Those of us who get hands-on to be in touch with reality, add value, and sharpen our skillset do so at risk to our careers. We are only rewarded for what we do as leaders, especially expanding our scope of responsibility (mission, people, budget, etc.).
When I was an officer in the aviation branch, it was the same problem. The rewards for briefing PowerPoint slides were greater than the rewards for competently flying helicopters.
The former AF/SF CSO observed that the lack of technical expertise in commanding officers is a problem. [0]
> Please stop putting a Major or Lt Col. (despite their devotion, exceptional attitude, and culture) in charge of ICAM, Zero Trust or Cloud for 1 to 4 million users when they have no previous experience in that field – we are setting up critical infrastructure to fail. [...] They do not know what to execute on or what to prioritize which leads to endless risk reduction efforts and diluted focus. IT is a highly skilled and trained job; Staff it as such.
But 100% agreed with you that top-loading degrees isn't a solution either.
It feels like the military's historical solution to a lot of problems (forced, regular duty station rotation, with assumed interchangeability based on rank) isn't suited to the types of technical project it's now being asked to execute quickly and successfully.
There's a huge amount of good that comes from rotating people, but it feels like there's a new local optima that needs to be found.
A starter might be to make technical position rotations more pull / resume / experienced -based, and less solely on billet rank. I.e. Does a given position want you? Or who of a stack of applicants do they want most, for the job they're currently executing?
[0] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/time-say-goodbye-nicolas-m-ch...
This is my experience as well. We have combat-arms guys who would probably be exceptional infantry regiment commanders or fighter squadron commanders, brought into a combined-arms, high-level headquarters where they are expected to weigh in on things like EM signature reduction, and issues with how IT infrastructure impacts their ability to execute Command & Control....and they don't even know what most of the relevant terminology means. By the time they learn enough via OJT they PCS to another duty station.
I'm so sick of field-grade officers saying "I dunno, I'm just a dumb grunt." Then drop papers and resign your commission! Stop hiding behind your ignorance or faux-modesty. Educate yourself to confidently fight fifth-generation warfare, or go away.
Then I ask people who the fuck is gonna tune the models when the "AI app" spits out garbage at a battalion CP? Are we gonna train Marines on linear algebra, tensors, and adversarial neural networks? Or even bother to run them through an AI code bootcamp? Are we gonna be shocked when our Lance Corporal AI technicians leave the Marine Corps to 10x their salaries in Silicon Valley?.... I get blank stares in return.
Find someone at the bottom of the totem pole, ask them to include a bullshit, non-sensical, or actually harmful slide in a presentation as a favor to you, then see how far it percolates back up before someone challenges it.
I think the fundamental problem is that the Army doesn't value technical work enough to pay for senior people to fill technical positions. There is no technical career path for individual contributors. Officers (the only people paid something comparable to engineers in the civilian world) are in management positions from the very beginning of their career, so they get almost zero experience doing technical things as individual contributors. This leaves us with no senior leaders qualified to be in charge of technical things (like Mr. Chaillan said) nor any senior technical individual contributors to advise them and do the work.
On the Army enlisted side, what does an E7-9 typically do if in an IT/technical role?
On the officer side, great observation. And pretty much mirrors the private industry: companies without individual contributor career paths are struggling to retain experienced technical talent and deliver complex projects.
I don't know if the Army uses them for IT functions, but isn't that the exact issue with technical fields more broadly for which Warrant Officers exist?
The other issue is that many warrant officers still just have a high school diploma, or a check-the-block degree from an online diploma mill. They have deep institutional knowledge and vocational experience, but they aren't going to do technical innovation. This isn't like hiring a senior researcher or engineer.
Perhaps the more accurate statement officers do the what they see as cool jobs all boring ones are delegated.
I agree. Developing my own technical proficiency and teaching the next generations has been the only thing keeping me going in an organization otherwise wrought with inefficiency and stupidity. In my experience aviation is fairly unique in this aspect (in the context of the military writ large).