The American public is getting a very high return on its investment in our current crop of junior officers. The are bright, industrious, and typically working significantly above their experience and training. And, day after day, they deliver for us. Iraq and Afghanistan are junior leaders' wars. And OUR junior leaders — officer AND non-commissioned officer — are serving us very well.
Phi Beta Iota: Viet-Nam deja vu, El Salvador deja vu, MASINT deja vu– in 1988-1989 the Marine Corps' highest priority for MASINT was the detection of mines based on explosives not the container, at a safe distance. $80 billion a year and the IC still cannot find anomalous objects buried in the ground. As MG Robert Scales points out, 4% of the force is taking 80% of the casualties, and we are spending less than 1% of the Pentagon's total budget on protecting them.
New York Times
December 21, 2010
Pg. 1
A Year At War: In Command
Life And Death Decisions Weigh On Junior Officers
Articles in this series are chronicling the yearlong deployment of the First Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, based in Kunduz Province, Afghanistan. The series follows the battalion’s part in the surge in northern Afghanistan and the impact of war on individual soldiers and their families back home.
QURGHAN TAPA, Afghanistan — The hill wasn’t much to behold, just a treeless mound of dirt barely 80 feet high. But for Taliban fighters, it was a favorite spot for launching rockets into Imam Sahib city. Ideal, American commanders figured, for the insurgents to disrupt the coming parliamentary elections.
