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Army Taps Controversial Generals: What McMaster & Mangum Mean For The Future
http://breakingdefense.com/2014/02/army-promotes-controversial-generals-what-mcmaster-mangum-mean-for-the-future/Army Taps Controversial Generals: What McMaster & Mangum Mean For The Future
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
on February 19, 2014 at 4:00 AM
(UPDATED 6:30 pm) HUNTSVILLE, ALA.: The ever-beleaguered Army has a reputation not undeserved for being bland, conformist, and bureaucratic, an organization where brilliant mavericks are forced to retire at colonel and the guys who make general dont rock the boat. Just ask any of the long-serving and long-suffering officers convening here in Huntsville, home of the massive Army Materiel Command, for the Association of the US Armys annual winter conference.
But it looks like 12 years of war and three years of budget chaos may be able to shake things up. One sign of the times is that the Army plans to promote two generals who are smart guys with enemies.
H.R. McMaster is the most notorious name here, and well get to him but lets take the less famous one first: Maj. Gen. (soon to be Lt. Gen.) Kevin Mangum. A helicopter pilot who once commanded the 160th SOAR, the Armys elite Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Since 2011 hes headed the Armys aviation center at Fort Rucker, Alabama, the central temple to which all Army helicopter personnel return again and again throughout their careers.
In recent months, however, Mangum has had the unglamorous and grueling job of making the case for major cuts. As the high priest of the cash-strapped Army aviation community, hes had to sell his flock on a 2015 budget plan one still awaiting White House approval and certain to face a fight on Capitol Hill that would retire almost 900 helicopters over the next five years.
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Army Taps Controversial Generals: What McMaster & Mangum Mean For The Future (Original Post)
unhappycamper
Feb 2014
OP
MADem
(135,425 posts)1. This guy sounds interesting!
In English, ARCIC is the Army organization tasked to think full-time about the next war and how to win it. So McMasters new position makes him point man for the entire Army as the service struggles to figure out its post-2014 role. Whats more, he takes that mission at a time when both the Armys budget and its case for strategic relevance are coming under intense assault. If there was ever a time the Army needed a bare-knuckle intellectual like McMaster in the job, the time is now.
unhappycamper
(60,364 posts)2. I've been watching and reading about McMaster for along time.
He's an interesting character and thinks outside the box.