Surefire controversy!

Let's talk Don't Ask, Don't Tell a bit.  I have served in all-male light infantry and motorized line infantry units, co-ed training units, and co-ed staff units.  I went to the Military Academy, which is a co-ed institution with approximately 17% of the student body being female.  My experience is wide enough that I have a fairly good idea of what goes on in the Army and can therefore comment on some impacts of the policy popularly known as Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT).  

First, let's posit a few things.  

1. Any policy affecting or regulating the military ought to be crafted with the explicit aim of enhancing the capability of the armed forces.  I hope this is apparent.  If you disagree with me on this, then stop reading and go do something else. 

2. Military capability is a function of the total equipment, personnel, and leadership/organizational activity of the military.  It means the ability to deliver the right force to the right target in the right place at the right time.  

3. There are trade-offs inherent in every policy.  To make an analogy, a pawn may move two spaces forward, which is an advance, but the trade-off is that it loses control of the squares it has passed.  

Ok, great.  Now we are on the same page.  So let's address some points about DADT.  

The first is a pretty big one that most people seem to miss.  DADT does NOT PREVENT gays from serving in the military. 

Let me say that again because it is an important point.

DADT does NOT PREVENT gays from serving in the military. 

What it prevents is gays from OPENLY serving in the military.  What does that mean?  That means engaging openly in gay behavior.  The line is a little ambiguous, but public displays of affection such as kissing, or getting caught in flagrante are sufficient to open an investigation into the behavior.  

But nothing in the policy prevents gay servicemembers from serving, provided they do not publish their orientation to the world to see.  And that's the rub.  There could be a couple of infantrymen, gay as can be, serving in a line unit, and, for example, living in their own off-post house, doing whatever they wanted to do.  And there's nothing the Army could do about it.  All that would be required is that they not make out in the barracks in front of their soldiers.  

So, you say, the policy is still discriminatory.  Well, yes, yes it is.  But let's go back to our propositions:  Looking at #1, would repealing DADT enhance military capability?  I don't think so, and here's why. 

1) Gays are already allowed to serve in the military; those who want to can, and therefore the military is not losing a valuable source of manpower.  The best (and only, as far as I am concerned) arguments for allowing blacks, women, and etc into the army and integrated units concern the usage of the whole population of the US in military endeavors.  

Fairness, taking into account peoples' desire to serve, etc., should have nothing to do with whether they are allowed to serve.  To make the point:  If a paraplegic wants to serve in the infantry, do we let him?  If he is a superior strategic genius, then maybe he should be made a general.  However, he is incapable of doing common Infantry tasks.  Women (~50% of the population) and minorities (~30% of the population) give valuable contributions to the military, and so the integration effort was well-aimed and well-implemented, despite the negative effects that we do see in co-ed units from a high-percentage male population interacting with a low-percentage female population, especially given the framework of the rank system.  There is no such argument for repealing DADT, because gays (2-3% of the population) are already allowed in the military.  Repealing DADT would be an exercise in enhancing gay self-esteem, not military readiness.  Consequently, the negative effects that we can anticipate--to unit readiness and morale-- are NOT outweighed by the benefits.   

Because it would not be a beneficial policy, I am forced to conclude that the campaign to repeal DADT is not based so much on "gay rights" as it is on "I'm Gay, Look At Me!" In short, it is about the individual's freedom to do what you want.  Freedom is great-- I am a huge fan of it.  And I am leaving the military so I can do what I want.  There are tradeoffs (see my #3 above) to every decision.  The military demands some degree of conformity.  If you can't handle it, don't join-- you know what you're getting into when you sign up.  However, DADT-repeal proponents would rather force an institution to change for a few individuals' lifestyle preferences than recognize that what they are doing is not in the best interest of the military.  

We then have a branch.  Would DADT repeal be detrimental to the military?  I don't know for sure.  I can say that with the coming confluence of gay marriage and military benefits, I would bet a month's paycheck that with those policies in place, most of my all-male infantry platoon would have gotten "married" to be allowed to use off-post housing and get BAH.  I can't say that my platoon would be significantly degraded by this, but I think getting my soldiers in formation in the morning would be a lot more difficult, and I would see a lot more legal problems coming out of Animal-House style quarters.  I could be wrong, but that's where I would see things going.

