US Army News

[James1978]

After reading this, I'm not laughing quite as hard at Russian tire issues.

Equipment for Ukraine drawn from Kuwait wasn’t combat-ready, IG says
By Jen Judson
May 31, 2023

WASHINGTON — Equipment drawn from the U.S. Army’s Kuwait-based pre-positioned stock bound for Ukraine was not ready for combat operations, the Pentagon’s inspector general has found.

During the inspector general’s audit of that pre-positioned stock area, the fifth of seven such locations around the world, “we identified issues that resulted in unanticipated maintenance, repairs, and extended leadtimes to ensure the readiness of the military equipment selected to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” the May 23 report stated.

All six of the M777 howitzers and 25 of 29 M1167 High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles were not “mission ready” and required repairs before U.S. European Command could send the equipment to Ukraine.

By January 2023, the U.S. government used its drawdown authority 30 times in total to provide $18.3 billion in equipment and ammunition to Ukraine, which is fighting a Russian invasion.

Army pre-positioned stock, or APS, is meant to be kept at the highest level of readiness so that it can be used immediately in case of an emergency.

The inspector general issued the report mid-audit out of concern that “issues with poor maintenance and lax oversight of the [APS] equipment could result in future delays for equipment support provided to the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” the report read. “In addition, if U.S. forces needed this equipment, they would have encountered the same challenges.”

The 401st Army Field Support Battalion in Kuwait is responsible for overseeing contractor maintenance work, which includes issuing equipment.

Hazardous howitzers
Because the battalion did not ensure the contractor was meeting its maintenance requirements for approximately 19 months on M777 howitzers, an Army Materiel Command senior representative from Kuwait issued a request for assistance, bringing in a U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command mobile repair team from Anniston Army Depot, Alabama.

When the team arrived at Camp Arifjan in March 2022, the contractor provided a howitzer that it said was fully mission capable. But the weapon system was not maintained according to the standard technical manual, per the mobile repair team, and “ ‘would have killed somebody [the operator],’ in its current condition,” the report stated.

Defense News has reached out to Office of Inspector General for the Defense Department to identify the contractor.

The team subsequently found that all six howitzers had operational issues. Four of the six howitzers had breech blocks improperly aligned with the rack gear, which prevented the breech from correctly locking. A breech not properly locked could result in an explosion that could kill the crew, the report noted.

Additionally, all six howitzers contained reused, old hydraulic fluid, which is not allowed because the fluid degrades over time and could lead to “disastrous results and malfunctions of critical systems,” the inspector general found.

The contractor paid the mobile repair team $114 million for labor and travel expenses, according to the report.

As the howitzers were being prepared to leave Kuwait for shipment to Europe on June 21, 2022, one of the howitzers experienced a brake fire, likely due to the contractor not releasing the parking brake when moving it, according to the report, which cited a specialist with the mobile repair team. The contractor claimed it was likely due to leaking brake fluid, the report noted.

When the howitzers reached Poland for distribution to Ukraine, officials there said all six howitzers still had faults that made them non-mission capable, according to the report, including worn firing pins and issues with the firing mechanism. The repairs cost about $17,490 in labor and materials.

Officials said they were able to avoid delays in getting the howitzers to Ukraine, but the inspector general noted in the report the inadequate maintenance on the howitzers highlights the need to consider the time it would take to maintain and repair equipment coming from the APS site in Kuwait for Ukraine.

Tire troubles
Prior to August 2022, the 401st declared 28 of 29 Humvees as fully mission capable, but when it received an order to pull those out for Ukraine on Aug. 24, only three of the 29 were ready, the inspector general said.

Problems with the Humvees included dead batteries, inoperative lights, faulty gauges, damaged seat belts, broken door lock latches and fluid leaks, the report listed.

In order to meet the deadline to ship the equipment to Europe, the contractor took parts from other Humvees in the inventory, including in one case a transmission, “potentially making that equipment non-mission capable,” the report noted.

When the vehicles arrived in Poland, officials there reported one of the tires on a Humvee was shredded due to dry rot. When the tire was replaced with a spare, that one also failed due to dry rot, the report described.

The officials in Poland opened up work orders to replace tires damaged with dry rot in September 2022. Additionally, the vehicles did not come with spare tires, the officials noted, causing concern they would cross the border and fail with no means to replace tires there.

Tires were ultimately pulled from other equipment for the Humvees headed to Ukraine.

The process delayed delivery to Ukraine and required significant labor and time, “pulling soldiers away from primary duties,” and cost $173,524 for labor and material, the report added.

Getting back in fighting shape
The head of Army Sustainment Command explained, in response to the report, that the service’s funding level for APS maintenance in Kuwait was 30% of the validated requirements in fiscal 2023 — about $27.8 million of the $91.3 million requirement.

And the commander stated the contractor “is not contractually obligated or appropriately resourced to maintain [APS] equipment” at standards laid out in the technical manual the inspector general followed to make determinations regarding mission-capable readiness of the equipment.

The inspector general disagreed that the contractor was not obligated to follow the same technical manual used by the inspector general and also noted in the report that the Army obligated nearly $1 billion from Aug. 31, 2016, through April 13, 2023, for the APS location.

The inspector general recommended in the report that the Army’s deputy chief of staff — or G-3/5/7, which is responsible for issuing what goes into APS — “consider the level of maintenance and leadtime required before selecting Army Prepositioned Stock [in Kuwait] equipment for sourcing Ukrainian Armed Forces.”

The commander of the 401st should also develop and implement “increased inspection procedures to not only validate that the [APS] contractor has properly corrected known maintenance deficiencies but also to conduct a thorough visual inspection of equipment and correct any deficiencies including tires damaged by dry rot, before shipping the equipment to [U.S. European Command] for transfer to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”

[James1978]

Is Soldier Recruiting Up? Army Claims Yes But Won't Say by How Much

31 May 2023
Military.com | By Steve Beynon

The Army is in a recruiting slump, struggling to pitch service to a skeptical Gen Z or even to find enough qualified candidates to join. But just how deep in the hole are the Army's recruiting numbers? It won't say.

The service has declined to provide the basic recruiting data, despite Army Secretary Christine Wormuth repeatedly telling Congress it is doing better on recruiting this year compared to last year, when it came up 15,000 soldiers short of its goal of bringing in 60,000 new troops.

On April 5, Military.com first requested the data on how many new soldiers enlisted for each quarter for the current and previous fiscal years. But the Army has balked for weeks, and service officials also declined to give the publication a reason it was withholding the data.

"We have seen an increase across the force in each quarter," Madison Bonzo, an Army spokesperson, told Military.com in a statement. "We expect to finish the third quarter strong and continue this momentum as we move into the fourth quarter."

Lawmakers broadly see the Army's recruiting slump as one of the top issues for the Pentagon.

The Army is by far the largest branch and is key to bolstering NATO's front lines in Europe and training Ukrainians on American weapons systems. The Army is also in the midst of shifting its doctrine and focus toward conventional warfare in the Pacific, which is going to require large formations of soldiers and a shift from the Global War on Terror, where most combat was relatively small skirmishes against poorly equipped insurgents.

"We are seeing improvements in our recruiting situation. We are better off this year than before the previous year," Wormuth told lawmakers at a hearing May 2.

The service has made changes that could boost the number of new recruits, including a pre-basic training course for applicants who fall outside the service's body fat or academic standards. If those applicants can comply within 90 days, they can move on to basic training.

Those courses have the capacity to graduate about 12,000 recruits per year into basic training, a massive batch of enlistees the Army wouldn't have otherwise been able to bring in.

But even with a boost from new initiatives, Wormuth and other senior officials have complicated the recruiting picture by warning publicly that the service will still not meet its goals.

"At the same time, the chief and I set a very ambitious goal of 65,000 recruits this year," Wormuth said during testimony to the Senate Appropriations Committee's defense panel. "We are not going to make that goal. We are doing everything we can to get as close to it as possible."

The Army's struggle to bring in new recruits is multifaceted but partly due to a low unemployment rate and a civilian job market in which employees are better positioned to negotiate salaries, time off and other incentives.

A Department of Defense study earlier this year also found that many in Gen Z are less inclined to want to leave their hometown and believe the Army is almost exclusively combat arms jobs in which their lives would be at risk -- while those dangerous jobs make up a minority of roles in the force.

At the core of the issue is a shrinking pool of eligible applicants.

Senior officials estimate only about 23% of 17- to 24-year-olds are eligible for service, in part because of an obesity crisis in the U.S. and dwindling academic performance, with fewer and fewer applicants able to meet the Army's standards on the SAT-style entrance exam.

Gen. James McConville, the Army's top officer, told Military.com last year that the pass rate for that exam has dropped by about one-third in recent years. Simultaneously, SAT and ACT scores have also dropped.

The service has also leaned on its existing soldiers to pitch service to their community, awarding them medals for successful referrals though that is unlikely to have even marginal impacts on the Army's bottom line. Cadets are also incentivized to bring in new troops and are awarded guaranteed slots at much sought-after schools such as airborne, air assault and mountain warfare, among other incentives that can be early career boosts.

[kdahm]

After reading this, I'm not laughing quite as hard at Russian tire issues.

