Interesting perspective from recent boots-on-the-ground soldier.

In Iraq the high tech light weight cross country Hummer has been turned into a road bound over weight tanket. When I was in Iraq it always seemed strange that our Hummers featured about half an inch of armor plate supported by an almost flimsy light weight aluminum frame. We were issued new M1114s and it was interesting how the weight of the armor caused the vehicle to noticeably settle in the year we had them.

In that year I witnessed the Military Transition Team (MiTT) that I was assigned to also settle on its frame. The leadership had the expectations of the "Leviathan Force" and did not grasp that they were the vanguard of the "System Administrator" force. They sought the big battle, the decisive engagement, the sound of screaming jets and overwhelming firepower on a battlefield ruled more by smiles, gestures, words and deeds. They taught the art of writing Operations Orders while skipping how to track operations on a map or even how to track what they had. They sought an enemy defined in black and white in a place with more shades than a paint store. The result was a great gap between expectations and results that lead in many quarters to "Sour Grapes." No screaming horde pouring through the Fulda Gap, but instead an enemy made up of handfuls of individuals armed with cell phones and IEDs. An enemy who's world turned not on great concepts and international politics but petty designs and private causes.

Ironically this MiTT was made up of the very people that the "System Administrator" force concept prescribes: professional people drawn from civilian business, engineering and IT. There was however no leap of intuition into the new role. Instead people fell back on what they had been trained to do, they remained blind to what they had not been trained on and tried vainly to superimpose their expectations over reality. The consequence was, for some, bitterness and for those who went beyond what they new and grew in the new roles some exultation. But even for the exultant there was the nagging thought that their untutored adaptations were not what could have been achieved with better preparation. Someone has to be first but the result was that both the success and the failure could not be fully appreciated by many of the participants.

What was needed was better vetting. The Army is often vetted more against

free thinking and experimentation than for it. In this the Army leadership has been accused of becoming addicted to employing the more flexible teams provided by other services. The Navy, for example, has provided small teams that; because they are employed far from their training base, have proven to be highly adaptive and aggressive as they move into the uncharted waters of prosecuting an asymmetrical counter-insurgency on land. Unfortunately, however the re-alignment of the Army at the end of the Cold War has left the Army Reserve with few soldiers qualified in Combat Arms. Those units with Combat Arms soldiers are subject to having their ranks full of Field Grade Combat Arms Officers who left active duty as junior officers. These officers therefore have experience in combat units during peace time as "Obligated Volunteer" junior officers without the benefit of the grooming being applied to their "Regular Army" counterparts. Such officers tend to be conservative or, worse, seeking that master stroke to prove that the chain of assignments that led them away from active command of a combat unit were wrong. Having neither great experience nor the benefit of being entirely inexperienced, they are consequently trapped by what little they know. And a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

The "Green Berets" were supposed to be the "System Administrators" of asymmetrical warfare, but unfortunately more than a Special Forces Tab is required. There has to be the expectation and the belief in the concept. There has to be the desire to learn, the ability and the willingness to network. There are no laurels from peacetime employment or past experiences on foreign terrain that could surpass current situational awareness, adaptability and networking skills. The over reliance on past experience is contrary current situational awareness. A soldier on the battlefield is required to know what is happening rather than what should be happening and to be a networked member of a group living in the present rather than an individual living alone in his personal past.

Like our Hummers, something specialized for one thing can be re-engineered to be specialized for something else. The results, however, while functional, will be expensive and probably less than satisfactory.

When I left Iraq, our Hummers were sagging like the old warhorses they had become. Transformed from high tech light weight cross country vehicles into road-bound, overweight tankets they were continuing their transition to the scrap yard, a transformation whose pace and ultimate design is preordained by their construction: heavy armor bolted to a light aluminum frame.