Sunday, May 29, 2011
Congratulations to Ryanna Zoellner
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| (From L to R) Ryanna, Todd, and Aileen Zoellner |
In case you are wondering, the supper gathering at El Bronco's, to which we were treated afterwards, more than compensated for the ordeal of the ceremony and the six hour round trip.
Best wishes, Ryanna!
High School Graduations
Drove from Augusta to the Georgia National Fairgrounds just south of Perry, Georgia for yesterday for a high school graduation. That's a long way to go for a graduation. Shoot, walking across the street is a long way to go for a high school graduation. Those things have got to be about the dumbest excuse for a gathering of people that I can think of ... but I probably need to explain that.
Car Wash Blues
Took the old Sable through the car wash this morning. Of course, the whole time I was thinking about the last time I did this. The little man was with me then. It was the day we washed the car together, then went for ice-cream. On that day he observed, with vanilla ice-cream all over his face, "This is a good day, right?"
Well, this is a good day, too. But it was just a little bit melancholy going through car wash by myself.
Well, this is a good day, too. But it was just a little bit melancholy going through car wash by myself.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
This is How we Train Doctrine Writers?
Last month at the Army Force Management School at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, I spent four weeks away from the Signal Center of Excellence where I am working to produce the Signal Regiment's first keystone field manual since FM 24-1 Signal Support in the AirLand Battle, published in 1990. The manual I'm working on is FM 6-02 Signal Operations. Within the Concepts and Doctrine Development Directorate, it consistently ranks in the top three of the director's list of priorities. So, if you thought that the training I received at Fort Belvoir would help me speed along the development of FM 6-02, you would be making a logical assumption, but you would be wrong.
I was sent to Belvoir to take the 4-week Force Management Course. The Force Management Course is required training for me because I am an employee of the Capabilities Integration and Development Directorate at the Signal Center of Excellence. All CDID employees take this course early in their careers. The nearby graphic shows what the course is all about. The folks who write the Danger Room Blog for Wired Magazine call this the Pentagon’s Craziest PowerPoint Slide. They describe it as a "three-foot wall chart the military uses to explain its gajillion-step process for developing, buying, and maintaining gear."
A couple more zingers from DR: "Stare [at it] long enough, and you’ll start to see why it takes a decade for the Defense Department to buy a tanker plane, or why marines are still reading web pages with Internet Explorer 6."
In DR's summary take on the DOD's Integrated Acquisitions Technology and Logistics Life Cycle Management. they call it "a twisting, endlessly-recursive, M.C. Escher-on-LSD three-dimensional hedge maze. Actually, it’s kind of amazing our troops have any gear at all."
And, what exactly, you may ask does that chart, er, horse blanket have to do ... no, wait, let me put it differently. What what does the 4-week Force Management Course have to do with doctrine development?
Nothing, actually.
__________________________
Author's note:
See my April archives for several posts I made from Fort Belvoir. The Force Management Course is a great course. It's well run, the instructors are among the best you'll find anywhere, and the material is absolutely essential if you're going to work at the Pentagon or on a CDID staff or somewhere else in the generating force where your job is all about developing organizations, training, materiel capabilities, leader development and education, personnel (human resources), or facilities (military construction). My thinking is that CDIDs are the wrong environment in which to cultivate good doctrine developers. And I think that, if you're serious about developing a good, solid stable of writers, then the Force Management Course is the wrong kind of training for them.
twh
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| This is How the Army Runs? |
A couple more zingers from DR: "Stare [at it] long enough, and you’ll start to see why it takes a decade for the Defense Department to buy a tanker plane, or why marines are still reading web pages with Internet Explorer 6."
In DR's summary take on the DOD's Integrated Acquisitions Technology and Logistics Life Cycle Management. they call it "a twisting, endlessly-recursive, M.C. Escher-on-LSD three-dimensional hedge maze. Actually, it’s kind of amazing our troops have any gear at all."
And, what exactly, you may ask does that chart, er, horse blanket have to do ... no, wait, let me put it differently. What what does the 4-week Force Management Course have to do with doctrine development?
Nothing, actually.
__________________________
Author's note:
See my April archives for several posts I made from Fort Belvoir. The Force Management Course is a great course. It's well run, the instructors are among the best you'll find anywhere, and the material is absolutely essential if you're going to work at the Pentagon or on a CDID staff or somewhere else in the generating force where your job is all about developing organizations, training, materiel capabilities, leader development and education, personnel (human resources), or facilities (military construction). My thinking is that CDIDs are the wrong environment in which to cultivate good doctrine developers. And I think that, if you're serious about developing a good, solid stable of writers, then the Force Management Course is the wrong kind of training for them.
twh
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Where Should Doctrine Writers go to School?
This video is a brief overview of the concepts of design and conceptual and detailed planning. It's about what commanders do in preparation for commencing an operation.
It seems to me that, if doctrine is written for the operational Army, then the Army would benefit most from writers who have experience in planning and conducting operations. A good place to round out or deepen the education of doctrine writers would be at an institution that taught operations--or how to think about operations ... how to conceptualize them ... how to design and plan for them ... and the art and science of conducting them. Places like the School for Advanced Military Studies or the Command and General Staff College, both located at Fort Leavenworth, or the Army War College at Carlisle Pennsylvania would provide excellent intellectual training for new doctrine writers.
