U.S. Army Defies Bush

It's very late. Does the President know what the Army is doing? On the issue of women in land combat, it seems no one is in charge. High-level civilians are circumventing law and policy, members of Congress are being misled and decorated generals seem to have lost all perspective.

President Bush has been a strong leader on national defense, which makes it difficult to understand why he is saying one thing, but the Pentagon is doing another.

During an interview with the Washington Times in January, Bush declared, "No women in [land] combat." He was referring to current Defense Department regulations that exempt female soldiers from land combat troops such as the infantry and from smaller support companies that "collocate" with them.

If the Defense Department wants to change those rules, federal law requires formal notice to Congress 30 legislative days (approximately three months) in advance.

Despite these directives, Army officials are implementing plans that would force (not "allow") female soldiers into smaller forward support companies, which operate with land combat troops 100% of the time. These unprecedented assignments will needlessly complicate combat missions and undermine the progress of Army "transformation," which is complex enough.

The Defense Department has sent out contradictory signals on this issue. Early in November 2004, several flag officers told congressional staffers that they had no intention of repealing the collocation rule. A different briefing by Human Resources Policy Director Col. Robert H. Woods, Jr., to Army Staff Director Lt. Gen. James Campbell, inside the Pentagon on November 29, called for elimination of the regulation.

On January 13, Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey assured House Armed Service Chairman Duncan Hunter (R.-Calif.) that the Army has not changed or violated Pentagon regulations. Eleven days later, the secretary's office prepared a "Women in the Army Point Paper" that indicates otherwise.

The four-page document--which is described as "unofficial" but is being implemented anyway--actually changes the wording and meaning of the Pentagon's collocation rule. It also alters the "gender codes" of 24 of 225 Army positions--mostly mechanics--in a typical forward support company (FSC), opening up 10% of these previously all-male positions to women. This arbitrary change in status, which is comparable to being "a little bit pregnant," clearly violates current Defense Department rules. FSCs differ from transportation and other support units that come and go intermittently. All soldiers are at risk, but FSC personnel are trained to operate in constant proximity with land combat troops that engage in deliberate offensive action against the enemy.

During a February meeting at the Pentagon with an associate and me, Army Secretary Harvey and Gen. Richard Cody, the Army vice chief of staff, confirmed that female soldiers are serving in forward support companies. Thirteen of the newly co-ed FSCs recently deployed to Iraq with the 3rd Infantry Division. This does not violate the rules, the officials told us, because female soldiers will not be collocated with combat troops when the battle begins.

This made no sense until we received the "Women in the Army Point Paper" from Harvey's office. This document includes a subtle but consequential change in Defense Department rules, which the Army is not authorized to make.

Current Defense Department regulations exempt female soldiers from support units that collocate with troops, such as the infantry, which are "assigned a direct ground combat mission." The Army's revised version adds the word "conducting" to that definition. This creates a new collocation rule, which applies only when a combat unit is actually "conducting an assigned direct ground combat mission."

Army officials claim that the new wording--call it the "collocation catch"--makes it unnecessary to provide legal notice to Congress, since the rules have not been changed. This is not a valid argument, but even if it were, how would the plan actually work?

Imagine a hapless battalion commander standing in front of a gender-mixed support company, telling the men that they will go forward to the battle, but the women will not. After that divisive moment, he will have to find a way to send the women elsewhere.

"Beam me up" transporter machines are in short supply. An active duty infantry officer estimates that it would take one Chinook, two Blackhawk, or six Huey helicopters, or two five-ton trucks, or 12 up-armored Humvees to evacuate 24 fully loaded female soldiers in a single forward support company.

That's assuming that the women would be willing to go. A female officer wrote to the Center for Military Readiness: "That is ridiculous. When does the combat begin?...[C]ommanders in the field will not follow those guidelines." The Army's top leaders told me, "They will have to."

So, field commanders are supposed to decimate their own support troops (remove 24 of 225) at times when they are needed most. A former armor officer described that scenario as "nuts." Responsible combat battalion leaders will not allow sophistry or semantics to detract from mission requirements.

The battlefield has changed, but land combat realities have not. When an infantry soldier is wounded under fire, his ability to survive may depend on a single male support company mechanic who can lift and carry him to life-saving emergency care. A female mechanic trained with "gender-normed" standards could not do the same. Under the Army's equivocal plan, there might not be any support soldier nearby at all. So much for "train as we fight" and the concept of "unit cohesion," which depends on mutual trust for survival in battle.

Doublethink definitions have consequences. The Army's revised collocation rule sets a new precedent for all land combat support units subject to Defense Department regulation. Absent intervention, this will affect all Special Operations Forces and eventually the Marine Corps. The "Women in the Army" blueprint even presumes to eliminate multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) and Stryker brigade reconnaissance surveillance target acquisition (RSTA) squadrons from the list required to be all male.