Equipment for Ukraine drawn from Kuwait wasn’t combat-ready, IG says
By Jen Judson
May 31, 2023

WASHINGTON — Equipment drawn from the U.S. Army’s Kuwait-based pre-positioned stock bound for Ukraine was not ready for combat operations, the Pentagon’s inspector general has found.

During the inspector general’s audit of that pre-positioned stock area, the fifth of seven such locations around the world, “we identified issues that resulted in unanticipated maintenance, repairs, and extended leadtimes to ensure the readiness of the military equipment selected to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” the May 23 report stated.

I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, that equipment in the prepositioned reserve was not ready for use immediately. Who could have foreseen that the contractor, especially in the Middle East, would short on the required maintenance and parts?

{Your winnings, sir}
(thank you)

The only way to make sure that it doesn't happen is to randomly draw vehicles from the reserve periodically and either inspect them top to bottom or rotate into units.

[Rocket J Squrriel]

After reading this, I'm not laughing quite as hard at Russian tire issues.

Equipment for Ukraine drawn from Kuwait wasn’t combat-ready, IG says
By Jen Judson
May 31, 2023

WASHINGTON — Equipment drawn from the U.S. Army’s Kuwait-based pre-positioned stock bound for Ukraine was not ready for combat operations, the Pentagon’s inspector general has found.

During the inspector general’s audit of that pre-positioned stock area, the fifth of seven such locations around the world, “we identified issues that resulted in unanticipated maintenance, repairs, and extended leadtimes to ensure the readiness of the military equipment selected to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” the May 23 report stated.

Didn't the Israelis complain of something like this when they received the equipment from the POMCUS dumps in Germany during the '73 Yom Kippur War? That the tanks and SPGs were all stored outside with little or no maintenance done on them.

[jemhouston]

Yep.

[James1978]

Army Retention on Track, Even as Recruiting Struggles
By Sam Skove
June 8, 2023

When Tobey Whitney joined the Army at 32 after 9/11, he expected to serve just four years. But after two decades and three deployments to Iraq, Sgt. Maj. Whitney is still in uniform, part of a broader trend of soldiers choosing to stay in the Army even as the service struggles to bring in new recruits.

Whitney is far from an anomaly. The Army is on track to meet its goal of retaining 55,100 soldiers this year, according to Congressional testimony by Army Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo. The Army also met its retention goals in 2022 and 2021: just 0.86 percent of soldiers who were eligible to leave actually quit, Camarillo said.

Retention numbers are “historically high,” said Agnes Schaefer, assistant Army secretary for manpower & reserve affairs, at an event Tuesday hosted by the Center for a New American Security. And even parts of the service that are under high stress are seeing good retention.

Air defense forces are deployed at twice the rate of the overall Army because of threats in Europe, China, and the Middle East, Lt. Gen. Daniel Karbler, commander of U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, told Congress in April. The resulting stress was eating away at soldiers’ “readiness and family well-being,” he said.

The trend is not new: in August 2020, crews for Patriot anti-air missiles batteries deployed more often than Army Special Forces.

But in 2022, the Army’s quick-deployment air defense forces, run by 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command, had a 109.7 percent mission retention rate, Karbler testified.

Retention stands in stark contrast to the Army’s recruiting crisis. The service’s numbers are better this year than last, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said at a D-Day commemorative event on June 5, but the service is still set to fall short of its 65,000 recruit target, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said in May.

Whitney, now the Army’s senior career counselor, joined the 82nd Airborne in 2003 after serving 10 years as a police officer. He had long wanted to serve in the military, but deferred after having a child at 18. But September 11 pushed him into service. “I knew that I had missed my calling before, and I wasn't gonna miss it again,” he said.

Joining up at the start of the Iraq war, Whitney faced mortar fire on his first day in the country.

He stayed in the Army, despite the risks, for what it had to offer his family. His son went to college on his tuition assistance, and his healthcare costs were covered by the Army without any premiums. “My quality of life as a soldier was better than it was as a police officer,” Whitney told Defense One.

Army officials haven’t cited one single factor as contributing to high retention, but have emphasized non-monetary factors—most notably soldiers’ ability to choose where to serve.

“We try to provide soldiers with a wide variety of options,” Whitney said, calling out programs that allow soldiers to stay at a favored base longer, change their career field, or move to new locations.

Extra money is also helpful, Whitney said, but noted the Army pays less than half of soldiers a reenlistment bonus. Instead, he said, he sees many soldiers motivated by the ability to control where they’re living, either to stay where they are or go closer to family

The Army’s busy deployment schedule, which Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston has called an “enormous strain” so far isn’t hurting retention, Whitney added. In fact, units that deploy more frequently have “great” retention, he said.

While he didn’t have specific data to point to, the four-times-deployed soldier pointed to the unifying effect a deployment can have, as well as the satisfaction that comes with “actually doing what you came in to do,” he said.

Nor was the Army’s recent emphasis on diversity a problem for retention, which Whitney called a “non-issue.”

The Army is also doing studies to see if economic pressures are key at keeping the soldiers in, Whitney added, amid an U.S. economy that has been buffeted by inflationary pressures.

Schaefer, the Army’s manpower chief,, flagged similar reasons for high retention rates. “Quality of life is a huge issue for us,” Schaefer said, noting benefits like child care, spousal employment, and barracks improvements.

In a nod to the importance of choosing an Army base over cash, she noted that letting people choose their station led to better staffing results than offering a bonus for moving there.

“Some people want to go to remote and isolated places,” she said, noting the popularity of Alaska among certain soldiers. “But that’s different when you're forced to go.”

The Army is also seeking new ways to boost retention. Whitney said that a study of younger service members aims to identify participants' most favored incentives for staying.

On Whitney’s initiative, the Army and other branches also meet quarterly to share best practices related to recruiting. Thanks to this work, the Army may introduce a Navy practice of having a central repository of guidance counselor advice, thus allowing guidance counselors at a soldiers’ new stations to see previous advice given to the soldier.

Schafer, meanwhile, has been pushing for even more flexibility for soldiers’ careers. “I worry that the incredibly siloed system that we have right now is outdated,” she said. “We need to move more towards a jungle gym type of a system where people can move around depending on life circumstances.”

Without retaining soldiers, she added, the Army is “just a tin can.”

[James1978]

Female Army enlistments down after Vanessa Guillen’s death, data shows
By Hope Hodge Seck
June 13, 2023

The 2020 disappearance and murder of a young Army specialist that prompted service-wide reckoning and reform may still be affecting efforts to recruit female soldiers, a revealing new slide presentation indicates.

A six-page Army PowerPoint presentation created for the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services shows a marked drop in the Army’s female enlistments for every year since fiscal 2019. The presentation does not mention 20-year-old Spc. Vanessa Guillen, who disappeared from Fort Cavazos (then Fort Hood) in Texas in April 2020, and whose remains were only discovered months later after calls for an intensified search. It does, however, point to another jarring statistic: a dramatic spike in the percentage of young prospective female recruits citing fears of sexual harassment or assault as reasons not to join the Army.

What’s more, the presentation states that the Army failed to allay women’s fears even as those concerns hindered recruiting efforts.

“The biggest factor is the perception among the target market and US Army’s issues with Sexual Harassment, Sexual Assault and discrimination,” the presentation, delivered by Command Sgt. Maj. Scott A. Wolfe, top enlisted leader of the Army’s 1st Recruiting Brigade, states. “We never tried to counter the narrative.”

Wolfe’s presentation, delivered to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services in March, offers a rare specific look at Army efforts to attract women amid broader, military-wide struggles to recruit within a young generation less predisposed to service than its predecessors. According to the presentation, the Army got 15,907 female enlistment contracts in 2020, down from 19,137 in 2019. Contracts fell to 13,320 in 2021, and tumbled again, to 10,751 in 2022. In terms of female representation in enlistments, the slides show female enlistments made up 20.8% of the total in 2019, falling to 20.5% in 2020, and dropping again to 18.6% in 2021. Female representation in enlistments increased to 19.3% in 2022, but has yet to fully recover.

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which kept recruiters out of high schools and restricted opportunities to meet prospective recruits face-to-face, was a factor in the drop in enlistment contracts, according to the presentation. But negative perceptions, it concludes, were a greater factor.

“Female Prospects view the Army as an inferior employer — neither aligned with their aspirations nor providing desired outcomes,” the presentation states, with jarring candor.

U.S. Army Recruiting Command declined to make Wolfe available for an interview, but did provide written responses to questions about the presentation and its findings. An Army spokeswoman, Madison Bonzo, said the service did not explicitly link the downward enlistment trend with the widespread furor and outrage over Guillen’s death.

“A decrease in enlistment for this specific reason would be difficult to determine,” she said, “however the Army is working to counter several misperceptions the public has about military service through awareness about the opportunities it provides and the programs we currently offer to combat sexual assault in the Army.”

Demographic-specific recruiting data included in the presentation does show more nuance, and some positive trends. While recruitment of white women fell to a five-year low in 2022, making up 6% of enlistments, down from 7.9% in 2020, representation of women from other racial backgrounds increased even as overall enlistments fell.

