Musings on army personnel policy for very poor countries

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I wrote about an all-round gendarmerie designed to not be corrupt and to not launch any coup d'états as a replacement for a miniature military in (very) poor countries back in 2011.

Today I want to build on that foundation, especially with very fundamental musings.

 

The exposure to heavy metals such as lead and malnutrition (especially lack of iodine) negatively affects the development of a child to an adult. There's not just "stunted" growth (being much shorter and weaker), but also a much-reduced mental development. Malnutrition during childhood can easily reduce the IQ by about 15 points. There are more childhood factors that are statistically (and probably causally) linked to reduced IQ scores. Frankly expressed, the populations of some countries are mostly dumb because of such factors.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_health_on_intelligence

These countries need to make the most out of the about 10% smartest people (men) of the country to get anywhere good. This is hard because leaders are all-too often not exactly in that group.

 

Deterrence and defence are unproductive resources drains on a country. The fiscal aspect is already bad, but a brain drain to the military can be even worse. So the army must not be too prestigious and it must not be wasteful regarding the 10% highest IQ demographic.

In short: A very poor country needs an army model that's cheap and can make do with almost exclusively dumb individuals. The latter requirement should only be eased once the malnutrition, environmental factors and primary education woes have been largely solved and a new generation of bright individuals becomes available.

 

So the organisation should be able to work with few officers. The demands on non-commissioned officer competencies should be modest. The bulk of troops who would go to war should NOT be active duty troops (so their productivity benefits the country in peacetime and the fiscal stress is reduced). The doctrine should be kept simple and the way it's taught should be paced and designed to work with dumb troops. The equipment should be easy to master. Most wartime motor vehicles should be commandeered.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Mobilisation Part III: Personnel

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Major wars usually show the very same thing; insufficient (quantity) training of reserve leaders pre-war leads to too short training of leaders in wartime. Well-known examples include the American Civil War, First World War, Second World War and the current Russo-Ukrainian War. The result is amateurish military actions leading to avoidable casualties, failures in offence and failures in defence against skilful attacks.

It takes as a (very rough) rule of thumb

• three months for a decent basic training to turn a civilian into a soldier,
• (I say) about three more months for a specialisation training (this can differ very much and many soldiers need no specialisation training),
• about six months for a good a good junior non-commissioned officer course (graduation rate well below 100%),
• some experience as leader and six months to turn a good junior non-commissioned officer into a senior non-commissioned officer or junior officer in yet another course (these two courses should both have graduation rates not much higher than 2/3).

So to create a reserves-grade senior NCO (assistant platoon leader or kind of chief of staff of a company leader) or junior officer (platoon leader) takes about two years in peacetime conditions IF and only if the ambitions are kept modest. Historically, the U.S. Army produced "90 day wonders" junior officers during WW2, almost all of which predictably didn't shine. To create junior officers with section leader competence takes around a year in peacetime conditions.

Wartime training is more serious, more urgent, more streamlined, more motivated and rather devoid of vacations. It can thus be much quicker, but often times it's also less versatile. A tank commander trained during a desert war for desert warfare would not be taught about fighting in hilly terrain with woodland and swamps, for example. Furthermore, the duration of peacetime training courses may be inflated because the armed service is too bureaucratic, adding too much nonsense training, is lacking training resources (such as access to simulators or live shooting ranges) or lacking self-discipline in defining the course.

- - - - -

The armed bureaucracies, politicians and journalists have a suboptimal obsession with peacetime military strength. I don't care whether the current Bundeswehr personnel strength is 177k or 183k; tell me the mobilised strength, damnit! The last time I read that figure it was at 690k (according to my memory), and that was ages ago. Nowadays it's likely below 300k with almost no properly-equipped reserve combat formations.

This focus on peacetime strength befits a military that doesn't fight with more than one finger - stuff like the farce in Afghanistan, for example. A military with a constitutional mission to defend the nation should be built for mobilised (wartime) strength instead.

There are multiple metrics for that. We could look at strength on day 1, on day 4, on day 14 or strength after one year of warfare, for example. We could furthermore look at these dates once with the assumption of a surprise war and another time with the assumption that the war risk was recognised long in advance and there was a two-year buildup of military power.

I'm in favour of paying attention to German military strength on day 14 of mobilisation, both with and without two-year reactionary buildup. The simple reason for this is that the geographic proximity of Germany to the NATO members under threat of invasion positions Germany naturally as a first weeks responder. The Spanish, British and North Americans could consider themselves as naturally inclined to bring most of their troops into action after (much) more than two weeks.

This leads to an emphasis on personnel and material reserves. Strength on day four would be about active forces strength, but strength on day 14 is about mobilised strength. The peacetime strength should thus be but a means to credibly create that day 14 strength (and to prepare for a two-year buildup).

We should also consider the "day 14 " strength after a two-year force buildup.

The enlisted personnel can be trained quickly (in about half a year as mentioned above), especially if you have enough leadership personnel to conduct the training.

A two-year buildup would give just barely enough time for creating many satisfactory junior leaders. This would require a diversion of suitably qualified leaders from the active army to employment as trainers, which runs counter to the generals' and politicians' primitive desire to enlarge peacetime combat strength in times of crisis. Germany can downgrade its "day 1" and "day 4" strengths like this, but directly exposed countries of the alliance such as Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania would probably not dare to do so.

So far I wrote about the generation of trained personnel. There's also the issue of wartime attrition, which matters a lot if the war is protracted. Regrettably, wars are notoriously difficult to end, so a protracted war should not be ruled out.

Land troops within about 30 km of hostile land forces suffer the highest rate of attrition, but it's not just the attrition by death or crippling that matters. Psychological attrition is just as bad, and remarkably predictable. Combat troops reach a zenith of combat effectiveness after les than 100 days of combat, but soon after 100 days of combat they become near-useless. The failures of particularly proven veteran troops in battle are legion in military history. Napoleon's Old Guard failed at Waterloo, British desert soldiers with experience since 1940/41 often failed to attack successfully in Tunisia and Italy in '43. Experienced German infantry (and officers!) failed towards the ends of both world wars.