I would also guess that living quarters for military service members in general would be dramatically reconfigured.  There would no longer be ANY justification for segregating housing by sex.

Read that again, and think about it.  It's absolutely correct.  What is the justification for segregating housing by sex now?  Privacy?  Sexual harassment cases?  When DADT goes, housing segregation by sex will (logically, but the army doesn't always follow logic) go too.  As a result, service-members will have to have each of their own rooms.  This is great for the servicemembers and I am all in favor of it generally, but not for the cause celebre of some individuals. 

You will notice that I haven't addressed the morale., etc,. of the people in the units.  That is intentional.  My platoons could probably be assessed as homophobic, but I am not sure how much of that was peer-pressure induced and how much of it was genuinely being bothered by gays.  I don't think integrating gays into the units themselves would be a problem unless you had gay romances going on.  That is a problem in male-female integrated units as well, and can have a significant detrimental effect on unit readiness.  It goes to a lot of fraternization issues.  If those could be avoided (which I don't think is entirely realistic) then there wouldn't be a big problem. 

However, let me make a point here:  forcing people to change their beliefs for the sake of forcing them to change is egotistical and wrong.  If there is an injustice going on, fine.  But to label a group of people ("the military") as being mentally deficient and requiring them to adjust to accommodate a relative few individuals is not the best use of the military's already poorly-managed time and energy.  There are already copious opportunities (mandates) for quarterly and yearly training on suicide, sexual harassment, equal opportunity, and so forth.  I got more time in EO classes in my training at Fort Riley than I did training on IVs or calling MEDEVAC.  Just sayin'.

Although to be fair I suppose I am at more risk of an EO complaint here on staff than I am of getting blown up.  But if I'd gone to Afghanistan, then I'd have a real point.  

Are we willing to accept the upheaval that repealing DADT will cause?  I personally don't think there's a point to it.  We should go with my marriage policy, and DADT in place.

Feedback is welcome, as are additional facts or commentary.  

Organizational Ownership Phenomenon

I attended a hail-and-farewell today.  For those of you who haven't attended one, it's one of a long list of Army functions that purport to be tradition and morale-building but actually serves to suck up between one and 3 hours of potentially productive time.  Last night, for instance, over the course of an hour-and-a-half, we learned exactly who of the incoming and outgoing personnel in the 3 shop were married, and some of what they were going to do once re-deployed.  A Colonel sang Irish songs in honor of St. Patrick's Day.  Though all this is no doubt crucial to individual self-esteem and a well-deserved recognition after a year of service in Iraq, I can't remember a single person except the specialist who was publicly mocked by the Sergeant Major for being fat and interested in fantasy role-playing games.  It was a near-total waste of time, except that I got some chicken wings and was able to assess the male/female ratio on the J3 staff to be approximately 20:1.

However, one productive thing did come out of this event.  I came up with yet another reason that the Army is possessed of strong organizational inertia--that is to say, why it doesn't change.  The fact that everybody in this Force-level staff changed out in the period of about a month clued me into this:  Since the typical tour of duty in the Army is between one and three years, no officer has any incentive to take actions to improve his organization past his individual time-frame. 


Hypothesis:  Organizational ownership increases with the anticipated tenure of the individual in the organization.  Ray Kroc and Sam Walton had tremendous senses of organizational ownership because their lives were tied up in growing their businesses.  The typical wal-mart clerk is probably not as enthusiastic.  Likewise, Army officers who constantly change units have no incentive to view their role in the Army in light of the long-term good of their immediate organization because they are moving around so much.


Individual officers do not have the capability or incentives to work on anything that will outlast them.  Therefore, they focus on short-cycle projects that will produce immediate tangible results.  This is where the current deployment-refit-train- cycle (I think it's called something like "Life Cycle Units, or Rotational Readiness program or etc) is very beneficial to the commander.  He works through the cycle, declares victory, and goes on to his next assignment.  He has no staying power or ability to influence anything in his organization past his RIP/TOA date.

