Gripes of a staff officer

We in the military attempt to tell ourselves that we are all in this fight together. "One team, one fight" is a common saying. It doesn't matter if you are Army, Navy, Air Force, Reserves, or National Guard. We're all in this suckfest together and we all need to work together to get the mission done.

This especially the case at the battalion and brigade level where everyone should be working with eachother and providing assistance to one another. If people are backstabbing eachother or you can't stand that guy in the office next to you so you don't bother giving him that information he needs that you have, things go down hill fast. In a best case scenario it leads to a hostile work environment.

Unfortunately I've seen this over and over in the course of my 3 deployments with 4 different battalions/squadron. It was pretty bad in my time in the 502nd MI BN. There was no "lieutenant mafia" (LTs in most units band together to keep eachother afloat and help get through the first couple years of the Army). The company XOs were all in competition with themselves to see who could impress the battalion XO. Staff officers hoarded information until they could bring it up in a weekly meeting and look good while the staff officer who needed that info 3 days prior now looks like a shitbag to the boss.

I don't think we really had that kind of problem in 296 BSB while I was there. There was some infighting and staff disgruntlement that always occurs on a deployment when people are forced together for so long. In 1-23IN the S2 kept his staff out of the loop on pretty much everything. I don't believe he did it on purpose, he just didn't trust his subordinates to do anything so he did almost all the work himself.

A problem really starts to create issues when company/troop commanders don't, or refuse, to talk with the battalion/squadron staff. In a counterinsurgency fight information comes from the bottom and feeds up. The platoons and companies on the ground are going to have a much better understanding of the area and are able to provide the most information to higher levels than corps/division/brigade can provide down. In a conventional fight, corps/division provides more information to lower levels while platoons/companies fill in a few gaps.

So when a troop commander refuses to share or give information...such as a location to a house or his thoughts on what is going on in his little corner of the world...the machine begins to break down. The situation is rather amusing in a way, if operations weren't affected. Troop commanders expect the staff to work for them, which the staff does, and provide higher analysis of what is going on. Difficult to do when a commander won't provide basic information or sit down and discuss things with the staff.

I'm done now. Hopefully I'll have something worthwhile to discuss in the near future instead of my random gripes.