More thoughts on HTS nationalization
Posted By Marc on February 15, 2009
Well, Wired has picked up on the shift of the HTS from contractors at BAE to temp Gov’t employees. Noah’s article, ‘Human Terrain’ Contractors’ Pay Suddenly Slashed, doesn’t really have much more detail that John Stanton’s original post on the subject, although it does have a few new quotes, one of which echos a concern I raised in a previous post.
“The dollar amount reduction is more than 60% of what I contracted to do the job for,” one Human Terrain Team member tells Danger Room. Hazardous duty and overtime pay have been capped, and there is now “no differentiation between paygrades, meaning someone who has never worked gets paid as much as someone with 30 years experience… a retired Colonel will have the same pay as a 23 year old straight out of college. Bravo, Tovarich!”
What I found truly “new” and enlightening in the Wired article was the comments which ranged from a “poor, poor people to only make $90k+ per annum” to a truly disturbing one posted by VOICE OF REASON (NB: all in caps as is the comment itself).
HUMAN TERRAIN TEAM MEMBERS HELPED OUR GUNNER IDENTIFY AND TARGET ENEMY FORCES: GIVING US THESE IMBEEDED INTELLIGENCE PERSONNEL HELPED US INCREASE OUR ACCURATE KILL RATIOS BY %100 IN THE FIRST TWO MONTHS THEY TRAVELED WITH US. YOU NEED TO PAY FOR THESE TARGETING SPECIALISTS, AND IF YOU AREN’T GOING TO PAY FOUR THIS, THEN YOU ARE DOING AS GOOD AS RIGHTING CHECKS TO THE LEADERS OF AL-QUAIDA!!!!!!?
Leaving aside the spelling that could only be produced by someone who was hooked on pa-hon-ics, HTT’s acting as Intel doing kill chain targeting? I can only hope that this is another case of acronymic confusion between Human Terrain Team and HUMINT Tactical Team (cf here for an example). A similar sentiment was posted by why?, (albeit all in lower case)
human terrain is part of the military’s targeting system; why would any jackass in washington dc want to disable or interfere with any aspect of a system that puts the right muslims in our gun sights? the only reason we should fund language and anthropogogy in universities is so that they can give us translators and targeters for the liberation and occupation missions. i don’t care if they are private contractors or government employees, just so long as they can hang targets on the right people.
I think I am getting a migraine!
the only reason we should fund language and anthropogogy in universities is so that they can give us translators and targeters for the liberation and occupation missions.
Maybe “why?” should take advantage of some anthropogogy
Moving on to more substantial issues, “Joe” made a very interesting comment
If this work is so important, the Government should be doing it. The military should be enlisting and paying for kids to go to school for social science and anthropology in exchange for 4 years of active duty service.
I disagree with the first sentence. Why should “the Government” be doing it? Sorry Joe, but “the Government” is just another way of saying someone else. “Government” (and any other organization along with many concepts) is an illusion that we – individual people – treat as if it was “real” and, by doing that, we make it “real” (this is a distinction between the Operational Environment – what is – and the Cognized Environment – what we perceive and how we interpret it; cf Rappaport’s Pigs for the Ancestors
Having said that, however, I actually do agree with the sentiment in the second sentence – it is a case of an organization putting its money where its mouth is. As long as it is spelled out in an open, above board manner, I certainly have no problems with the military enlisting people and paying for their education in return for four years of service – it happens in Canada all of the time, as it does in the US.
There are, however, difficulties with this type of pseudo-ROTC program. First, I suspect it would encounter a lot of academic resistance as did the PRISP scholarship program. Second, would the US military establish an MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) of Anthropology? Third, if such an MOS was established, what type oif career track would be available for people in it?
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Perhaps the “big question” for me is whether this really means the end of HTS, that is, as a program that hires social scientists. On the surface, no, it does not mean that, since the program is not being officially terminated. Yet, there are all these statements and suggestions of HTS social scientists resigning “in droves” (I am not sure they ever had droves, but anyway). If they cannot keep the people they have, and I can imagine recruiting is a severe challenge even without the pay incentive, that would seem to suggest that the program has effectively ended, without a definitive and formal termination (nice trick, if so).
Otherwise, even with the pay cuts, and the changed job label, given the economic crisis and the already limited opportunities for social scientists (especially anthropologists) one would think that there should still be some potential recruits. HTS might have to formally give up on seeking people with a PhD, but even then I am not sure.
So what do you think: was this really meant to be an announcement of the termination of HTS?
Also: do you think they are emulating Canada here, which has its own kind of HTS (white situational awareness team), all government and military staffed?
And finally, if the program was so expensive, and it is cheaper as a government-run program, then why was it contracted out to a private firm to begin with?
P.S. I follow TRADOC in Twitter and apparently they do not deem this news to be worthy enough to broadcast.
Hi Max,
“So what do you think: was this really meant to be an announcement of the termination of HTS?”
I suspect, given the timing, that it has more to do with a budgetary “restraint” move given the new administration. I had heard of some signals that, in retrospect, seem to indicate that this was being thought of as early as last October. I doubt it will be a program killer, though.
“Also: do you think they are emulating Canada here, which has its own kind of HTS (white situational awareness team), all government and military staffed?”
Well, if they are going to have such a program, then that is probably a better model than the outsourcing one. Then again, they have their own models to draw on – the Foreign Area Officer (FAO) program is one.
“And finally, if the program was so expensive, and it is cheaper as a government-run program, then why was it contracted out to a private firm to begin with?”
