An unvarnished factual answer (not opinion) follows-

1. How is our MTOE designed? For COIN-style fight, rapidly deploy by C-17? A fix: not a one-size fits all Army. Army Europe needs tank-fighting capability to include anti-tank weapons at FSC-level and other enabler units (signal, MI) that can be exposed enemy armor, or to set-up rear-area security patrols (detachment, company) with anti-tank capability, working in concert with the hunter-killer teams that are screening forward; “recce coys” (NATO-speak) need focus on task of “recce” and avoiding decisive engagement/counter-recon fight. Surely, in Pacific, the enemy looks different, requires, again, different set of capabilities.

2. some 1SGs build rapport with, call back to career managers and get predictability on NCOES, others get blindsided. Biggest hurdle to readiness is “available Soldiers”. The Army is trying to solve its brigade-plus of non-deployable Soldiers, tough to fix but there are pragmatic solutions out there; do we want to explore them? Also, I like the Armor mentality of who has the authority to break-up gun-crews. How do you maintain readiness and for how long? Reality is – you fight to get through all of the training requirements only to lose those Soldiers/crews. Stabilize crews with less PCS moves, lengthen time on station and send non-deployable Soldiers with combat-related injuries to TDA units, where they can still contribute their experience/expertise, while MTOE units need Soldiers able/willing to fight tonight.

3. streamline the bureaucracy that it takes to get guys off the books – even in an Army that is once again swelling in numbers, we need the right Soldiers. If identified as not fit for service or willing to serve, its okay, not end of world, but unburden the length of time, and number of steps – maybe a one-stop solution is having a designated transition unit, point, detachment, platoon run by an NCO and Captain (post-command) tasked with ensuring the multitude of chapters get processed and the units and their commands can focus on training. If I had the authority, I’d do this at my post – where you send the Soldiers to such a “company” and that post-KD Captain can handle the transition part with a team of NCOs and a few TMPs.

4. Just cause you do the training, doesn’t mean you are objective T. Qualification on gunnery tables is a good measurement. Again, its tracking, logging the stats of crews, who has done what, and the length of that unit. Further, at a CTC, how did the unit actually do? What’s at stake? Commanders used to get relieved for bad performance at a CTC and in a DATE – there was skin in the game. So, are we “testing” at CTCs or are we “coaching/training”? Once that decision is made, then let’s look at our formations and decide how we want to fight? In Europe the conflict with that may be, interoperability? Are we after interoperability which is starting to yield returns, or do we want to build the strongest Army possible and really test out how a BN-pure or BDE-pure (with enablers attached) will fight? Again, its okay for a formation to be robust and theater-centric I believe. You need the capability to fight and best your enemy and we can move brigades by boat too, not always by C-17; and C-5s can move the biggest and heaviest pieces as well. But that means, mitigate the shortfalls and gaps in formations’ MTOEs; i.e. does a BEB have the ability to move and recover its grader?