Brigade the 56th Heavy Brigade Combat Team Essay

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Brigade

The 56th Heavy Brigade Combat Team is suffering from a shortage of effective leadership, a factor that appears to be impacting nearly every functional aspect of the brigade. Hard-wired coordination has given way to fractured, piece-meal functioning that is particularly in evidence within and across S1, S3, and S4. Several variables appear to be associated with the diminished leadership, including the following issues that I observed or noted during my review.

The Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) study conducted for the 56th in Afghanistan indicated that "leadership performed well given the circumstances" but this qualification pointed to several substantive challenges that need to be addressed. Communication was hampered by the number of communication systems in use and the fact that many of them were incompatible; the digital networks were insufficiently robust, causing frequent lost communication between the brigade and subordinate battalion headquarters. The historical unit status reports (USR) indicate the 56th HBCT was deployed at less than the assigned strength. It was not possible to sustain 24-hour operations over the long-term due to insufficient personnel authorizations on battalion staffs, which meant that untrained, unqualified personnel were put in a position to perform battalion tactical operations center functions. Friction between the battalion and brigade staffs escalated as a result.

These issues were further exacerbated by the modular BCT structure, the inevitable pitting of the combat role of the BCT against that of the military transition teams (MiTTs).

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Moreover, I came to appreciate that demands of the Afghanistan environment to simultaneously expand operations in unsecured areas and protect the population translated into more infantry squads, which impacted soldiers' capacity to fill their own military occupational specialty (MOS) core competencies. There was a mismatch between the training conducted during the ramp-up before deployment and the mission-essential tasks that soldiers encountered in Afghanistan, resulting in significant resource trade-offs in the theatre. Capping these corrosive dynamics is a single critical event during which a SVBIED attacked a patrol, wounding several soldiers and Afghan Security Forces, and killing the commander, brigade command sergeant major, and Battalion Commanders.

I reviewed the results of a 360-degree commander and staff assessment conducted for the 56th HBCT by the Center for Army Leadership (CAL) Leadership Assessment and Feedback Program. A primary finding is that the commanders are not embracing leader-development. A command climate survey found reduced soldier morale related to conflicting messages from leadership and behavior approaching fraternization by officers.

Red cycle activities are creating a full-court-press on soldiers who are supposed to be reconnecting with their families. I attended the AMC ARFORGEN synchronization conference and learned….....

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