Rotation of troops should be self-evident, but even with a lavish rotation scheme and a defensive strategy you'll need a 100% turnover of personnel in combat troops within a year if you want to avoid a collapse of combat effectiveness for psychological reasons. I suppose we should at very least be prepared for one such full water change in the combat arms and generally all troops meant for within 20 km distance to hostile ground forces. This creates a justified but uncommonly high expectation for personnel reserve creation during peacetime.

There's also the issue that combat troops junior leaders can be expected to suffer higher attrition rates than enlisted combat troops, at least if they lead in the German way.

This is all without taking into account the creation of additional formations, as it always happens in large wars (ACW, WWI, WW2, Iraq-Iran War, Russo-Ukrainian War examples). The creation of new formations always dilutes the quality of the overall armed forces and was often driven well past the optimum. All-too often the creation of additional formation was pushed for at the expense of fully reconstituting depleted existing formations that have a proven and working skeleton cadre left.

And then there's the issue of middle-level leadership. I have a low opinion of how much senior (above brigade command) leadership (or rather management) we would need at war, so middle-level is much more interesting. Company leaders (captains / Hauptmann) should have at least some platoon leadership experience as officers, so a total time in service of about 30 months is a reasonable minimum for them. The exceptions are very easy jobs (such as being leader of a clothing depot or a railway repair unit) and very tricky jobs (example company leadership in electronic warfare or armoured reconnaissance) and jobs that are very similar to civilian jobs (medical, road logistics).

The training of a large quantity of junior leaders and larger quantity of reserve enlisted men has the nice side effect that you need company leaders and battalion commanders for this, of course. So that training program gives experience-gathering opportunities for mid-level leadership personnel.

It's often said that it's the personnel that matters most. People should pay more attention to the fact that it's the WARTIME personnel that matters most, NOT the peacetime personnel. War after war military historians recorded the same issue that certain jobs in an army require long training and experience, but had to be done by quickly trained and not very experienced men. 

We need guns and munitions and vehicles and electronics, but we also need to be credible regarding personnel. Even deep munitions stocks and thousands of reserve combat vehicles would not be of much value if we lack the personnel to make good use of them. The long-serving peacetime army concept cannot provide the required quantity of junior leaders. We should have many volunteers serving for six to 36 months. That would enable a powerful mobilisation (though not without equipment stocks) and it would be a fine basis for a roughly two-year race of training & producing to counter an aggressive power's race to become ready for successful aggression.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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The cheapest deterrence is for free

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It's a tragedy, but the current Russo-Ukrianian War shows that modern inter-state warfare can last a long time, just as in the past. Moreover, it shows that army buildups in the years leading up to a war are a thing, just as in the past.*

 

The tragedy of war is terrible, but there's a good side of the coin; extremely cheap means to deter aggression have become very plausible and also more visible.

 

1) The ability to grow up the armed forces personnel-wise is now easily recognizable as valuable, and having deterrence value. 

 

2) Artillery munitions stocks are really cheap compared to maintaining a large pool of personnel on active duty.

1,500 € per shell, 500 € per multifunction fuse, 1,000 € for propellant modules, 500 € for packaging and storage at suitable climate sum up to merely € 3.5 bn for a million 155 mm HE shots.

 

3) The ability to grow up the armed forces material-wise within a year is now a topic as well, and to demonstrate such ability would help to dissuade a wannabe aggressor's attempt to gain an advantage through a two-yer arms race.

This ability is in part about actual economic capabilities, but it's also about legislative and administrative preparation. A law should be on the books (and administrative procedures and forms prepared) for the case of commandeering vehicles and equipment, for forcing the economy to priority-build dictated quantities of equipment (up to the government replacing the top management to force compliance).

Such a law would have helped us greatly to respond to Ukraine's shell hunger. Such a law is FOR FREE.

 

#1) This means in my opinion that we should have great many men (and women, whatever) who underwent a fine basic military training (3...6 months) and could quickly be called up for specialised training (equipment, doctrine, small unit and unit training) that lasts for weeks.**

Moreover, we should have great many junior non-commissioned officers (active time on duty until going into reserve no more than two years) and great many junior officers (no more than three years).

The Bundeswehr is rather preparing and maintaining a huge quantity of senior officers, which lets the force rot, as there's a lack of reinvestments, spare parts, exercises and an imbalance of personnel (1/3 officers, 1/3 non-commissioned officers, 1/3 enlisted personnel). A wartime German army needs no more than one Colonel, six majors and about 30 captains per brigade. All other officers could be reserve lieutenants, each paired with one experienced senior NCO. Civilian managers conscripted to serve as reserve officers can lead all the kinds of support services in wartime that peacetime armies employ LtCol and Col ranks for.

#2) Germany could easily have stocked up 10 million 155 mm HE shots post-Cold War by saving the money spent on obvious bollocks. A large quantity of NATO standard artillery munitions in Central Europe would have been a huge boon for NATO defence plans (which apparenlty weren't even being prepared until about 2009 IIRC) and it would have given us enough munitions to help Ukraine decisively by now.

The German military budget wasn't too small; it was (and is) mismanaged.

 

#3) We don't need substantial army rotary aviation. We don't need substantial air force transport aircraft fleets, we don't need more army logistics vehicles other than the ones supposed to carry fuel and munitions within the brigade. We don't need offroad cars (or even MRAPs) to equip resevre brigades. We don't need expensive tractor vehicle for tank transporter trailers in quantities that would enable the entire army to deploy quickly. We can commandeer and conscript. That would enable us to equip 20 reserve brigades on the cheap if we wanted to do so. That's also how the Finns do it; agricultural tractors and civilian motor vehicles are meant for use in their army reserve formations.

