recceguy said:
I did. You said combat arms should stay out of the delivery business.
No I didn't. I know how the echelon system works and why its there. It serves a purpose and does that job very, very well (as shown in Afghanistan). In fact, the armd corp has a very interesting (and highly effective) way of conducting first-line supprt that is quite unique.
What I was lamenting was the fact that cbt arms officers do not understand CSS (except for a select few). They understand that we exist and why, but not much else. Like I said, there's more to CSS then just CLP's (the 'sexy' part that cbt arms guys are mostly involved in). If I asked you to explain a dumping program, could you? If I asked you to explain to me how to properly manage, rotate and replace a base's SPV fleet, could you? If I asked you to give me a rundown of how far your units MSE has driven in a year, by vehicle and driver, would you know where to find that info?
Same goes for how we are organised. The Army expects CSS to appear by magic, and it doesn't. We need people to do it and we need enough of those people to meet our requirements (as a service battalion), to support other units (our raison d'etre) and to rotate people through their training. Spend a day, just one day, at a service battalion and you'll see what I'm getting at. There are nowhere near enough people to do the job....and the army is cutting more as they feel that 'other trades' can do the job of MSE Ops. Believe it or not, driving anything more complicated then an MLVW or cube van is a full time job. Unless you want civvies to do it (another dangerous misconception, there aren't a lot of civvies acting as infanteers or armd crewmen out there)...which is just bad.
Besides, given your limited time in, it's a valid question. i.e. - where are you drawing your expertise from?
What experience in CSS do you have that qualifies you to comment? Working in an armd sqn echelon is but one VERY tiny piece of CSS. There fact that you confused the echelon type of support with what service battalions do shows how much 'understanding' you have of logistics. Like I said, tell me I'm wrong when I worry about the constant cutting of CSS that happens alongside an increase in who we have to support.
I'm not trashing the cbt arms. You guys go off and do what you do best (fight) and leave us alone to do what we do best and define what we need and how much of it we need, or the next time you pick up the phone asking for X there won't be anyone there to do it.
Piper, have you ever experienced a rolling replen at night on a combat team trace? It's a thing of organizational beauty. Nobody is debating the requirement of CSS to push the beans and benzine forward, but hand it off to the pointy end guys for final disposition.
I don't deny that. You're confusing first-line support (what you guys do) with second-line support (what we mostly do). If I'm talking about the service battalion, we're talking second line support. Cbt Arms types have no business meddling around there, just like I have to business teaching battleschool or leading a platoon attack (unless things go horribly wrong).
Piper, could you please post a reference or link for the "Army 2011" document and the names of these poorly informed drafters. I get disappointed when some threads keep being derailed by nebulous info.
It's on the DIN.
