CJTF-HOA

Since before I got here there was something that was really bugging me and I was shocked that no one was fixing it.  CJTF-HOA's Wiki page was all jacked up by someone who clearly was sabotaging the information there.  Well, I finally took it upon myself to fix the mistakes and reorganize the first few paragraphs.  Gone are the references to promoting tourism.  Gone is the joke about the J-9's huge sign being the most impressive and valuable structure aboard Camp Lemonnier.  (Although I have to say, the thing is godawful ostentatious.)

So, although I am not much of a Wikipedia maestro, the refurbished page can be found here.

We Just BLUF

I'm not exactly sure how this particular bit of lingo worked its way into the U.S. military lexicon but I think it should be destroyed, and destroyed quickly.

When briefing a senior officer it has become vogue to put the Bottom Line Up Front, labeled BLUF, on your first slide and then use the rest of you brief to back it up.  Because when you get through with a brief the commander knows there's really only one important point you want to make.  So by putting it up front you tell him what to expect by the time you get to the end.

Good in theory?  Maybe.  In practice?  This is just stupid.  (If I want to bluff the commander, I'm certainly not going to make it that easy for him to see...  I want him to work for it.)

What I see far too often is an officer that goes on and on, repeating himself along the way, only to get to the end of his brief to announce what the BLUF is (which, as you will note, is no longer up front) and then that BLUF is actually a longer summation of what he just repeated.

It makes you want to drive long, sharp objects into your eyeballs at a high rate of speed.

Travel

In all my days as a Marine, I've never quite seen a system of official military travel like this.  Usually if there's some kind of training or conference you're supposed to go to the admin shop will get you set up for it.  Here it's a little different.  You have a couple of web based processes to go through but you essentially write your own orders. If you can route the travel request through your supervisor and he or she buys off on it, away you go.  I've also never seen conferences, like the one in Germany I'm soon to go to, that don't have some kind of official attendee list and travel instructions and such.  I guess I just get off the plane in Stuttgart and meander on over to conference.  Strange.

Joint Pubs

If you are an officer and you're going to be part of the staff here at all, make sure you read up on your basic joint pubs.  JP-5 is critical.  You'll need to be able to speak the planning language that everyone else speaks.  Another good one is JP-3.57 Civil Military Operations.  There are also some pubs on interagency operations, which is especially important in the emerging 3D environment.  (Development, Diplomacy, & Defense)  USAFRICOM and CJTF-HOA are forging new trails regarding how to fight and win a war without pulling a trigger.  Anyhow, the best place to find joint pubs online is the Joint Electronic Library.  It's a gold mine for joint doctrine geeks.

Increasing Efficiency

Like any military headquarters staff, we generate a lot of reports around here.  It's almost a daily occurrence for us to come up with some kind of briefing, point paper, after action review, op order, etc.  Around the office we joke about how most of this stuff sits in desk drawers or file cabinets and then eventually gets shredded when it's superceded by a newer version.  (The Range SOP that was finished and signed when I got here a few weeks ago is about to undergo Change 1.)  So I thought of a clever invention that will cut down processing time and lead to greatly increased efficiencies throughout CJTF-HOA.  We could put a printer on top of a shredder and rig the document tray to feed directly into the shredder's mouth.  I even came up with the name 'Shrinter'.  That had us laughing most of the afternoon.  This morning I discovered through Google that The Shrinter already exists.  There is nothing new under the sun.

The only improvement we could come up with would be to pass the documents through a scanner that automatically emails them into everyone's recycle bin.