 

I see a lot of talk (writing) that's firmly within the establishment paradigm of paying 99% attention to army peacetime strength (formations, platforms, personnel). This paradigm calls for more and more money, ever more money, for the purpose of deterrence and defence and often produces hollow forces.

 

This is stupid. There are more cost-effective ways that serve the group thinking senior officer caste's interests and leanings less. We should not waste money on avoidable inefficiencies in deterrence & defence!

 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: The arms race in Europe 1933-1939 (for the U.S. extending into 1941) was msot obvious, but there was also a marked increase in military buildup efforts in 1912-1914. The German parliament gave up its resistance to calls for more army corps (to counter the decades-long French army buildup) in 1912, for example.

**: Another inisght from Ukrainians; motivated people can learn specialised military trades and using complicated equipment really quick, mcuh quicker than in ordinary peacetime training courses.

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The American Way of (Land) War

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Take it with a grain of salt, but here's my view on the American Way of (land) War. It's based on indications collected over about 25 years of paying close attention to international military affairs:

 

The U.S.Army has a personnel system that's still showing its roots in "latecomer to World War has to quickly build an army". The training of officers is not only relatively brief (extremely green 2nd Lt compared to a German 2nd Lt), but everyone gets moved around from job to job so often and in an uncoordinated fashion. A battalion may conduct individual, small unit, unit and formation tactics training in sequence, but by the time they're mid-way in formation training they'd have many of those men who participated in the small units training already replaced.

The result is that from 2nd Lieutenant up to Lieutenant Colonel hardly anyone is trusted to be very competent or even competent in a well-rounded way. 

U.S.Army doctrine was thus built with mistrust in the one-the-spot decisionmaking of officers. Preferably everything has to be planned in advance or be cast into SOPs (standing operating procedures, British would call it 'drills' at the lower levels). But they don't trust their officers' quality much, so there's an extreme task division. Every staff officer other than commanding officer and chief of staff is responsible for a small window of tasks only. Now almost everyone is focused on a myopic view of the land war, but of course you can't be done with your job after an hour of work per day, so they work a lot more, plan a lot more in their highly task-divided way. The extreme task division also leads to extreme demands for communication between the officers, and of course there have to be comprehensive briefings (there are 'powerpoint ranger' non-officers who are specialised in overloading powerpoint slides with graphics).

Everything is thus a big deal that needs thorough planning by a huge staff. Almost nothing seems as if it could be decided by a commanding officer and one or two officers who ride in his car on the spot, within a few minutes.

It's fine to be able to plan things in detail in advance, to rehearse, to have SOPs for common scenarios. Every good army had those, there are opportunities to make good of those. There are problems if you become extremely in favour of planning, though:

"No plan of operations reaches with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main force." Moltke the Elder, 1880

A second problem is that planning much in decisions where quick decisionmaking on the spot is possible is simply too slow.

A third problem is that focusing doctrine (thus training) on planning and extreme task division leads to unpreparedness for the necessary on-the-spot decisions in actual warfare.

A fourth problem is that Americans are gifted communicators; in part due to their huge numbers they can convince others that something is the way it ought to be done or even the normal way. They can do so even with ludicrous nonsense, such as their insane and wholly debt-financed overspending on the military.

The American Way of (land) War is not super-competent; it's an adaptation (coping method) to the by design modest competence of their troops.

This crap creeps through NATO into allied armies, in part by officer exchanges, officer training by the U.S.Army, NATO standardisations (such as tactical forms; there's a detailed NATO standard form for who gets to blow up a bridge on whose demand, for example), "interoperability". Allied armies are being led by senior officers who are naturally inclined to have a whole court of bootlickers a.k.a. a large staff and over time these foreign senior officer corps trend towards emulating the American approach. I suspect this effect was the worst on the British, Canadians (due to no language barrier) and the small & poor armies in NATO (due to more direct training and admiration), though I have but anecdotal evidence for this.

A land war can be fought the American way. That's slow and requires overwhelming resources superiority, involves much firepower (especially air support). It gets the job done against a conventional opposing force if there's enough time and enough resources. Just about every approach to land warfare other than African 19th century witchdoctors handing out bulletproofing drinks would succeed against a conventional opposing force with enough time and resources on hand.

An American army sergeant, captain, colonel, general may very well with great experience tell about how much time, effort, personnel, planning, synchronization and training a certain action requires. He/she/it may very well be right - within the context of that one armed service (and possibly their marines, too). The only ones who have a comprehensive understanding are scholars who looked at how such an action was done in the past by different armies, and how it would be done by different armies today. So take my opinion with a grain of salt, but you should also take the 100% self-confident proclamations of army insiders (including retired ones) with a grain of salt, for their horizon is usually very close. And better don't fall for appeal to authority routines; military history shows that terribly many generals are highly self-confident and strong on opinion, but also incompetent.

Land war can be fought and won they American way, but it's not the best way unless a nation has the exact same set of limitations, and you're going to argue as a member of a minority if you bring this up in the anglophone internet.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

P.S.: It's about the same on U.S. Navy ships save for personnel rotation being organised along their months-long tours overseas.

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How to: Create an army from scratch

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Some countries have armed forces that are FUBAR, with terrible cultural traditions and an inability to reform thoroughly. Some other countries lack armed forces. This is a beginner's guide on how to create an army (a new one) from scratch.

It's not terribly complicated at first, unless one makes it so. That's why guerilla armies can form.

The basis of a military is the transformation of personnel (let's call them "men" for brevity) from civilians to military personnel. This is about about acceptance of an authority framework, an adaption of expectations regarding comforts and a willingness to learn skills that are utterly irrelevant in the civilian world. 

Guerilla armies have their own ways, but regular armies use a combination of stick (conscription; threat of jailing) and carrot (pay especially for non-conscripts, retirement pay and medical care promises) to motivate men to undergo this transformation. So you need a budget to set up an army.

