{"id":38022,"date":"2013-10-17T06:30:52","date_gmt":"2013-10-17T10:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=38022"},"modified":"2013-10-17T10:49:24","modified_gmt":"2013-10-17T14:49:24","slug":"back-to-the-future-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=38022","title":{"rendered":"Back to the Future?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Army Times<\/span> is reporting that the Army may temporarily assign a rather large number of soldiers to \u201cinstallation support\u201d duties<\/a>, in some (I’d guess most) cases outside their normal MOS.\u00a0 These functions are currently being performed for the most part by contractor support personnel.<\/p>\n

Specific roles planned for this temporary detail of soldiers are dining facility operations and security guard functions.\u00a0 The period would be for up to 18 months; around 6,000 positions are being considered for such temporary augmentation.<\/p>\n

The rationale, as you might have guessed, is financial.\u00a0 Sequestration has cut budgets, and has reduced dollars available for both training and contractor support.\u00a0 So the Army has to do something make available dollars cover the essentials.\u00a0 This at least avoids reducing the number of folks in uniform.<\/p>\n

In many ways this seems little more than a return to the way the Army did business prior to the Reagan-era push for \u201ccontracting out”.\u00a0 Prior to that, much if not most installation support was performed by personnel in uniform.\u00a0 That\u2019s not generally the case today.<\/p>\n

I have to admit I\u2019m of two minds here.\u00a0 I\u2019m not a huge fan of contracting out mission-essential functions \u2013 and many installation support functions are indeed mission essential.\u00a0 (You don\u2019t eat or guard the place, you don\u2019t operate or fight for long.)\u00a0 I\u2019ve long thought DoD went much too far down the \u201ccontract it out\u201d primrose path.\u00a0 That works OK as long as you have the money to contract things out and\/or are in a safe area.\u00a0 But when funds get tight or you\u2019re in a combat zone, there are some serious problems inherent in depending heavily on non-uniformed contractors for mission essential tasks.\u00a0 Plus, it also obscures the number of people it really takes to defend the nation.<\/p>\n

On the other hand \u2013 doing this will take a rather large number of troops away from their units, particularly if the augmentation ends up being short-term (3 or 6 months) rotations.\u00a0 And it does make keeping those troops detailed to work outside their assigned units and MOS trained on their primary MOS damned difficult.\u00a0 That may not be an issue in the short term \u2013 if there\u2019s no money to train, it\u2019s damned hard to keep soldiers well-trained anyway.\u00a0 But eventually it certainly could be an issue, for both the service and the individuals.\u00a0 (However, please spare me the bogus \u201cThat\u2019s work is demeaning!\u201d argument.\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing inherently demeaning about cooking, washing dishes, or pulling guard duty.\u00a0 They may not be glamorous or exciting jobs, but they\u2019re essential.\u00a0 And soldiers have been doing them for centuries.)<\/p>\n

Comments?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Army Times is reporting that the Army may temporarily assign a rather large number of … Back to the Future?<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[198,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-army","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}