It Just Makes Sense

I submitted this to the Military Times back in July, it was timed for the debut of the new OPR.  Apparently it didn’t make the cut, so I’m posting it here.  If the Times ever changes its mind, I’ll remove it from here.

Show me the mission

Officer performance reports (OPRs) have reportedly been overhauled, but it looks more like they have been stripped.  The mission has been abandoned, and a standards consolidation will test the integrity of the raters of company-grade officers.

Yes, it’s shorter, but at what cost?  The one-page OPR format was made possible through data reorganization and a disappointing elimination of unit mission descriptions and the officers’ impact on those missions.  The reorganization cost raters 33% of their space to assess their people, the additional raters gave up 20% of their space to concur, and the reviewers’ space was shrunk by 20%.  However, most of the space was purchased by combining the pre-existing 6 performance factors, along with a new fitness factor, into one line, which requires only one X to be entered.  The new form has been highly praised, but I’m not sure if it meets standards.

Years ago, OPRs had 10 performance factors, each of which required a small paragraph to explain how the officer actually met those standards.  After a while, it became obvious that while most officers were doing good work, sometimes their work had nothing to do with the mission they were supposed to be doing.  Some people argued that the wrong officers were being promoted because of a flawed OPR form.

So in 1988, “the mission” became the focus of officer performance reports.  The unit’s mission was described at the top of the form and the officer’s performance was required to have an impact on that mission.  The performance factors were reorganized into 6 and no writing was required to explain their performance, merely an X was placed in the meets, or does not meet, standards block.

But now, all we’ve done is go full circle back to the pre-1988 form and leave out the writing part which explained the officer’s performance.  It gives the appearance that the Air Force has decided that the mission doesn’t matter.  The form is praised as being based solely on performance, but it appears future promotion boards will be making decisions based solely on 6 lines of assessment given by a rater with an unknown mission.

For years, I heard it preached that, as a supervisor, one of our most important jobs was to ensure we accurately documented the performance of our people in writing.  Since Air Force officers are promoted and chosen for special duties mainly from what is written in the performance reports, OPRs are of paramount importance to their careers.  Was that just another one of those old-fashioned ideas that needed to fade away?

But there is another, more dismal change in the new form.  Since the same form is used for all officers, from Second Lieutenant through Colonel, the performance standards for field-grade officer and company-grade officer are now the same.

While the Air Force has often treated many of their field-grade officers, especially aviators, as if they were company-grade officers, it has always expected them to behave and perform as field-graders.  But now the new OPR form clearly shows that company-grade officers are to behave and perform to the same standards as the more seasoned field-grade officers do.

So, will Lieutenants and Captains suffer when evaluated against these new standards?  Probably not.  More than likely, busy supervisors will give as much adherence to holding the company-grade officers to the new performance standards as they have given to the requirement to provide performance feedback.

Will the Air Force’s mission suffer if its officers focus more on their personal performance metrics than they do on their unit’s mission accomplishment?  You can bet on it, because … it just makes sense.

Michael W. Wynne, the Sec AF, responded to “The Saga of a Bent Spear” this morning in the Washington Post.  Yesterday, an old bomber pilot circulated a copy of the article and a piece of the EXTERIOR INSPECTION checklist 1B-52H-30-1 (Apr 2000):

1.d. AGM-129 Missiles – Checked
(1) Nose Protective Guard – Checked removed
(2) Payload Marking – Checked: Check proper payload is installed for the mission
(3) Evidence of Missile Fuel Leaks – Checked

Mr. Wynne states the investigation will be completed within several days.  He also covers four issues that show the AF is not waiting for the results of the investigation:
1) Weapon inspections at all similar installations as Minot and Barksdale.
2) ACC did a stand-down to review munitions policies, regulations and procedures.
3) dialogue with the Sec Def and his inspectors
4) Mr. Wynne has visited both bases and looks at the “dedicated professionals working with our munitions.”

He finishes with declaring the USAF owes a comprehensive, detailed investigation with results that will be transparent and accurate.

I read in the AF Times that he’s called Gen Welch to help look at things, not sure if that is as a formal part of the investigation.  I wonder how an older B-52 general, former CINC SAC, COSAF would be impressed with the reorganization of the bomber force under the leadership of weapon-school grads, that being the most important qualification for leadership? Gen Welch was a doer, I had a conversation with him back in the summer of 1987 that resulted in copilots being called pilots and pilots being called aircraft commanders . . . yes that was my idea, but he made it happen.

I wonder if an objective look will be made at a system that is a political faternal-order of school graduates which has literally defused our nuclear bomber force from any resemblance of the professionalism that was once common place.  Remember when every unit had one or two idiots on the team, but they weren’t the guys in charge?