A build-up of a civilian bureaucracy to support the uniformed armed bureaucracy is a typical approach, but you don't necessarily need that initially. See how Russian mobiks equip themselves, even without having gotten vouchers or money from the government to do so. Let's face it; soldiers in NATO armies regularly wear boots and other items that were not provided by the bureaucracy as well. Few items require actual dedicated military procurement; night vision, secure radios, most weapons and munitions.

The training can be set up as a snowball system to some degree. A small group devises basic regulations using foreign regulations (especially the Americans are publishing great many (and low quality) field manuals, but also some other countries and in Germany you could buy the "Der Reibert" book that summarises many things a common soldier needs to know and more). This small group needs to know its own work well and becomes trainers to more recruits, the best of which get selected to become trainers (and possibly junior NCOs) as well. Junior NCO training gets devised again by a small author team using foreign source materials.

The idea is to create a very personnel-intensive defensive infantry battalion. Some natural leaders emerge and get a chance to prove themselves in leadership positions two and more levels above the basic level of hierarchy (officers).

Six defence-capable battalions form the basis for a brigade and its support troops. 

• Three battalions get qualified further to infantry (including offensive actions capability)
• One battalion gets qualified further to become an indirect fires (and their supply, closely related sensors) battalion.
• One battalion gets qualified further to provide non-combat support (supply, drinkable water, medical, recovery & repair)
• One battalion worth of troops gets converted into a training force, a brigade headquarter, military police, an officer pool for liaison duties, military intelligence, field manual writing teams, equipment testing & selection teams and more.

It should be possible to set up the first brigade from almost nothing within four years, and then to double the brigade count every two years.

Simplicity, modesty and self-discipline would be the most important virtues. You could see this in the hardware, which would ideally include

• ruggedized and normal laptops all with the same operating system and USB-C interface
• ruggedized tablet computers all with the same operating system and USB-C interface
• one handheld radio and one vehicle & backpack radio of the same radio family (compatible with the laptop and usable as fibreoptic field telephone)
• one type of portable electrical power generator
• one low light vision system (firearm and helmet-mounted)
  
• one thermal optic type (weapon-mounted)
  
• civilian flare gun & pyrotechnics
• one (day&night) spotter quadcopter
• one type of (crew-)portable forward observer kit (thermal, E/O, LRF, canting sensors, multiple GNSS capable, USB-C interface)
  
• one type of indirect fire gun (105 mm)
  
• one machinegun type of identical calibre as the carbine/rifle
  
• one guided missile to defeat MBTs (day&night capable)
  
• one ManPADS
• one carbine/rifle type
• one light anti-tank munition
• one type of 6x6/8x8 lorry in several versions but all with the same engine and tire size
• use of civilian pallet and container standards
  
• one 4wd car in several versions but all with the same engine and tire size
  
• one demolitions explosive 'brick' with multiple interfaces for a fuse

Legal affairs, personnel affairs, many construction works, mil-only equipment & vehicle procurement, major vehicle repairs, major medical care, entrance tests (including medical & IQ) and much else could be left to civilians, either (pre-existing) government agencies or civilian contractors.

(c) Jantusla

I suppose I've by now sketched out enough how an extreme keep it simple, stupid! (KISS) + snowballing effort to build an army from scratch could work out. Other details would either simply not be part of such an army or be developed about the same way.

I suppose this blog post looks like total, accomplished idiocy to any army bureaucracy. Well, we have military history evidence that armed forces can be built from scratch (usually a lot less orderly than my description). We also have military history evidence that such rapidly built armed forces can be a match to long-time established armed bureaucracies. Such newcomers have some advantages and some disadvantages. They learn particularly well and rapidly by involvement in hot conflicts. Ukraine's volunteer forces in 2014/2015 and 2022 are examples just as the Waffen-SS, guerilla armies and (regarding the doubling of formations within two years) the German army 1934-1939.

Established armed bureaucracies also have advantages, but they also have disadvantages (such as red tape, bad legacies). It might be a good idea to reset entire armies, as many armed bureaucracies are FUBAR and more of a waste of public funds than superior to a new-built force.

This whole blog post was meant to stretch the horizon, make readers think themselves about the issue. Maybe it would help to have some more KISS in an army, maybe even only the threat of being disbanded in favour of a new-built force would have a healthy effect on our armed bureaucracies?

One thing is for certain; all armies claim to be competent when challenged, but military history called many such bluffs already.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Military ranks in an army

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The rank system appears to be a mess in all armies. 

The Bundeswehr has 11 officer ranks, 10 non-commissioned officer ranks, 8 enlisted personnel ranks  + 9 medical officer ranks (which have a total of 17 designations because some ranks have variations for human medicine, apothecary and veterinary). I think we really could make do with much less total, maybe ten ranks.

Huge corporations thrive (despite their inefficiencies) with hundreds of thousands of employees without a rank system and usually also without a uniform (especially without a uniform that encompasses manual labourers AND staffs with one uniform).

Armies have decent arguments for having ranks, though. The most solid argument is for a division between

1. enlisted personnel
2. non-commissioned officers (leaders who live with the enlisted personnel)
3. officers (higher level leaders who separate themselves from the enlisted personnel for some psychological reasons
   

We can further divide between junior and senior non-commissioned officers. The latter of which would not live with the troops in the barracks (peacetime), but justify themselves by being very experienced and thus indispensable for good training of enlisted personnel and junior NCOs. They may also be very helpful authority figures.*

1. enlisted personnel
2. junior NCOs
3. senior NCOs
   
4. officers

We can further divide the officers between small unit and unit leaders (up to captain rank) on the one hand and formation commanders (major and up) on the other. The latter require more experience and need to have proved themselves in unit leadership. Battalion (battlegroup) command is the lowest combined arms leadership position, and combined arms expertise requires learning much about at least two arms, which junior NCOs don't need to have done.

