Posted on 09/30/2022 7:25:42 PM PDT by AndyJackson
The next administration’s top priority must be a dramatic reduction in the four-star overhead
Reflecting on the Battle of the Bulge during December 1944 and January 1945, Troy Middleton, former VIII Corps commander, said, “Patton’s principal worth was that he kept things moving. He kept everybody else moving—not only his juniors but his seniors. Otherwise, during the Battle of the Bulge, there would have been a tendency to play Montgomery—to dress up the lines instead of getting in there and hitting the Germans hard.”
Middleton’s observations are sound, but in 1939, the Army’s senior leaders had already selected the unpopular and irascible Patton for retirement and obscurity. Patton was not the only one. In the 1920s, the Army’s senior leaders sidelined Colonel Billy Mitchell and Brigadier General Adna Chaffee. Mitchell wanted to develop air power. Chaffee wanted to build the armored force. Thanks to the outbreak of wars in Poland and Western Europe, the ideas survived, and Patton survived, but only barely in time to be used in World War II.
Today, the potential for high intensity conventional warfare between great powers looms large. The next president and his administration must recognize that high intensity conventional warfare demands much more character and competence than they will find in another cohort of three- and four-star “Yes Men” with brush cuts, and bright eyes wearing a uniform from the distant past (minus its gold buttons).
Adding more money to an already bloated defense budget will also not fix the problem. Still finding new senior officers who are focused more on service than promotion; senior military leaders with minds receptive to fundamental change in warfare is easier said than done. To understand why change must be imposed from above, Alfred G. Meyer developed a typology of leadership that explains the progressive evolution of leaders in a large military, political or industrial establishment from creative revolutionaries to plodding bureaucrats that maintain the institution.
For the current generation of system maintainers, a fundamentally new military system with new organizations for a new kind of war is not only inconceivable; the idea is offensive. And therein lies the problem.
n conflicts like those in Iraq and Afghanistan where the application of overwhelming American firepower substitutes for tactics and strategy because there are no enemy armies, air forces or air defenses to fight, the historic outcome is a collection of enormous headquarters manned with far too many generals or admirals. Even worse, the headquarters tend to fill up with weak, untested, but politically savvy senior officers or “Power Point Rangers,” as the saying goes.
The numbers of four-star generals and admirals currently in the U.S. Armed Forces illustrates the problem. For a force of 1.1 million active-duty Service Members, the current U.S. Armed Forces are commanded by 40 four-star generals and admirals.
or readers who may think this command overhead is normal, they should know that for most of World War II when there were 12.2 million Americans in uniform, the nation relied on 7 Four Stars to command the Armed Forces: Marshall, MacArthur, Eisenhower and Arnold for Army Ground and Air Forces; King, Nimitz, and Leahy for U.S. Naval Forces. Admiral Leahy, a former Chief of Naval Operations, served as President Roosevelt’s senior Military Advisor who interpreted FDR’s strategic guidance, but held no designated command.
Marshall deliberately kept the numbers of four stars to a minimum saying, “I don’t have time to argue.” More than 77 years after WW 2 it’s time to reinstate Marshall’s wise policy. The growth of numerous agencies, technical support organizations, and high cost logistical and acquisition programs have driven the rank and experience required to command operational fighting forces into a very small corner.
Marshall’s insistence on streamlined command and control, on simplicity of orders, and on unity of command is more relevant than ever. Instantaneous, redundant space-based communications, surveillance, reconnaissance, intelligence, and missile technologies have wrought profound change in the way military operations can be conducted. The next administration must revisit the 1947 National Security Act and The 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act.
The 1947 National Security Act resulted from the victory in the Second World War. It was designed to harmonize all the U.S. Armed Forces’ capabilities. Instead, it fostered bitter budget fights, single-service thinking, and dug deeper ruts for senior officers to follow. Goldwater-Nichols subsequently created a command structure that is no longer suited to the new multipolar international system.
