It's also concentrated on too few major bases, multiple single points of failure.
With its many missions, the U.S. Army is hard-pressed to meet the requirements of the National Defense Strategy at its current authorized end strength. A major part of the problem is that the Army is awash in staffs, many of which did not exist during World War II, or even in the 1990s. After 9/11, the Army Staff grew by 60 percent, while headquarters and staffs Army-wide ballooned. All of these headquarters consume resources withheld from the warfighting Army. Nor can it be shown that Army functions are being executed more effectively or efficiently because multiple large headquarters have been created to run them.
A case in point is the Army Installation Management Command, or IMC, created in 2006 and chartered to “reduce bureaucracy, apply a uniform business structure to manage U.S. Army installations, sustain the environment and enhance the well-being of the military community.” IMC is headed by a lieutenant general, with a major general as deputy and brigadier general as chief of staff. IMC includes a workforce of 30,000 soldiers and 70,000 civilians. Formerly, Army installations were managed by garrison commanders reporting to local commanding generals, with an Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installation Management. In theory, centralizing the installation management function promised common standards and greater expertise. In practice, results have fallen far short, with the Army experiencing a “crisis” in installation management in recent years.
Another compelling example is the Army Acquisition Corps, created in 1989 and today employing 1,600 commissioned officers plus many more senior civilians. Since its creation, the Army has failed badly with major program acquisitions, squandering billions on programs like the Crusader Field Artillery System, the Future Combat System, the Ground Combat Vehicle, the RAH-66 Comanche helicopter and the XM1299 Extended Range Cannon Artillery system, among others. No major Army program has been successfully fielded since the 1980s, a trend described by one Secretary of the Army as a “tale of failure.” In 2018, the Army doubled down by creating Futures Command, adding another large 4-star headquarters to supervise an existing, labyrinthine set of acquisition headquarters which includes the Army Futures and Concepts Center, the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command and its associated battle labs, the Army Research, Development and Engineering Command; and the Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity, among others. Despite this massive infrastructure, the Army has not improved performance in this key sphere.
Growth in staff size and the proliferation of unneeded headquarters is accompanied by a strong tendency to “over-officer” the force, one factor in the explosion of personnel costs since 9/11. In 2024, one in six soldiers is a commissioned officer (a 21 percent increase since 2000). About one-third of the Army's personnel budget goes to officer pay and allowances. Between 1965 and 2018, the number of general and flag officers in the U.S. military as a percentage of the total force increased by 46 percent; of 4-stars by 114 percent; and of 3-stars by 149 percent. Such deliberate rank-inflation and over-staffing contributes to a bureaucratic culture that demands constant reporting from junior commanders, so much so that one authoritative Army War College study found a “suffocating amount of mandatory requirements” they are “literally unable to complete…forcing them to resort to dishonesty evasion.” Almost certainly, this environment contributes to an exodus of young officers who are frustrated by crushing administrative burdens they cannot reconcile with their duty to train their soldiers for war.
#1
A lot of staff is because someone is unwilling to make command decisions and seeks CYAWP. It's sustained by an institution that is unwilling to punish failure or outright violation of the UCMJ by officers.
#2
“…enhance the well- being…..”??
Tell that to the troops around the country whose eating facilities are shut down with fast food or commissary their only options. Not all have wheels.
#6
All government entities turn into jobs programs.
That was one argument for the draft in the 50s, to remove a good number of young men from the labor market for 2 years in order to play with the employment statistics. Unfortunately, when you have a hammer, everything starts to looks like a nail (foreign inventions).
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Dmitry Likhtarik
[REGNUM] Speaking at his first press conference after his victory at the Mar-a-Lago residence on December 16, US President-elect Donald Trump made more resonant statements revealing his position on the Ukrainian case.
For example, he criticized the Biden administration's decision to allow Ukraine to launch long-range strikes on Russian territory, stressed that it could take a century to restore what was destroyed, and expressed his belief in the need for a deal to end the nearly three-year war. And at the same time, he admitted that he did not invite Volodymyr Zelensky to his inauguration in January.
But before analyzing the statements on Ukraine, it is necessary to make a number of important observations.
First, Trump’s negotiating style (apparently borrowed from his business experience) suggests that he sets his own framework for his negotiating partner’s theses and tries not to let him out of this framework in the future.
Let's explain this using a specific situation: he reported receiving signals from Kiev about the desire to reach a settlement of the conflict with Russia. As we understand, this is not a completely correct interpretation of either Zelensky's position, expressed by him at a meeting in September, when the Republican was still a presidential candidate, or the messages of the delegation of the head of the Ukrainian presidential office, Andriy Yermak , who recently visited Washington to meet with Trump's inner circle.
Official Kyiv is indeed asking for help in "achieving a just peace" from the "collective West" and from the new US president in particular. But by "just peace" they mean a return to the borders of February 2022 (until recently - to the borders of 1991), as a tool for achieving it - military and financial assistance, and the mechanism for guaranteeing post-conflict security - Kyiv's membership in NATO.
Trump, however, without a second thought, separated Kyiv's goals and means, taking on the former, but with his own tools. And as the president-elect stated at that same press conference, he has already made "a little progress" in the settlement and is "working hard" to end the conflict.
The second important point is that the White House team is now a close-knit group of people who are absolutely loyal to their leader. They act in a completely coordinated manner (at least because until January 20, 2025, appointments to all posts except for the White House Chief of Staff are de facto, not de jure). And the disclosure of a number of nuances of Trump's position, for one political reason or another, is taken on by his associates.
