Strelnikov
4th Level Red Feather
- Joined
- May 7, 2001
- Messages
- 1,812
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- 0
Big Jim and red indian, this is old news to the two of you. Bear with me, others aren't so knowledgeable.
Since its founding after the Stuart Restoration, the British Army has always recruited and trained its replacements through its regimental depots. From the depot, the trained recruit is assigned to one of the battalions in the regiment. Once assigned to a battalion, usually that's his home throughout his whole time in the Army, until he is discharged. Overseas deployments and returns home are by complete units, not individual soldiers.
Since the start of WW-2, the US Army has followed a mass-production personnel scheme, where individual soldiers are interchangeable replacement parts. The process is continual fruit-basket-turnover as each man follows his "Army Of One" career path.
During WW-2, even recovered wounded men were sent to a replacement depot ("repple-depple") to wait for assignment to the first unit that needed a warm body, rather than returned to their units. This caused much ill feeling, and there were many cases of men escaping from repple-depple or hospital and returning to their units, only to be arrested as AWOL.
George Patton, canny old bird that he was, abolished this practice in Third Army. He recognized that unit esprit counts for more than the efficiency of the personnel process. That's something the British Army has never forgotten. IMO that's in large part the reason why British units performed as well or better than ours, even though we had better equipment and more of it.
Well, we forgot again. Now, after 57 years, we're reinventing the wheel, when we could have taken our lesson from the British Army.
Strelnikov
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White Says Army Will Waste Billions If Individuals, Not Units, Are Rotated
By Lisa Burgess
European Stars and Stripes: November 1, 2002
ARLINGTON, Va. - If the Army doesn't stop shifting soldiers from post to post and start keeping them together in the same units, the billions of dollars the service is spending on new fighting equipment will go to waste, according to the service's top civilian leader.
"If we don't move the Army from its current individual replacement system to some sort of unit manning configuration, there will be a limit to the effectiveness that we can achieve with our transformation," Army Secretary Thomas White told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday.
Just two months ago, White mentioned his intention to revamp the Army's long-standing practice of managing each soldier's career separately, which sometimes results in that person changing units as frequently as every 18 months.
White said in September that he wants to see soldiers kept in the same unit for certain periods of time, instead.
The practice, known as "cohort manning," is the way the Army deploys units to Bosnia, Kosovo and the Sinai.
On Thursday, White raised the stakes, calling the pending shift to cohort manning "the most important thing we're doing," now that Army leaders have settled on the "transformational" technology that they believe will win future wars.
White has tapped Lt. Gen. John LeMoyne, the Army's Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, to produce a report by January that will list ways the Army could implement cohort manning.
White said he expects to sort through LeMoyne's recommendations and decide which to adopt "by this time next year."
Fundamentally altering the personnel system in such a short time going to be difficult, White admitted.
"There are a million organizational things we've got to work out," White said, including the size of the units the Army intends to keep together, and just how long soldiers will be kept in those units.
"We've done the easy part" in deciding to make the change, he said. "The tough side is figuring out how to do it."
White also acknowledged that not everyone in the Army likes the idea of cohort manning, which could lead to widespread unaccompanied overseas tours.
The Army has tried cohort manning before, "and we've had a lot of failures," White said.
But after discussing the matter with soldiers, "I have the overwhelming sense from people in uniform that we need to get on with this," he said.
Since its founding after the Stuart Restoration, the British Army has always recruited and trained its replacements through its regimental depots. From the depot, the trained recruit is assigned to one of the battalions in the regiment. Once assigned to a battalion, usually that's his home throughout his whole time in the Army, until he is discharged. Overseas deployments and returns home are by complete units, not individual soldiers.
Since the start of WW-2, the US Army has followed a mass-production personnel scheme, where individual soldiers are interchangeable replacement parts. The process is continual fruit-basket-turnover as each man follows his "Army Of One" career path.
During WW-2, even recovered wounded men were sent to a replacement depot ("repple-depple") to wait for assignment to the first unit that needed a warm body, rather than returned to their units. This caused much ill feeling, and there were many cases of men escaping from repple-depple or hospital and returning to their units, only to be arrested as AWOL.
George Patton, canny old bird that he was, abolished this practice in Third Army. He recognized that unit esprit counts for more than the efficiency of the personnel process. That's something the British Army has never forgotten. IMO that's in large part the reason why British units performed as well or better than ours, even though we had better equipment and more of it.
Well, we forgot again. Now, after 57 years, we're reinventing the wheel, when we could have taken our lesson from the British Army.
Strelnikov
****************************
White Says Army Will Waste Billions If Individuals, Not Units, Are Rotated
By Lisa Burgess
European Stars and Stripes: November 1, 2002
ARLINGTON, Va. - If the Army doesn't stop shifting soldiers from post to post and start keeping them together in the same units, the billions of dollars the service is spending on new fighting equipment will go to waste, according to the service's top civilian leader.
"If we don't move the Army from its current individual replacement system to some sort of unit manning configuration, there will be a limit to the effectiveness that we can achieve with our transformation," Army Secretary Thomas White told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday.
Just two months ago, White mentioned his intention to revamp the Army's long-standing practice of managing each soldier's career separately, which sometimes results in that person changing units as frequently as every 18 months.
White said in September that he wants to see soldiers kept in the same unit for certain periods of time, instead.
The practice, known as "cohort manning," is the way the Army deploys units to Bosnia, Kosovo and the Sinai.
On Thursday, White raised the stakes, calling the pending shift to cohort manning "the most important thing we're doing," now that Army leaders have settled on the "transformational" technology that they believe will win future wars.
White has tapped Lt. Gen. John LeMoyne, the Army's Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, to produce a report by January that will list ways the Army could implement cohort manning.
White said he expects to sort through LeMoyne's recommendations and decide which to adopt "by this time next year."
Fundamentally altering the personnel system in such a short time going to be difficult, White admitted.
"There are a million organizational things we've got to work out," White said, including the size of the units the Army intends to keep together, and just how long soldiers will be kept in those units.
"We've done the easy part" in deciding to make the change, he said. "The tough side is figuring out how to do it."
White also acknowledged that not everyone in the Army likes the idea of cohort manning, which could lead to widespread unaccompanied overseas tours.
The Army has tried cohort manning before, "and we've had a lot of failures," White said.
But after discussing the matter with soldiers, "I have the overwhelming sense from people in uniform that we need to get on with this," he said.
But I dare ya to invade New Zealand! C'mon, ya bunch of pansies! Bring your big shiny toys down here and let's see ya back up all this talk! Please? Before the rugby? 
