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A Marine's-Eye View of the Networked Battlefield
Ian Lamont writes "Tyler Boudreau, a Marine veteran of the war in Iraq and a blogger, has written an interesting analysis of the impact of email, IM, and other digital devices upon 'ground-pounders' and their commanders in the field. These innovations were introduced in hopes of increasing situational awareness, rapidly gathering data, analyzing it, organizing it, and then pushing it back out to operators as actionable intelligence. They also provide commanders with the freshest possible information and aid them in their moment-to-moment decision-making. However, Boudreau found that the technologies can lead to micromanagement and deep frustration, trends that he illustrates by describing a shooting incident in al Anbar and its aftermath. He also warns that soldiers can become too dependent upon headquarters for critical decisions, which can lead to dangerous situations when communications get cut off."
This sounds very familiar. I joined Army ROTC in '73, when all instructors had at least one tour in Vietnam. I served in the 82nd Airborne in the late '70s, when every senior NCOs, many captains, and all field grades had been to Vietnam. Micromanagement was was a common complaint, both from them and in the reading I've done then and since. But while the Infantry School would lecture against micromanagement, I can't say that I saw many of my seniors taking a hands off approach.
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
Taking things that happen between headquarters "tactical operations centers" or TOCs and individual units, then extrapolating that into the communications that happen between higher echelon headquarters or logistical operations is a stretch at best.
At a real TOC somwhere like Iraq, you have 7x24 coverage by people whose job is to report upward on events at that locale. Therefore, a small unit action becomes well known to those in the chain of command associated with that unit. However, a random DFAC (mess hall) at Camp Victory isn't reporting up to its chain with anything approaching that frequency. In fact, that might happen once a week or once a month, aside from regular orders for foodstuffs and personnel actions. Moreover, all the tactical systems associated with this reporting are used by actual warfighters. Those engaged in logistical work will never see such a system.
Same goes for prisons - they have no tactical systems.
Yes, I just came back from there in late April.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I wonder about the ability of a soldier to effectively multi-task. Not only is he in charge of his safety and that of his buddies, but also facing an enemy trying to kill him, and then having to lug around all this electronic stuff occasionally providing manual input into it. I have a tough enough time handling email/cell phone/my job daily I cannot imagine how difficult it is for the modern warrior.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
Trained not to think? That is ridiculous.
Soldiers are trained to follow orders. In no way does following orders entail the lack of thought.
You know, so they won't have to kill a human being for a cause they don't agree with.
Someday they'll have robot soldiers...but not today.
Blar.
Wow.. DO you have a severe misunderstanding of things.
First, the order to do X aren't spelled out to them. They have a limited number of scenarios and resources at their disposal and when command says take and secure that hill, or weed out resistance in this town, the soldier have to assess the situation, develop a plan of action, implement it, correct for when something goes wrong, and hopefully not killing innocents or themselves. A drone couldn't do this because no two situations are identical.
You must be thinking of the old colonial wars where the troops lined up and squared off until one side decided they had enough. This is not the situation any more and hasn't been for quite a while.
The level of communications is set to jump even more as networking waveforms are developed and comm systems link up even more. If you look at the CONOPS for some future capabilities, the guy on the original foot patrol could have sent video of the entire firefight to the other patrol, or to an Apache/A-10 overhead and then back to the Battallion. Texting is already in place, but if you listen to any Marine or Army officer talk, voice will always rule supreme. Yeah, you'll have streaming video, IM, texting, etc. But the platoon leader wants to hear voice, and more importantly, the inflection in his voice. I'm sure this article's author backed his man because he heard the sincerity and urgency in his men's voice while on patrol.
Google JTRS if you want to see where the Marines and Army are headed with comm. These will be small form factor, maritime, manpacks, handhelds, etc. Micromanagement and bad leadership will always happen, regardless, but I think good situational awareness and NCOs it will even out.To all the posters saying, "Soldiers don't think". Please STFU. You're just being dumb and either anti-military, biased, or just spouting crap you heard on CNN. I taught new recruits in the Air Force as a special duty assignment at Vandenberg. I have friends who are Marines that leave and go to Iraq more than you go to the dentist. If there's any common thread between all the branches it's this: accountability is much higher, better skills required , and critical thinking never been more demanded. You can point to Abu, but you're ignorant of the thousands of patrols who held back their trigger finger to allow a bad guy get away because of the civilians behind him. The hundreds of additional hours spent planning ATOs (Air Tasking Orders) so that __IF__ a bomb missed it would not hit innocents and that the proper munition is used for the target, building, support, etc. If you're still not convinced, spend at least an hour reading the foot patrols blogged here and then click "Next". Spend some time poking through his dispatchs.
it's because "soldier" refers to the Army, and is not inclusive of marines, sailors and airmen. "warfighter" refers to all branches.
