Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

Col. G.I. Wilson & Maj. Donald Vandergriff • 75this mindset among the officer corps, and inculcate our juniors with the desire tobecome instructors and help shape our officer corps. This is not currently the caseand, while change is coming, it needs to be expedited.The Time is Now, the Future is Too LateEffectiveness for the Army is not an option; it is imperative. The new culture neededto execute the type of missions imagined in the future is sine qua non to the effectivenessof the Army. Many officers and civilian leaders believe technology makes thedifference, but as John Boyd said, people make the difference, especially when thereis effective leadership. The personnel system is the linchpin that will directly affectcombat effectiveness, doctrine and a host of other critical issues pertaining to theArmy of the future. The culture must adjust its course before the Army can executethe high- tempo and rapidly changing warfare of the future.The fundamental reason for instituting serious reform is that our national securityconstruct, from our national security strategy down to the smallest military organizationand how we manage our personnel, is not keeping pace with the rapid changes inthe world today. The military’s personnel system is an outdated adjunct to an officerpersonnel system designed for the Cold War. Most leaders are uncomfortable with oursystem; they know that it is not sufficient to meet the challenges that are clearly coming,that something’s lacking. They feel this way because officers understand that ourcurrent culture is founded on the very organizational model used almost a hundredyears ago to reform the War Department (today’s Department of Defense).We would be among the first to agree that much of the current system that is dysfunctionalis the result of good intentions that have had unintended consequences. Thepeople who are upholding the culture of personnel management science for the last100 years and who put these systems in place were trying to do the right thing. Theironly fault is that they have ignored the bad results of their implementations – the useof individual replacements in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and to a certain degreein Iraq and Afghanistan, and the maintenance of an up-or-out promotion system in anage where specialization must occur not only in a given field, but also at a given rank.Other examples of well-intended practices that have had unpleasant outcomes:• A larger than necessary officer corps at the middle and senior levels in orderto prepare for mobilization of the Army to fight World War III employing anattrition doctrine. In June 2008 the Army added five more generals to its alreadybloated population of 308 generals.• Fairness, transparency, objectivity are all good things, but they have led to asystem that causes OERs to be “scored,” making quantitatively commensurablethings that should not be.