Is the Army broken as Sen Murtha suggests? I made a post about this the other day that suggested he might not be totally wrong. Major John at Miserable Donut’s has written a piece about Murtha’s comments that suggest the Senator is operating in an alternate reality. It is passionate and well written as in many ways right on target.
One thing Major John and I agree upon completely is that if Murtha is talking about the people in the Army, then yes, Murtha is delusional. Major J talks at some length about how his experience in OEF V was that every class of supply was ample, and in some cases more than what they needed. I don’t dispute that. By the time he finishes, Major J pronounces Sen Murtha “dead wrong.” I am not sure I agree.
What concerns me are the Class II and Class VII items in the “Army after Next.” These are end items in “supply lingo” that range from bayonets to Longbow Apaches. If this is what Murtha was talking about then he may not be far off the mark as to what is “broken.”
Major weapon systems were procured based upon some assumptions. They are usually expressed in terms of an “Operational Mode Summary (OMS).” It is a SWAG that comes out of the TRADOC user community on the hours, duty cycles, miles, rounds fired, or sorties that a system will complete during its life cycle. I have seen over the years a lot of different formulas used, but ultimately it often comes down to a “scientific wild ass guess” (SWAG) that assumes a system will live in peacetime training mode for 9 years and have not more than 1 year in combat during a 20 year life. After that, the system will be retired and replaced or rebuilt and the usage “zeroed” on it. That OMS drives a lot of things in the design and specification of the system’s components.
Today we are engaged in a war that has lasted for 4+ years. Instead of that two years in twenty of combat operations we are seeing systems in direct operations against an enemy for twice the time that system was expected to operate. There are on-going programs to rebuild/overhaul these systems (aka “reset”). But they tend to be under budgeted and over extended. The OPTEMPO has not permitted these systems to come out of the battle long enough to be “reset.” Therein lies how a “system” can be broken.
As the “War on Terrorists” began the message was clear. It would be a long, tough road. There is a lot yet to be done, and current budgets do not seem to recognize the reality that our hardware is getting tired and being broken. If that continues, then Murtha is right and perhaps not, as Major J suggests, “dead wrong.”
