Good article on changes in Army training and deployment. I agree. I qualified in Basic and never saw a range or combat problem again. I spent my time as a shop office clerk in Germany and fired by "Grease Gun" once in two years at a hillside. I wouldn't have made a pimple on a combat soldier's ass.
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'Every soldier a rifleman'
New Army chief outlines his plans for America's oldest service
Sean Naylor reports in Army Times (subscription required) that Gen. Peter Schoomaker has laid out an ambitious plan for transformation of the Army after Gulf War II. For what it's worth, transformation after victory has always been harder than transformation after defeat, and the Army appears anxious to seize on 'lessons learned' from this war in order to prepare for the next one. The cornerstone of this effort is the plan to train every Army soldier as an infantryman first -- and specialist second -- in order to build a warrior ethos within the ranks and ensure that every unit can competently fight when called upon. The move is an implicit response to the failures of the 507th Maintenance Company and others in Iraq.
“Everybody in the United States Army’s gotta be a soldier first,” Gen. Peter Schoomaker told reporters during an Oct. 7 roundtable meeting with reporters in Washington.
The specialization of jobs in the Army pulled the service away from the notion that every soldier must be grounded in basic combat skills, he said. But Iraq has demonstrated that no matter what a soldier’s military occupational specialty is, he must be able to conduct basic combat tasks in order to defend himself and his unit.
“We’ve dismounted artillerymen in Iraq, and we’ve got them performing ground functions — infantry functions, MP functions,” Schoomaker said. “Everybody’s got to be able to do that … Everybody’s a rifleman first.”
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*Every soldier will be required to qualify on his or her individual weapon twice a year, [Gen.] Byrnes said. The current Army standard requires soldiers to qualify only once a year, although some commanders have their troops qualify more frequently.
*New recruits will qualify on their individual weapons in basic training and then again in advanced individual training, Byrnes added. Until now, qualification in basic training only was the standard.
*Every soldier, regardless of MOS and unit, will conduct at least one live-fire combat drill a year. For higher headquarters rear-echelon units, it might include reacting to an ambush, Byrnes said.
In addition to transforming the grunt, the new Chief of Staff of the Army has plans to transform the way units are structured. His goal is to maximize the number of deployable brigades that the Army has, in an effort to boost the number of troops available for deployment without busting the Army's "end strength" cap as set by federal law. And Gen. Schoomaker has had enough of rotating senior commanders out of combat while their troops stay behind.
This policy has infuriated many in the Army, especially the outgoing commanders, who feel it forces them to abandon their troops just when their soldiers need them most.
Schoomaker is sympathetic to those who feel the policy should be changed, and has told the units preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan that he does not want midtour changes of command. Staying with a unit until it redeploys is “a fundamental role of leadership,” he told reporters.
This is all good stuff. The question will be whether Gen. Schoomaker gets the support he needs from the SecDef to make this happen, and whether he can get the authorization/appropriations authority from Congress to do it. Gen. Schoomaker's likely in for a long fight, since some of these changes may collide with other service objectives and programs. There's a lot of parochialism in the Army, and a lot of stakeholders with vested interests who know how to fight like a guerilla in the halls of Congress. Thankfully, Gen. Schoomaker's a pretty good snake-eater too.
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