As I,and others, retired from service, I watched some actions take place that drew some thoughts about something the Army seem to have gotten right in the wrong areas: Accountability.
We have all seen Soldiers charged for losing items, like a wrench that costs $20 at Wal-Mart. This makes perfect sense on the surface. However, what about when Soldier lose more 'sensitive items'?
I have, over the course of my career, seen several battalions and even entire brigades locked down for weeks, and even up to a month in one, case because of a single set of missing Night Vision Goggles (NVG's) - which are hardly secret technology anymore. The average set of NVG's (based on what I recollect from Property Books) cost from $500-1000. In locking down an entire Battalion, even for two weeks, based on average salary and size, it costs the Army $1.3 million in wages alone to keep the Soldiers sequestered and away from their families. The lost training time? The need to provide meals and other services during this time only adds to that cost.
Certainly, someone losing a piece of equipment needs to be held accountable, but at some point a cost benefits analysis needs to kick and common sense needs to take over. I took all of this on faith, that it was the right thing to do. Accountability is, after all, quite important.
Whether it is right that company commander must conduct combat operations at the same time they are responsible for every esoteric piece of equipment on the roster (something they are hopelessly undermanned to do) is another debate altogether.
However, during the retirement process, one example brought this issue to the fore. A subordinate Soldier was being medically retired, the pain he was in from day to day was obvious and clearly debilitating. He went through the verification process of the MEB at Fort Bragg, and then patiently waited from the next step in the process. At some point, after weeks of waiting he was informed that his entire medical packet from the process has been lost. To be clear, the price of flying a Soldier to Fort Bragg, conducting numerous medical tests to verify and document the diagnosis in a Soldier's Medical file, easily costs 10x the amount of a single pair of NVG's.
Was the Medical Center locked down until the packet was found? Of course not.
Was anyone disciplined or even counseled over losing a packet? Of course not.
Was there even an apology to the Soldier for losing the packet and wasting, literally, weeks of his life? Of course not.
These sorts of actions are not uncommon. Neither is the complete lack of accountability in these situations.
As you look higher, the situation gets even worse. Many projects are pitched and approved by Congress under barely tenable budgetary analysis. The Government Accountability Office has routinely blasted projects, from the F35 to the Army's failed Future Combat Systems, for this practice. The amount of over spending, or simply just wasted money when no FCS show up, is enormous. It ranks in the billions of dollars.
Yet I would be hard pressed to see any of the agents that set these projects in motion held accountable? There just seems to be something perverse about locking down 800 guys over a hardly secret piece of equipment worth $500, while at the same time having an indisciplined administrative system that continuously loses critical documents and is feeding billions in cost overruns.
Is accountability something the Army has gotten wrong?
We have all seen Soldiers charged for losing items, like a wrench that costs $20 at Wal-Mart. This makes perfect sense on the surface. However, what about when Soldier lose more 'sensitive items'?
I have, over the course of my career, seen several battalions and even entire brigades locked down for weeks, and even up to a month in one, case because of a single set of missing Night Vision Goggles (NVG's) - which are hardly secret technology anymore. The average set of NVG's (based on what I recollect from Property Books) cost from $500-1000. In locking down an entire Battalion, even for two weeks, based on average salary and size, it costs the Army $1.3 million in wages alone to keep the Soldiers sequestered and away from their families. The lost training time? The need to provide meals and other services during this time only adds to that cost.
Certainly, someone losing a piece of equipment needs to be held accountable, but at some point a cost benefits analysis needs to kick and common sense needs to take over. I took all of this on faith, that it was the right thing to do. Accountability is, after all, quite important.
Whether it is right that company commander must conduct combat operations at the same time they are responsible for every esoteric piece of equipment on the roster (something they are hopelessly undermanned to do) is another debate altogether.
However, during the retirement process, one example brought this issue to the fore. A subordinate Soldier was being medically retired, the pain he was in from day to day was obvious and clearly debilitating. He went through the verification process of the MEB at Fort Bragg, and then patiently waited from the next step in the process. At some point, after weeks of waiting he was informed that his entire medical packet from the process has been lost. To be clear, the price of flying a Soldier to Fort Bragg, conducting numerous medical tests to verify and document the diagnosis in a Soldier's Medical file, easily costs 10x the amount of a single pair of NVG's.
Was the Medical Center locked down until the packet was found? Of course not.
Was anyone disciplined or even counseled over losing a packet? Of course not.
Was there even an apology to the Soldier for losing the packet and wasting, literally, weeks of his life? Of course not.
These sorts of actions are not uncommon. Neither is the complete lack of accountability in these situations.
As you look higher, the situation gets even worse. Many projects are pitched and approved by Congress under barely tenable budgetary analysis. The Government Accountability Office has routinely blasted projects, from the F35 to the Army's failed Future Combat Systems, for this practice. The amount of over spending, or simply just wasted money when no FCS show up, is enormous. It ranks in the billions of dollars.
Yet I would be hard pressed to see any of the agents that set these projects in motion held accountable? There just seems to be something perverse about locking down 800 guys over a hardly secret piece of equipment worth $500, while at the same time having an indisciplined administrative system that continuously loses critical documents and is feeding billions in cost overruns.
Is accountability something the Army has gotten wrong?