Monday, May 17, 2004
LA Times: Good Article, Bad Headline
Other bloggers are being a bit hard on the LA Times and defense reporter Esther Schrader for this article on the 101st Air Assault Division's work on recovering from a year in Iraq and getting ready for the next mission.
But reading the full article, I think Schrader got things about right, and lays out the key issues in bringing a unit back up to ARTEP and inspection standards:
1. Deployed soldiers who did not perform their MOS tasks in combat--such as tankers who rode in Humvees all year or artillerymen who manned a base entry control point--grow rusty on their soldiers' tasks and have to be retrained.
2. Officers and NCOs fall behind on their required military education classes like the Captain's Career Course and the Basic NCO Course.
3. Vehicles often need overhauls after a year of being rode hard and put up wet in Iraq. For instance, while in theater, our Army Oil Analysis Program was pretty much suspended for a year. We are going to have to play catch-up when we get our vehicles back, and depending on what the oil samples tell us, we may have to rebuild several engines (if we get the money from somewhere to do so, which is always a huge question in the Guard.)
Ditto the equipment calibration program.
Schrader's piece lays all of this out for us, and we get the sense that the 101st's experience is pretty normal for a unit just returning from theater.
The outfit's a little banged up, but all is ok, and they're nursing themselves and their equipment back up to health.
Unfortunately, the LA Times copy-editing staff took a pretty insightful bit of reporting and undercut it all with the most sensational headline they could justify: stating that a third of the Army is "unfit to fight."
Splash, out
Jason
But reading the full article, I think Schrader got things about right, and lays out the key issues in bringing a unit back up to ARTEP and inspection standards:
1. Deployed soldiers who did not perform their MOS tasks in combat--such as tankers who rode in Humvees all year or artillerymen who manned a base entry control point--grow rusty on their soldiers' tasks and have to be retrained.
2. Officers and NCOs fall behind on their required military education classes like the Captain's Career Course and the Basic NCO Course.
3. Vehicles often need overhauls after a year of being rode hard and put up wet in Iraq. For instance, while in theater, our Army Oil Analysis Program was pretty much suspended for a year. We are going to have to play catch-up when we get our vehicles back, and depending on what the oil samples tell us, we may have to rebuild several engines (if we get the money from somewhere to do so, which is always a huge question in the Guard.)
Ditto the equipment calibration program.
Schrader's piece lays all of this out for us, and we get the sense that the 101st's experience is pretty normal for a unit just returning from theater.
The outfit's a little banged up, but all is ok, and they're nursing themselves and their equipment back up to health.
Unfortunately, the LA Times copy-editing staff took a pretty insightful bit of reporting and undercut it all with the most sensational headline they could justify: stating that a third of the Army is "unfit to fight."
Splash, out
Jason
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