George W. Bush's Real Legacy: a broken military

Are_grits_groceries

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Fri Mar-05-10 05:44 AM
Original message

George W. Bush's Real Legacy: a broken military

By Blue Girl:
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I screamed until I was blue in the face that our military was broken, that it is actually in far worse shape than it was in the aftermath of Vietnam, and will take decades to rebuild, and I was right. In fact, it has been degraded to the point that our ability to train our forces is in jeopardy due to the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that stretched our military beyond it's breaking point. Consider this: If not for mercenaries doing much of the training that is getting done, wide swaths of the military would stumble and fall.
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In a Feb. 16 memo <.pdf> to Gen. George W. Casey, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the commander of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, says that the Army has lost thousands of uniformed trainers because of troop demands in Iraq and Afghanistan, has had to put junior officers in charge of some key training functions and has delayed initial instruction for nearly 500 pilots because it doesn't have enough trainers.
Only 30 percent of the instructors at Army training schools are in the military, Dempsey says, with the Army increasingly dependent on outside contractors.

"We are behind in integrating lessons learned, developing training and updating doctrine," Dempsey wrote in the memo, a copy of which McClatchy obtained. "We are undermanned in our efforts to design the future Army."

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Dempsey wrote that since September 2001, the number of soldiers assigned to training and other planning responsibilities has declined by 7,300, while the number of civilian employees has declined by 4,500. To fill the gap, Dempsey says, his command has hired 9,000 outside contractors.

He complains that the result is a "de-greening" of training, meaning less reliance on Army personnel. For example, he wrote, outside contractors are teaching 68 percent of the courses at the Army's Intelligence School.

Dempsey also says the manpower shortage has affected ROTC training programs, particularly at universities that provide large numbers of junior officers to the Army. He says that the officer-to-student ratios at five of the nation's six largest ROTC programs, including The Citadel in South Carolina and Texas A&M University, now exceed 1 to 45 and that in some cases the ratio is 1 to 76.

A shortage of captains and majors with combat experience is particularly troubling, he says.

"Their experience level is of extreme importance to our command because it gives them the field-tested knowledge and credibility to teach, coach and mentor the officers following behind them," Dempsey wrote.

He wrote that 18 first lieutenants were filling company command positions in basic combat training units - positions usually reserved for higher-ranking officers - and that the command has had to turn to noncommissioned officers in some of those units to fill operations positions usually reserved for commissioned officers.

Link to complete memo here: http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2010/03/03/17/Youssef-CSAMemo.source.prod_affiliate.91.PDF
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"Only 30 percent of the instructors at Army training schools are in the military, Dempsey says, with the Army increasingly dependent on outside contractors."

This ought to give everybody the willies. Who are the contractors who are doing the training??? What are they possibly teaching in addition to what is assigned?