DOD vs the Services

http://www.amazon.com/The-Masks-War-American-Corporation/dp/0801837766

The Masks of War goes to the thesis that each Service has its own "culture" and that Goldwater-Nichols is an effort to meld another single culture (IMHO). The concept of a Service Culture as the current vision of what is central to a service does not discuss the very obvious fact that each Service has a bunch of different Cultures. The Army has Infantry, Armor, Artillery, etc. The Navy has Air, Surface, and Subsurface cultures.

Once upon a time, one could follow service politics as a contest between these sub-cultures with the winner being the sub-culture of the next military Chief of Staff. The reign of this Chief was marked with the advancement of the personnel, material, and doctrinal agenda for that sub-culture.

Within each Service there were cross cultures focused on missions focused largely on geography. There was the Korea and the Europe cross cultures each with differing concepts of mission, time, distance, and technology.

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Goldwater-Nichols was an attempt to force the Services to send their best to Joint Service, and to end the practice of sending only those who could be spared for Purple Suit slots.

The Purple Suit World is not a military service, and its prime movers are not "officers of the United States" (commissioned officers), they are civilians without the confirmation of position and rank by the Senate. Given that this is a DOD Culture with its own parameters, it is, like the others, at odds with the Services for control of resources.

The processes of competition is for the DOD Culture is the consolidation of control of resources in Civilian DOD hands, and this goes to cross cultural combat of DOD versus whatever each Service deems important. It doesn't matter what, as long as it keeps the services out of the decision making process,

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Thus was the fate of Air-Land Battle and of the Total Force which focused on inter-service cooperation at levels below Theater aka Specified/Joint Commands. In order to preclude the Services from effective management on the battlefield, the Services had to be cleansed of any component or activity that might interfere with DOD dominance.

The Order of Battle for specified Contingencies was erased to be replaced by cookie cutter chunks of force which could be parceled out as modular building blocks like an Avalon Hill board game. This also lead to the destruction of any element that threatened the self interest of DOD-Land (REMFCOM). This includes the disarmament of the National Guard and the Air/Land elements of the Reserves.

In that spirit, so goes the A-10, and the C-17. They represent a clear and present danger to the Consultants from Oz and the Crystal Ball that all parameters (including promotion timing and opportunity) are seamlessly woven into a fantasy woven in Imperial Cloth.

The Orifice of Net Assessments made sure that no service culture would intrude and impinge on the New Order of the REMF.

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The current events in Syria and Iraq should be correctly assessed as the definitive fault of REMFCOM and their politics of disassociation and fragmentation of the forces that go in harms way. IMHO, the net combat power of the services could be tripled by the elimination of the superfluous levels of consolidated self interest therein.

Gordon S Fowkes, M.Ed., KCTJLTC USA RET

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