The number of Hispanic women who signed enlistment contracts dropped from 4,500 in 2019 to 2,923 in 2022, but representation in the population increased from 4.9% to a five-year high of 5.2% in the same timeframe, the presentation shows. African American female enlistees dropped from 6,085 in 2019 to 3,550, but representation remained relatively strong, dipping from 6.6% in 2019 to 5.7% in 2021, but climbing back to 5.7% last year.

Female production — or the annual number of enlistment contracts — is down 31% overall since the pandemic, according to the presentation, but overall production is down 29.2% as all Army elements contend with historic recruiting difficulties. Bonzo pointed to another statistic, the 13% of female enlistees in 2022 who opted for combat arms jobs once off-limits to women, as another positive sign.

“Overall female representation has not dropped, active component female representation has increased each year since 2011,” she said. “For example, in 2016, women became eligible for all jobs within the Army’s combat arms branch, since then, the Army has increased overall representation of females in those roles to approximately 5% as of FEB 2023.”

But as the stark language of Wolfe’s presentation makes clear, the misgivings of women ages 16 to 28 about Army service, especially if not effectively addressed in outreach and communication, may be a harbinger of greater recruiting struggles to come.

In that age group, the presented data shows, 64% of respondents believe they would be sexually harassed, and 61% believe they’d be sexually assaulted, if they joined the Army. Among respondents from Gen Z, those born after 1997, almost half said that they think their lives would be worse off if they joined the Army, and 43% said they believe they’d experience some form of discrimination.

Bonzo acknowledged the service sees challenges in reaching Gen Z, and said the Army’s recruitment machine is working to push out social media content highlighting female soldiers in traditionally male-dominated roles, as well as “in leadership positions, fulfilling their passions, balancing work and family and other success stories.”

“Army Marketing research tells us that Gen Z does not know their Army,” she said. “Research also tells us that youth seek out paths filled with possibilities of purpose, passion, community, and connection; however, they don’t see the Army as an organization that can set them on those paths. Army marketing campaigns are designed to close these gaps.”

Bonzo pointed to new and upcoming Army initiatives that aim to communicate positive aspects of Army service and highlight opportunities for women to advance and thrive. The Army’s Enterprise Marketing Office, she said, is partnering with media company IGN to produce a mini-documentary series called “Women Warriors,” focused on telling the stories of real service members who pursue their passions while serving in the Army.

“A decrease in enlistment for this specific reason would be difficult to determine,” she said, “however the Army is working to counter several misperceptions the public has about military service through awareness about the opportunities it provides and the programs we currently offer to combat sexual assault in the Army.”

Demographic-specific recruiting data included in the presentation does show more nuance, and some positive trends. While recruitment of white women fell to a five-year low in 2022, making up 6% of enlistments, down from 7.9% in 2020, representation of women from other racial backgrounds increased even as overall enlistments fell.

The number of Hispanic women who signed enlistment contracts dropped from 4,500 in 2019 to 2,923 in 2022, but representation in the population increased from 4.9% to a five-year high of 5.2% in the same timeframe, the presentation shows. African American female enlistees dropped from 6,085 in 2019 to 3,550, but representation remained relatively strong, dipping from 6.6% in 2019 to 5.7% in 2021, but climbing back to 5.7% last year.

Female production — or the annual number of enlistment contracts — is down 31% overall since the pandemic, according to the presentation, but overall production is down 29.2% as all Army elements contend with historic recruiting difficulties. Bonzo pointed to another statistic, the 13% of female enlistees in 2022 who opted for combat arms jobs once off-limits to women, as another positive sign.

“Overall female representation has not dropped, active component female representation has increased each year since 2011,” she said. “For example, in 2016, women became eligible for all jobs within the Army’s combat arms branch, since then, the Army has increased overall representation of females in those roles to approximately 5% as of FEB 2023.”

But as the stark language of Wolfe’s presentation makes clear, the misgivings of women ages 16 to 28 about Army service, especially if not effectively addressed in outreach and communication, may be a harbinger of greater recruiting struggles to come.

In that age group, the presented data shows, 64% of respondents believe they would be sexually harassed, and 61% believe they’d be sexually assaulted, if they joined the Army. Among respondents from Gen Z, those born after 1997, almost half said that they think their lives would be worse off if they joined the Army, and 43% said they believe they’d experience some form of discrimination.

Bonzo acknowledged the service sees challenges in reaching Gen Z, and said the Army’s recruitment machine is working to push out social media content highlighting female soldiers in traditionally male-dominated roles, as well as “in leadership positions, fulfilling their passions, balancing work and family and other success stories.”

“Army Marketing research tells us that Gen Z does not know their Army,” she said. “Research also tells us that youth seek out paths filled with possibilities of purpose, passion, community, and connection; however, they don’t see the Army as an organization that can set them on those paths. Army marketing campaigns are designed to close these gaps.”

Bonzo pointed to new and upcoming Army initiatives that aim to communicate positive aspects of Army service and highlight opportunities for women to advance and thrive. The Army’s Enterprise Marketing Office, she said, is partnering with media company IGN to produce a mini-documentary series called “Women Warriors,” focused on telling the stories of real service members who pursue their passions while serving in the Army.[/quote\

[James1978]

Pentagon’s Secret Service Trawls Social Media for Mean Tweets About Generals
A document shows the Protective Services Battalion uses sophisticated surveillance tools that can pinpoint anyone’s location.

Daniel Boguslaw, Sam Biddle, Ken Klippenstein
June 17 2023

When the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley enters into his scheduled retirement later this year, one of the perks will include a personal security detail to protect him from threats — including “embarrassment.”

The U.S. Army Protective Services Battalion, the Pentagon’s little-known Secret Service equivalent, is tasked with safeguarding top military brass. The unit protects current as well as former high-ranking military officers from “assassination, kidnapping, injury or embarrassment,” according to Army records.

Protective Services’s mandate has expanded to include monitoring social media for “direct, indirect, and veiled” threats and identifying “negative sentiment” regarding its wards, according to an Army procurement document dated September 1, 2022, and reviewed by The Intercept. The expansion of the Protective Services Battalion’s purview has not been previously reported.

The country’s national security machinery has become increasingly focused on social media — particularly as it relates to disinformation. Various national security agencies have spent recent years standing up offices all over the federal government to counter the purported threat.

“There may be legally valid reasons to intrude on someone’s privacy by searching for, collecting, and analyzing publicly available information, particularly when it pertains to serious crimes and terrorist threats,” Ilia Siatitsa, program director at Privacy International, told The Intercept. “However, expressing ‘positive or negative sentiment towards a senior high-risk individual’ cannot be deemed sufficient grounds for government agencies to conduct surveillance operations, even going as far as ‘pinpointing exact locations’ of individuals. The ability to express opinions, criticize, make assumptions, or form value judgments — especially regarding public officials — is a quintessential part of democratic society.”

Protective details have in the past generated controversy over questions about their cost and necessity. During the Trump administration, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s around-the-clock security detail racked up over $24 million in costs. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt ran up over $3.5 million in bills for his protective detail — costs that were determined unjustified by the EPA’s inspector general. The watchdog also found that the EPA had not bothered to “assess the potential dangers posed by any of these threats” to Pruitt.

Frances Seybold, a spokesperson for the Army Criminal Investigation Division, pointed The Intercept to a webpage about the office, which has been renamed the Executive Protection and Special Investigations Field Office. Seybold did not respond to substantive questions about social media monitoring by the protective unit.

The procurement document — published in redacted form on an online clearinghouse for government contracts but reviewed without redactions by The Intercept — begins by describing the Army’s need to “mitigate online threats” as well as identify “positive or negative sentiment” about senior Pentagon officials.

“This is an ongoing PSIFO/PIB” — Protective Services Field Office/Protective Intelligence Branch — “requirement to provide global protective services for senior Department of Defense (DoD) officials, adequate security in order to mitigate online threats (direct, indirect, and veiled), the identification of fraudulent accounts and positive or negative sentiment relating specifically to our senior high-risk personnel,” the document says.

The document goes on to describe the software it would use to acquire “a reliable social media threat mitigation service.” The document says, “The PSIFO/PIB needs an Open-Source Web based tool-kit with advanced capabilities to collect publicly available information.” The toolkit would “provide the anonymity and security needed to conduct publicly accessible information research through misattribution by curating user agent strings and using various egress points globally to mask their identity.”

The Army planned to use these tools not just to detect online “threats,” but also pinpoint their exact location by combining various surveillance techniques and data sources.

The document cites access to Twitter’s “firehose,” which would grant the Army the ability to search public tweets and Twitter users without restriction, as well as analysis of 4Chan, Reddit, YouTube, and Vkontakte, a Facebook knockoff popular in Russia. Internet chat platforms like Discord and Telegram will also be scoured for the purpose of “identifying counterterrorism and counter-extremism and radicalization,” though it’s unclear what exactly those terms mean here.

The Army’s new toolkit goes far beyond social media surveillance of the type offered by private contractors like Dataminr, which helps police and military agencies detect perceived threats by scraping social media timelines and chatrooms for various keywords. Instead, Army Protective Services Battalion investigators would seemingly combine social media data with a broad variety of public and nonpublic information, all accessible through a “universal search selector.”

These sources of information include “signal-rich discussions from illicit threat-actor communities and access to around-the-clock conversations within threat-actor channels,” public research, CCTV feeds, radio stations, news outlets, personal records, hacked information, webcams, and — perhaps most invasive — cellular location data.

