May 22, 2008
Clean out the officer rot
Robert Averech allows a currently-serving officer in the U.S. Air Force to post on his blog, offering up a blistering indictment of "Officer Rot" in the aviation component of our military.
Peacetime leaders make horrible wartime leaders.
It's a generalization, but a generalization that's generally true.
Enter today's United States Air Force. The plague of peacetime bureaucracy has set in, and it's set in hard. “Officer rot” is what Robert dubbed it, and I can't think of a better term to describe the disease. Officers are advanced in a system that awards those who clog the service's pipes with new and excessive regulations. Simplicity and speed are downplayed in favor of safer methodologies.
And “safe” is really the word of the day. On my base, the Wing Commander emphasizes—above all else—how DUIs and vehicle accidents are a few notches below the historical average. Commanders are reprimanded if one of their Airman suffers from—God forbid—an accident. The mentality has become so perverse that the Air Force actually seems to believe its leaders capable of preventing accidents from even happening.
Smart people realize that accidents are a statistical certainty.
The Air Force does not.
Now that's a very specific example of a larger problem. And the problem is this: Air Force careerists have made risk aversion their number one priority. "Who dares, wins" has gone the way of the Dodo. Airman and their officers are forced to memorize the Six Steps of Operational Risk Management and are expected to apply to every decision they make, so that risk may be avoided at all cost. Not unnecessary risk, mind-you. Risk. Period.
Risk aversion, as many thinking types know, is a horrible trait in an officer and a leader. World War II was marked by an innovation in military thinking never seen before in the US Military—except when Confederates Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were engineering innovative ways to kill Union soldiers. Today's Air Force, sans a primary purpose and an identifiable peer competitor, is not forced to think outside the box. In fact, they are so far in the box they probably couldn't find a way out if they tried.
[...]
They are so caught up in the wars of old, may God help us if the Chinese make good on their threats to reunify with Taiwan, or if Putin brings back the Russian Empire, or if Kim Jong Il decides he wants a bungalow in Seoul.
I'm an Air Force man and I'm telling it to you as plain as I can. We're screwed. Donezo. Kaput.
Pity, as the USAF would be our front line against any of those scenarios.
The Air Force needs a George C. Marshall. Oh, do they need a Marshall. Someone who gets it. Someone who has the stones to tank a generation of officers who just aren't helping. Someone who understands how to communicate the service's needs, what it can bring to the fight—the Air Force's abilities are unmatched—and someone who will rediscover the service's purpose: to support the infantry.
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Don't get me wrong though, folks. When the sun sets I still love my blue suit and love the sound of thundering jets overhead. Love it. But that's why it pains me so much to see a once-proud service fall into disrepair and irrelevance because of cowardly leaders who value their own stinkin' promotions over the good of the service and the good of the country. Some are well-intentioned. Most are just plain arrogant. I see both types every day. It pains me.
And I want it to stop.
It's hard to find much to argue with in his analysis, which begins with a look at how the U.S. Army avoided the ruinous impact of a piss-poor officer pool during the two years leading up to our entry in World War II. Read the whole thing.
Posted by Mike Lief at May 22, 2008 12:05 AM
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Comments
They canned a lot of unagressive submarine officers at the beginning of WW2, as well. Some may have gotten the boot wrongly, but it served the purpose. Who are the Cross and CMH winners? The guys who risked all. But that doesn't matter.
This is all coming from corporate America. I can see it very clearly working for a large defense contractor. The military is taking their cues from the corporate safety wonks, who say "Why is a 0.7% annual accident rate acceptable? Why can't we have 0%?" So, as the military has adopted disastrous corporate financial policies, so they are now following the pied piper of ORM - in a "business" of destruction.
Is there anyone sane in our gov't?
Posted by: sonarman at May 22, 2008 04:59 PM