________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
Q:
School and Center, right. Now, if you want to talk about the engineer force, that would be
perfectly acceptable.
A:
Well, I think at the Engineer Center we've got probably our cut of Army talent. That is, I'd
say we've got top third, middle third, and some bottom third kind of folks. We've got some
folks who are very good, very talented, some of the best I've ever seen. We've got some who
haven't pulled their weight, and they stay in the background while the first group does the
work, like in many places.
I would make two specific points. I don't know if I talked about this last week; maybe I did.
The fact is that we went out to MILPERCEN over the last couple of years and tried to bring
in some very talented folks, not only high-quality officers--that's whom I'm speaking of in
this instance--who had great credibility among their peers be they engineer or maneuver, but
also people who had a broad perspective of combat engineering on the battlefield,
specifically with regard to maneuver. We focused our efforts to get that kind of talent. We
brought in lieutenant colonels who had been to the National Training Center with their
battalions, lieutenant colonels who had commanded in Europe, a lieutenant colonel who had
commanded in Korea, and one who had commanded in Hawaii. We went after talent based
on reputation and demonstrated capabilities and potential, but also because of their
perspective of how things were in the Army. That was a tight,
small group, really, but in the amount of talent there it was a
tremendous wellspring of capability that we hadn't had
before. That was one aspect.
General Kem met with Israeli Defense Force officers during a visit to Israel while he
was Commander of the Engineer School.
The second comment I would make is that we have some very good people but they're not
fully effective in the jobs they are in because of the Army's continued movement to pull
down the strength in the field grade level of the officer Corps within TRADOC. A specific
example: we've decreased 30 to 35 percent in the number of majors we're authorized in
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