The document mentions the use of “geo-fenced” data as well, a controversial practice wherein an investigator draws a shape on a digital map to focus their surveillance of a specific area. While app-based smartphone tracking is a potent surveillance technique, it remains unclear how exactly this data might actually be used to unmask threatening social media posts, or what relevance other data categories like radio stations or academic research could possibly have.

The Army procurement document shows it wasn’t just looking for surveillance software, but also tools to disguise the Army’s internet presence as it monitors the web. The contract says the Army would use “misattribution”: deceiving others about who is actually behind the keyboard. The document says the Army would accomplish this through falsifying web browser information and by relaying Army internet traffic through servers located in foreign cities, obscuring its stateside origin.

According to the document, “SEWP Solutions, LLC is the only vendor that allows USACID the ability to tunnel into specific countries/cities like Moscow, Russia or Beijing, China and come out on a host nation internet domain.”

The data used by the toolkit all falls under the rubric of “PAI,” or publicly available information, a misnomer that often describes not only what is freely available to the public, but also commercially purchased private information bought and sold by a wide constellation of shadowy surveillance firms and data brokers. Location data gleaned from smartphone apps and resold by the unregulated mobile ad industry provides nearly anyone — including the Army, it appears — with an effortless, unaccountable means of tracking the phone-owning public’s movements with pinpoint accuracy, both in the U.S. and abroad.

A recently declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence outlines the dramatic and invasive surveillance efforts conducted by the U.S. government through the purchase of data collected in the private sector. Through contracts with private entities, the government has skirted laws enshrining due process, allowing federal agencies to collect cellular data on millions of Americans without warrants or judicial oversight.

While the procurement document doesn’t name a specific product, it does show that the contract was awarded to SEWP Solutions, LLC. SEWP is a federal software vendor that has repeatedly sold the Department of Defense a suite of surveillance tools that closely matches what’s described in the Army project. This suite, marketed under the oddly named Berber Hunter Tool Kit, is a collection of surveillance tools by different firms bundled together by ECS Federal, a major federal software vendor. ECS and three other federal contractors jointly own SEWP, which resells Berber Hunter.

ECS website all feature prominently in the Army contracting document. It is unclear if Argos is a rebrand of the Berber Hunter suite, or a new offering. (Neither ECS nor SEWP responded to a request for comment.)

Job listings and contracting documents provide a rough sketch of what’s included in Berber Hunter. According to one job post, the suite includes software made by Babel Street, a controversial broker of personal information and location data, along with so-called open-source intelligence tools sold by Echosec and Zignal Labs. Last year, Echosec was purchased by Flashpoint Intel, an intelligence contractor that reportedly boasted of work to thwart protests and infiltrate private chat rooms.

A 2022 FBI procurement memo obtained by the researcher Jack Poulson and reviewed by The Intercept mentions the bureau’s use of Flashpoint tools, with descriptions that resemble what the Army says in the procurement document about the monitoring of “extremist” chat rooms.

“In relation to extremist forums, Flashpoint has maintained misattributable personas for years on these platforms,” the FBI memo says. “Through these personas, Flashpoint has captured and scraped the contents of these forums.” The memo noted that the FBI “does not want to advertise they are seeking this type of data collection.”

According to the Protective Services Battalion document, the Army also does not want to advertise its interest in broad data collection. The redacted copy of the contract document, while public, is marked as CUI, for “Controlled Unclassified Information,” and FEDCON, meant for federal employees and contractors only.

“Left unregulated, open-source intelligence could lead to the kind of abuses observed in other forms of covert surveillance operations,” said Siatitsa, of Privacy International. “The systematic collection, storage, and analysis of information posted online by law enforcement and governmental agencies constitutes a serious interference with the right to respect for private life.”

[James1978]

Lawmakers demand Army justify pursuit of new attack recon helicopter
By Jen Judson
June 14, 2023

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers would curb the U.S. Army secretary’s travel until the service shows a thorough analysis of alternatives to pursuing a Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, according to a draft of the fiscal 2024 policy bill released this week by the House Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces.

No more than 70% of the Office of the Secretary of the Army’s travel budget can be obligated or spent until Secretary Christine Wormuth submits that analysis for the FARA program to congressional defense committees, the mark of the bill laid out.

The Army completed a “very robust” analysis of alternatives in 2019 for its Future Long Range Assault Aircraft program, subcommittee Chairman Rob Wittman, R-Va., told Defense News in a June 14 interview. “So our question was why not the same for FARA?”

The Army chose Textron’s Bell to build the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft in December 2022.

As for the FARA program, the Army released a request for proposals in the summer of 2021 limited to two preselected teams — Lockheed Martin and Bell — for a competitive fly-off. Each team has essentially finished building prototypes and are awaiting the delayed Improved Turbine Engine Program engine in order to get off the ground for the fly-off phase of the competition. Flights are delayed by at least year. The current plan is to fly by the fourth quarter of FY24.

“Apparently they started out but never completed [the analysis of alternatives for FARA] and then came to a decision, and here’s where we’re going to go with the request for proposals on FARA,” Wittman said. “What we’re saying is that with all the things going on today with all the different service branches and looking at these platforms and looking at how do we have capability and capacity at the same time, they should do a very rigorous look at alternatives.”

There are other schools of thought on future attack and reconnaissance capabilities, Wittman said, pointing to the Marine Corps’ vision for semiautonomous and autonomous aircraft to reduce risk and “have a bigger footprint in that realm.”

Doug Bush, the Army’s acquisition chief, told Wittman during a hearing in April that the service is conducting an analysis of alternatives for the FARA program, noting the process was slowing the program in addition to the ITEP engine struggles.

Wittman said during the hearing that he is alarmed the Army is just now conducting an analysis of alternatives AOA for FARA — having already spent $2 billion on the program — and pressed Bush for what might happen if the review showed a better alternative to what is in development now.

Bush explained the analysis kicked off now because the Army had not decided on an acquisition pathway earlier in the program. The Army debated between whether it could enter the program at the engineering and manufacturing development stage, or if it should take a more traditional approach and go through a technology development phase.

“We decided the more responsible approach would be to go to a traditional Milestone B, which requires the AOA,” Bush said. “I think I’m confident though that the AOA, the way it’s structured, is fair. It’s very thorough, examining many alternatives. I think that’s good.”

“We’ll know more later this year,” he added. “I think we will be in a good place to know exactly where things are going to land in terms of the program schedule.”

Because of delays within the program, Bush said during the hearing, FARA’s technology maturation phase won’t begin until the first quarter of FY26.

The Army is continuing to develop systems for FARA, despite delays, that go beyond just the airframe, Maj. Gen. Wally Rugen, who is in charge of the service’s vertical lift modernization, told Defense News in April.

While the Army waits for the engine, it is developing the weapons systems and a critical modular, open-system architecture for the aircraft, Rugen said. “This is our effort to claw back schedule and claw back scope.”

[James1978]

Our people are our greatest asset . . .

Also, anyone else notice how Fort Cavazos (ex-Fort Hood) always pops up in these screwed up stories about the Army?

Army auditors scrutinize food allowance deductions for field training
By Georgina DiNardo and Davis Winkie - Army Times
July 3, 2023

The Army’s internal auditors will review whether officials at five installations correctly docked meal allowances from soldiers during field training events this year, according to an internal announcement reviewed by Army Times.

At stake is roughly $15 per field day for a typical enlisted soldier, and troops interviewed by Army Times were furious that the service is “counting pennies,” as one characterized the audits.

The audits, conducted by the Army Audit Agency, will check basic allowance for subsistence — or BAS — deductions from May and June at Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Fort Cavazos, Texas; Fort Drum, New York; Fort Carson, Colorado; and Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington.

BAS, according to the Defense Finance and Accounting Service and Army regulations, is a monthly payment between $311 and $905 based on rank and availability of cooking facilities, intended to “partially offset” the costs of service members’ meals. Although virtually all troops beyond those in initial training receive BAS, many barracks-dwelling members must pay equivalent mandatory meal card charges.

Under the same regulations, though, units must deduct soldiers’ BAS on a day-for-day basis when they attend field exercises and eat “Government-provided” meals. The deductions add up, and can tear a hole in a soldier’s budget amid widespread food insecurity in the ranks.

Bryce Dubee, a spokesperson for the Army, said the audits are a “follow-up...to previous audits conducted on meal collection for field training” that indicated significant “non-compliance” with the deduction policy.

Although Dubee said the Army’s new HR platform, the Integrated Personnel and Pay System-Army, did not inspire the audit, the platform was highlighted in the internal announcement. The new program changed long-standing processes for BAS deductions.

According to the regulation governing Army audits, such efforts identify areas where improvements can be made, make recommendations to solve problems, and identify “potential monetary benefits” in cases of financial loss. The internal auditors often review complex or new pay-related programs. Last year, the agency found an experimental recruiting performance bonus program may have overpaid recruiters by nearly $500,000.

Before the new HR platform debuted, the deductions would occur after lower-level commanders submitted field exercise rosters to finance offices. According to an internal control checklist, division-level units are typically responsible for ensuring their units impose BAS collections in line with DoD directives and Army policy.

