New Chief of Staff of the Army Comments (Notes)

9/23/2003

[AlaninSA]

Good comments from the new CSA. Shinsheki was a Clintonista who destroyed MY Army during his tenure.

I'm still ticked off about the "ARMY OF ONE," Berets and such. Nothing irritates me more than seeing the fat REMF medics from Fort Sam Houston running around in their incorrectly worn black berets at lunchtime.

[Old Sarge]

If authentic, they make a boatload of sense.

ANYTHING is going to be better for the force than Shinseki-san was.

[IGOTMINE]

Looks like they're going to move to a Marine Corps like structure for task organization.

[cavtrooper21]

This guy is talking a good talk, now lets see if he can get the rest of the Army to walk the walk.
Hope he eats his Wheaties, he has a long battle to overcome the entrenched "Clintonista" senior officer corps.

[Ed_in_NJ]

SCHOOMAKER -- FRIEND OF YOURS?

Posted by archy to Ed_in_NJ
On News/Activism 09/23/2003 9:38 PM PDT #88 of 107

So who is next? Who else could damage Clark?

Documents released to Cox Newspapers on Friday by the FBI indicate that Col. William Boykin, then Delta Force commander, and Brig. Gen. Peter Schoomaker, then the assistant division commander of the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas, were the previously unidentified officers who told Reno use of CS gas, a potent form of tear gas, would make the compound "untenable."

[Arkie2]

Woah! Divisions a thing of the past. Brigade level mobile and more lethal is the name of the game.

I'm especially intrigued by the comments on air support. Being an old Air Force guy myself, my ears pricked up when I read that. The helicopters took a beating during the recent festivities and the Air Force has announced the retirement of the A-10 and its replacement will be the F-16. Not viable in my opinion. I smell a turf war brewing and given the Air Force's lack of concern for close air support I'm hoping the General can bloody their noses. Not very loyal I guess but the Army needs air support and the Air Force has announced they're going out of the business.

[inPhase]

Agree. The Warthog was a huge hero last spring in Iraq so they retired it.

[archy]

The DAMPL (DA military priority list?) is out.

Not quite. It's the Department of the Army Master Priority Listing. See here to get an idea of which piece of the S3 puzzle DAMPL fits into.

This should offer some real interesting questions for those involved in inactive reserve force and mobilization/training command readiness programs.

Anyone heard any rumbles about a draft or other conscription authorization bill being drafted or offered lately...?

-archy-/-

[Steely Glint]

A rumor says that those notes are dead accurate and that they got out via a senior officer in TRADOC.

But that's just a rumor, of course.

[Steely Glint]

The F-16 is about as useful at air support as a kite would be. Too high, too fast, too fighter-pilot-oriented.

Close Air Support needs to be delivered near ground level, which is why the Warthogs and all of Marine Aviation are so very deadly (and so very valued) for CAS: they fly low and hit hard. Meanwhile, the cowards that fly F-16's stay in the clouds where they can't be hit and never even get near the battlefield and if all you have is F-16 CAS then you have to watch good men die with no support.

Don't let the warthogs be killed off by the USAF Fighter Pilot Mafia. We don't need fancy fighters in the post-USSR world; we need effective CAS and lots of it.

[archy]

Being an old Air Force guy myself, my ears pricked up when I read that. The helicopters took a beating during the recent festivities and the Air Force has announced the retirement of the A-10 and its replacement will be the F-16. Not viable in my opinion. I smell a turf war brewing and given the Air Force's lack of concern for close air support I'm hoping the General can bloody their noses. Not very loyal I guess but the Army needs air support and the Air Force has announced they're going out of the business.