This phenomenon is not strictly limited to officers, but it seems to hit them harder.  Within 2 months of my last deployment ending, I'd estimate that 90% of officer-positions changed hands.

So what's the problem?  Well, let me make an analogy: Publicly traded businesses are often derided for taking courses of action that benefit their share prices in the short-term without regard for moral hazard or long-term consequences.  Just think about the recent banking collapse if you need an example.  They are pressured by the public clamor to keep share prices up.  This prevents them from taking actions that might be beneficial to the long-term health of the company (i.e. shedding lines of business, layoffs, etc) but are unpopular.

Apply this to the Army.  A unit commander (or other officer, but I will say "commander" here to keep it simple) has a short-term goal, just like keeping share prices high: Career advancement, i.e. his OER.  After his  2 or 3 years, he moves on to another position in another organization, or a different shop within the same organization-- but more commonly the former.  So his incentive is to do whatever he can do NOW, because he is a) rated on his short term performance, and b) he will not be around long enough to see any long-term projects to completion--hence, anything that has a less-than-sexy performance in the immediate term will hurt him.  Thus, problems have a tendency to be ignored or put off until the rotation happens, to let the next guy deal with it.

So because officers are moved around so much, they have no incentives to take on long-term unit improvements.  They focus on the immediate train-deploy cycle.  They focus on their immediate tour and not on how to build the battalion over years.

But, you ask, isn't that a good thing because of cumulative improvement to the unit?  Surely new commanders, all full of piss and vinegar, reinvigorate organizations and keep them wired tight.

You'd think so, but then account for the fact that all the expertise and teamwork built up during that time frame is constantly decimated by OTHER officers moving around.  The WHOLE ORGANIZATION can change in a period of a couple of months.  Because officers are the ones that set the training and operational agenda, every time a command position changes hands, there is a reorientation of priorities throughout the unit.  Everyone has to adjust to the new boss.  This can happen en-masse--like when the battalion commander and company commanders all change at roughly the same time-- or it can happen piecemeal, with platoon leader rotations, company commander changes, etc.  But every time there is a change, the ship has to adjust course.  In fact, a time-honored tradition in the Army is assuming authority and declaring that the last guy was all messed up and the situation needs to be fixed.  Maybe our current CoC knows something about military culture after all.

The required re-org and re-orientation following personnel turnover simply further reduces the ability of everybody else to make long-term change or adjustments that would improve the organization.  Everybody has to drop what they're doing and learn what the new boss wants.

What kind of long-term organizational improvements are we talking about?  

How about winning wars?  If postings to combat zones were permanent, would we win faster?  How about equipment and accountability problems?  If officers couldn't kick the can down the road as easily, then they might be able and motivated to take action to fix problems.

By the way, this post nicely supports my idea for a free-market HR department, in which units and individuals work at common interests to find good organizational fits, and then retain the leaders that are worth a damn.

Fraud, Waste and Abuse, or Your Tax Dollars At Not-Work

Something that a lot of people mistake is frictional unemployment.  That's the amount of people in a given economy who are between jobs, and represents the normal exchange or flow of labor between sources of production.  It indicates that the market for labor is working.  It's really a useful concept, and puts unemployment rates into context.  4% unemployment?  That's probably really good, based on the actual can't-find-work percentage.  It looks like this:

Can't Find Work = Total Unemployment - Frictional Unemployment

So the Can't Find Work percentage might be actually closer to 1-2% overall.  Pretty good, eh?  A certain amount of frictional unemployment is actually necessary to having a healthy, functioning free-market economy.

That's not what I'm writing about today.  Today's topic is more along the lines of Frictional Employment, a term I'm coining to describe what's happening in my office, and which I will extrapolate to the larger Army and government bureaucracies in general to describe the rampant waste that goes on with the military.

So here's an example.  In my staff section, we have several civilian contractors.  They are very experienced in their fields.  They have spent careers in law enforcement, customs, intel, etc., and are incredible assets in those areas.  They are being paid considerable amounts of money to come overseas and ply their expertise to help assist the US or Gov't of Iraq (GoI) learn about governance, law enforcement, etc.

