Originally Posted by Cuddles

A bit like between the wars when you could be a Lieutenant for ten years? Or indeed more if you were cack and unlucky. Now so scared of losing 5xxxxx Capt. I.M. Incompetent are the Army board that they accelerate him to Major and then are stuck with the goon. Regardless of his cackness and ill favour...

Indeed, but this wouldn't necessarily work in a negative way. Given a slower flow-through of officers, you can probably get a lot more out of them. Slim, for example, was 46 when he achieved battalion command, but was actually highly thought of and had already instructed at the Indian and British Army Staff Colleges, IIRC. Montgomery was 44 when he made substantive Lt Col. Why do we race to get people into command slots at the earliest possible moment except in order to validate the Peter principle? If they are physically fit for the job it shouldn't matter how old they are, and if we're simply worried by retention, then improve pay and conditions: not so difficult if we're saving money by reducing the numbers we recruit and train.

Originally Posted by msr

But that is the thrust of the original article. Criticism is not the 'done thing' in the British Army.

MSR

Honest question. How do your After Action Reviews work?

With my mob, one of the changes that came out of the post-Vietnam reforms, used at all levels of training and operations, and THE centerpiece of the big training centers (NTC, JRTC, CMTC) was the formalized AAR. I have heard it described as a deliberate emulation of the Viet "struggle session." The basic rules are, be polite, stick to your level, (limit discussion to the platoons actions at a platoon AAR for example), and above all, constructive, but everyone from the newest rifleman to the platoon leader has an equal voice and it is best facilitated by an outside observer. When it works, it is extremely effective and I have seen very few acts of retribution arising from AAR comments. I have seen it work up to the BN level, and while I only attended one at BDE but it seemed the same rules were in effect there as well. When I was looking at selecting folks for promotion within the platoon, asking the most insightful questions at an AAR was a tie-breaker, all other things being equal.

Is it a panacea? Of course not, but even in the dark times of the 90's, perhaps we maintained an ability and structure that required self reflection, even if it did not change the wider system. When we finally realized the old ways were hurting the mission and the service, we were able to recognize and implement some of the necessary changes.

Might not give always us answers, but it surely helps us ask better questions.

I joined several of these AAR/struggle sessions whilst on an exchange with the US ARNG. There were no great issues but all were invited to contribute and there were no comebacks.

Originally Posted by cpunk

Originally Posted by Stonker

QUESTION 1: Why would any commander feel the need to spell out any kind of mission statement in this kind of detail?

Because all staff training is focused on the generation of 'product' in the form of OSW and you lose marks if your margins are the wrong size.

I attended the Battlegroup staff officer planning course at Warminster in 2004. The two week course focussed on the 7 Questions and OSW. The target audience was Capt-Major, about to embark on the relevant BG staff officers appointments. Many of those attending had been involved in the build up and early stages of Telic and had seen the fun and games of the build up for the great "liberation".

The course content verged on the ridiculous at times, with a fascination on the worthless detail of OSW over the actual content. As much time was spent aligning borders and using the correct graphics as worrying about whether the content was correct.

The course taught that a detailed DSO/DSM/Synch matrix should be produced - in colour - down to section commander level. When the question was asked "are they teaching how to read and interpret these on section commander level courses?" there was much harrumphing and shuffling of papers, but no real answers.

The final nail in the coffin for me was the grand finale - the command group of a battle group recently returned from Ops to tell us how it worked in reality. In this case, it was 3 Para covering their actions on Telic. They discussed the ridiculous levels of OSW coming down from higher formations, their initial OpO consisting of 36 pages of 3 column format for the border crossing alone, and the subsequent melt down of their limited IT capabilities. Their Ops Offr then stated that they sacked OSW, and produced manually copied (by clerks on self carbonating copy paper) relevant staff work from that point onwards. The same detail went into planning, but the OSW was limited to what could be hand written in the time available - typically 2 sides.

At this point they were ushered out of the auditorium, with one of the instructors coming back to effectively describe them as cowboys, and that we should not take any notice of anything they said!

On TESEX in the same year the final task was supposed to be the one to really melt down Bn HQ and test the capabilities of the Ops O for production of OSW. It didn't. HQ planned, the Ops WO build a model and the CO gave orders to the OCs from an issued notebook, giving time in turn for them to do the same at Coy level.

Slave like adherence to the procedures would have resulted in the failure of the task, or no time for battle procedure at lower levels purely due to the demands of OSW production. Of course, the OSW is also what gets disected in great detail at any subsequent boards of enquiry, so does failure to produce reflect a failure to plan? Not necessarily, but try explaining that to a BOI.

Originally Posted by The_Duke

Originally Posted by cpunk

Originally Posted by Stonker

QUESTION 1: Why would any commander feel the need to spell out any kind of mission statement in this kind of detail?

Because all staff training is focused on the generation of 'product' in the form of OSW and you lose marks if your margins are the wrong size.

I attended the Battlegroup staff officer planning course at Warminster in 2004. The two week course focussed on the 7 Questions and OSW. The target audience was Capt-Major, about to embark on the relevant BG staff officers appointments. Many of those attending had been involved in the build up and early stages of Telic and had seen the fun and games of the build up for the great "liberation".

The course content verged on the ridiculous at times, with a fascination on the worthless detail of OSW over the actual content. As much time was spent aligning borders and using the correct graphics as worrying about whether the content was correct.