When I took a tour group of USAF cadets from Colorado Springs to the St Louis McDonnell-Douglas plant in the mid-1990s, we were told a little story about the time the USAF brass decided to cancel the A-10 while it was still under development. Unofficially, or maybe not, depending on how sneaky some Army senior brass at DCSOPS were, the Army sent a handfull of Army aviators to transition from rotary wing aviators to fly the fixed-wing Marine AV-8B Harrier, which of course the Army doesn't operate. The Air Force got wind of the thought of the Army developing its own fixed-wing CAS assets, and the 1000 or so Warthogs got built as planned instead.

Well, I guess the Army could always reopen the former rotary wing basic pilot's school at Ft. Wolters Texas, now the *Ft Wolters Industrial Park* as a Harrier driver's school....

[Arkie2]

Well I was with you there until you called F-16 pilots cowards. I assume you know Air Force pilots transition from one aircraft to another, sometimes several times in a career? An F-16 pilot today may be a warthog driver tomorrow and vice versa. If you were trying to make a point you blew it pal.

[archy]

10. We may go to a system of unit manning versus individual replacement. This is not the cohort revisited. It is the wholesale moving of units between headquarters on a grand, scheduled basis. We're not going to DEROS people, but units. Even so, a soldier will have to expect to be deployed for one year out of a three year tour.

Uhoh. *FORCE XXI* rears its ugly and untested head [unless it worked out a LOT better in Iraq than appears to have been the case.] There goes the *institutional memory* of activity in particular operational areas, unless they're hoping it can be managed via SEP and FBCB2 *digital battlefield* C4.

No more Division-level HQs? Hmmm, looks like no more Division Capstone Exercises at Ft Irwin....

<10. We may go to a system of unit manning versus individual replacement. This is not the cohort revisited. It is the wholesale moving of units between headquarters on a grand, scheduled basis. We're not going to DEROS people, but units. Even so, a soldier will have to expect to be deployed for one year out of a three year tour.

Better mobilize those family-support group assets RIGHT quickly....

[archy]

Well I was with you there until you called F-16 pilots cowards. I assume you know Air Force pilots transition from one aircraft to another, sometimes several times in a career? An F-16 pilot today may be a warthog driver tomorrow and vice versa. If you were trying to make a point you blew it pal.

Count on the bluesuiters getting called a lot worse things by the grunts, and for the potential of a lot worse things happening than namecalling if the family members of grunts killed because they've got no close air support come home in boxes.

Remember the cancellation of the army's 155mm Crusader artillery because the USAF air support would always be there to save them- as it mostly was during Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan? Whatr happens when the grunts have no artillery and the USAF won't give them *danger close* support in populated areas? More Jessica Lynchs and Lori Ann Piestewas?

That is NOT what the *Aim High, avoid shooting yourself in the foot* Air Force needs right now....

-archy-/-

[Arkie2]

The discussion is about the right machine for the job, not the courage of Air Force pilots. Steely Glint owes an apology and if the grunts have a beef, and I believe they do, they can take it up with the Air Force brass hats and not the pilots.

[inPhase]

Thanks for posting this, I read a lot and miss a lot.

[inPhase]

should read

"miss a lot"

[xzins]

Any Army leader who balks, drags his feet, or complains about working in a joint or coalition environment will be fired.

This sounds like a comment from someone who's been in special ops for a career, as has schoomaker.

He doesn't need to worry. All the officers I've known since 1995 would KILL to get a joint assignment. They believe them to be absolute career enhancers.

The other stuff sounds about right. The MIA2 until 2025 is unrealistic. I'd bet it'll still be the MI, but it'll be like the M1A4. Technology is changing, and so will our equipment, or our guys will die.

The housing business is humorous. The army has long hated having to manage on-post housing. Why haven't they changed it? Because there's a whole civilian government jobs system built in support of it. Everytime it's tried to change, the gov unions and politicians get called into it, and then the initiative dies.

If Rumsfeld leaves after Bush's first term, the civilians will outlast this one, and it will not change.

[inPhase]

Boy if what you said is not the truth!
And those civilians survive the military too, everyday counting the days to retirement paid out of that entitlement pie they "work" to create.