Teaser: Army Paper Making Major Waves in SOCOM and Weapons Ranks

Part of the takeaway from yesterday's roundtable with PEO Soldier officials was the revelation that the School of Advanced Military Studies paper we wrote about Monday is making quite a splash in Army circles that matter.

Given the obvious impact, I wrote a news piece for Military.com and I'll tease it here for our Kit Up crew. But be sure to read the entire story in today's morning news on Military.com.

An obscure graduate school paper by an Army major that took the service to task over poorly training and equipping Soldiers for the fight in Afghanistan is causing quite a stir amid key service officials.

Special Operations Command has been picking the paper's conclusions apart with a fine-tooth comb. It is now required reading for Army weapons experts, and the service's top gear buyer has read it cover-to-cover.

But the paper's conclusions are causing some heartburn.

"I've read it. It's a very good paper. But he did take things out of context in a couple of places," said Col. Doug Tamilio, program manager for Soldier weapons. "He makes some conclusions that aren't substantiated with the documents he's got."

In a monograph titled "Increasing Small Arms Lethality in Afghanistan: Taking Back the Infantry Half Kilometer," Maj. Thomas Ehrhart, an infantry officer attending the elite Army School for Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, wrote that the Army undertrained and underequipped its front-line units to battle insurgent forces over long ranges in mountainous terrain.

Debate over the study comes amid a series of major reviews within the service over improvements to the M4 rifle, a possible replacement for the Soldier's basic carbine, and radical changes to the equipment used by troops in Afghanistan, including a new camouflage combat uniform that better matches that country's varied terrain.

"We want to provide that squad a more modular capability specific to that theater," said Brig. Gen. Mark Fuller, the Army's top weapons buyer. "But do we want to do that across the whole Army? Maybe not."

And in case you forgot where it is, here's the entire report.