Wednesday, September 11, 2013

HOW TO FIX THE ARMY . . .

. . . Sack All the Generals

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond T. Odierno receives a briefing from Maj. Gen. James C. McConville, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) commanding general (right), Brig. Gen. Ronald F. Lewis, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). Photo: U.S. Army

Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis doesn’t have faith in Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno.

Or the rest of the U.S. Army’s generals, for that matter.

Writing in the August issues of The Armed Forces Journal (“Purge The Generals“) Davis argues that it’s high time to sack the Army’s senior leaders for what he sees as an institutionalized epidemic of astonishing failures that not only go unreported, but are typically rewarded. All of it, he says, is creating a self-perpetuating culture of abysmal performance that won’t go away until the generals do.

“Over that past 20 years, our senior leaders have amassed a record of failure in major organizational, acquisition and strategic efforts,” Davis writes. “These failures have been accompanied by the hallmarks of an organization unable and unwilling to fix itself: aggressive resistance to the reporting of problems, suppression of failed test results, public declaration of success where none was justified, and the absence of accountability.”

Davis, a seasoned Army colonel who has already earned a reputation for being something of a whistleblower by tracking leadership failures from the field in Afghanistan, describes a system where underserving leaders “received prestigious medals, promotions to higher ranks, and plum follow-on jobs; others retired and went to work for defense contractors, often with companies that had profited from the failed acquisition effort.”

Just a few of those failed acquisition efforts total nearly $35 billion dollars.

Read the rest of it HERE

The above stated sentiments are why I left the Regular Army and went Special Forces, and why - after I retired - I distanced myself from the military and went into corporate security. They're significantly more results-oriented when they're directly responsible for every bottom dollar.

STORMBRINGER SENDS

1 comment:

  1. too bad Lt.Col. Davis will never become Gen. Davis. What is your opinion of Gen Petraeus under these circumstances?

    ReplyDelete