And they are completely useless.  They are getting paid essentially to sit around because they have been misplaced in my section.  Think about this for a second.  These contractors are getting paid in the six-figures (from what I gather) to be here.  Their contracting company is getting paid some amount that includes profit as well as additional comp packages for the contractors.  So in my shop alone, the US government is spending-- I estimate-- Six Hundred Thousand Dollars (could be more, could be less, but let's call it that for a SWAG, shall we?) to have expertise and experience and sit around and read CNN.

It's not the contractors' fault.  They are hard-working individuals.  They applied for specific jobs, and were accepted, hired, trained, and sent over here.  They have notified their superiors and companies about what's going on.  The US forces know what's going on.  But they stay in this section.  Hence, Frictional Employment is folks being employed where they shouldn't be.

I strongly, strongly suspect based on my time in the office as well as a few other places in this country that this is NOT an isolated occurrence.  So let's multiply my figure of $600K by the Mystery Multiplier of my observations and experiences--let's assume that the contractor placement process is incredibly efficient all across iraq, and call it "5", for a total of only 15 mis-utilized/overpaid contractors across the country (Stop laughing, we'll get to that in my next point)--and we end up with a total utter wastage of a cool 3 Million Bucks.

At this point, I anticipate several objections.
1) "So what?  3mil is peanuts compared with the overall cost of the war."

Yes, and it's still $3 mil, which is enough to do a whole lot of other things in this country.  Like the man said, a million here, a million there, and soon you're talking real money.  But this attitude is commonplace.  There is almost no incentive for fiscal discipline for the service at war.  Expenditures are all based on a budget and pots of money from various places, and while those are drying up (In Iraq), you'd be surprised how adept at finagling money the military is.  The usual justification is "Oh, it's for the troops!" which can be very valid, but let's face it-- if we spent more time figuring out what we needed and where to cut money from useless crap (or at least get the value from the money we've spent), then we'd be a lot more cost effective.

This is not an isolated incident.  The amount of money that the Army wastes by having the wrong people in the wrong places is amazing.  Soldiers, contractors, it doesn't matter:  Somewhere, somehow, your dollars are being spent to pay someone in Frictional Employment.  Don't blame the soldier: blame the system.  

We don't want to skimp to defeat, but right now there's a lot of things to do and we don't need to be paying for mid-eastern vacations for people.  If you're going to deploy me, use me.  Which brings me to my next point:

2) "It can't be avoided, we just have to live with it."

You're absolutely right.  There's no way that the Army can avoid wasting money on things.  But somehow, companies across America learn to do it every day.  I am not sure what the solution is, except for possibly introducing financial discipline as a criterion pursuant to my first few posts.  We needs a total overhaul in accountability and justification, which is something that soldiers aren't good at when it comes to money.  The generals have a completely different idea of spending priorities than do the field-grades, and the staff thinks that the operations folks are totally off base, and so forth.  It's a giant cluster.  But there's a lot of money to go around, everybody takes their piece, and everybody's happy... but the efficiency rates aren't so hot.

For another instance, the ACU/ Multi-Cam fiasco is just winding up.  After 5 years of fielding the Generals' Favorite Uniform Evar (the ACU), the Army has decided to listen to the soldiers and 1) get rid of that silly-ass ACU digital pattern, and 2) go back to buttons instead of velcro on the pockets.  They are going to switch uniforms for troops in Afghanistan to the Multi-Cam pattern.

Did we really need to purchase 5 years' worth of crap uniforms with all the associated generals doing studies and convening task-forces/working groups, etc., to take care of something that your average infantry Joe could have made a better decision on in five minutes?  Apparently, the answer is Yes.

I won't even delve into the opportunity costs that all this has incurred.

Say it with me: Fraud, Waste, and Abuse.

Everything I've said is all anecdotal, which I admit is not quantifiable.  But you have to have blinders on to think that the government can spend money responsibly, even in the context of a war.  

What can we do about all this?

I am not sure, but it probably has to do with:
1) Figuring out what we need, preferably ahead of when we need it
2) Figuring out how much of what it is that we need
3) Buying it
4) Looking for ways to be efficient

These apply to materiel and personnel.

Army culture, history, and incentives militate against every one of these steps.  I don't know how to change those things, other than what I've already written.