I wonder if a hard look will be made at how many “pumping-gas into your mini-van” safety briefings were made during our myriad “safety/training days.”

I wonder if a hard look will be made at what really goes on during a mission planning day or on the nearly non-existent critque days.

I wonder if job proficiency will ever become a priority for advancement in the bomber-force.

I wonder if the inspectors will perform a comprehensive psychological and intelligence review of the crop of weapon-school leaders that control the bomber force.  Then I wonder if they’ll conduct a similar test of the crew force that serves them.

I wonder if the investigation will reveal the “brains” behind the process that gutted the aircrews’ ability to follow checklists or recognize nuclear weapons in a 6 out of 12 line-up.

I wonder if the USAF will clean up the leadership disease, and in doing so will they recall the generals who allowed such as virus to infect our Air Force and hold them accountable for the fruits of their labor.

I wonder how frustrated Michael Wynne must be as he tries to deal with the excrement he inherited.

I wonder if there was anything else I could have done while I was on active duty to have prevented this mess – a mess we all saw coming.

I wonder if the true test of leadership really is “knowing when to follow” or is it “knowing when to fall on your sword.”  The personal results is about the same in each case, but the institutional results might have been better.  I wonder if … it just makes sense.

I submitted this column to the Military Times back in early August.  Apparently it didn’t make the cut, so I’m posting it here

Some people have recently suggested we need a military draft.  I disagree.  The suggestion is out of sync with the historic use of the draft, current national restrictions on military end-strengths, and basic common sense.

During the first 168 years of our nation, the draft was used for less than ten.  The United States has mostly been defended by volunteers, with World War II being an anomaly.  Over ten million men, two-thirds of all that served during World War II were draftees.  In 1948, the draft was reinstituted in order to extract manpower from a war-weary population, to keep the expansionist Soviet Union in check during the Cold War.

In 1969, President Nixon established a commission to develop a plan to return to the traditional all-volunteer military.  Two years later, an all-volunteer baseline was established as pay was raised for all ranks.  The entry-level recruit’s pay went up to $307 for October 1972 from a stark $130 a month the year prior.  After adjusting for inflation, the new recruit enjoyed over 221% of his previous buying power.  An E-4, with over 4 years in service, got a 21% increase, while most other ranks enjoyed nearly a 10% increase in their buying power.  Officially ending in 1973, the longest draft in American history had lasted almost 25 years.  It has been over 34 years since the all-volunteer force has been standard operating procedures.

The all-volunteer force attracts the modern equivalent of the people that fought and won our independence.  They are the best and the brightest our nation has to offer.  In contrast, many people can still remember how the financially elite did the nation a service by obtaining draft deferments for their children as they attended ivy-league colleges during the Vietnam War.  Unfortunately, as the draft pulled many non-volunteers who could manage to pass the mental and physical requirements of the services, the military culture degraded, becoming less attractive to those who were truly called to defend our nation.  Possibly, the only good thing the draft did for our nation was to encourage some of our lesser citizens to flee, seeking refuge beyond our borders in hopes they would not be asked to serve anything beyond their own personal lusts.

It defies common logic to suggest a draft is needed when tens of thousand of qualified airmen and sailors are being required to leave service against their personal desires.  Congress establishes each service’s end strength.  When a service exceeds its authorization, they are required to reduce their numbers.  For example, in 2003 the Air Force and Navy forced thousands of “overage” people to leave.  Our military is the size it is today because our elected officials have so ordered.

It is true that the all-volunteer force has had cyclical problems with retention.  However, those problems were the result of a failure to maintain the 1972 base-line pay scales.  Decision makers used the power of inflation and lagging pay adjustments to shave funds off of personnel costs.  By the end of 1980, all service members had lost 17% of their buying power.  The Air Force was short thousands of pilots and the Navy was parking ships because they didn’t have enough petty officers to float them.  The nation reacted to the mass exodus and brought military compensation to where in 1993, it actually exceeded the 1972 base-line only for a short while.

After the Soviet Union dissolved, the Cold War was over, and then the startling quick victory during the Gulf War, Congress reduced the end-strengths by nearly 40%, which made some sense at the time.  What didn’t make sense was a deliberate effort to deviate from the 1972 all-volunteer baseline.  History had already shown that an all-volunteer force needed a certain amount of compensation and quality of life.  Dropping below that amount jeopardizes retention and recruitment.  When 9/11 hit, the military was almost down to the pay scale equivalents of 1980.  However, retention had been manipulated during the down-sizing through the use of targeted bonuses in order to retain key career fields, while the overall base pay’s buying power continued to wither.

