Tuesday, June 19, 2007

7 hours to evacuate wounded troops


Can you believe that at one stage it was taking 7 hours to evacuate wounded soldiers from the battlefield in Afghanistan? It wouldn’t be the case if we had more than just 13 helicopters able to evacuate troops and if there wasn’t such a long chain of command. Why exactly can’t the army have a flatter organisational structure with fewer layers of command?

Did anyone believe Blair when he said that troops will get whatever they need to defeat the Taliban? I think they need more than 13 helicopters.

To reiterate, these are the changes that should be made:

  1. More helicopters
  2. Flatter organisational structure with fewer layers of command (or management)
  3. More decision making lower down the ranks

Maybe I’m wrong?

1 comment:

Stan said...

I'm not sure a flatter structure would be more use - that would tend to concentrate authority in fewer people. What is needed - in my opinion - is more autonomous units with the resources available at battalion level - or even, in some cases, regiment level.

By that, I mean that each battalion/regiment has at it's disposal the helicopter evac, close support, heavy armour, engineers and artillery required (in addition to those available from the cavalry and Royal Artillery/Engineer regiments and Army Air Corps.

Personally, I'd prefer to see this at regimental level, but battalion level at the least.