This is important stuff:
The new American secretary of defense is the first combat infantryman and combat commander to run the Department of Defense. Equipped with that background he sees a lot of problems his predecessors missed or underestimated. In particular the guy at the top understood the seriousness of a growing problem in the military; not enough time to carry out all the required training and verification events. In other words, too much paperwork and pointless busywork. This degenerative process got worse once the Cold War ended in 1991 and throughout the 1990s there were more and more mandatory training and verification tests. Many of these new requirements were based online, which somehow supposed to make them less onerous.
I hope this succeeds. It is a problem. Let me provide three examples from my personal life, 2 from the Army and 1 from civilian life.
First, the civilian side. When I was a research analyst one job was to fill out a form that identified long distance phone calls made from my phone to identify who was called, why they were called, and what research question this was related to. This had to be done every month. If the total calls per month resulted in more than a couple dollars in charges, it was noteworthy.
One day when I was carrying out my monthly drudgery, my boss came in to check on how things are going. I picked up my log sheet, and told him that I was astounded that I had to spend X amount of time at Y rate per hour to verify that the calls on this log that cost Z piddly amount was really worth it. Wouldn't it be better to simply come to me if I have a sudden spike of costly calls and otherwise just let me do my job?
He was silent for a moment and then said "You're right." He took the paper from my hand and told me I'd never see it again. He was a smart guy and a good boss. But I was still kind of shocked that he acted given the pressures of paperwork. And I never saw that paperwork again.
The second example is from my time at Fort Gordon for signal school. Uniforms were designed to suppress infrared signature and were not to be starched lest they ruin that feature. I have no idea if that is true but that's what I was told.
Yet having ironed and starched uniformed was considered the look of professionalism. As a National Guard soldier, I emphasized by casual nature while following the rules. I did iron my blouse front pockets while at Gordon, but other than that, wrinkles ruled. Indeed, the base sergeant that was my first point of contact when I arrived at the base noted on my personal record that I did not present myself as a professional soldier. But I was at the top of my class and a high performer on the PT tests, so nobody ever officially told me to change.
But one day a staff sergeant who was in the class along with me took my aside to dress me down for my presentation and told me that I should iron and starch my uniform. I listened as I stood at parade rest. When he finished I asked him if ironing and starching the uniform was required. Completely annoyed, he said no it is not. I thanked him for his advice and that was the end of that. At the end of the field training exercise (actually it was a station training exercise (?) since nearing the end of the fiscal year there wasn't the money to send us into the field), the active trainer wrote on my "report card" that I should be regular Army and not Guard. I took it as the compliment it was intended to be. Apparently my un-starched uniform (and the flu I was enduring during the STX) did not affect my ability to learn the MOS.
The final example comes from Guard annual training at Camp Grayling in northern Michigan. The issue was a debate on the bandage orientation that changed from day to day for a while. Opening up or opening down was the question for how to place the bandage carried on the front of the LBE. It was completely silly as word came down on the latest directive.
I started just randomly placing my bandage on my LBE each day. Not that this took up my time. But there were clearly officers up the chain of command using up scarce training time to determine just how the bandage should be placed.
But I was lucky that none of my experiences affected whether I would live or die; or win or lose. Let's hope Mattis succeeds in his effort to rein in the bullshit so that it can be safely said that none of the bullshit kills our troops or loses us a war.