1. enlisted personnel
2. junior NCOs
3. senior NCOs
   
4. junior officers
5. senior officers
   

Now we could take into account that the majority of officers are actually NOT in leadership positions. They're in staff positions. It seems like a strong argument to separate officer ranks by this criterion, but somehow even armies with clearly separate career paths for leadership officers and staff officers usually don't do it for all I know. The maximum example that I'm aware of is the "i.G." suffix used by German armies (i.G. = "im Generalstabsdienst", 'in general staff service').

1. enlisted personnel
2. junior NCOs
3. senior NCOs
   
4. junior officers
5. staff officers
   
6. senior officers
   

The authority to give orders independent of the chain of command would be like

enlisted personnel < junior NCOs and senior NCOs < junior officers < senior officers 

and

enlisted personnel < junior NCOs and senior NCOs < staff officers

in addition to the position-specific chain of command. (The complicated conditions of command authority don't matter here.)

A participation in NATO headquarters requires that armies send officers with certain NATO-compatible ranks. It's debatable whether NATO HQs are any good and whether North Atlantic Treaty members should withdraw their forces from NATO subordination as France did long ago. Anyway, I strongly suppose that temporary ranks could be assigned to satisfy NATO's idea of ranks if need be.

So I'm at six distinct groups of army combatant personnel. I suppose that we COULD make do with this. A certain unit could have four slots for junior officers, four slots for senior NCOs, dozens of slots for junior NCOs and more than a hundred slots for enlisted personnel. Who gets to work which position exactly after falling into one of these categories would be decided by qualification, JUST AS WE ARE ALREADY SUPPOSED TO DO NOW.

So why do we have such a rank system mess instead?

The simple answers are in my opinion

• 10%: A lack of self-discipline makes everything messy over time.
• 90%: Promotions have been misused to give men better pay when a pay rise for the original rank or performance-specific pay bonuses or qualification-specific pay bonuses were more appropriate, but not the policy.
  

I wouldn't mind adding one rank for unqualified enlisted personnel (recruits until basic or branch training is completed) or another one for medical doctors. 

Here's a list that doesn't seem too radical (that is, I think it could really be done) to me any more:

1. recruit
2. soldier
3. corporal (junior NCO)
   
4. sergeant (as senior NCO)
   
5. lieutenant (small unit leadership, battalion staffs)
6. captain (unit leadership, brigade staffs)
7. major (battalion command, divisional/corps staffs)
8. colonel (brigade command, national and theatre HQ staffs)
9. general (divisional and higher commands, army branch leadership)
10. (doctor)

Would any battles be won through such a rank reform? Would any wars be averted? Would much money be saved? No.

The primary point of reforming the rank system would be to send a strong (symbolic) signal that the undisciplined cancerous mutations and general bollocks of the past are getting wiped away. It would only be worth the effort if that signal is true.

A secondary (and very small) point would be that the importance of qualification for a certain high level job would be highlighted. A current bright 1-star general would not be held back by his rank from getting a post that's meant for a 3-star general.

related:

/2012/05/rank-inflation-in-bundeswehr.html

 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: I know that accommodations are more random in reality. Almost anyone in the Bundeswehr can live off-base, so I'm referring a bit to the old school barracks and life in the field here.

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AC and IQ

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There used to be a time when businesses were in awe of the organisational and management skills of certain leading armies. Armies had hundreds of thousands of personnel and were thus avantgarde in terms of personnel affairs at a time when megacorporations were very uncommon. These times ar eover, except in the U.S. where general militarism still gives the word "military" a good sound and reputation, deserved or not. This silliness goes even so far as Sun Tzu adaptions for business strategy.

Some of the army innovations for personnel affairs were about tabulations and primitive computing. One innovation originating from Germany was the assessment centre.

The 18th century method of recruiting new officers in much of Europe was about checking if the man is a nobleman (necessary at least for cavalry and infantry) and then having a meal with him to check whether he was 'cultured'. 'Cultured' people believed that they were destined to lead until the 1960's in some countries (*cough* UK *cough*).

This aristocrats-only approach changed into a more general elites-only approach during the 19th century, but without a satisfactory process. Having the school degree required for university access became a basic requirement in some countries, for exmaple. The German army invented such a process for evaluating candidates, and today's shapes of the process are called "assessment centre" (AC). It's mostly an attempt to simulate the job and observe how a candidate fares.

The results are mixed, to say the least. I'm not easily impressed by people, so I won't use that as a criterion, but by my observation about half of the officers shouldn't be officers of any rank. Half of those (overall quarter) shouldn't even be non-commissioned officers.

The AC should have weeded those out.

Studies about assessment centres in the business world are controversial. Some studies conclude that the AC fails to predict job success, others conclude it's a fine (albeit expensive) tool.

So it appears that armies weren't all that competent after all even back in the times when people thought of armed bureaucracies as innovative.

There's a non-controversial alternative, though: You could simply conduct a proper intelligence test, demand an OK primary education graduation, check for a clean criminal offence convictions slate and  conduct a health check. These things are done anyway. They may be sufficient.

I suppose we could do with these simple tests, a trial period and a hefty emphasis on the IQ test result.

• IQ 120+ officer
• IQ 110+ NCO
• IQ 100+ enlisted personnel in demanding jobs
• IQ 90+ enlisted personnel for a few most simple jobs

(I should mention that I want to see a much smaller share of NCOs and especially officers in overall personnel numbers than we've got in the Bundeswehr.)

We should furthermore keep the workaholic officers and NCOs away from leadership jobs and limit them to staff jobs.

High intelligence is a requirement for many things. I've very often observed that people are simply incapable of reasoning about something complicated. Part of that was bad faith, part was stubbornness and part was an obvious shortfall of intelligence.

You cannot solve demanding problems if your team cannot understand the problem or cannot understand a proposal for its solution, much less devising such a proposal. Too stupid people can even hold back (and easily outnumber!) the smart ones in a team.