The Services expect, get, and spend a predetermined piece of the funding pie, fostering waste and redundancy. Too much force structure remains wedded to the WWII designs modified in 1947. New force designs and new technologies that could be exploited to streamline command and control and make operations more effective are excluded from consideration.
Other problems are caused by secretaries of Defense whose priorities were too often been driven by the politics of apportioning money and technology to the “right people,” or social engineering, and far less to the ruthless pursuit of building forces that can fight. The Biden administration’s divisive, racially charged policies and “woke” LGBT agenda may be the worst of these given their impact on military morale, discipline, readiness, and recruiting.
These points notwithstanding, the next administration’s top priority must be a dramatic reduction in the four-star overhead and a commensurate reduction in the numbers of regional unified and functional commands. System maintainers can’t do the job.
America’s military future must be shaped by two kinds of generals and admirals: System creators and builders; those who can theorize and design, and those who can harness people and technology with the ability to lead and inspire. These are the desired attributes that transcend the drill field, the parachute jump, or the routine exercise. Once the overhead is substantially reduced, these are the leaders the civilians-in-charge that populate the next Administration must identify and appoint. In a word, Alfred Thayer Mahan’s advice to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt remains valid: “No Service can or should be expected to reform itself.”
Good summary and solution. Either you can fight or you are out. The Pentagon is filled with lard asses, faggots and woke pieces of excrement. It needs a major house cleaning.
1. Something in a science fiction story I read in my youth (by candle light) stuck with me. Aside from the space opera stuff it posited that there are two kinds of people: routineers (the maintainers in this article) and non-routineers (the revolutionaries and builders in this article) and you need both.
In short, routeeners keep things going on an even keel and are less likely to get dissatisfied or bored with the job but they aren’t necessarily adaptable to new situations. Non-routineers are adaptable and can implement change to fit the situation but they get bored and dissatisfied with routine and frankly, can be trouble makers when you need things to be on an even keel.
You need both kinds, but in the proper roll or in reserve.
2. In my association with the military, which is not recent, it occurred to me that the officer corp kept a certain number of “wild cards” (kind of like Patton) in reserve, to bring out in case of war or other need. Maybe they don’t do that now or maybe I was wrong.
3. We need to be careful about thinning things too much at the very top. I was taught that the reason they chose a Joint Staff in 1947 rather than a General Staff like the Germans had was that they didn’t want too much consolidation/monopoly of power in the military. They wanted some level of competition among the Services, and as supporters of Capitalism don’t we believe that competition is good? Ideally that would keep all the services from going down the same wrong path, which is an ideal that isn’t being met right now.
Basically it was the Navy who wanted no central control presuming the Army and the AF (which came from the Army) would just gang on them. True in my opinion.
Grant was an infantry officer, Mac was a engineer officer. Both served the whole Mexican War but the perspective of an infantry company commander and a tope engineers captain are way different. Lee was an engineer also but read how Scott utilized him gives insight to how he could rise without significant organizational support to lead a very hard hitting infantry army.
It is claimed there can be too many cooks in the kitchen;
a valid explanation as to why that fancy feast dinner was
spoiled and uneaten.
The same could be said of the USA and its military elites.
Should we be required to fight Russia, Russia, Russia,
on which side would we be placing our bets?
One Eisenhower = 3 woke men. An additional Patton replacing
the remaining.
He has been flatly wrong about Ukraine and he has been wrong on national television.
With respect to this article, he fails to comment on the profound changes worked in the American Armed Forces as a result of our misadventure in Vietnam and he fails to adequately consider the impact of technology since then.
This is a democracy and it is the function of democracy to quarrel and squabble over the allocation of resources. This applies to the allocation of resources for defense. If we are not quarreling and debating these issues, we are in danger of becoming victims of cronyism. Colonel Macgregor is wrong when he decries the very existence of contentiousness because it is debate that is essential to the process.
