CSM Lacks Combat Badge

[RONALD45]

Very valid points. And I've seen the same thing that you referenced. I got back from deployment and PCS'd short-notice to a TRADOC assignment (where I spent less than a year, by the way...so I didn't hide out there). I get there to an instructing position and hear all this talk when I first get there from Booz-Allen-Hamilton contractors about how we're going to alter the instruction to reflect the realities downrange. That's great, but then many of the people writing the lesson plans either had never deployed at all or hadn't recently deployed (most were retirees from the military). So instead of bringing in people to do this who have recent deployment experience (say, the past couple of years or so), I'm going to rely on a retired COL who "heard from my friend how things are in Iraq" to write current, relevant instruction to prepare Soldiers for life in a war zone

This happens all the time, to get off topic I know. Recently my unit received new equipment that is supposed to be an improvement over the old stuff because it is NBC proof. Nevermind it is 3 times harder to set up and use than the old stuff and a lot more complicated. "It will protect us from NBC attack" well great who authorized the change I asked. You guessed it the very folks who never have to set the stuff up and use it "the Army Leadership" (more and more a contradiction in terms if there ever was one).

Besides all that money wasted to protect against NBC? Really 8 years at war already and has their been ONE NBC attack anywhere???? Oh we are told over and over it is coming? Really the only place NBC has been used in the last 10 years is by a nutjob in a Japanese subway and right here in the US (anthrax figure that probably a plot so they can still give us anthrax shots) BY ONE OF THEIR OWN PERSONNEL FROM THE ARMY LAB!!!!!

So really can we concentrate on real threats instead of imaginary ones and get stuff that has been verified as needed by those actually fighting the war???? Instead of things that are "thought to be needed" by those who have never set one foot down range to begin with???

[MCGYVER]

We can try but until we have leaders at the top who have truly BTDT (Been There, Done That) we will be spinning our wheels because they just can't relate.