ARFORGEN

Did you ever really screw up? 

I mean screw up so bad that you wanted to just go hide under your desk, or something, but your friends were standing there watching you screw up and handing you more material so you could just keep doing it.  Right in front of God and everybody.

And no one would tell you to stop because they had helped you screw up for so long that now they were just as screwed up as you.

Well, that's ARFORGEN - Army Force Generation. It's the way Army units nowadays train for deployment and then deploy to Afghanistan or wherever. It is screwed up.  And it is FUBAR.  Ask your dad what that means.

ARFORGEN is this huge plan for everyone to train up to go all as one group so they have cohesion and know each other really well and stuff.  But then the commander who trained the unit leaves because his two years is up.  And Soldiers report in right out of advanced individual training as artillerymen, then get sent downrange three weeks later as infantry to go kick in doors for which they have no training.  All of the equipment has to be ready to go 60 days before deployment and gets sent away so the unit has nothing to train on for the crucial time before they go into combat.  Aviation units then get sent to support ground units with whom they have never trained or hardly talked with on the phone.

This is definitely a political ploy to avoid the appearance of "planting a flag."  Do they think they are really fooling anyone after ten years? 

And it cost gazillions of dollars, because all that equipment (a lot!) is shipped downrange to stay (now) nine months and then the cycle starts over. The whole danged Army that is deployed moves every nine to twelve months!

Everybody says we don't want another Vietnam.  Not everything was done wrong in that war, there were things that we did right. (And we still do it in Korea.)  We should replace individuals. Soldiers move in and out of the deployed units one at a time - only the Soldiers, not the equipment.  That way a third of the force is seasoned in the fight, a third has probably caught on, and less than ten percent have been there less than a month, based on a 12 month deployment.

When planners talk off the record, they long for the individual replacement approach. They know that ARFORGEN is foolish and wasteful.  It's a screwup, but no one seems to be telling the emperors about the absence of clothing.

ARFORGEN is also the reason units struggle and one of the reasons people suffer so much with deployments, and total Army readiness is adversely impacted with this up and down constant swing.

ARFORGEN needs to be one of the noble efforts that earned a lot of OER bullets but is relegated to the dustbin of history along with classic screwups like Task Force Smith and An Army of One.

I'm not sure even beer can help this.

Air Ground Integration

General Patton said: "I don't know what this AGI stuff is, but I want me some of it!"  Not really, but he would have said it if he was around today.

AGI seems to be a mystery to a lot of Soldiers.  I never understood the problem.  I used to be an Infantry guy and I thought I had it figured out.  Don't you know how (you should know!) to integrate fires? Artillery? Air Defense? (Well, nobody knows anything about air defense). Engineers? Signal? Same thing.

It's staff coordination! And you've got a staff that is designed to do it. Just like you have a Fire Support Officer, Mr. BCT S-3, you have a Brigade Aviation Officer (BAO). Let him (or make him) do his job.

When the Infantry commander gets a warning order to do something, the Aviator should be peering (lurking) over his shoulder to see how he can help the ground guy do his business. From the beginning of the mission planning process to the consolidation on the objective and beyond, aviation should be helping the ground guy get his mission accomplished in the most effective way.  Aviation should not sit back and wait to be asked, it should "sell" the product every step of the way.

Most important:  Aviation exists to support the guy on the ground.  Bottom line.

Attach yourself to the ground guy like you're his RTO! Don't let him plan anything (well, you don't own him) unless you have a chance to offer ideas and assistance - within your capabilities.  Some guys willl ask you for everything.  That's okay, even though you can't provide unlimited resources.  But he needs to know you are trying to get him absolutely as much Aviation power as is available.

Well, that got serious.  Time to go watch "The Walking Dead" or something.