This reminds me of a general ossification trend in Western countries, or in particular procurement processes. We have many small injustices and private financial issues, and welfare states try to address all these in detail rather than with a wide brush. This leads to much complicated regulation, complicated forms (income tax!), much process with substantial administrative effort and in the end there's still injustices and private financial issues. Likewise, we try to avoid corruption and nepotism in procurement by writing ever more rules and implementing checks - all this to the point of having a procurement system that's much slower and likely also more wasteful than free hand procuring by the minister in a functioning democratic country would be.

Whatever the candidate selection process is in large corporations or in armies; it doesn't appear to do a good job. Maybe we should slim it down to essentials.

That would put a premium on judging performance on the job, which is incompatible with the near-automatic promotions up to LtCol rank in certain armies, of course.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Wagner and SS

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Hitler's NSDAP party had a paramilitary organisation for bullying, intimidating, 'security' at events and plain brawling against communists and social-democrats; it was called the SA.

This SA quickly became very important and very powerful in 1933, as among other things it gained power by providing personnel for the government's new auxiliary police force that did the dirt political stuff that the regular police wasn't reliable enough for.

Its leader became too ambitious* for Hitler and was eliminated in 1934, the SA was dissolved.

A much smaller violent party organisation rose to prominence instead. This SS had been a kind of bodyguards organisation at first. It took over much SA personnel and among other things the running of the KZs, which were at that time mostly holding political prisoners.

You didn't need to be well-versed in military matters to rise up the ranks in these organisations, most important for a career were

• being loyal to superiors
• being able to shout commands well
• being ambitious
• participating in social events with other 'leaders'
• talking shit
  

Some men rose through the ranks because of personal connections to top leaders, in the SA this included wartime friends of the SA leader.

The military arm of the SS was founded soon after war broke out, in late 1939. It became a parallel organisation to the army.

There was another parallel German ground force in WW2; the air force (Luftwaffe) had initially a ground combat element in shape of paratroopers, which gained much attention and prestige in 1940 and 1941. It wasn't difficult to raise them as a good infantry force because the air force itself was created in 1933 with army officers.

The army bled white in the Russia campaign 1941...1943 while the air force wasted hundreds of thousands of infantry-suitable young conscripts in utterly inflated organisations such as pickets all over occupied France to observe the sky with eyes and microphones. Thus the Luftwaffe came under pressure to provide men for ground warfare. Its ambitious and blusterous boss Göring didn't intend to have hundreds of thousands of young men transferred from HIS air force to army. So he formed air force divisions for ground combat, with more or less ridiculous names (including a 'paratrooper tank division'). These divisions appeared a decade after the inheritance of skilled army personnel by the air force and they generally weren't average or better fighting forces. Their equipment was mostly 3rd rate (including many captured weapons with insecure munitions supply) anyway. Their leaders would have been fit for occupation security regiments, while their young conscripts should have been channelled through several months of retraining in and by the army before being sent to the front.

 

Back to the Waffen-SS; it was founded in late 1939, enjoyed no inheritance of thousands of highly skilled army officers and once in action on the Eastern Front in 1941/1942 it quickly gained a reputation for reckless and unnecessarily casualties-rich tactics. In short; it was led poorly.

This did improve eventually, but the continued quick expansion of the Waffen-SS to rival the army ever more and the concentration of talent in one 'elite' flagship division meant that the waning army critique of Waffen-SS casualty rates was probably more about the deteriorating army experiencing rising casualty rates itself in 1943...1945 than about the Waffen-SS becoming very good at tactics.

Brutality towards not only the enemy but also towards the own men was employed by the Waffen-SS (and the army itself was already brutal by today's standards including an outrageous casualty rate during training).

Neither the air force's dabbling in ground war nor the Waffen-SS' were rooted in rational optimisation of national warfare potential. These were political efforts, meant to elevate their leader, some inner circle crony. Neither army competitor was particularly skilled and both suffered excessive casualty rates (including the original paratroopers, who were ruined in the Crete invasion).

Fast forward to 2022, we see the Wagner PMC employing inept tactics and brutality in a ground war in order to elevate the political weight of their crony-in-command, Prigozhin. The organisation has a few former military officers, but isn't built on such 'competence'. Wagner PMC's behaviour  fits to the fact that the Russian Federation checked all the Fascism test checkboxes in the past years.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: It didn't help him that he was a fat by the standards of the day, gay and in the focus of public disaffection with the new regime and its corruptness.

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Yet another blog post on reserves

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There's a substantial difference between modern NATO-style armies and how most of their predecessor armies (other than troops used in colonies) did it in the 1880...1945 period.

Armies of old developed an officer corps (and some of them also a senior non-commissioned officer corps) to have qualified leadership for a huge mobilised army ready. This included some briefly-trained reserve officers and reserve junior NCOs, which usually had a good education (and thus social) background.

Enlisted personnel was trained and then discharged after at most three years, often two years. The idea wasn't to have super-competent enlisted personnel. The idea was to be able to mobilise millions for the next great war. Peacetime strength of the army was of much lesser importance than wartime (mobilised) strength.

I should more often use images to break up text walls again

 

The training shortcomings of the time up to 1916 weren't rooted in this; they were rooted in a lack of understanding how best to tackle tactical problems. It was later shown over and over again that you can train young men to become highly proficient enlisted personnel in less than two years. In fact, in times past many junior officers had less military experience than that and were sent to lead men in battle, often even without anyone more experienced supporting them.

Modern armed forces are very much concerned with peacetime personnel strength. But what's the point of having enlisted man on active duty for more than two years? His learning curve has flattened already, he's little more than a prop for a handful of junior leaders to gain experience in leadership and management. Couldn't those learn their trade also by training another class of enlisted personnel? Two men serving two years as enlisted personnel each gives about the same experience to the junior leaders as one man serving four years.And they are about twice as much enlisted personnel in wartime.

To recruit two young men for each two years is harder than to recruit one for two years and then bribe him to re-enlist, of course.