“Look at that loser with only one row of ribbons! And why is he wearing his stars in a circle?...” [Jim Noble, post 19]
The stars on Ike’s epaulets don’t form a circle, they form a pentagon. That’s the way insignia of rank were designed, for a General of the Army.
And it’s common for senior servicemembers to wear only the top row of authorized decorations. Senior officers frequently exercise wide latitude in the design and wear of their uniforms. Unsurprisingly, they can get away with more than can individuals serving in lower grades.
George S Patton Jr is remembered today because George C Scott portrayed him in a feature film. Authors Macgregor and Whitehouse have allowed the media to mislead them - a common failing among professional wordsmiths. And they pay too much attention to professional theorists like Alfred G Meyer. The editors at American Conservative have in turn been hoodwinked, into believing any of these have distilled any professional experience into foolproof universal “truths.”
Ike himself never expected to rise higher than O-5. And he never held a field command, nor fired a single shot in action.
“...Colonel Macgregor is wrong when he decries the very existence of contentiousness because it is debate that is essential to the process.” [nathanbedford, post 27]
You have hit on an important point. It’s better to have the high rankers squabble with each other than it is to afford them the leisure to oppress the citizenry.
Shelby Foote was onto something when he declared Nathan Bedford Forrest to be the ACW’s only authentic genius. Even more astonishing that Ken Burns failed to edit that out.
I am so screwed.
Also, reduce the amount of useless confetti they wear on their chests. Those uniforms are looking ridiculous.
Yep. Look, at the US military of 75 years ago. A lot fewer ribbons and medals. Far fewer in the senior ranks and we actually won wars.
Now......
Bump
Exactly. Anybody who is not directly enhancing warfighting capability needs to go.
I disagreed with a lot of what he did especially later on but Colin Powell said it right back in 1990. The military’s job is to kill people and break things.
It has no other purpose.
Anybody with “diversity”, “equity” or “inclusiveness” in their job title needs to go. All trannies need to go. All open Leftists need to go. Anybody whose job is in any way nation building needs to go. Physical fitness standards need to go right back up to where they were - if you can’t hack it, you’re out. The Pentagon needs to be forced to take back everybody they pushed out for refusing the Fauci Juice - at their former rank in their former MOS and to pay them back pay. Just shove it down their throats. Anybody who whines about that needs to go. Anybody who supported Milley’s mutiny needs to go (and then be prosecuted). Anybody who openly criticized President Trump needs to go. etc etc. THOUSANDS of Officers’ heads need to roll.
George S Patton Jr is remembered today because George C Scott portrayed him in a feature film.
/\
I read his biography
Patton rocked.
And monty’s
( closet Natzis sympathizer imho)
And Bradley’s
And Ikes
And MacArthur’s
And Churchill’s
I think patton should have had ikes job, war would have been shorter.
If Patton instead of one was Supreme commander of allied forces.
Ussr would have been defeated next immediatly, one nuke.
CCP would never have never got a foothold or control China.
Korean war wouldn’t have happened
Viet Nam war wouldn’t have happened.
The world would have been a much better place..
George was murdered.
Imho
Ymmv
If Patton instead of Ike was Supreme commander of allied forces.
Ussr would have been defeated next immediatly, one nuke.
CCP would never have never got a foothold or control China.
Korean war wouldn’t have happened
Viet Nam war wouldn’t have happened.
The world would have been a much better place..
George was murdered.
Imho
Ymmv
Have you read or listened to VDH discuss generals?
You may enjoy.
Have you read or listened to VDH discuss generals?
/\
No,
wouldn’t know where to start, is there a book title you recommend ?
Did I come to some of the same conclusions as VDH ?
He might have seen some action in the Philippines under MacArthur. Ike big advantage is that he was trained by MacArthur. He spent almost his entire preWW2 career with the General. MacArthur had a keen eye for talent. So did Ike which is why Paton was not canned after many of his bone headed mistakes. Ike was a better president then he was a general. We sure could use him right about now.
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