The terrorist attacks on our nation reinvigorated our best and brightest to serve, recruitment went up, separations and retirements were put on hold.  And for a while, quality of life issues took a back seat as a new generation of heroes answered the call to arms.  Our enemy’s strongholds in distant mountains and harsh deserts were rolled into a ball and buried.  With the toppling of two national governments behind us, a protracted war of dealing with a network of organized terrorists, mostly intent on undoing what we’ve started, wearies us as the nation rests safely behind our all-volunteer force.

As our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines deploy over and over and over to remote regions of the earth to fight, build, defend, and occasionally witness their comrades make the ultimate sacrifice, some folks look at falling retention and strained recruitment and say we need a draft.  In reality, we just need to correct back to the 1972 all-volunteer base-line.  Even after the latest targeted pay raises, the 2007 recruit’s $1,203.90 has less than 78% of the buying power of the 1972 recruit’s $307.  An E-4’s $1978.50 has a little over 87% of the buying power of his 1972 counterpart’s $445.50.  For a Major, with over 14 years of service, to equal the buying power of his 1972 counterpart’s pay, he would need a base pay increase of nearly $465 a month.  A draft is not going to fix that problem.

The 2007 all-volunteer force should live at least as well as the all-volunteer force of 1972.  The richest nation in the history of mankind has a mere 0.7% of their population defending the rest of them.  Certainly we can afford to provide those that serve with an American quality of life.

It is one thing to ask young people to offer the prime of their learning and earning years for the defense of the common good.  It is another to expect them to make a career of it, while their families’ quality of life is less than their historic counterparts.  We need to stop experimenting with trying to see how little we can compensate personnel for their military service and just accept the 1972 baseline as a fixed expense for the price of an all-volunteer military.

The best recruiting tool will always be satisfied career NCOs and officers.  Those who are able to, will want to be like them.  The real strength in an all-volunteer force rests in its ability to retain the volunteers who have answered the call.

It just makes sense.

Once the fingers start pointing, the Air Force is in for a reorganization of epic proportion

Back in SAC, when a wing failed an ORI, the commander was fired.  Even though everyone knew that a wing could bust an ORI for a lot of things that were probably beyond the immediate control of the wing commander, it was certain that the commander was gone when the wing failed, for three reasons.

First of all, if you ever do it, nuclear warfare will be the most serious thing you ever do.  Do it wrong, and you may kill multitudes that don’t need to die, or worse yet, you’ll leave the wrong people alive, who in-turn, will kill multitudes that don’t need to die.  That’s serious stuff.

The second reason for firing a commander is that the blame was easy to assign.  The commander at any level is the reason the commanders below him have their jobs.  If he didn’t have confidence in them, he’d replace them.  So at the very least, the commander displayed incompetence by trusting the wrong people to handle things for him.

Finally, replacing a commander is the best way to flush any system.  When a new wing commander came to power, he was certain to clean out any of the subordinate commanders who had not lived up to the trust of their previous commander.  Self-preservation is a powerful instinct.  Another ORI was certain to come over the horizon after he had been given adequate time to rebuild his organization.

During my last few years in the Air Force, many of the aviators who grew up in SAC were often dismissed as dinosaurs of a by-gone era.  The new bomber aviators were assimilated into a near-clone of the system that the fighter community was comfortable with.  They referred to SAC as the “S-Command” and were bold enough to say they didn’t want to hear stories about the water-wagons we used to fly or the alerts we used to pull.  The mantra was, “the only thing you need to know about the N-mission, is that it’s easy.”  And we learned to silently accept nearly blasphemous statements like, “We’re sick of hearing how it used to be done.”  Or even the occasionally slam, “We didn’t really know much in those days.  We’re much smarter now.”  And one of the surest ways to get them riled up was to say, “Back in SAC . . .”

Well, let me reminisce for a moment.

In days of old, when SAC was bold, and nothing was more important than the status of your weapons; we verified the numbers and settings and checked them every day.  We were good at it.  And we took it seriously.  It wasn’t a secondary mission.  We didn’t need a small group of certified experts to tell us how to use them or to count them for us.  We were all experts in our weapons, tactics, and procedures, and our commanders expected nothing less than that.

Unless we find a criminal very close to the crime scene, how can we stop the blame from marching right up the chain of command, through the wing, the numbered air force, the major command and even higher when we lose a load of nuclear weapons?

Before the Air Force starts figuratively lobbing the heads off of commanders, who are operating in a system they were force-fed since the dissolution of SAC, we need to take a serious look at why we changed just about everything we used to do.  Maybe we’re not so much smarter now.  Maybe the dinosaurs weren’t so dumb, and maybe they had some of it right.

It just makes sense.