Our modern armed forces have thus been formed by the socio-economic background, just as knights were a product of their feudal time, for example. I'm jut a bit irritated that people seem to believe that this way of running an army is superior, "professional", possibly even "elite". It's a recipe for having too small trained reserves for when you need to have a numerically strong army.

NATO can keep following this recipe as long as it doesn't fight a land war against India or China. We are outnumbering the peacetime Russian armed forces roughly 2:1 with European NATO alone. Recent events have show that Russia cannot mobilise any better than we could. So it's safe to keep following this path in NATO, albeit it's guaranteed to be cost-inefficient.

What about countries that are not part of such a large (and effective, unlike CSTO) alliance? They should abstain from some follies like miniature balanced forces (such as having a navy just because you have a coastline, or running a single squadron of Mach 2 strike fighters). They should also absolutely abstain from the "professional" army model.

It takes more than just a budget to motivate enough young men (and women) to volunteer for a relatively brief military service, but they would do it if it's a career boost rather than a career speed bump. There's no need for conscription in most countries. Yet for deterrence and defence there's a need for quantity. Look at Ukraine and Russia; both need plenty infantry for the oh-so usual infantry tasks. The terrain is mostly open fields, but the demand for infantry is still extremely high. Russia in particular did not prepare, and can apparently not mobilise infantry in quantity with decent equipment and at least modest (six months) training.

Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Iran, Vietnam, South Korea, Pakistan and Philippines need substantial infantry reserves. The NATO model of land forces would be a folly for them.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Zentraler Sanitätsdienst / medical services in a military

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According to the Bundeswehr itself, the central medical service of the Bundeswehr counts 19,860 personnel out of a total of 183,116 (31st July 2022). This does not include soon-to-be officers who are studying at universities, those are counted separately. The personnel share is thus 10.8%. The Heer has a 34.3% share only! This is insane. The constitutional mission of the Bundeswehr is defence, not being a self-licking ice cone.

This large share is not all due to the greater ease of recruiting (particularly for officers, as they can easily transition into high-paying civilian jobs after their volunteer term). The Bundeswehr does traditionally maintain an oversized medical branch, and it did protect itself well against the otherwise widespread outsourcing to civilian contractors.

Overpriced, overweight, oversized MEDEVAC - a nightmare

 

(c) Wolpat

I will propose an entirely different way of doing business that would provide better care* AND reduce costs. But first, let me make a statement appraising the extremely important role of army medical services:

The confidence of the fighting men in getting good and timely medical treatment is an extremely valuable boost to morale. The effect of seeing a comrade in pain with a leg bone shattered by a bullet turns into sheer horror if you think that he'll either bleed to death, get his arm amputated or die in agony due to wound infections. Small unit leaders can get the minds of his comrades back on track to pursue a mission if the wounded man's pain gets treated (so he stops screaming), his bleeding stopped and blood loss compensated with intravenous liquid (better things than saline solution are available) supply. He needs to be moved away for medical treatment properly, and well-informed troops will understand that the survival rate can be near-100% if wounded men arrive at a surgical hospital within an hour, as even the really bad cases have a good chance of survival if they arrive there alive.

The army needs to take care of its soldiers and doing so does indeed help accomplishing missions. I don't doubt that at all, it's just that the bloated peacetime medical service is largely unnecessary and partially even detrimental to this.

 

So here's how I would do it (or rather, this is a first order proposal for a long-term transition):

(First, a precondition; the German military is for deterrence & defence, not for military adventure bullshit on distant continents. Any deployment outside of geographic Europe and NATO-included territories should be banned (save for tiny 2-men military observer missions).)

 

Every soldier has to join an ordinary Gesetzliche Krankenversicherung (regulated health insurance, the most common kind of health insurance in Germany) and the Bundeswehr pays 100% (rather than the normal 50% employer co-pay) for the basic health insurance (no co-pay for any extras, but 100% reimbursement for dental treatments after service-related dental injuries and for certain jobs also 100% co-pay for eye surgery for improved vision). Illnesses and injuries in peacetime would thus overwhelmingly be dealt with by civilian medical care capacities.

The peacetime medical personnel gets reduced to

• One medical doctor per battalion-sized garrison, ideally with a civilian government-employed medical doctor (Amtsarzt) as helping out as backup. This medical doctor (actually no doctor degree required) gives medical courses at the garrison, confirms when a soldier is really too sick for work and is part of the battalion HQ.
  
• One combat medic with a combat medic backpack (and additional stuff stored in motor vehicles) per almost every** platoon meant for employment on the battlefield (not a member of the medical branch)
  
• Soon-to-be reservists on basic training
  
• Reservists on two-week refresher exercise
• A tiny, tiny overhead at whole Bundeswehr level administration for medical topics, mostly busy trying to introduce improvements (methods, tools, consumables, vehicles) and getting necessary procurement initiated.
  

(No medical doctors would be needed for the navy, for I would disband the useless service.)

The mobilised/wartime medical support would look like this:

Every non-officer in the Bundeswehr completes a full First Aid course (with a theoretical and practical test that needs to be passed!) every 2nd year, army personnel additionally receives combat injury-specific courses during the other years (also biannually, also with mandatory pass test). All personnel has a personal injury kit (mostly stored in upper leg pouches due to the low weight) and at least one canteen with (ideally sterilised) water (essential for treating white phosphorous wounds, for example).

Combat medics at platoon level stop external bleeding, replace blood loss (avoid volume shock), treat injury pain, provide quick assembly stretchers and arrange for casualty evacuation together with the assistant platoon leader. These combat medics would still be armed with a self-defence subcarbine with 100 m iron sights and carry maybe 2x20 rounds for it. Some platoon combat medics would receive secondary training as a signaller, to watch radio traffic for the platoon leader when the primary signaller is not available. Infantry combat medics would additionally carry non-munitions supplies such as batteries and not have an active combat role (other than keeping an eye on radio traffic and the back).

