Headquarters

This isn't the same Army I left in 1998. I just walked around the new brigade headquarters we're setting up, watching soldiers plug in computers, network printers, post signs, demarcate refrigerator space, align desks and fight the petty turf wars of office space. I've always been interested in organizations- the structures; the union of the mechanical and organic; the role of position versus personality; the procedural versus the incidental. I derive a certain odd pleasure comparing the flowcharts and hierarchies that exist on paper with the actual workings of human institutions. The organization that I serve in here is far different than the one my armor battalion was a part of when we trained to engage in massive land warfare. We would have provided the big punch in a conventional war, our tanks fanning out across the battlefield with artillery providing the deep-reach fires and the infantry engaging the restricted terrain. (I may be guily of a certain ethnocentrism regarding my accession branch, but I am certainly not the sole violator in armed forces history.) The operations centers that controlled and supported that mission had a much different feel than this one. I've signed up for a mission with the Civil Affairs branch. In the big operations like the ones I used to train for, CA was a small supporting piece; as the primary conduit between the military leadership and the local populace it was the component that dealt with the externalities of conflict: mitigating the impact on local civilians, providing humanitarian support and facilitating the reconstruction of damaged essential infrastructure. Now the Army seems turned inside out. Those externalities are now the 'big fight'. Every unit is now engaged with rebuilding and support to the population. Armor and infantry units still provide the bulk of the fighting force, but support the larger mission of providing security for the entire population. And commanders are responsible, not for a territiorial front line, but for engagement along civil-military lines of operation like 'Governance', 'Economy', 'Education', 'Health' and 'Essential Services'. Jobs have morphed, and there seems to be a perpetual fluidity in what should be a strict hierarchy of command, execute and support elements. For instance, Artillery officers at the brigade level engage in 'targeting', but in a much different sense than their doctrine would dictate. They now assist the Commander in deciding whether to conduct raids in suspected insurgent villages, or to speak with a local village elder about turning over the suspected ring-leaders. Engineers have taken responsibility for the enormous amount of construction projects being built. There's an enormous amount of creativity in this environment- something I truly didn't expect. I don't discount the enormous influence of institutional inertia, but it is clear that not only is this not the Army of 1998, it is also not the Army 0f May 2003. This operation will define the Army for the next generation, and it will define a generation of military leadership as significantly as Vietnam did a previous.