My gut guess has to do with bureaucratic inertia and organizational lag time. A similar rationale appears to have been at work with DoS hiring Blackwater mercenaries rather than training their own security people.
One of the problems with turning HTS into an “MOS” is that the best candidates, in my opinion, are relative graybeards, like me, who have most of, but not all of the desired qualifications, and are willing to do the job.
Maybe not independent of the pay rate, but who will do the job for less than HTS was originally paying.
The idea of the Army having an “HTS” MOS, kind of scares me. I doubt this will be all that effective, mostly having to do with Army groupthink that pervades the organization.
Hi Drew,
I suspect you are right about the groupthink phenomenon. They have certainly isolated the FAOs, and those on advising duty were also under a career track shadow as well. As Max noted, we have something similar – the situational awareness team, and I can see something like that operating in, maybe 10-15 years in the US Army (Max’s post on it is at http://openanthropology.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/canadas-own-human-terrain-system-white-situational-awareness-team-in-afghanistan/).
As to who would be best at it, personally, I think it would be a combination of “greybeards” and kids using some form of matrix organization, at least inside for a team dynamic. Ideally, they should also have a really good reachback system, something that doesn’t seem to exist yet.
Marc–
Here is the latest on HTS.. http://www.theseoultimes.com/ST/index.html
All 14 of ‘em are at cryptome.org and throughout pravda,ru.
By now you’ve probably seen the Loyd piece in the Washington Post. I thought I was reading a People Magazine (Time Warner) piece.
Hi John,
Thanks for the heads up, I appreciate it. Yes, I’ve seen the piece (sigh). Scary…
“the life of the HTS program has become a political struggle somewhere in Washington, DC, that likely pits US Army General and Dr. David Petraeus and his Think Tank Mafia (Dr. McFate-Sapone; Dr. Mike Meese—advisor; Dr. David Kilcullen—advisor; Dr. John Nagl—advisor; Dr. Fred Kagan—the latter from the American Enterprise Institute and father of the “surge”) and more traditional elements in the US Army who know BS when they hear and see it.”
Yep, there it is. The members of the “we just haven’t killed them enough” mafia, who have persistently, and rather underhandedly set up a myriad of roadblocks to HTS and its implementation (assisted, of course, with the difficulty of actually fielding a prototype in time of war) get the Leonard Wood award for throwing wrenches in the gears and “getting” Petraeus/Nagl.
An unlikely cabal of conventional warriors, who helped screw up the initial Iraqi invasion and the “we’re too special to let anyone else play” Forces mafia, whose main problem with Petraeus and Nagl is that they aren’t members of their precious little “club,” has, consistently and persistently drug their feet on items as small as approving the hiring of a new IT guy to manage the website and IT systems, to holding up the applications of HTS employees since last September due to various “contracting approval issues”.
To be sure, the system grew too quickly for orderly development, without serious problems, As usual, John Stanton chooses to assume the worst and ascribes evil intent on the parts of the program leaders. A serious journalist shouldn’t do that, but that is John’s style, and you can make your own decisions on his “journalism”.
So, regardless of problems, the SF Nazis get to keep their death grip on this aspect of COIN, academics will get to continue demonizing the miliitary, and BCT commanders can continue kicking in doors and killing people, which is what everyone wants, right?
God forbid we try to challenge status quo thinking and try something new.
Those supposed experienced warriors who know BS when they see it ARE the problem, if you ask me. But at least they get patted on top of their collective heads for protecting their own precious rice bowl, by sycophants like John Stanton.
Er, ahhh, to think that Petraeus is somehow anti-status quo and is changing the Army via COIN, Smart Power is silly. The USA has done COIN again and again and again in various forms. What is the fascination with the HTS. It’s community policing, civil affairs stuff. Read your ASOF/US updated..
If we want to cut to the point, here it is: “Need to Map the Human Terrain across the kill chain” said James Wilcox in a PPT briefing. He also said that “Target detection may be difficult and require non-traditional means.” NTM is HTS. Yippeee! Remove the gloss on HTS and its ignore its personalities and you’ve got another intel program that makes use of academia for kill/dominate chain purposes. I have no problem with that, just don’t argue that HTS is some dramatic new idea. And if you are an academic, understand what you’re getting into.
Now, as for Petraeus, he is a politican in uniform, a PG. Sort of the Colin Powell mode. He really thinks he is Casear. Here inside the DC Beltway, seat of government of the marvelous, benevolent empire, Petraeus and his seconds leak away information–like everyone else does here–to get his/their own way. That happened recently over Obama’s 16 month draw-down from Iraq. Ye olde Petraeus worked some information wizardry to make it seem that 23 months was what Obama wanted. A fine case of MILDEC!
It was a brilliant decision by Petraeus to bribe, I mean pay the Sunni’s in Iraq for not killing US troops. And as for the Surge, it was a small part of a very complicated set of events that has, thus far, produced a reduction in violence. I’m betting Al Haig at 85 could take out Petraeus with one punch.
In the end, it’s all going to be about littoral/urban warfare as the world’s populations continue to move to the city-scapes near big water.. That means the USN and USMC will be really busy as their scope/mission/capabilities are better suited for primary activity. The USAF and US Army will end up supporting them. Perhaps, Petraeus knows this and is trying to find a role for the Army in the future besides cleaning up, performing community policing after the USN-USMC have done the dirty work.
Marc–can I gt your email…I’ve got a 2007 HTS game plan briefing that is quite intersting. I forgot I had it. Like to send it along.
cioran123 – at – yahoo.com