Military Review English Edition July-August 2016 | Page 31

FORCE MANAGEMENT

Recognizing the need to develop the current field
grade officers to meet the challenges of the future, the
Army produced The Army Leader Development Strategy
2013 (ALDS).16 The ALDS aims to develop agile, adaptive, and innovative leaders who thrive in conditions
of uncertainty and chaos, and are capable of visualizing, describing, directing, leading, and assessing operations in complex environments and against adaptive
enemies. Appendix A of the ALDS states that officers
are given additional educational and training opportunities “to allow them to understand areas such
as Congress, the Army budget, systems acquisition,
research and development … and Army operations
as a complex enterprise.”17 Understanding the basic
processes of force management allows officers at all
levels to then adjust quickly to defeat an evolving
enemy. Field grade officers develop company grade
officers into future leaders of the Army. Therefore, as
professionals, majors and lieutenant colonels need to
understand the “corporate” business management of
the Army so they can develop their subordinates.
Force management is part of the job. Many new
field grade officers have a huge misconception that
force management does not apply to them or their careers, and that it is instead the purview of the roughly
250 functional area (FA) 50 force-management officers in the Army. This is far from the truth.
FA50 officers manage Army force development,
force integration, and global force management.
They participate as subject-matter experts, along
with basic-branch officers, in strategic planning,
requirements determination, capability development,
new-equipment training, force integration, materiel
acquisition, recruiting and manning the force, Army
force generation, budgeting, and execution or prioritization of requirements.
However, simultaneously, and of principal importance to the CGSOC demographic, basic-branch
officers often serve in key generating-force roles
alongside FA50s. As an example, it is common for
the brigade combat team organizational integrator at
G-37 Force Management to be an armor or infantry
officer, or for basic branch officers to serve as doctrine
writers or capability developers at the Combined
Arms Doctrine Directorate.
While the force-management professional performs a critical part within the business of the Army,
MILITARY REVIEW  July-August 2016

commanders and directors are the instruments of
actual change in Army organizations given force-management decisions. If a commander leaves force management to his FA50, he might as well leave discipline
to his lawyer or medical readiness to his combat medic.
Force management is commander’s business.
Force management links to every aspect of the
Army at every level. Arguably, force management is
the one CGSOC subject officers will use most during
the remainder of their careers. In tactical assignments,
officers will experience force-management decisions
mainly through new equipment fielding, modified table of organization and equipment (MTOE) changes,
and resource management.
In strategic assignments, they will be the ones
developing new capabilities, doctrine, tactics, and cost
estimates. They will be measuring risk and providing
options and information to senior leaders so those
leaders can make decisions and run the business processes of the Army.
Field grade officers are leaders. Soldiers deserve
leaders who understand the process of how and why
decisions are made that impact a unit’s organization,
personnel, equipping, and funding. And, junior officers
and NCOs look to field grade officers for answers
during times of change. As a professional the answer
cannot be, “Those people in the Pentagon do not know
what they are doing.” Or even worse, “I don’t kno w.”
Field grade officers must understand the
force-management system to effectively manage and
influence change inside and outside their organizations. They cannot resource, train, mentor, deploy,
or sustain their organizations effectively without
a thorough knowledge of where they fit into the
bigger picture. They need to know how decisions
made many levels up will impact them, such as when
MTOEs change, budgets are lowered, or new equipment is fielded.
Force management will be included in follow-on assignments. One officer recently wrote his
force-management instructor at Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas, and told him that he had not been concerned with the force-management instruction
while he was in CGSOC because he did not see any
linkage to the battalion S3 and XO positions he
would fill immediately after the course. However,
after those two jobs, he was assigned to his branch
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