As a new writer, I was sent recently to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, to the Army Force Management School, to take the 4-week Army Force Management Course. I came away with a much clearer understanding of how the generating force works--they call it, "teaching how the Army runs." But I learned nothing at all about how to write and develop doctrine for the operational Army.
At the Signal Center of Excellence, doctrine development is placed within the Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate (CDID). I don't know if that is the case with the other TRADOC schools and centers who also have the same level of proponent responsibilities for the development of doctrine. But it is not done that way at the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, where the development of doctrine Army-wide is overseen. At the Combined Arms Center, the commander has placed his Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate outside of his CDID organization. CDIDs are all about development and fielding new capabilities, be they organizational, training, materiel, leader development and education, personnel, or facilities--in other words, everything in the 'DOTMLPF' acronym except for the 'D.' Doctrine development is out of place in a CDID. It should be a separate organization, oriented not towards the Army Requirements and Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC) but towards the Combined Arms Center--the intellectual center of the Army.
The video is not about doctrine; it's about design. But design is about how to think and in that way is a near cousin of doctrine. Doctrine is the way the Army thinks about how it will operate in order to conduct the nation's business. The place to educate those who write and evaluate emerging Army doctrine is in a place where they teach commanders how to think and how to plan and how to design their operations.
General George Casey used to say that Doctrine must be the driver of everything else. Well, it will never be that if we keep sending doctrine writers to schools that teach the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development Systems, Army acquisition, and the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Process. Those things are important and they have their place. But they don't equip doctrine writers with the tools they need to understand broad, overarching ideas about how the Army operations in pursuit of national objectives, about how it goes about to conduct combined arms maneuver and wide area security. So we need to do something else. We need to send our writers to places like the Army War College, to the CGSC, to the SAMS, and to joint schools. They must be trained on how the Army operates, not just on how it "runs."
It seems to me that, if doctrine is written for the operational Army, then the Army would benefit most from writers who have experience in planning and conducting operations. A good place to round out or deepen the education of doctrine writers would be at an institution that taught operations--or how to think about operations ... how to conceptualize them ... how to design and plan for them ... and the art and science of conducting them. Places like the School for Advanced Military Studies or the Command and General Staff College, both located at Fort Leavenworth, or the Army War College at Carlisle Pennsylvania would provide excellent intellectual training for new doctrine writers.
As a new writer, I was sent recently to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, to the Army Force Management School, to take the 4-week Army Force Management Course. I came away with a much clearer understanding of how the generating force works--they call it, "teaching how the Army runs." But I learned nothing at all about how to write and develop doctrine for the operational Army.
At the Signal Center of Excellence, doctrine development is placed within the Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate (CDID). I don't know if that is the case with the other TRADOC schools and centers who also have the same level of proponent responsibilities for the development of doctrine. But it is not done that way at the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, where the development of doctrine Army-wide is overseen. At the Combined Arms Center, the commander has placed his Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate outside of his CDID organization. CDIDs are all about development and fielding new capabilities, be they organizational, training, materiel, leader development and education, personnel, or facilities--in other words, everything in the 'DOTMLPF' acronym except for the 'D.' Doctrine development is out of place in a CDID. It should be a separate organization, oriented not towards the Army Requirements and Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC) but towards the Combined Arms Center--the intellectual center of the Army.
The video is not about doctrine; it's about design. But design is about how to think and in that way is a near cousin of doctrine. Doctrine is the way the Army thinks about how it will operate in order to conduct the nation's business. The place to educate those who write and evaluate emerging Army doctrine is in a place where they teach commanders how to think and how to plan and how to design their operations.
General George Casey used to say that Doctrine must be the driver of everything else. Well, it will never be that if we keep sending doctrine writers to schools that teach the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development Systems, Army acquisition, and the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Process. Those things are important and they have their place. But they don't equip doctrine writers with the tools they need to understand broad, overarching ideas about how the Army operations in pursuit of national objectives, about how it goes about to conduct combined arms maneuver and wide area security. So we need to do something else. We need to send our writers to places like the Army War College, to the CGSC, to the SAMS, and to joint schools. They must be trained on how the Army operates, not just on how it "runs."
Monday, May 23, 2011
Melancholy Memories
Just sitting here within my dominions pondering those occasions in childhood when it was time to leave our grandparents' house and go back home. Tearful they were. Such a contrast to the excitement of arrival were those sad farewells. In the car, we would wave as we cried, waving until the house was out of sight. I don't have a memory of either of my grandparents actually weeping. Since it was hard for him to get around, we always said our good-byes to Granddaddy inside. He didn't say much, just "Bye-bye, now, be good, and come back to see us." So, it was always Grandma who saw us to the back porch and watched us begin our long drive home.
Now that I have my own grand children, it interests me to imagine how my grandparents felt whenever we grandchildren finally left after a long visit. Yes, we had long visits. Couple of weeks ever summer. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Seems there were more. I spent almost my entire fourth grade year there. Yet, when we left, it was always the same. Sad. So, so sad!
But I wonder how it was for them?
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| Miss Rory |
But I wonder how it was for them?
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