Why is this happening? More than one general has told me that the objective is to "grow" the careers of female officers, including their own daughters. This is careerist groupthink, which cannot justify incremental changes that will force the majority of enlisted women and men to pay the ultimate price.

A May 2004 Pentagon briefing speculated about insufficient "inventory" of male soldiers for the combat support companies, but presented no data to support that concern. If there are shortages of men, officials who retained gender-based recruiting quotas for women--including Defense Under Secretary David Chu, his deputy, Charles Abell, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker, and Personnel Vice Chief Lt. Gen. Franklin Hagenbeck--should be held accountable for their failure to plan ahead.

The military needs sound leadership on personnel policies, not problematic decisions by default. Members of Congress should insist on compliance with the law requiring advance notice of proposed policy changes, including the effect of the revised collocation rule on women's exemption from Selective Service registration. Officials might claim that the new wording is "pre-decisional" (even though it appears in the Army's official magazine Soldiers). If that is so, immediate revocation should not be too difficult.

The ultimate responsibility to bring the Army back into compliance with law and policy resides with the commander in chief, President Bush, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The time for principled leadership is now.

An AAR (after action report for the uninitiated) you might find interesting.

On Sunday afternoon, in a very bad section of scrub-land called Salman Pak, on the southeastern outskirts of Baghdad, 40 to 50 heavily-armed Iraqi insurgents attacked a convoy of 30 civilian tractor trailer trucks that were moving supplies for the coalition forces, along an Alternate Supply Route. These tractor trailers, driven by third country nationals (primarily Turkish), were escorted by 3 armored Hummers from the COSCOM. When the insurgents attacked, one of the Hummers was in their kill zone and the three soldiers aboard were immediately wounded, and the platform taken under heavy machinegun and RPG fire. Along with them, three of the truck drivers were killed, 6 were wounded in the tractor trailer trucks. The enemy attacked from a farmer's barren field next to the road, with a tree line perpendicular to the ASR, two dry irrigation ditches forming a rough L-shaped trenchline, and a house standing off the dirt road. After three minutes of sustained fire, a squad of enemy moved forward toward the disabled and suppressed trucks. Each of the enemy had hand-cuffs and were looking to take hostages for ransom or worse, to take those three wounded US soldiers for more internet beheadings.

About this time, three armored Hummers that formed the MP Squad under callsign Raven 42, 617th MP Co, Kentucky National Guard, assigned to the 503rd MP Bn, 18th MP Bde, arrived on the scene like the cavalry. The squad had been shadowing the convoy from a distance behind the last vehicle, and when the convoy trucks stopped and became backed up from the initial attack, the squad sped up, paralleled the convoy up the shoulder of the road, and moved to the sound of gunfire. They arrived on the scene just as a squad of about ten enemy had moved forward across the farmer's field and were about 20 meters from the road. The MP squad opened fire with .50 cal machineguns and Mk19 grenade launchers and drove across the front of the enemy's kill zone, between the enemy and the trucks, drawing fire off of the tractor trailers. The MP's crossed the kill zone and then turned up an access road at a right angle to the ASR and next to the field full of enemy fighters. The three vehicles, carrying nine MPs and one medic, stopped in a line on the dirt access road and flanked the enemy positions with plunging fire from the .50 cal and the SAW machinegun (Squad Automatic Weapon). In front of them, was a line of seven sedans, with all their doors and trunk lids open, the getaway cars and the lone two story house off on their left.

Immediately the middle vehicle was hit by an RPG knocking the gunner unconscious from his turret and down into the vehicle. The Vehicle Commander (the TC), the squad's leader, thought the gunner was dead, but tried to treat him from inside the vehicle. Simultaneously, the rear vehicle's driver and TC, section leader two, open their doors and dismount to fight, while their gunner continued firing from his position in the gun platform on top of the Hummer. Immediately, all three fall under heavy return machinegun fire, wounded. The driver of the middle vehicle saw them fall out the rearview mirror, dismounts and sprints to get into the third vehicle and take up the SAW on top the vehicle. The Squad's medic dismounts from that third vehicle, and joined by the first vehicle's driver (CLS trained) who sprinted back to join him, begins combat life-saving techniques to treat the three wounded MPs. The gunner on the floor of the second vehicle is revived by his TC, the squad leader, and he climbs back into the .50 cal and opens fire. The Squad leader dismounted with his M4 carbine, and 2 hand grenades, grabbed the section leader out of the first vehicle who had rendered radio reports of their first contact. The two of them, squad leader Staff Sergeant and team leader Sergeant with her M4 and M203 grenade launcher, rush the nearest ditch about 20 meters away to start clearing the natural trenchline. The enemy has gone into the ditches and is hiding behind several small trees in the back of the lot. The .50 cal and SAW flanking fire tears apart the ten in the lead trenchline.