On social media forums devoted to the Army, soldiers discussed the pending audits and openly wondered if they’d see missed deductions retroactively applied as debt on their paystubs. In an email to Army Times, Dubee said the audits are focused on “process and compliance” rather than clawing back money from soldiers.

One former infantry NCO who spoke with Army Times, requesting anonymity because he isn’t authorized to speak to media, suggested responsibility for any mistakes should fall on administrative personnel rather than individual soldiers.

But the NCO, now a cyber warfare soldier, also questioned the practice of deducting the meal allowance during field training altogether.

Army regulations governing the allowance explicitly state BAS “is not intended to offset the costs of meals for family members.” But many military families try — and fail — to qualify for food assistance programs, and even the Pentagon’s new “basic needs allowance” for hungry families is not working as intended.

“If you’re an E4 and married, that’s an extra [$450] a month,” the cyber NCO said. “You want to tell the guy, ‘Hey, I know you’re in the field away from your family, and we fed you MREs, but we’re gonna completely wreck your budget this month and you just have to suffer.’”

Another soldier, an NCO stationed in Georgia, acknowledged the allowance is technically only intended for the soldier, but argued that “BAS is a vital part of [most service members’] monthly budget, especially with the current high inflation rates.”

In a text message to Army Times, he argued the service “should not be doing BAS deductions for field time…rations should be included in the training budget.”

Currently, it’s not clear whether the audits will expand to other installations should this round uncover widespread deduction failures. Dubee said the auditors “will make this determination.”

[James1978]

Army Aims to Fix Storage Program that Sent Defective Humvees to Ukraine

By Sam Skove
June 21, 2023

The Army is re-evaluating how it stores equipment abroad after the Defense Department’s inspector general found that an Army unit and a contractor sent Humvees with rotted tires to Ukraine.

Army senior leaders will “review all aspects of this instance and apply the necessary improvements” to the Army Prepositioned Stocks program, said service spokesperson Jason Waggoner. “The Army is looking at all recommendations to make necessary changes to the APS program.”

The service keeps large stores of equipment abroad at seven sites, which allows soldiers to quickly deploy to those locations without first having to ship bulky items like tanks, self-propelled artillery, or trucks.

Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, the Army ordered the 401st Army Field Support Battalion in Kuwait to send equipment to Ukraine, including all six of its M777 howitzers and all 29 of its M1167 Humvees.

But inspections revealed that the M777s had problems with their firing mechanisms, some of which could have killed their own gun crews. Meanwhile, all but one of the Humvees had rotted tires, which were discovered after one vehicle’s tire and its spare shredded as the Army attempted to hand them off to Ukraine.

On May 25, the Defense Department inspector general released a report that blamed the Army and its contractor for not performing certain maintenance checks.

In their response to the report, Army Materiel Command officials accepted some of its recommendations, but also noted that Congress had provided less money for maintenance than the Army requested. They also disagreed that the contractor was obligated to maintain the equipment at the level cited by the inspector general.

Army regulations do appear to allow some wiggle room, as they distinguish between the conditions under which an item is stored and the conditions under which it is issued, said Elvira Loredo, an associate program director at the RAND Corporation,

“The IG report raises good points and should force a discussion about APS,” Loredo said.

“However, I don’t think the topic of the discussion should be the contractor. It should be how the Army and the Department of Defense set requirements and standards for APS management, how it reports the readiness of the equipment, and how it funds that readiness.”

The inspector general cited the same unit and contractor, Amentum Services, for similar issues in 2018.

The Army also experienced some problems when it used prepositioned stocks in Europe to help soldiers deploy to Europe at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

According to a Feb. 27 inspector general report, contractors failed to adequately maintain some equipment, leading to more than ten percent of equipment being less than fully ready to use. Some of these problems were due to a lack of necessary maintenance facilities.

The overall impression was better, though, with the Army and the inspector general noting the speed at which the equipment was issued.

[James1978]

Green Berets Have Struggled for Years with Recruiting, Internal Data Shows

8 Jun 2023
Military.com | By Steve Beynon

Last year, the Army failed to hit its recruiting goal for the first time in decades. But the service's Special Forces has been struggling to bring in new talent since before the pandemic, recruiting data shows.

As Green Beret recruiting has faltered for years, the Army has also been chipping away at the size of its elite units.

The service has come up hundreds of Special Forces soldiers short of its goals each year since at least 2018, with one exception, based on the internal data reviewed by Military.com. Meanwhile, quality recruits are becoming increasingly scarce with fewer Green Beret applicants passing the service's grueling selection course each year.

"We have to do a better job at telling our story," Lt. Gen. Jon Braga, head of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, told Military.com in a statement.

Between 2018 and 2020, the service recruited an average of 1,011 new Special Forces soldiers, missing its goal of 1,540 each year. That data is strictly contract signups, not the total number of soldiers who make it all the way through Green Beret training. Those who don't make it sometimes get second chances or are put into the regular Army infantry.

In 2021, the Army scaled back its recruiting goals, seeking to bring in 1,250 new Green Berets. It exceeded its goals that year with 1,358 new Special Forces contracts, but dropped again with 779 recruits in 2022.

So far this year, 527 new applicants have signed on to try for the Green Berets.

"I feel like I can go into any high school in America and say -- whether you're in the robotics club, the STEM club, or you're a middle linebacker on the football team, if you love foreign language and culture, you build sets for the drama club, or you just want to make a difference in the world -- we've got a place for you," Braga said. "You're going to be welcomed, you'll be part of a diverse team, and you're going to make a difference."

Special Forces, or Green Berets, are the military's go-to force for unconventional and guerrilla warfare. They serve as force-multipliers on the battlefield, with their main mission being training ragtag militias.

The elite units set the stage for the invasion of Afghanistan, building up militia allies to topple the Taliban government in 2001. It was the first time Americans used horses in a combat environment since World War II.

The recruiting data is the first clear indication that the service may be slowly reducing the footprint of special operations. Military.com reported in May that the size of the Army's special operations could shrink by about 10% this decade, but those cuts were generally attributed to support personnel, not Green Berets.

A smaller Special Forces footprint in the Army would come after an end to two decades of the Global War on Terror. The diffuse global conflict, which relied on swift nighttime raids and building relationships with indigenous forces, put the Green Berets and other commando units front and center.

But that era may now be coming to an end.

"In GWOT, there was a real preference for special operations," Katherine Kuzminski, a military policy expert at Center for a New American Security, told Militarry.com. "This is part of a broader healthy realignment on the Army's part."

The service is spending this decade shifting its training and doctrine toward conventional warfare, a move that is expected to invest more into large formations of conventional troops, cyber warfare and long-range missiles.

Meanwhile, a Military.com review of the Army online found a minimal presence of Special Forces, outside of relatively active Instagram accounts for units including 3rd, 5th and 19th Special Forces Groups.

The service's new "Be All You Can Be" recruiting campaign has no meaningful reference to its elite units. There is one high-profile ad for the Green Berets the Army has shared on some of its official websites and social media, though the video is housed on an unverified YouTube channel that isn't owned by the service.

Meanwhile, the 75th Ranger Regiment, the Army's special operations infantry unit, has an active YouTube presence with high-quality videos posted regularly, most of which get a lot of views.

Recent Army recruiting ads have placed less of an emphasis on combat arms, as an internal Defense Department survey found that Gen Z thinks service automatically puts their life at risk, while those combat jobs make up only a fraction of roles in the military. Conversely, peacetime could dampen recruiting prospects among would-be applicants interested in high-octane jobs such as Special Forces.

"Some people join because they are itching for a fight, and there isn't a fight," Kuzminski said. "Some who have a propensity toward that might be more inclined toward special operations. The problem is we need to have them, even in peace."

The quality of Green Beret applicants is also on the decline. Applicants go through a series of schools and qualifications to earn their long tab, a process that can take up to two years.

Amid a low rate of soldiers making it through the initial selection process and overall recruiting woes, the Army considered shortening the Special Forces training pipeline by about half to get new operators in to fill units faster, according to an internal 2018 briefing obtained by Military.com. It is unclear whether the service is moving forward with that idea.

Before candidates can even begin training, they go through a three-week course known as Special Forces Assessment and Selection, which is effectively an interview process for Green Berets to select who will have a chance at joining their ranks.

It's a grueling gantlet of physical tasks, painful ruck marches and complicated teamwork exercises, all while under severe sleep deprivation. Even if a candidate makes it, they can still not be selected to continue into training. Roughly 13% get another chance, according to the internal briefing reviewed by Military.com. Others are kicked back to the regular Army.

That pass rate was between 60% and 80% in the early 2010s, but has plummeted to around 45% and 60% in recent years. It's unclear what led to that lower pass rate, though failing land navigation accounts for roughly 70% of all failures.

Only about 5% of candidates are medically dropped due to injuries, though it's relatively common for candidates at special operations selection courses, such as the Navy SEAL Basic Underwater Demolition course, or BUD/S, to hide or downplay injuries.

Soldiers with previous experience in the National Guard have the highest Special Forces selection rate at about 60%, compared to their active-duty counterparts with a 53% selection rate. Some of that could be attributed to Guardsmen seeking to transfer to Special Forces having opportunities to train with those units before going to the selection course.