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
That's all well and good as far as it goes, but in the case of Iraq, the orders to invade were probably legal, or at least ambiguous enough that ordinary soldiers were correct to obey them. You really don't want to turn every E-3 into an amateur international lawyer - the military would fall apart. Orders given by superior officer should be presumed to be lawful unless you have a compelling reason to believe that they are not. Some of the stuff that went on at Abu Ghraib, for example, should have been stopped on this basis.
And just so this is clear, while I believe that it was likely legal (in a narrow sense) to invade Iraq, I don't believe at all that it was the right thing to do. It was probably the biggest blunder of the century.
What, in the name of sanity, is that supposed to mean? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CJTF-76 Combined Joint Task Force - 82 (CJTF-82) was a US led subordinate formation of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). It served as both the National Command Element for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, reporting directly to the Commander, United States Central Command, and as ISAF's Regional Command East. It was replaced by Combined Joint Task Force - 101 (CJTF-101) in early April of 2008 [1].
CJTF-82 was headquartered at Bagram Airfield.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Commissioned_Officer_in_Charge Non-Commissioned Officer in ChargeThe designation Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge, usually abbreviated to NCOIC (or NCO I/C), signifies an individual in the enlisted ranks of a military unit who has limited command authority over others in the unit.
OEF8 is Operation Enduring Freedom 8 presumably.echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Why I can see were you would think what you presented, after all, the movies and accounts of wars and battles tend to lean to your direction when told after the fact. But the reality of it is that the average soldier makes more decisions that could mean life and death throughout the course of a battle and even when risking his life doing duty in hostile areas while waiting on a battle then some CEO's and managers will make all day long. It is imperative for them to do so when we are attempting to fight clean wars in politically correct ways.
Please don't confuse discipline and enthusiasm with not thinking. I know on the surface, that is makes sense. But the truth of the matter is that a uniformed soldier is a several hundred thousand dollar asses entrusted with the same amount or more asset during the course of their endeavor. I say that not to put a price on their lives but to estimate the cost of training a replacement to a level comparable to an experienced combatant. The sir, Yes sir, is more of a leadership thing then a loss of will to think. The America Fuck Yea and lets get some is a motivational ploy to psych them up when getting ready for what could be the end of their natural lives. It isn't a sign of brainwashed ignorance but a sign of willing participation.I know people in Iraq right now. They are there because they think there are some things deeper and more important then themselves. To each of them, this is a little different but the common theme is that they are proud to do the work of bringing democracy and hopefully peace and opportunity to a people who have not had that luxury in a long time. They are doing it themselves because they don't want to have people forced into doing it for us. I don't want to sound like a recruitment officer or some poster boy for the war, but at least two of these people I know made that decision after Iraq started and they still believe it today. I tried to talk one of them out of joining and he insisted that if he didn't go, someone else would and he needed to do his part for his country. Granted I've always been a flag waving fan of the US but this clearly shows that they can think for themselves and after they return and talk about their experiences, the close calls, the decisions that saved their lives, someone else's decision that save their lives, and even how they use cheap toys to detect tripwires for IEDs and such, there is no doubt in their ability to think without someone barking orders to them.
Oh, so you ran the PX then. Gotcha.
Seriously, if you think a soldiers job is to obey unquestioningly, your career with the military must not have been a very successful one. As a section commander I went out of my way to try and get soldiers under my command who could think on their feet, and who weren't afraid to speak their minds. Most of my superiors attempted to cultivate similar attitudes at all levels of leadership. I'm sure that a soldier who can't think was a wonderful concept back in the 1800's, but in modern combat he's just another body waiting to fill a bag.
Now, if we ever start fighting all-out wars again, perhaps we'll need some mindless cannon-fodder to charge machine-gun nests over open ground. Until then, smart leaders are well advised to develop the minds of their subordinates at every opportunity.
There's been an argument that the British Navy was successful because of mechanisms for monitoring captains. Lieutenants, for example, kept their own logs which could be reviewed by the captain's superiors.
Barbara Tuchman's book, _The First Salute_, has lots of anecdotes of captains getting court-martialed for not following orders, even when the orders were internally contradictory.