Posted on Oct 4, 2018
How the Marines, Army are counting ‘out-the-door-now’ troops and increasing small-unit readiness
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COL Mikel J. Burroughs SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL LTC Stephen F.SGT David A. 'Cowboy' GrothCPT Jack DurishPO1 William "Chip" Nagel]TSgt Joe C.SP5 Mark KuzinskiMaj Marty HoganSSgt (Join to see) LTC Stephen C. LTC (Join to see)Cynthia Croft SPC Margaret Higgins 1SG Carl McAndrewsSGT (Join to see)CPL Dave HooverSGT (Join to see)Lt Col Charlie Brown
How the Marines, Army are counting ‘out-the-door-now’ troops and increasing small-unit readiness
Posted from marinecorpstimes.com
Marines
Soldiers
Readiness
Deployment
Posted 6 y ago
Responses: 4
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I remember doing readiness reports and being told I could not say we were short personnel. Never did understand that position.
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LTC Jason Mackay
Lt Col Charlie Brown there is a difference between self inflicted personnel shortages, system inflicted shortages, and then deployable/nondeployable.
There was always the kabuki dance around self inflicted shortages where you let people leave, you approved the packet for All Army Sports, or most common is the internal shell game. The internal shell game is the reallocation of people to handle non MTOE mandates like SHARP, Resiliency Trainers, Combatives instructors, Financial Readiness NCO, etc that are mandated full time jobs that all come out of hide. The internal shell game is having all the people at Division level, but not in the right positions. In aggregate, you are good. In reality at the motorpool on any given Monday not so much. Since it is self inflicted (commanders deciding to accomplish prioritized missions with what they have), you can't complain as it will come right back to you like a dookie coated boomerang.
The system wide shortages are 100% "complainable" and reportable. Most of my adult life, 92Y has been short. You need two in each company and more at the Battalion, Brigade, PBO, etc.
Every place I have been has used USR reporting concurrently with nondeployable reporting. My last year on active duty, it was ruthless and bloody. It was also perceived as a direct reflection of the commander's ability to lead. So all these people that are nondeployable, are counting against your on hand strength.
There was always the kabuki dance around self inflicted shortages where you let people leave, you approved the packet for All Army Sports, or most common is the internal shell game. The internal shell game is the reallocation of people to handle non MTOE mandates like SHARP, Resiliency Trainers, Combatives instructors, Financial Readiness NCO, etc that are mandated full time jobs that all come out of hide. The internal shell game is having all the people at Division level, but not in the right positions. In aggregate, you are good. In reality at the motorpool on any given Monday not so much. Since it is self inflicted (commanders deciding to accomplish prioritized missions with what they have), you can't complain as it will come right back to you like a dookie coated boomerang.
The system wide shortages are 100% "complainable" and reportable. Most of my adult life, 92Y has been short. You need two in each company and more at the Battalion, Brigade, PBO, etc.
Every place I have been has used USR reporting concurrently with nondeployable reporting. My last year on active duty, it was ruthless and bloody. It was also perceived as a direct reflection of the commander's ability to lead. So all these people that are nondeployable, are counting against your on hand strength.
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Here's the challenge as I see it from my foxhole. Keep in mind that I'm in the NG so I only get to see my folks once a month. We report information up the chain of command and when we get together during drill, we report to the CDR out section status. It discusses MOSQ, NCOES, Rifle Range qual, APFT, and a myriad of other things so he has a better understanding of where we fall as a section. The problem I see is that information doesn't make it to the decision makers in a timely fashion and we're often caught off guard when something's needed. I think a huge problem in this is communication up and down the chain of command. I also see where a CDR is worried about numbers but I think they focus on the wrong areas (APFT, NCOER, etc). Those are important but it should feed into the larger challenge, overall readiness. So what constitutes a fully ready Soldier to go out the door? What does right look like?
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Good read, good to know they're, paying a little closer attention to this aspect of readiness.
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CW5 Jack Cardwell
Over the years commanders have been fudging readiness reports in all areas, personnel, equipment, and training.
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