Green Berets, through the 19th and 20th Special Forces Groups, are among the only special operations elements that troops can do part time in the National Guard. However, those commitments are significantly greater than the typical rank-and-file Guardsman responsibilities.

[James1978]

Exclusive: Army secretary talks force structure cuts, SOF ‘reform’

By Davis Winkie
June 28, 2023

The Army is preparing to ax some units and restructure others, the service’s top civilian told Army Times in an exclusive phone interview Friday, but it’s still not clear when and how the changes will play out.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth also attributed “some” of the moves to “the recruiting challenges that we’ve been experiencing…if we don’t turn our recruiting situation around, we will likely have to contemplate additional force structure changes, because we can’t have unready forces; we can’t have hollow formations.”

Wormuth detailed a four-pronged effort to identify and eliminate excess units — and restructure others to remove unnecessary billets — that she said will allow the force to stand up purpose-built units for short-range air defense, indirect fires protection and multidomain operations. “We are transforming...to an Army that is focused on multidomain operations against a near-peer competitor, and that requires us to bring in new capabilities [and] new force structure,” she argued.

The cuts will come following an analysis of force needs at the soldier level, based on unit purpose; at the unit level, based on deployment rates; restructuring of Army special operations; and reducing or eliminating “close-combat forces” that were purpose-built for the War on Terror.

Military analyst Thomas Spoehr, a retired Army lieutenant general who heads the conservative Heritage Foundation’s defense policy center, agreed with Wormuth’s assessment of the force’s needs. But Spoehr, whose comments came via email, criticized some elements of the service’s approach and argued that Congress should further scrutinize whether the Army has enough people to man its 31 brigade combat teams today.

“We don’t know yet what the Army will have to cut, but it cannot sustain the force structure it has, the 31 brigade combat teams, at an acceptable level of readiness at an end strength of 452,000,” Spoehr said. Before recruiting collapsed, the service wanted 485,000 soldiers to support the same number of brigades.

The secretary, however, said that changes to manning guidance — headquarters-issued guidelines that prescribe manning percentages across the force by variables like unit or career field — can help ensure critical units, such as those on the Immediate Response Force, “remain highly ready.” She likened manning guidance to “the bridge from where we are today, with a considerable amount of overstructure, to where we’re trying to go.”

Spoehr described Wormuth’s intended use of manning guidance as “completely understandable, and the Army has no choice.”

But the Heritage Foundation analyst argued the situation is dire if this is what’s required to keep the service’s on-call units ready.

“[Manning guidance] represents only a band-aid on a sucking chest wound,” Spoehr said. “It lowers expectations but does nothing to solve the fundamental readiness problems.”

How will the Army decide what to cut?
The service’s efforts to create space for the new units requires significant reduction of what Wormuth termed “overstructure,” or units and positions that don’t align with the Army’s projected mission, she said.

One way to find it, she said, is the ongoing “people night court” process that she described to Congress in May. Each of the service’s career fields were asked to “lay out where their people are in which formations and provide an assessment — do we really need every single one of those people at every echelon?” One example from her May testimony to a Senate committee focused on cooks.

“Do we need to have 60 cooks [in a unit]?” Wormuth told lawmakers. “Or can we use 40 cooks?”

The secretary also told Army Times the service developed a “unit priority list” from an analysis of historical deployment data. Units that hadn’t deployed recently — or perhaps at all — were evaluated as potential candidates for reductions.

“That became another place where we could make some reductions without necessarily having to take down any flags,” she explained.

Spoehr of the Heritage Foundation decried the unit priority list as “a gamble” by which the Army is “hollowing out units in the hope they won’t actually have to be deployed.”

But some of the service’s most heavily utilized units, those in the special operations community, face cuts amid a broader “reform” process that Wormuth said the Army will approach “in a very careful way, obviously, given…[their] highly specialized nature.”

The secretary noted that the Army’s special operations community has more than doubled in size since the Sept. 11 attacks. “We’re looking at their functions…that can be provided by conventional Army forces,” she said.

Wormuth identified “enablers,” or non-special operations qualified support personnel, as a target for cuts, arguing that “general purpose forces can provide that support.”

But she offered little detail about the fourth area in which the service plans to draw down: “close-combat forces,” including those “parts of our formations that were purpose-designed for those kinds of fights [such as counterinsurgency and counterterrorism] where we may not need quite as much capacity going forward.”

Asked to elaborate on what types of combat units she believes are on the chopping block, Wormuth demurred and quipped, “That’s the kind of thing…that I need to talk to the [Congressional] oversight committees about,” before commenting publicly.

Spoehr warned against cutting too deep in this arena, even if falling end strength numbers mean the Army “will have no choice” but to do so.

“The Army promised not to repeat the lessons of Vietnam when after that conflict the service cut all its counter-insurgency forces and the supporting intellectual foundations, with the idea that we will ‘never do that again,’” he said.

Despite her optimism that the Army is progressing well in its force structure evolution, the service’s top civilian cautioned, though, that the recruiting crisis could derail the plan or damage the Army’s ability to stay ready in the interim.

“We really need to continue to work hard to solve our recruiting challenges,” she added, lest it force “additional” cuts.

[James1978]

Fort Knox cadets taste Army life: walkouts, expired MREs, water issues

By Jaime Moore-Carrillo
July 14, 2023

Worker protests. Suspended dining services. Expired rations. Water supply cutoffs.

Reports of conditions at this year’s ROTC Cadet Summer Training (CST) at Fort Knox, Kentucky read like dispatches from a neglected outpost or underfunded sleepaway camp, not a flagship officer training program managed by the biggest branch of the wealthiest military on earth.

Thousands of college-aged officers-in-waiting have congregated at the base for a months’ worth of classes and field drills designed to imbue the Army’s next generation of “tough, adaptable leaders” with the skills needed to “thrive in ambiguous and complex environments.”

For some aspiring lieutenants, the ambiguous and complex environment that awaited them at CST may have been more than they bargained for.

Tales of shoddy provisions and contracting woes began flooding social media platforms in late June. Army Times sifted through the rumors, contacting base officials and CST participants to separate fact from fiction.

The deluge began, as with most contemporary digital scandals, with a viral TikTok video. The eleven-second clip, which has amassed 1.5 million views since hitting the platform July 3, showed dozens of Fort Knox employees gathered in a driveway chanting, “No Pay, No Work” in rhythmic unison. Other clips uploaded to the video-sharing service capture the scene from different angles.

Cadets, cadre, and other CST support personnel — speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press — said the walkout occurred during the final week of June outside Sprocket 1, the cadre’s principal dining facility (DFAC).

The videos’ bold-texted captions claimed the protesting DFAC employees hadn’t been paid in over a month. Richard Patterson, a spokesperson for U.S. Army Cadet Command (USACC), acknowledged in a statement to Army Times that the command “terminated the food service contract that supported the Warrior Restaurants for CST on July 1st due to the contractor not fulfilling its obligations.” Patterson declined to say whether or not unpaid wages precipitated the termination, deflecting the matter to the contracting company. Army Times was unable to confirm whether the DFAC employees had gone without pay prior to the walkout.

The strike and subsequent contract debacle derailed the program’s dining operations. The cadre’s DFAC shut down until July 5, when base leadership hired a new temporary food service provider. USACC shifted Army cooks to the chow line to keep other cadet dining facilities up and running.

Base leadership relied on extra stockpiles of Meals, Ready-to-Eat to plug the gaps in the food supply. Adding to the displeasure of replacing hot meals with pre-packaged feed, trainees found that many of the distributed MREs had expired.

Patterson confirmed to Army Times that “some of the MREs at Cadet Summer Training have passed their inspect/test date stamped on the MRE cases by the manufacturer,” but stressed that the out-of-date packets had been tested before distribution and were safe to eat.

Subpar grub still slipped past inspectors. One member of the instructor cadre told Army Times that a number of cadets under their purview received moldy MREs. Several cadre personnel said they struggled to carve out time for DFAC meals (when they were available) because of demanding schedules. Limited options forced some cadets to buy food off-base with their own money.

Multiple sources told Army Times the dining situation had largely stabilized by July 7. Yet that semblance of normalcy was again disrupted the following week.

On the morning of July 10, Cadet Summer Training personnel received a message from Knox leadership ordering them to “refrain from drinking from all freshwater sources except the water point at Densberger and bulk water at LSA Baker,” two facilities on base. The warning also prohibited trainees and staff from refilling water containers at “any water points or any buildings on Fort Knox.” (Some cadre members reported never receiving official notice of water issues.)

Later that afternoon, Hardin County’s water authority diagnosed the problem as a “water main break” — a burst pipe — that sapped water pressure across the entire installation. County officials issued a boil water advisory in response, prompting base officials to set up “multiple potable water points throughout Fort Knox and the training area to ensure cadets and cadre had fresh drinking water,” according to Patterson. The county ultimately lifted the advisory Wednesday afternoon.

Few training participants — past or present — seemed surprised by the turbulence.

“USACC willfully ignores [quality of life] for Cadre and Cadets every summer,” one ROTC graduate vented in response to a comment request from Army Times. “Same BS, different year.”

The title of an anonymous blog post detailing the DFAC drama framed the issue in blunter terms: “CST cadre aren’t real people.”

