KEEP YOUR RIFLE CLEAN
Phil Carter at Intel Dump posts a fascinating and disturbing analysis of the report on how the 507th Maintenance Company went astray and its members wound up killed or taken prisoner. The bottom line:
Summary: I don't want to keep picking on support units, but in this case, I see a trend. Support units work hard in peacetime to keep our equipment running, often to the neglect of their own field training. The result is that they do not meet the standard for basic soldiering and warfighting skills. Of course, they learn through trial and error just like every unit. But the result of waiting to learn these lessons in wartime is that young Americans die as the unit climbs the learning curve. Our Army needs to embrace the warrior ethos in all units -- not just the combat arms -- and it needs to ensure that every unit can fight its way out of an ambush like this one.In the end, none of this may have made the crucial difference and saved the convoy. War is chaotic, and bad things happend to good units who do everything right. But commanders strive to set their units up for success; to do everything possible to make the fight an unfair one -- for the enemy. Training, maintenance, pre-combat checks, pre-combat inspections, and fieldcraft are what enable good units to execute when the time comes on the battlefield. The 507th Maintenance Convoy failed in these areas, and the effects were devastating.
That's the conclusion, but the details make it meaningful--so read the whole thing. My favorite example of bad management:
(2) Lubrication. It's not enough to clean the M16 rifle, M249 squad automatic weapon, or M2 .50 cal machine gun -- you also have to regularly apply lubricant in order to keep the metal parts moving against each other. The standard military lubricant for small arms is called "CLP" (See this discussion regarding CLP at Winds of Change). It worked okay for me in Korea and Texas, but not well. My platoon sergeant (an avid hunter) liked to use special commercially-available lubricants that he knew worked better. Apparently, he knew more than the Army's procurement folks. In the weeks since the war, several after action reviews have concluded that the Army's standard weapons lube was inadequate for the job in the desert.
Lubricant: Soldiers provided consistent comments that CLP was not a good choice for weapons maintenance in this environment. The sand is as fine as talcum powder here. The CLP attracted the sand to the weapon. ... Soldiers considered a product called MiliTec to be a much better solution for lubricating individual and crew-served weapons.
Various current and former military officers echoed this report, saying that CLP was one of the worst lubricants the Army could buy for the desert...