senior officers to be pretty shaky as well.
I spent 24 years and 7 months on active duty, almost all of it (outside tech training and higher ed) closely tied to strategic targeting and related aspects. As a technical officer, I was required to stand up to quite a selection of senior leaders, telling them that their exalted rank and unshakable willpower did not grant them a license to violate the laws of physics. They did not always accept it gracefully.
I’m going to do rhetorical violence to another sacred cow of a lot of forum members: namely, the conceit that civilian employees of DoD don’t do much. The offices I was assigned to would have gotten little done if our civilians hadn’t been on the job. As the only people present possessed of anything like an institutional memory, they were forever saving us junior staffers from reinventing the wheel. And saving the bacon of mid-level supervisors who should have known better.