[DaveAAA]

“Do we need to have 60 cooks [in a unit]?” Wormuth told lawmakers. “Or can we use 40 cooks?”

Besed on the articles about food service at the former Fort Hood and at Fort Knox, it sounds as if they not only could use 60, they don't even have close to 40.

[James1978]

Army’s basic training prep course to become permanent part of recruiting strategy
By Doug G. Ware
Stars and Stripes • September 1, 2023

WASHINGTON – A remedial course designed to prepare potential Army recruits for basic training will become a permanent part of the service’s strategy in overcoming its sagging enlistment numbers, officials said.

The Army’s Future Soldier Preparatory Course was launched at Fort Jackson, S.C., in August 2022 as an experiment to help young Americans qualify physically and academically for military service. With higher obesity rates in America and fewer young people qualified to meet the Army’s entry standards, the service hoped the course would give those who don’t qualify much-needed time and training to get in shape. Service leaders said the yearlong test has worked.

The Army said it has had a 95% graduation rate from the prep course since the program started, a figure that service leaders called “an overwhelming level of success.” The results led the service to open the course at a second base — Fort Moore, Ga. — earlier this year. Officials said further expansion is possible.

“If one wants to serve, we have a way to fight through the individual obstacles that may have prevented their service in the past,” said Brig. Gen. Jason Kelly, the commander at Fort Jackson. “Every day these young men and women show that when provided the right resources and training, they are able to perform and meet or exceed the standards expected of every soldier.”

The Army confirmed the course will transition in October from a pilot program to a permanent part of its training operation. The formal switch makes more funding available.

The success of the course comes at a time when the Army has faced substantial obstacles in recruiting. The service is aiming to sign 65,000 new recruits in fiscal 2023, which ends Sept. 30, but officials have already said they will come up a few thousand soldiers short. All branches of the military have encountered recruiting challenges, largely because fewer than 25% of Americans between the ages of 17 and 24 can meet the requirements to join the military, according to Pentagon data.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said recently that the service will bring in more soldiers in 2023 than it did in 2022, when it enlisted about 45,000 new recruits against a goal of 60,000. Wormuth said the total for 2023 will be between 50,000 and 55,000 recruits.

Since the Future Soldier Preparatory Course was launched, officials said more than 10,000 recruits have graduated and moved on to basic combat training. The course has two tracks: an academic one and another for fitness. At first, potential recruits could take only one track, but the Army changed the rules in the summer to allow candidates to take both tracks, if needed.

“Twenty-three percent of available awards in basic combat training are earned by Future Soldier Prep Course graduates,” the Army said in a statement. “And more than 15% have scored 500 or above on the Army Combat Fitness Test, where the maximum score is 600.”

The prep course is one of several efforts that the Army has introduced to boost recruiting in recent years. It’s also offering financial bonuses, official decorations and duty station flexibility for soldiers who successfully refer new recruits.

“The Army will continue to find innovative ways to invest in individuals who have the desire and passion to serve but may need help in meeting the Army’s enlistment standards, which we have not and will not lower,” said Gen. Gary Brito, who leads U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. “Every day we have new examples of someone overcoming their personal obstacles, realizing their full potential, and fulfilling their dream of serving our great Army.”

The Navy and Air Force have said they also expect to be several thousand recruits short of their 2023 goals. The Marine Corps and Space Force, however, have said they are on track to meet their smaller recruiting targets before Oct. 1. The success of the Army’s prep course inspired the Navy earlier this year to try a similar physical fitness program called the Future Sailor Preparatory Course.

[James1978]

US Army scraps Abrams tank upgrade, unveils new modernization plan
By Jen Judson
September 6, 2023

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is scrapping its current upgrade plans for the Abrams main battle tank and pursuing a more significant modernization effort to increase its mobility and survivability on the battlefield, the service announced in a statement Wednesday.

The Army will end its M1A2 System Enhancement Package version 4 program, and instead develop the M1E3 Abrams focused on challenges the tank is likely to face on the battlefield of 2040 and beyond, the service said. The service was supposed to receive the M1A2 SEPv4 version this past spring.

The SEPv4 will not go into production as planned, Army Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo told Defense News in a Sept. 6 interview at the Defense News Conference in Arlington, Virginia. “We’re essentially going to invest those resources into the [research and] development on this new upgraded Abrams,” he said. “It’s really threat-based, it’s everything that we’re seeing right now, even recently in Ukraine in terms of a native active protection system, lighter weight, more survivability, and of course reduced logistical burdens as well for the Army.”

The Abrams tank “can no longer grow its capabilities without adding weight, and we need to reduce its logistical footprint,” Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean, the Army’s program executive officer for ground combat systems, said in the statement. “The war in Ukraine has highlighted a critical need for integrated protections for soldiers, built from within instead of adding on.”

Ukraine’s military will have the chance to put the M1 Abrams to the test when it receives the tanks later this month. The country is fighting off a Russian invasion that began nearly two years ago.

The M1E3 Abrams will “include the best features” of the M1A2 SEPv4 and will be compliant with modular open-systems architecture standards, according to the statement, which will allow for faster and more efficient technology upgrades. “This will enable the Army and its commercial partners to design a more survivable, lighter tank that will be more effective on the battlefield at initial fielding and more easy to upgrade in the future.”

“We appreciate that future battlefields pose new challenges to the tank as we study recent and ongoing conflicts,” said Brig. Gen. Geoffrey Norman, director of the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Cross-Functional Team. “We must optimize the Abrams’ mobility and survivability to allow the tank to continue to close with and destroy the enemy as the apex predator on future battlefields.”

Norman, who took over the team last fall, spent seven months prior to his current job in Poland with the 1st Infantry Division. He told Defense News last year that the division worked with Poles, Lithuanians and other European partners on the eastern flank to observe happenings in Ukraine.

Weight is a major inhibitor of mobility, Norman said last fall. “We are consistently looking at ways to drive down the main battle tank’s weight to increase our operational mobility and ensure we can present multiple dilemmas to the adversary by being unpredictable in where we can go and how we can get there.”

General Dynamic Land Systems, which manufactures the Abrams tank, brought what it called AbramsX to the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in October 2022. AbramsX is a technology demonstrator with reduced weight and the same range as the current tank with 50% less fuel consumption, the American firm told Defense News ahead of the show.

The AbramsX has a hybrid power pack that enables a silent watch capability and “some silent mobility,” which means it can run certain systems on the vehicle without running loud engines.

The tank also has an embedded artificial intelligence capability that enables “lethality, survivability, mobility and manned/unmanned teaming,” GDLS said.

The Army did not detail what the new version might include, but GDLS is using AbramsX to define what is possible in terms of weight reduction, improved survivability and a more efficient logistics tail.

The Army awarded GDLS a contract in August 2017 to develop the SEPv4 version of the tank with a plan then to make a production decision in fiscal 2023, followed by fielding to the first brigade in fiscal 2025.

The keystone technology of the SEPv4 version consisted of a third-generation forward-looking infrared camera and a full-sight upgrade including improved target discrimination.

“I think the investment in subsystem technologies in the v4 will actually carry over into the upgraded ECP [Engineering Change Proposal] program for Abrams,” Camarillo said. “However, the plan is to have robust competition at the subsystem level for a lot of what the new ECP will call for, so we’re going to look for best-of-breed tech in a lot of different areas,” such as active protection systems and lighter weight materials.

For instance, the Army has kitted out the tank with Trophy active protection systems as an interim solution to increase survivability. The Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems develops the Trophy. But since the system is not integrated into the design of the vehicle, it adds significant weight, sacrificing mobility.

The Army plans to produce the M1A2 SEPv3 at a reduced rate until it can transition the M1E3 into production.

The M1E3 is expected to reach initial operational capability in the early 2030s, the Army said. “As longer-range threats increase in both lethality and survivability, the M1E3 Abrams will be able to defeat those threats,” the statement said.

[James1978]

Army Announces Plans for M1E3 Abrams Tank modernization

By U.S. Army Public Affairs
September 6, 2023

DETROIT ARSENAL, Mich. – The U.S. Army announced today the path forward for the M1E3 Abrams Main Battle Tank modernization program.

The Army will close out the M1A2 System Enhancement Package version 4 effort and develop M1E3 Abrams, which will focus on making the capability improvements needed to fight and win against future threats on the battlefield of 2040 and beyond.

“We appreciate that future battlefields pose new challenges to the tank as we study recent and ongoing conflicts” said Brig. Gen. Geoffrey Norman, director of the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Cross Functional Team. “We must optimize the Abrams’ mobility and survivability to allow the tank to continue to close with and destroy the enemy as the apex predator on future battlefields.”

“The Abrams Tank can no longer grow its capabilities without adding weight, and we need to reduce its logistical footprint," said Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean, Program Executive Officer for Ground Combat Systems. “The war in Ukraine has highlighted a critical need for integrated protections for Soldiers, built from within instead of adding on.”

The Abrams Main Battle Tank is a full-tracked, low-profile, land-combat assault weapon that enables Soldiers to dominate their adversaries through lethal firepower, unparalleled survivability and agile maneuvering. It closes with and destroys the enemy using mobility, firepower and shock effect.