Meanwhile, the two treating the three wounded on the ground at the rear vehicle come under sniper fire from the lone house. Each of them, remember one is a medic, pull out AT-4 rocket launchers from the HMMWV and nearly-simultaneously fire the rockets into the house to neutralize the shooter. The two sergeants work their way up the trenchline, throwing grenades, firing grenades from the launcher, and firing their M4s. The sergeant runs low on ammo and runs back to a vehicle to reload. She moves to her squad leader's vehicle, and because this squad is led so well, she knows exactly where to reach her arm blindly into a different vehicle to find ammo-because each vehicle is packed exactly the same, with discipline. As she turns to move back to the trenchline, Gunner in two sees an AIF jump from behind one of the cars and start firing on the Sergeant. He pulls his 9mm, because the .50 cal is pointed in the other direction, and shoots five rounds wounding him. The sergeant moves back to the trenchline under fire from the back of the field, with fresh mags, two more grenades, and three more M203 rounds. The Mk 19 gunner suppresses the rear of the field. Now, rejoined with the squad leader, the two sergeants continue clearing the enemy from the trenchline, until they see no more movement. A lone man with an RPG launcher on his shoulder steps from behind a tree and prepares to fire on the three Hummers and is killed with a single aimed SAW shot thru the head by the previously knocked out gunner on platform two, who now has a SAW out to supplement the .50 cal in the mount. The team leader sergeant, she claims four killed by aimed M4 shots. The Squad Leader, he threw four grenades taking out at least two baddies, and attributes one other to her aimed M203 fire.

The gunner on platform two, previously knocked out from a hit by the RPG, has now swung his .50 cal around and, realizing that the line of vehicles represents a hazard and possible getaway for the bad guys, starts shooting the .50cal into the engine blocks until his field of fire is limited. He realizes that his vehicle is still running despite the RPG hit, and drops down from his weapon, into the drivers seat and moves the vehicle forward on two flat tires about 100 meters into a better firing position. Just then, the vehicle dies, oil spraying everywhere. He remountes his .50 cal and continues shooting the remaining of the seven cars lined up and ready for a get-away that wasn't to happen. The fire dies down about then, and a second squad arrives on the scene, dismounts and helps the two giving first aid to the wounded at platform three. Two minutes later three other squads from the 617th arrive, along with the CO, and the field is secured, consolidation begins.

Those seven Americans (with the three wounded) killed in total 24 heavily armed enemy, wounded 6 (two later died), and captured one unwounded, who feigned injury to escape the fight. They seized 22 AK-47s, 6x RPG launchers w/ 16 rockets, 13x RPK machineguns, 3x PKM machineguns, 40 hand grenades, 123 fully loaded 30-rd AK magazines, 52 empty mags, and 10 belts of 2500 rds of PK ammo.

The three wounded MPs have been evacuated to Landstuhl. One lost a kidney and will be paralyzed. The other two will most likely recover, though one will forever have a bullet lodged between second and third ribs below his heart. No word on the three COSCOM soldiers wounded in the initial volleys.

Of the 7 members of Raven 42 who walked away, two are Caucasian Women, the rest men--one is Mexican-American, the medic is African-American, and the other two are Caucasian-the great American melting pot. They believed even before this fight that their NCOs were the best in the Army, and that they have the best squad in the Army. The Medic who fired the AT-4, said he remembered how from the week before when his squad leader forced him to train on it, though he didn't think as a medic he would ever use one. He said he chose to use it in that moment to protect the three wounded on the ground in front of him, once they came under fire from the building. The day before this mission, they took the new RFI bandoliers that were recently issued, and experimented with mounting them in their vehicles. Once they figured out how, they pre-loaded a second basic load of ammo into magazines, put them into the bandoliers, and mounted them in their vehicles---the same exact way in every vehicle-load plans enforced and checked by leaders! Leadership under fire--once those three leaders (NCOs) stepped out of their vehicles, the squad was committed to the fight.

Their only complaints in the AAR were: the lack of stopping power in the 9mm; the .50 cal incendiary rounds they are issued in lieu of ball ammo (shortage of ball in the inventory) didn't have the penetrating power needed to pierce the walls of the building; and that everyone in the squad was not CLS trained.

Yesterday, Monday, was spent with the chaplain and the chain of command conducting AARs. Today, every news media in theater wanted them. Good Morning America, NBC, CBS, FOX, ABC, Stars and Stripes, and many radio stations from Kentucky all were lined up today. The female E5 Sergeant who fought thru the trenchline will become the anti-Jessica Lynch media poster child. She and her squad leader deserve every bit of recognition they will get, and more. They all do.

I participated in their AAR as the BDE S2, and am helping in putting together an action report to justify future valor awards. Lets not talk about women in combat. Lets not talk about the new Close Combat Badge not including MPs.

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