Thus, the future presidential adviser on national security Michael Walz in an interview with CBS News repeated his thesis from the time of the discussion of the aid package for Ukraine in Congress earlier this year that “a blank check (unlimited aid) is not a strategy.”
Moreover, in the same interview he posed a purely American question point-blank: " What does success look like in accordance with our interests? How do we end the conflict?" The word "we" is key here - obviously, "success in accordance with Ukrainian interests" is not on the agenda of Trump's team at all.
And the third point. Trump's team, in this case acting within the framework of the good old American political tradition, states its position and/or launches "trial balloons" through "leaks" in the press.
On the day of the press conference in Mar-a-Lago, American military expert Ryan Menon expressed the opinion in a column for The New York Times that Trump is unlikely to agree to provide Ukraine with security guarantees from the United States, and Kiev will not consider any coalition without the participation of the Americans to be reliable.
The expert points out that the president-elect “is seeking not only to end the conflict without making any promises to protect Ukraine, but also to reduce America’s security commitments in Europe as a whole.” Menon also believes that Kiev’s admission to NATO is unrealistic.
As for the last thesis, it can be found in direct form among Trump’s closest allies: Vice President-elect J.D. Vance , nominees for the positions: Secretary of State Marco Rubio , National Security Advisor Michael Walz , Senior Advisor for Trade and Industry Peter Navarro , and US Ambassador to Beijing David Pardue .
The key moment in switching from Europe to China is closing the “Ukrainian case”, and as quickly as possible.
Thus, at the time of the press appearance, Trump's positions on various aspects of his vision for the settlement of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict were already quite clearly defined and he added only a few strokes to this picture. Again, acting in his usual manner.
Most importantly, the US President-elect called on Zelensky to prepare for an agreement to end the conflict. This message was “paired” with Trump’s statement that he might reconsider the decision of the current President Joe Biden to authorize long-range missile strikes deep into Russia.
According to him, the United States should not have allowed Ukraine to carry out such strikes, the decision was again called "bad and stupid." And the other day, Trump gave a similar assessment in an interview with Time magazine, specifying that Zelensky made this decision with Biden's approval:
"I think the most dangerous thing right now is what's happening when Zelensky decided, with the approval, I assume, of the president (Biden. - Ed.), to start firing missiles at Russia. I think that's a serious escalation. I think that's a stupid decision."
As we can see, Trump is demonstrating a willingness to act with respect to Kyiv using the American version of the carrot and stick method, where the "carrot" is the absence of a "stick". And his most significant reaction was the absence of even a hint of a positive answer to the question of whether Ukraine should cede part of its territory to Russia?
Trump responded that he would let them know after his first meeting with the leaders of Russia and Ukraine, but added that “ there is not a single [whole] building there (in the territories that have been transferred to the Russian Federation. — Ed.) , and people will not return there,” and that it could take a hundred years to restore the destroyed cities. Translated into common language, this means: let the territories be restored and maintained by the one who actually owns them. That is, Russia.
It was a fortunate coincidence that on December 16, White House Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby made a statement that, in the opinion of the Biden administration, Zelensky should himself determine the terms of negotiations to end the conflict. But Kiev understands perfectly well that everything they say about their terms of participation in the negotiations under Biden could be used against them by Trump on January 20.
And in the current situation, one of the most adequate Ukrainian experts, economist Alexey Kushch, recommends that the government take the geopolitical product called “the world named after Trump” even for five years – that is, for the period of his term, after which the situation will change.
"Right now, either the key existential risk of the existence of Western civilization in the 21st century or the track of a safe future for the next 30 years is being formed. In the first case, the Baltic-Black Sea arc will literally become "bloodlands", in the second, it will plunge into a geopolitical sleep for 30 years. Now there is a key struggle for the basic Eurasian vector of inter-civilization movement of goods, services, investments and technologies. It will pass either to the south of the Black Sea or to the north. This explains the development of the geopolitical situation in the Middle East and Ukraine," the expert notes.
In any case, with peace, Ukraine will find itself in a better place and in a better condition in 2030 than during the war. And what choice the Kiev authorities will make will be clear in the coming weeks.
[PJMedia] I seem to be writing a series on our interesting times, starting with the implications of the fall of Bashar al-Assad and followed by talking about the discovery of the Assad Ba’ath regime’s archives.
I wish I could be smug about my predictions coming true, but honestly, fascists are too predictable. They always seem to have a secret service to keep the populace under control, and they always seem to become more and more abusive as their efforts to make the populace just behave fail, as the populace doesn’t want to behave.
Honestly, fascism would be so much simpler if it weren’t for all the people.
So now that al-Assad has ridden off into the Russian sunset, we are starting to discover some of the details, that honestly — well, as I said, I wish I could be smug about it, but I can’t.
A lot of stuff is coming out now.
First of all is the opening of Sednaya, al-Assad's concentration camp.
I assumed what we’d find out would be bad, but I didn’t really know how bad. It really is comparable to Auschwitz and Dachau. Many thousands were killed by their captors. Was there some sort of prize for making yourself a 21st-century Hitler?
While “May you live in interesting times” isn’t really a Chinese curse, it’s a curse nonetheless. Maybe I’ve grown cynical in my old age, but this is what real fascists are like. What were we facing in the alternate timeline in which Kamala won?
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/18/2024 00:00 ||
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#3
Yes, Sednaya is where the Assads locked of the perps who committed minimum security criminal stuff.
They say, no good deed goes unpunished. Spare a terrorists' lives, not good enough. You'll still be accused of war crimes for improper accommodations. Allowing the terrorist to take another breath, will not be recognized.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
