This topic popped up as an article in the latest Canadian Army Journal, (entitled "Time for Consideration: One Combat Arms Classification" by LtCol Shane Brennan) and I was dumbfounded as I read it.
The gist of it was that officers would all become staff officers, and the senior NCOs would take up the command positions at the platoon/troop level and possibly even higher.
"The Canadian Army has it backwards. It initially trains officers as specialists, when it really needs combat generalists. In the long run, it is not so much a competent platoon/troop commander the army desires as a competent sub-unit commander, solid second-in-command, or skilled key staff officers."
"The army should harness the expertise of senior NCOs by expanding their responsibilities in the execution of critical tasks.[...] The reason why a comissioned officer is required to call for fire, control a command post, plan and supervise obstacle construction is a throwback to older cultural class divisions. This requirement no longer fits the requirement of Canadian society. Senior NCOs want and should have more responsibility. Officers should focus on wider issues related to commanding and co-ordinating tactical operations rather than the mechanics of tactical tasks"
The driver for this conclusion appears to be the move towards combined arms operations in ever-smaller formations (at one time the smallest combined arms formation was the division, then the brigade, then the battalion sized combat team, and now company-sized combined arms formations are not unusual) and the increasing vehicle commonality across the arms. He specificially cites the new LAVIII based American Stryker Brigade Combat Team, which does not have integral tank support, and whose direct-fire capability comes from MGS commanded by infantry officers.
Reading between the lines, I think what he's actually getting as is the elimination of the Armoured corps and integrating Armoured functionality into the infantry. I note that Col Brennan is PPCLI....
The problems with this proposal are absolutely legion, and it's impossible for me to write up a sufficiently detailed and researched rebuttal off the top of my head this late at night. I've been musing about writing an actual rebuttal paper ever since I read this piece... and the one thing that has prevented me from getting started is the wisdom of going head-to-head with the current Chief of Staff of the Joint Operational Group Headquarters in a public forum. (Be it here or in the pages of CAJ)
But very quickly:
It is very true that the current trend is to drive the size of the formation where one is operating in a combined-arms mode ever smaller. I can imagine a formation that is basically a 2-car Recce patrol, an infantry platoon mounted in LAVs, a 2-vehicle direct fire element (either a tank or some sort of LAV-based big-gun vehicle - hell, even a pair of Cougars) a FOO, and maybe a section of engineers mounted in a single LAV-based engineer vehicle. Such a formation wouldn't have much staying power in the face of a similarly-equipped enemy determined to fight it out, but would make an ideal, flexible formation in an asymmetric warfare type mission.
I readily grant that our current force structure makes assembing and training such a team difficult. Our current level of cross-arms unit is the regiment, and that is tailored to the fielding of combined-arms brigades. In my case, we share an armouries with an infantry regiment, but we don't work together anywhere except at brigade-level concentrations (which are rare and brief) and so the problem of how to get the arms to work together, especially in smaller formations, when we never train that way, is a very real one.
But that being said, the solution is not to train officers as generalists and then require them to learn (as the Col suggests) arm-speciific tasks from their senior NCOs.
The biggest thing I see here is that the effect of personal leadership, especially when under fire, by small unit commanders is GREATLY undervalued. It is something that is not easily quantified (as anyone who plays tabletop or computer wargames will know) but when you read any historical accounts of actual action, effective leadership, unit morale and cohesion, and the effective direction of the local situation often trumps technical superiority, superiority of numbers, or even superior tactical position.
In short, the well-led army "fights above its weight", and effective leadership should be considered the most important force multiplier.
Note that I'm not talking about staffwork here; I'm talking about the ability of an effective leader to inspire troops to work and fight harder, to take greater risks, and to recover from initial setbacks. LEADERSHIP, vice MANAGEMENT.
And the single most powerful component of a successful leader is COMPETENCE. (with "deciciveness" a close second) It doesn't matter if you are an asshole, or ugly, or smell bad, or anything else; if the troops feel that you are competent in the job assigned to you, that you actually know what you are doing, are smart enough to apply that knowledge to an ever-changing tactical situation (ie you are "street smart" not just "book smart") that the decisions you make in the heat of the moment are well-founded and likely to lead to success (and as a bonus - and historically, NOT the prime determinant for professional soldiers - likely to keep them alive) then they will follow you.
And if you are an idiot, they won't.
Now like it or not, there is a tremendous amount of arm-level specialization when it comes to actual combat tasks, especially when you get away from the pure infantry tasks. I could probably do a reasonable job as an infantry platoon commander (although having a strong platoon warrant would be a big help) Asking me to command an artillery battery or lead a bridging operation would be a huge stetch though, and I'd be totally in the hands of the senior NCOs. Hell, we have trouble enough with Armoured officers crossing the line between Sabre and Recce - to expect a battery commander to step into my shoes and lead a full-bore troop-level Recce advance (no matter how switched on he might be) is equally a stretch - and would be patently unfair too. It is impossible to inspire confidence and lead by example when you are constantly flailing around trying to figure out just exactly what it is you are supposed to be doing.
My Recce training was the highest-intensity, most difficult thing I have ever undergone in my entire life, and I am neither young nor insulated. It had to be that intense and difficult because there was so much to learn, and the stakes for failure were so high. No generalist is going to be able to pick that up - even after the official training, there was still much more to learn in practice.
The Col's counter argument to this is that senior NCOs could do the job instead. Pull the officer out of the small unit, send him to the CP, and let the WO handle it.
This is a terrible idea... but I'm going to have to think about how to phrase this before I write anything on the subject. There are plenty of competent senior NCOs out there, and I don't want a hastily composed phrase to accidently slight any of them.
I will say this though - there is a powerful synergy between a troop-level officer and a senior NCO. Each brings different experiences and world views to the table, and the interaction of this as a team produces a stronger leadership core than would be possible with just an NCO on his own, or with an officer on his own. Different people have different strengths, and the differnent career paths between officer and NCO also build different strengths.
I have had a troop WO who was god's gift to administration and logistics, the "beans and bullets" stuff. I never once had to ever see to *any* troop admin (vehicles serviced, troops properly bombed up, kitted, fed, washed, and slept) It all "just happened" without any direction or interference from me. (This was unlike another troop WO I once had, where half my time was spent making sure we had rations, POL etc) On the tactical side... not so much. But together, my strength in tactics and his strengths in admin were mutually re-enforcing, and the troop was much better off for the partnership.
That senior NCO/officer split isn't a "class division"; it is a splitting and sharing of responsibilites in a manner that strengthens the unit as a whole.
Enough of that, I'm about to enter territory where phrasing becomes too important, and it's getting late.
DG
