military rant

Military Rant

Half Sigma said [1]...

I am not impressed by McCain's military experience. I worked for

the army as a civilian, and it was the most poorly managed

organization I ever worked for. Romney, on the other hand, has the

proven capacity to run large organizations.

I think that whatever McCain's failings, earning his wings as a Naval

Aviator speaks volumes about young John McCain's intelligence,

adaptability and ability excel. Dummies don't fly airplanes.

Now, I'm not sure when Half Sigma worked for the Army .. but generally

he's right.

The military is optimized to break things and hurt people. When it's

not actually doing this - and that was most of the time before between

1973 and 2001 - it's incredibly inefficient.

The reason is that it's really tough to run a lean military optimized

for peacetime and then change stuff around in the span of a few months

so you can destroy Iraqi mechanized armies with minimal waste. Or at

least minimal waste on our side.

Nobody wants to replay Task Force Smith.

I was in a support role in 1991 and it's amazing how many wasted

cycles .. suddenly were not when we had to pack up people and gear and

move them halfway around the world.

Did 3D FSSG need a whole bunch of desert camo in 1990? Going to the

Middle East wasn't our mission so you might think that the cubic set

aside in the warehouses were wasted space.. But when we were tasked to

send people the guys who went were pretty happy to be able to draw the

gear they needed.

Likewise in 1990 3D FSSG didn't need a DFASC [2] - mainframes in a

trailer [3] - but when 1st and 2nd FSSG found theirs were breaking

down (AC issues) we were able to ship them ours on a day's notice.

Sorry for the rant - ignorance irks me.

Via.

[1] A rant is a terrible thing to waste so I'm recycling and editing a

comment from another blog into a post. Some editing for clarity, some

to correct a faulty memory.

[2] Rumor had it that we were going to get rid of it someday and in

the meantime we didn't use it - or at least hadn't in the year and few

months I'd been assigned to that unit. After 1991 the mainframe guys

routinely dragged them out and operated them on field exercises.

[3] Interesting beasts they were - two semi-trailers per DFASC, one

for the mainframe, one for the operators and programmers. Since my MOS