Fixing the Army (VII): Learn some languages, close the Sgt. Maj.'s academy

I'm ending the "Fixing the Army" series with this
installment. The rest of the 66 steps to enlightenment were about uniforms and
I didn't care about blousing this and eyelets that, so Petronius summarized all
that back in the
last item of his second installment. But if you enough of you want, I can plead
with him to do another installment on that stuff.

My thanks to Petronius (USA, ret.) for his series, which
provoked a series of interesting discussions.

By "Petronius
Arbiter"

Best Defense department of Army affairs

Leader Development

Require all new
officers who acquired a commission utilizing Army funding (ROTC, West Point) to
have obtained four years of a foreign language in pre-commissioning education in
order to be granted the education. Army
should dictate what language cadets take based on language aptitude test and
needs of the service. Long term impact
on officer corps' ability to deal with the complex world will be phenomenal. This doesn't mean they will have fluency,
just that they can better develop fluency if in the long term interest of the
Army.

Eliminate Sergeant
Majors Academy (USASMA). Restructure key
NCO development schools, Battle Staff Course, under Institute of NCO
development as a staff section of TRADOC.
Apply saved resources to increase WLC, ALC and SLC, the significant
leadership development NCOES schools.
USASMA is not additive to the effectiveness of the Army.

Improve standards and
standards enforcement in NCOES. If they
fail a course, they don't get promoted.
Don't take that into account in determining pass/fail. Some attrition is good. Likewise if an officer fails a course in OES,
they should be considered to revert to enlisted status.