Thanks to Overwatch DVA for the link!
Note: I take this minute to shout to the rooftops, and bask in the glory of I TOLD YA FUCKING SO! Read the article and weep. I've been telling you that these crazy exercises, over the top movements of troops is doing nothing but breaking the force and FINALLY that shout is being echoed by others.
via American Conservative.
I’ll admit I was taken aback. This senior officer and mentor—with nearly 28 years of military service—wasn’t one for hyperbole. No, he believed what he was saying to me just then.
“We’re killing these kids, we’re breaking the army!” he exclaimed.
He went on to explain the competing requirements for standard, conventional army units—to say nothing of the overstretched Special Forces—in 2018: balancing Russia in Eastern Europe, deterrence rotations in South Korea, advise and assist missions in Africa. Add to that deployments to the usual hotspots in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He was genuinely concerned about the physical and emotional toll on the active-duty force, pushed to its limits by 17 years of perpetual combat. After all, with high military suicide rates now labeled the “new normal,” and a recent succession of accidental training deaths, it seems reasonable to wonder whether we are, indeed, “killing [our] kids.”
The overall effects of this rapid operations tempo on morale and readiness are difficult to measure in a disciplined, professional, all-volunteer military such as the one the United States possesses. What we do know is that despite former president Obama’s ongoing promises that “the tide of war is receding” and that America could finally “start nation-building at home,” nothing of the sort occurred then, or is now, under President Trump. Though the U.S. military (thankfully) no longer maintains six-figure troop counts in either Iraq or Afghanistan, American soldiers are still there, as well as serving in 70 percent of the world’s countries in one capacity or another in what has become a “generational war.” America’s troops are still being killed, though in admittedly fewer numbers. Nevertheless, U.S. servicemen continued to die in combat in several countries in 2017, including Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, and Niger.
Story here.
The heartbreaking, wall pounding part of this?
I could see this from my chair. They're in the middle of the issue and they couldn't see it...they only wanted to push a meme.
Personally?
I hate the generational war theorists, COIN mafia and Special Ops cultist.
They were more concerned about their concepts for operations than they were about the health of the force.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. The only answer to this is to put Combatant Commanders back in their cages. A desk needs to be established in the SecDef's office and every request for forces should go thru that desk. The purpose? To approve or deny such requests with an eye toward whether the exercise makes sense, if it fits rotation tables and if it fits with the security goals of the US.
If it fails any of those tests then the CC is told to go away and comeback with something that makes sense.
CC's broke the force. Only the SecDef can save it.
