Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

William S. Lind • 101the battalion buys its own food other than “iron rations.” When motorized transportis useful, it requisitions it on a “use it and leave it” basis.The Islandian Marine Corps appears to have successfully bucked the trend visiblein all other developed countries’ militaries for trigger-pullers to get fewer whilemaintenance and supply requirements rise.An Interview with the CommandantThe headquarters of the Islandian Marine Corps is a two-story, stone building locatednear the Doring Province docks in The City. The structure is unimpressive and couldeasily be mistaken for a warehouse. The second floor is a combined bar and library.Perhaps its most remarkable feature is that, while overseeing a military with 175,000men, it houses only 19 active-duty Marine officers. One of those officers is the MarineCorps Commandant, Lord Dorn, who graciously granted me part of a morning foran interview.My first question to Lord Dorn was, “What is your personal focus (Schwerpunkt)as Commandant?”Lord Dorn: My focus is ensuring that the Islandian Marine Corps and the FightingMarine Forces (FMF) are, to the greatest degree possible, identical.ME: Is that difficult?LORD DORN: It used to be, and it remains something that needs constant watching.All militaries, perhaps all organizations, must contend with a form of entropy thatbleeds men away from the fighting forces into work that may have higher peacetimepriority. At one point, not too many years ago, we found more than half our manpowerwas not in the FMF.ME: How did you deal with that?LORD DORN: By adopting the force structure you see now. Its purpose is transparency:at any given time, we can see exactly where every Marine is and what he is doing.The tools that permit that are two-fold: the battalion muster roll and the designationof each battalion as combat, logistics or national support.Every Marine, including myself, is at all times on a battalion muster roll. That istrue from the day he enters the Marine Corps until he retires. The muster roll alsotells what he is doing – in school, manning a machine gun, cooking, whatever. Thebattalion adjutant keeps the muster roll, and it must be updated monthly. A copy issent each month here, to this headquarters. If a battalion is allowing too many of itsmen to be drawn away from manning weapons, we see it immediately.