The course taught that a detailed DSO/DSM/Synch matrix should be produced - in colour - down to section commander level. When the question was asked "are they teaching how to read and interpret these on section commander level courses?" there was much harrumphing and shuffling of papers, but no real answers.

The final nail in the coffin for me was the grand finale - the command group of a battle group recently returned from Ops to tell us how it worked in reality. In this case, it was 3 Para covering their actions on Telic. They discussed the ridiculous levels of OSW coming down from higher formations, their initial OpO consisting of 36 pages of 3 column format for the border crossing alone, and the subsequent melt down of their limited IT capabilities. Their Ops Offr then stated that they sacked OSW, and produced manually copied (by clerks on self carbonating copy paper) relevant staff work from that point onwards. The same detail went into planning, but the OSW was limited to what could be hand written in the time available - typically 2 sides.

At this point they were ushered out of the auditorium, with one of the instructors coming back to effectively describe them as cowboys, and that we should not take any notice of anything they said!

On TESEX in the same year the final task was supposed to be the one to really melt down Bn HQ and test the capabilities of the Ops O for production of OSW. It didn't. HQ planned, the Ops WO build a model and the CO gave orders to the OCs from an issued notebook, giving time in turn for them to do the same at Coy level.

Slave like adherence to the procedures would have resulted in the failure of the task, or no time for battle procedure at lower levels purely due to the demands of OSW production. Of course, the OSW is also what gets disected in great detail at any subsequent boards of enquiry, so does failure to produce reflect a failure to plan? Not necessarily, but try explaining that to a BOI.

To be put another way. Enjoyed 2 weeks on a course teaching a product that a Real Life unit had thrown into the bin under real war pressures....

ps. OSW???

Operational Staff Work.

Originally Posted by cpunk

Operational Staff Work.

Ohhh...Thank you. Never heard of it....Clearly gets down to my level all the time..

Originally Posted by DDart

This was illustrated by my Bn CDR in Kosovo in 2001. A few of my squads were chasing some smugglers around on the Mac border and as the drama unfolded, he commented to me "I am controlling things here a captain (company commander) would have been doing twenty years ago." The guy is one I would consider a "toxic officer" but I think the sad truth was, he had been a very good staff officer in postings that played to his natural strengths, but the independence and creativity that was required as a Bn CDR in a place like Kosovo was beyond his training and predilections.

I have often wondered if we should have 2 sorts of officers: command and staff. The 2 functions seem to require different personalities and so identifying what an individual is best at and then only giving him that type of appointment would reduce the round pegs in square holes problem.

Originally Posted by western

I have to agree with Stonker’s post above.

I had the misfortune during my career to have close exposure to the Staff at Bde, Div, District, LAND and MOD as well as my own Corps. I still have daily exposure to serving military including those at two high level commands.

Do you remember the programmes by Sir John Harvey Jones years ago? His basic philosophy was that all organisations atrophy and wither from the top down over time if fresh people, ideas and structures are not continually introduced. This has to be supported by internal challenge, the whole point of the paper. Remember how he tried to get Morgan Cars to increase production to save the company? Senior management ‘knew better’ and refused to take his advice although they had no experience outside the company. Pretty much the military stance described.

Being an inward looking and somewhat insecure culture individuals within the Army are constantly telling each other how good they are, take a day or two’s observation and you will see how prevalent this is. What is worse is when the senior person in a conversation states his own expertise as a primer for his subordinates to agree and expand on that opinion. It is not a culture that encourages any comment that can be perceived as dissent as any disagreement is immediately perceived as an attack on the individual not the system

It is in introverted culture which is fertile breeding ground for self destruction.

I feel comparing the Army with commercial organisations is a little unrealistic.

It is the nature of business that companies are in a permanent state of flux as they daily have to deal with changing market conditions and competitors’ activities, but this is a continuous process and if push comes to shove they frequently poach their competitors’ employees.

The Army does not enjoy this gradualism, let alone being able easily to co-opt the enemy. It is either deployed or it is in barracks and training for what it thinks will be the next conflict.

Yet as past and current conflicts seem to demonstrate that none is like another, commanders are inevitably influenced by their previous deployments and new lessons have to be learnt each time.

So, it is just as likely that the next generation of senior officers will be regarded as being as out of touch as the current cohort.

Originally Posted by Mobat

Originally Posted by DDart

This was illustrated by my Bn CDR in Kosovo in 2001. A few of my squads were chasing some smugglers around on the Mac border and as the drama unfolded, he commented to me "I am controlling things here a captain (company commander) would have been doing twenty years ago." The guy is one I would consider a "toxic officer" but I think the sad truth was, he had been a very good staff officer in postings that played to his natural strengths, but the independence and creativity that was required as a Bn CDR in a place like Kosovo was beyond his training and predilections.

I have often wondered if we should have 2 sorts of officers: command and staff. The 2 functions seem to require different personalities and so identifying what an individual is best at and then only giving him that type of appointment would reduce the round pegs in square holes problem.

Yes but then you risk developing parallel systems and two groups of highly opinionated individuals with no real idea of what the other group does and why - the British Army and the British Indian Army suffered a bit from that syndrome and it's an absolute recipe for disaster. Ultimately the Army needs rounded and adaptable individuals who can do what's needed and that means spending a period of time seeing how the other half lives, regardless of whether one is more suited to slitting throats or finding Form 123xyz.