Years of testing, analysis, Soldier feedback and maturing technology culminated in this strategic decision. The new approach balances costs with the Army’s needs and invests in the nation’s defense industrial base.

The development of the M1E3 Abrams will include the best features of the M1A2 SEPv4 and will comply with the latest modular open systems architecture standards, allowing quicker technology upgrades and requiring fewer resources. This will enable the Army and its commercial partners to design a more survivable, lighter tank that will be more effective on the battlefield at initial fielding, and more easy to upgrade in the future.

This modernization will enhance the efficacy and maneuverability of armored brigade combat teams in conflicts across the globe through a reduced sustainment footprint and increased operational and tactical mobility.

The Army will continue to produce the M1A2 SEPv3 at a reduced rate until production transitions to the M1E3 Abrams, and the Army will carry technologies forward into the SEPv4 Abrams modernization effort.

“The M1E3 Abrams nomenclature is a return to the Army’s standard use of its type classification and nomenclature system for our combat vehicle fleet,” said Dean. “The ‘E’ designation represents an engineering change to an existing platform that is more significant than a minor modification and serves to designate the prototype and development configuration until the vehicle is formally type classified and receives an ‘A’ designation. This is distinct from the ‘XM’ designation used for new prototype systems.”

Initial operational capability is anticipated in early the 2030s. As longer-range threats increase in both lethality and survivability, the M1E3 Abrams will be able to defeat those threats. The Abrams Main Battle Tank remains the most lethal, protected tank in the world.

[James1978]

Army Shift from Brigades Back to Divisions Raises Concerns Among Retired Generals

17 Jul 2023
Military.com | By Adrian Bonenberger

Change is afoot in the Army: Divisions are returning to prominence.

From recent reporting to rumors and offhand comments made during briefings, an image is beginning to emerge of the Army of the future. Bursting with enablers and officers, full general staffs, additional brigade and battalion headquarters with more staff, and funding, the divisional headquarters may soon replace brigade headquarters as a unit's heart.

That would mark a big change from the past 20 years. During much of the Global War on Terror, or GWOT, the action downrange in combat and at home in garrison was at the brigade combat team, or BCT, level. For the overwhelming majority of veterans in Iraq and Afghanistan, "division" was a combat patch, a notional way of organizing brigades.

"The BCT model worked really well during GWOT," according to a retired brigadier general with experience at the brigade and division level who agreed to an interview on the condition that his name not be used. "In that fight, most of the tactical challenges could be dealt with by a rifle company. The Army fights two levels down; two levels up from the company level is the brigade."

In a literal sense, divisions never left. While at garrison, the division was the origin of daily or weekly operations orders and taskings for troops. Downrange in Iraq or Afghanistan, the division coordinated the distribution of assets such as helicopters, aircraft and artillery -- but was unseen by soldiers patrolling from smaller company- or platoon-level forward operating bases, or FOBs.

But the importance of divisions waned in the beginning of GWOT. Assets were pushed down to BCTs. A thriving culture (or bureaucratic hassle, depending on one's perspective) vanished with the flourish of a pen, never to return. Until now.

The restructuring originated in the 1990s when, after the Cold War, some Army planners saw smaller conflicts and insurgencies of the type later encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan as the future of conflict (others did not). Drawing on feedback from officers and data pulled from exercises, leadership decided on a dramatic overhaul of force structure.

Between 2003 and 2004, as brigades were standardized or made "modular," assets that had existed mostly at divisions since their creation -- a signals battalion; military intelligence battalion; artillery brigade; and a brigade full of support and logistics, so-called "enabler" units --  were sent to brigades in company- or battalion-sized elements.

This gave brigades the resources they needed during GWOT to function autonomously. It also helped forge teamwork and relationships in training and garrison that translated to more effectiveness downrange in combat. The reorganization also eliminated unnecessary battalion and brigade staff positions, freeing up force structure spaces for combat soldiers, sergeants and officers.

One factor complicating the shift is that most people who experienced both models and were in a position to compare are no longer in the military. This uncertainty is helping fuel a debate now over how much power to keep at Army brigades -- or whether to move it all back to the division level.

Some worry that bringing the units back from the brigade to division level risks losing lethality at the point where it is most needed on the battlefield -- that it will be adding potentially redundant layers of bureaucracy that will slow decision-making, decrease flexibility, degrade unit flexibility and trust, and reduce interoperability.

"Our first-order principle for how to organize the Army is that we should optimize our force structure for warfighting," retired Gen. Robert "Abe" Abrams said in an interview.

Abrams commanded a pre-modularity brigade combat team in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom II and later a division with several modular BCTs underneath it in combat in Afghanistan, and feels that the Army got the BCT exactly right.

"At present, the BCTs are optimized for lethality," he said. "Take assets from the BCT commander, you're losing some of that fighting capability."

Abrams stressed that the advantages gained through training, in shared language through habitual associations, and with relationship-building collectively outweigh the benefits of keeping those assets at a higher level.

"We risk taking a step back as a force if we back away from the BCT model that's proven itself so effective at fighting together as a team," Abrams said.

Though most agree losing the BCT's combat capabilities would be a mistake, others see the move to re-emphasize divisions -- and possibly even corps -- as inevitable and necessary for planning and command.

"In a fight, it can be difficult for a brigade commander to know what's around them," retired Maj. Gen. Fred "Doug" Robinson said.

Robinson said that combined arms warfare has always been difficult to manage, and that the complexity of war is only growing with technological advances in weapons such as drones and cyber warfare.

"At the most, you've got 24 to 48 hours of space in which to plan and think in a peer-to-peer fight," he said. "There just aren't enough hours in the day. Properly staffed, divisions can help plan and make those decisions. It opens up planning for days rather than hours."

Retired Maj. Gen. William "Bill" Nash commanded a brigade during Desert Storm that was similarly organized to one of the more recent modular BCTs. He later commanded the 1st Armored Division in Germany, from which it deployed to Bosnia in 1995.

"A division is more than a major general," Nash said during an interview. "It's an ex-brigade commander, chief of staff, a dozen lieutenant colonels who've graduated from Leavenworth and probably one or more War College graduates. It's people with brigade and battalion command and staff experience, who can write sensible orders and coordinate effectively."

Nash, like Abrams, said he hopes the transition to divisions with fuller staffs keeps brigades powerful.

As a strong believer in habitual associations and the importance of units training together and knowing one another's strengths and weaknesses, Nash said the division he led in Bosnia was at its best just after it redeployed, and that the combination of real-world experience and training helped form one of the strongest units he'd ever seen.

"Having the division structure in addition to a strong brigade component is nothing but advantage," he said.

Meanwhile, the Army's recent struggles with recruiting are putting planners in a tough position.

"Restructuring the force is a zero-sum game," said Abrams. "Ideally, you'd have all the personnel and equipment you want. To do everything correctly you'd need to expand, and that would take well over half-a-million people. We're 30,000 short of the 485,000 authorized to man the force we have now."

And that means strengthening divisions could come at the expense of brigade power -- something nobody wants to see happen.

If recruiting continues to pose a challenge, the retired brigadier general who wished to remain anonymous feels that technology may make up some ground, by helping ensure the right people get to the right positions.

"We're developing our understanding of people and their personalities," he said. "With the right tools, we can maximize the use of the people we have. One way or another, though, we'll get it done."

[James1978]

A bit older, but relevant.

Raytheon Calls in Retirees to Help Restart Stinger Missile Production
By Marcus Weisgerber
June 28, 2023

Raytheon has called in retired engineers to teach its employees how to build the Stinger missiles heavily used by Ukraine’s military—using blueprints drawn up during the Carter administration.

It’s the latest example of a private company working to ramp up production of a now-in-demand weapon that the Pentagon hasn’t purchased in decades.

“Stinger's been out of production for 20 years, and all of a sudden in the first 48 hours [of the war], it's the star of the show and everybody wants more,” Wes Kremer, the president of RTX’s Raytheon division, said during an interview last week at the Paris Air Show.

The United States has sent nearly 2,000 of the heat-seeking missiles to Ukraine, which has used them to shoot down Russian aircraft. All of those missiles have come from U.S. military stockpiles. And the Biden administration said this week it will send even more Stingers to Ukraine.

When the U.S. Army placed an order for 1,700 Stingers in May 2022, the Pentagon said the missiles wouldn’t be delivered until 2026. Kremer said it will take about 30 months for Stingers to start rolling off of the production line largely because of the time it takes to set up the factory and train its employees.

“We were bringing back retired employees that are in their 70s … to teach our new employees how to actually build a Stinger,” Kremer said. “We're pulling test equipment out of warehouses and blowing the spider webs off of them.”

On top of that, the electronics used in the missile are obsolete, said RTX CEO Greg Hayes.

“We're redesigning circuit cards [and] redesigning some of the componentry,” Hayes told Defense One in a June 14 interview. “That just takes a long time.”

While engineers these days often tout 3D printing and automation as a way to speed up the manufacturing process, that’s not possible with the Stinger—because doing so would not only mean redesigning the weapon, but also undergoing a lengthy weapon certification process.

“You'd have to redesign the entire seeker in order to automate it,” Kremer said.

That means they must build the weapons the same way they were built four decades ago: including installing the missile’s nose cone by hand.