Major Donald E. Vandergriff,
USA, an armor officer, teaches military science
at Georgetown University Army ROTC. Vandergriff
began his military career with the United
States Marine Corps, and has had extensive
experience in the field with the Army. After
he transferred from the Marine Corps to the
Army National Guard, he initially served as
a cavalry platoon leader in the 278th Armored
Cavalry Regiment (TNARNG). Upon entering active
duty, he served in the Republic of Korea as
a tank platoon, tank company executive officer
and scout platoon leader for almost two years;
at the National Training Center (serving both
as an observer controller and in the OPFOR);
and in the Middle East and Germany.
He has his undergraduate degree in education
from the University of Tennessee, a graduate
degree in military history from American Military
University, and began his PhD studies in military
history at the University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill. Major Vandergriff has lectured
extensively on military effectiveness and
cultural impacts in the United States and
Europe. He has also been the subject of several
articles that deal with military effectiveness
and military transformation, including features
in the Washington Post, The Atlantic
Monthly, The New Yorker Magazine,
The National Journal, Government
Executive Magazine, The Washington
Monthly, Army Times, Stars and
Stripes, Norfolk News-Gazette and
Pittsburg Star.
He currently lives in Woodbridge, Virginia
with his wife Lorraine, and their three dogs
and one cat. Vandergriff has always been athletically
competitive, playing Rugby at the University
of Tennessee 1982-1984, at Fort Irwin 1987-1990,
in Germany 1993-4, and in Northern Virginia
1996-97. Vandergriff also participated in
Iron Man competitions from 1987-1990, and
was an avid snow skier. His current hobbies
include Tennessee college football, military
wargaming, mountain biking, hiking and his
dogs.
Sean Naylor's article, "Guard Borrows Lieutenants: Shortages Prompt Loan from Active Duty" (Army Times, Dec. 20, 2004), opens a door to larger issues that will haunt the Army. The Army is beginning to solve its personnel problem with short-term fixes that will have dire long-term consequences. It is letting the personnel bureaucrats fight the wars of today with practices from the past. Analogies with Vietnam, sure, but in ways that most fail to point out.
During Vietnam, standards in officer accessions (how we prepare individuals to become officers), leader development, promotions and attendance to military and civilian education opportunities were lowered to meet the need for "bodies" or "spare parts." Despite piles of lessons learned from the mistakes we made in the personnel arena during Vietnam, we are doing it again! The Army is beginning to cut corners in the area of leader development, like sending too many lieutenants to combat without the necessary training. We are robbing the retirement account (leading the Army of the future) to pay for debts incurred today.
The reason: There is a mismatch between input and output; namely, the officers are going to be punching out faster than the required number of lieutenants are getting promoted to captain and major based on the predictions by personnel ORSAs (operations research systems analysts) for the future need for majors (in some requirement that has little to do with combat, like manning large Napoleonic headquarters).
Why will the combat-saavy junior officers, if not killed or wounded, want to punch out after doing what they prepared to do? The most frequent complaint beginning to be made by the "best and brightest" of the numerous lieutenants and captains I hear from about departing is that they are fed up with being micromanaged to death in a zero defects, PowerPoint-driven culture that does not give them enough time in the field to learn the arts of soldiering, like troop command and tactical leadership. Even more so, they are fed up and insulted by the lowering standards appearing across the ranks - from whom we commission and promote.
The Army solution: balance input with output by pumping up the input - in this case by beginning to demand more from accession sources (like ROTC raising higher "mission," but with less resources=great equation for quality), raising the percentage that just made major (97 percent) considering to cut down pin on time to major, and one of the worse decisions, sending lieutenants to a combat zone without going to Ranger school in order to fill "lieutenant slots" in battalions deploying to an insurgency war.
We do two things that is undermining the long-term health of the Army to fix today's problems. In an era of 4th Generation War, where we are asking lieutenants to make decisions with strategic implications, decreasing their development opportunities, and the time available to learn the soldierly arts at the small unit level, is a recipe for disaster.
The Army's solution is akin to increasing the size of the bilge pump rather than plugging the hole that is sinking the ship.
This kind of bilge also helps us to understand why the first four letters of the word "analyst" are "anal." Why is this happening in the 21st century?
The Army still views the management of its people through the tired old eyes of Secretary of War Elihu Root and the turn-of-the-century industrial theorist, Frederick Taylor.
The Army's plan to retain officers by promoting them faster aims to solve a structural problem by bribing people to stay - the positive incentive of faster promotions will buy their loyalty, patriotism, and the moral strength to go in harm's way. Yet this kind of appeal to self-interest is precisely the kind of policy that has failed repeatedly in the past and will actually increase the exodus of our "best and brightest" young people - thus robbing the Army's future. It is based on the dehumanizing assumption that our officers (and NCOs) are mindless, undifferentiated, replaceable cogs in a machine.
A little history will help us understand where this hidden assumption came from. In 1899, President McKinley picked Elihu Root as Secretary of War to bring "modern business practices" to the "backwards" War Department. Root was a highly intelligent lawyer specializing in corporate affairs. He acted as counsel to banks, railroads, and some of the great financiers of that era. Root's approach to reforming the American military was to insert the ideas of management science then in vogue into the Army's ossified decision-making process. His wanted the Army to run like a modern large corporation (sounds familiar?).
