The Profession of Arms
HISTORICAL CONCEPTS
Cultural Development
Human Endeavor
ETHICAL FOUNDATIONS
PROGRESSIVE IDEAS
Medicine
Education
The solder's art forms the basis of civilization. It entails a monopoly on the use of force. Should an outside force gain superiority in arms or should internal forces corrupt the profession, the soldier ceases to be a preserver of peace and the society, unable to resist incursion, becomes defunct.
Methods and ideals have changed through the ages, but the essential soldier has not. There remains always the mission of defense and the welfare of the command. In peace, an army must recruit tomorrow's victors today and equip itself with every article to make war. The soldier must master and maintain these arms, training so as to be invulnerable to attack and able in every case to achieve the intent of the commander.
In the United States Army today, corruption lurks most notably in the realm of materiel and acquisition. In the recent war, soldiers felt compelled to buy their own personal body armor, GPS receivers, and flashlights, among other things. Commanders saw little alternative than to allow these non-standard items as the Army had failed to procure them. A soldier resistant to torso bullet strikes is obviously more effective than one who is vulnerable. I will also mention Army automations systems: they currently inhibit greatly the efficiency of the organization. There are literally hundreds of separate systems, each contracted out to whichever company happened to be in favor at the time of its undoubtedly haphazard introduction. Each system is pigeonholed to a very specific and narrow purpose, from personnel to finance to movement, etc. Most are antiquated and irrelevant. Few have any interconnectivity whatsoever, and none have adequate interoperability. This same degree of inadequacy is true for practically every other system. These systems, having no overarching organization, combine with the disastrous procurement system to beset the commander each day in a hundred or more unseen ways and serve as a locus of disunity in every command.
The system of recruitment is likewise questionable in that the services must compete with each other for the same pool of recruits. Some competition is inevitable and healthy; in today's environment, however, it has led to abusive practices. Services now essentially "bid" against one another to attract recruits with monetary incentives. Testing the ability of a recruit to recognize a higher figure is neither proof of suitability for a given service nor an effective use of government funds. Also, the quantity of recruits is often stressed more strongly than quality in recruiting commands, leading to lower quality recruits and again besetting other commanders daily with unnecessary difficulty.
The solutions to these problems are simple but painful. As for procurement, we must find reliable contractors to standardize and produce our equipment on an ongoing basis. We must then seek to mitigate complacency. This is possible through a working relationship between Army quality control personnel and the company. Commanders and soldiers ought to vote on what major items of equipment the Army as a whole should procure, as they have the best knowledge of what is needed. This means an end to relationships based on factors other than quality- let somebody not faced with life and death use substandard equipment. As for recruiting, the answer is even simpler and more painful. The Army staff must determine exactly how many personnel they need. Recruiters should be more rewarded for the quality, not the quantity of personnel they recruit. Individual services should select recruits only after they have agreed to join the Service. And if personnel quotas are still not met, adequate personnel must be drafted to meet the needs of defense.
Mounted knight
Albrecht Duerrer
Modern soldier
US Army photo