Tossed out for your consideration.

I'm not sure he was suggesting removing the "colonels", but yes, it does look like he means to remove a headquarters. Maybe, though, the colonels would be closer to the action since he seems to be indicating smaller, dispersed forces that operate with more autonomy.

Last time I checked, we still have the Brigades, but the Commander is now a full Colonel. The BGen rank is becoming a staff rank only (in the absence of a proper Div). Interesting, because the rank of Colonel was originally for those who were not going to make Brigadier, in that it was intended as the senior staff rank. Cheers JMH

we say...."above our paygrade!" Will give it a read though, Charlie is usually all over this stuff.

Sounds like you've been reading "So, You've Been Posted to the Pentagon: Preface--Role of the Aide-de-Camp for Dummies." "

My inclination is to pick this thing apart, but I'll resist the temptation. Slide 4 Yes, new thinking is needed. But considering how important some of these decisions are, we need to be on the leading edge, not the bleeding edge. Point 2 is well taken, but then it's an argument that's been made since we climbed out of the jungles of Vietnam. Not really any new insight. Point 3 completely stuns me. There are other principles of war besides economy of force. And his usage is really contra the principle of economy of force as traditionally understood. As someone once said, "Quantity has a quality all its own.". Slide 6 I agree with him that the FCS is probably too advanced and too costly, given present levels of technology and funding. A more conservative plan to develop the hardware side is what's called for. Slide 8 Mostly platitudes. Sure large formations where the tooth to tail ratio is low are just plain bad. I think most would agree that the continuing decline in the ratio of trigger pullers to others is not where we want to be. But, on the other hand, when you load up units with high tech equipment and layer on surveillance units (where an SP4 sits in the TOC "flying" a UAV) et al, you get to the same place. That stuff does not fix itself. It does not guard your Battalion trains, it does not do your -20 and -30 maintenance repairs nor process your casualties. In a modern western army, the overhead is inevitable. The alternative is lots of platoons and companies that get "consumed in use", a la the Soviets circa 1979. A SOLUTION, to the logistics dilemma is to make companies MORE, not less, self sustaining. In effect you give the company level units the same capabilities that regiments had in WWII. This solution is arguably "less efficient" than the road we've gone down since the mid 1970s. But if you let "the mission" drive the configuration of the organization, then you accept less efficiency as a trade off for a more robust and self containted "unit of action" (oh how I hate that!). Slide 10 Well, he's right about the Gordian Knot problem. But 'twas ever thus. Change in an institution as old and ordered as the US Army is not usually a welcome thing. But then most of the changes inflicted on the Army were not fully explained nor thought through. By comparison, the transition to "Division 86" was a popular and well executed change. There were two primary reasons for that. First, most of the "middle management" had seen the need right in front of their eyes for years. Second, the smart guys at the C&GS who invented our whole new war fighting philosophy cogitated about it for quite a few years. It was, not to oversell it, not half baked. And it was fully funded by Weinberger and Reagan. My guess is that you can count the number of fully funded changes the Army has lived through in 200 years on one hand. My bias at this point would be to say that the way you go about this transition is to build the company level units first. Then you create a command and control structure to support them. One idea this presentation leads me to, is that companies should be larger, and commanded by a major not a captain. A major as CO, a CPT XO as deputy ops and a supernumerary "veteran" LT as the support operations officer. This gives you the benefit of a flexbile command structure. In theory you could organize a company operation with two two platoon manuever elements. Slide 13 I suppose his argument for having a BG "command" rather than a COL is the same argument I used above for having majors as company commanders. I don't see it as really necessary, we already have more generals on active duty today than we did when we had 12 million men in the Army. Slide 14 Probably the most important point that's often left out of force structure discussions. Units must be able to take casualties and stay in the fight. All too often the default is always slimming down the units to "save" manpower. It does not take much more overhead to support a 200 man company than it does to support a 100 man company, but that is the direction the Army has been marching in since Desert Storm. Slide 16 Preaching to the choir. We all know it, we all believe it and yet the institutional inclination of the Army has leaned in the opposite direction. Is there a solution? It would really have to be out of the box. When you centralize promotions and assignments you penalize risk taking. Maybe stablizing people at one post, or in one "unit" for six or seven years is one answer. Institutionally everyone wants the next job. Assuming this new organization came to pass, it would take 20 years to change the behavior and aspirations of the present officer corps. Slide 17 Absolutely. And something we could do today, if the Army leadership really wanted to. No more large scale EXFORs or Army 21s. Bring back MASSTERs and the High Technology Test Bed type of experiments. Do lots of them. Let unit commanders have the freedom to experiment, and fail! All in all a very intersting and thought provoking presentation. Despite my comments, I'm mostly for it. Steve