Battalion battlegroups have a bandaging station with a medical doctor and a few medics. They provide extra blood loss compensation, improve the blood loss stop and take care of burn wounds to limit the risk of infections. These bandaging stations/vehicles are the transfer point between casualty evacuation (CASEVAC***, transport by ordinary vehicle) to medical evacuation (MEDEVAC, using a dedicated vehicle with a medic taking care of the wounded during transportation - usually 4x4 vehicles).  They need to be highly mobile and should generally match the mobility of the battlegroup (so at least two 4x4 vehicles of less than 8 tons gross weight with 1.2 m maximum fording depth ability, better a 20 ft ISO container on a 8x8 universal container/pallet transport vehicle with protected cab). I would prefer complete camouflage over Red Cross markings for these vehicles, as the Russian military doesn't respect the Red Cross anyway.

We should not rely on helicopters for MEDEVAC, but (mostly civilian) helicopters could be commandeered for the purpose (with a new crudely-applied paintjob) - maybe their employment is not too risky, after all. No gold-plated nightmares like NH90 would even only be maintained in service, neither for MEDEVAC nor for CASEVAC.

An (the) army corps maintains two pairs of leap-frogging (moving alternatingly) mobile surgical hospitals. These would not be container & tent villages, but rather prefer to make use of civilian buildings with man-movable equipment (same as headquarters above battalion). Tents would be backups that should be avoided. Such a mobile surgical hospital would be the place for surgical treatment (including for eye and burn injuries), largely drawing on civilian emergency room experience of their personnel. Much attention would be on maximising the survival rates of highest priority patients, so these surgical hospitals have to be within range for the golden hour for battlefield injuries of almost all combat troops (not forward scouts). The primary job of these mobile surgical hospitals would be to make the patients ready for transportation by civilian medical transport vehicles to civilian hospitals. It would take care of all patients until they can be transported. This explains why we'd need leap-frogging hospitals; whether the army corps advances or withdraws or simply moves laterally to a different region; one hospital of the pair would stay behind with those patients that cannot be moved except in most dire emergencies. The exact required quantity of hospitals is driven by the operations area of the Corps (all combat formations within one hour radius of a mobile surgery hospital) and this leapfrogging (x2).

The MEDEVAC vehicles and their crews (for movement of wounded to the mobile surgical hospitals) would form each one MEDEVAC Company per mobile surgical hospital, consisting almost entirely of reservist drivers and reservist medics.

Battalion-level garrison medical doctors exist as in peacetime (though typically being reservists in wartime) unless the garrison is largely empty (it might be in use for refresher training for reserves in wartime).

And that's it. The use of civilian medical care in peacetime improves the care and reduces costs, while the wartime strength of the medical service would largely depend on reservists, especially regarding medical doctors.

The key challenge would be to recruit the medical doctors and medics who would normally work in the civilian world, but be available as reservists. This is so far being done by giving people contracts for 17 years including the time when they study medical jobs at civilian universities.

We'd need to apply a different motivation than providing medical training while paying them on the job for many years. I basically propose to pay only as much as necessary; they get subsidies for their years at a civilian university and become reserve officers (medical doctors for surgery/emergency care and for eye emergency care) and reserve non-commissioned officers (medics) with little basic military training and a two-week refresher course once every 2nd year (ideally with much of the 2nd week overlapping with a non-computer exercise at corps or at last battalion battlegroup level). The pay would be good, the intrusions into their life kept minimal and they would be shielded from the usual red tape bollocks as much as feasible.

Now keep in mind; this was partially tailored to an army that's based in its own country, preparing for being deployed to a rather populous (not desert-ish, devoid of hospitals) developed world region for alliance defence. This approach would work just as well for Republic of Korea (save for the navy) or Taiwan (save for their stupid forward fortress islands and their navy) and any European country if it abstains from stupid military adventures such as the stupid occupation wars of the past two decades or the war of aggression against Iraq in 2003.

- - - - - 

You may have noticed that what I described is not extremely different from what's being done or meant to be done, but I

• skipped insane waste of budget by relying more on civilian medical personnel,
• opposed the container+tent village nonsense for field hospitals,
• opposed MEDEVAC (dedicated vehicles) within the manoeuvre forces on the battlefield****
  
• and opposed gold-plated helicopters due to their high costs and survivability concerns.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: Disclosure: I received spectacularly bad dental "service" in the Bundeswehr in the 90's myself, and this poor treatment was directly caused by persisting systemic nonsense. The dental assistants were inexperienced and thus incompetent and did not find the correct tools for the dentist.

**: Not for tank platoons, for example. Platoons of mostly vehicle crews (also some logistics small units) could simply have some extra supplies such as IV solution and extra bandages stored in their vehicles and a member or two with extra training. It would be difficult to find a good place for a medic in such platoons.

***: By the way; vehicles suitable for CASEVAC (this includes APCs and if existing IFVs, both of which should have folding seats to enable transportation of stretchers and small pallets) should have equipment to mark themselves as in CASEVAC action, so for example military police knows to prioritise them in traffic. This could range from detachable blue lights to a red cross flag attached to the vehicle front.

****: I am in favour of having tracked protected carriers with a crew of two but no dedicated cargo or passengers, held at infantry battalion level. These kind of (H)APCs would move infantry, supplies, prisoners of war (evacuation only) and civilians (evacuation only) through dangerous areas of the battlefield, preferably with concealment (by smoke and terrain features), rarely support by neutralising or suppressive fires (usually only for infantry assault to objective). They would have thin folding seats on the sides of a separated transport compartment to offer maximum cargo and stretcher capacity with folded seats. These universal battlefield transports would be preferred for casualty evacuation and could easily store a couple litres of medical supplies. The infantry would normally ride in vehicles that have the very same (limited offroad, 1.2 m fording, 1000 km road range, 80 kph road march) mobility and protection (presumably mostly against 99% fragments of 152mm HE@50 m, maybe PKM ball bullets @100 m threat) as the vehicles of the battalion battlegroup support.

 

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