PROPOSAL FOr Office of PERSONNEL OPERATIONS, OCTOBER 1961
ORGANIZATION OF Office of Personnel OPERATIONS)

confused among the major Army staff agencies and the technical services who were often at loggerheads with each other. Known as the "Flow of Trainees through the Training Base,' this problem would continue to cause trouble.37

The Personnel Management task force's principal recommendation was to consolidate control over Army military personnel management in a single Office of Personnel Operations and transfer to it all such functions performed by the Army staff, including TAGO and the technical services, except for such professional groups as the Army Medical Corps, the Judge Advocate General's Corps, and the Chaplains Corps. DCSPER would retain responsibility for general officer assignments. It also recommended organizing officer personnel management within OPO along "branch" lines for technical service as well as combat arms officers with brigadier generals assigned as branch chiefs to provide proper top-level supervision. (Chart 29)

OPO would operate under the General Staff supervision of DCSPER, and the Hoelscher Committee stressed that the DCSPER and the Chief of OPO should not be the same person since the purpose of OPO was to relieve DCSPER of all operating responsibilities. TAGO would be abolished and its personnel responsibilities transferred to OPO, including welfare and morale services. Its personnel research function would be transferred to the Army Research Office. The Hoelscher Committee also recommended transferring responsibility for induction and recruiting, examination, reception, transfer, and separation of enlisted personnel to the proposed Individual Training Command under CONARC as mentioned earlier.38

Civilian personnel management received little attention. The Hoelscher Committee simply recommended transferring this function from the technical services and from the Army

(1) Hoelscher, Story of Project 80, p. 128. (2) Memo for Record, 22 Aug 61, sub: Discussion of Office of Personnel Operations at OSD Project 80 (Army) Committee Meeting; Memo for Record, 29 Aug and 31 Aug 61, sub: Discussion of the Office of Personnel Operations (OPO) and the Overall Headquarters, Department of the Army, Organization Pattern. Hoelscher files, Project 80. (3) See also Chart 29 below.

38 (1) Hoelscher Committee Report, pt. VI, pp. 62, 67, 72--83. (2) Memo, General Kjellstrom for Hewes, 21 Sep 71.

staff to OPO, stressing that it remain a separate and distinct operation from military personnel management.

39

When Mr. Hoelscher's over-all report and those of the task forces had been drafted, he submitted them to the Secretary of the Army's staff and to the General Staff representatives on the Project Advisory Committee for comment.40 The technical services, the agencies most vitally affected by the proposed reorganization, were not consulted. General Colglazier, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics, informed technical service chiefs in late September that their comments were not wanted at this time and cautioned them against revealing information on Project 80 to "unauthorized" persons.11

General Colglazier's office had kept the technical service chiefs reasonably well informed of developments. Brig. Gen. James M. Illig, Chief of DCSLOG's Office of Management Analysis, and his assistant chief, Dr. Wilfred J. Garvin, as members of the Project Advisory Committee, were the principal contacts between the Hoelscher Committee and the technical services. At the end of July General Illig and Dr. Garvin learned of the alternative organization patterns being considered and developed a set of DCSLOG counterproposals.

The "Illig-Garvin" proposals and the criticisms of the final Hoelscher Committee report, also made by General Illig and Dr. Garvin, represented a rough consensus among DCSLOG and the technical services. They accepted the Hoelscher Committee concept of one or more logistics commands, but insisted the technical service chiefs should remain as such on the Army staff with responsibility for personnel management and training.12

"Hoelscher Committee Report, pt. VI, pp. 80-81, Annex C.

40 Comments Re Study Reports, pts. I-VII. Hoelscher files. Hereafter cited as PAC Comments.

41

1 (1) OCofT Staff Conferences, Mar-Oct 61, passim, especially No. 28, 21 Sep 61. Project 80 files. (2) Blumenson, Project 80 History, p. 57. (3) Army, Navy, Air Force Journal, 99, No. 5 (September 1961), 12. (4) Memo, Hoelscher for Horwitz, 20 Oct 61, sub: Status Report on Project 80. (5) Interview, Hewes with M. O. Stewart, 27 Feb 67.

42

2(1) Summary of Proceedings, Meeting of Project Advisory Committee, 27 Jul 61. dated 1 Aug 61. Located in PAC-Materials Presented to the Project Advisory Committee. (2) Memo for Record, Mr. Garcia, 3 Aug 61, sub: Briefing of the DCSLOG on Reorganization of the Logistics Establishment Within the Department of the Army. Copy obtained from files of Management Division, OCofT, Project 80 files. Hereafter cited as Garcia Memorandum. (3) Comments by Management Division, OCofT, to Garcia Memorandum. (4) Interview, Blumenson with Colonel Kjellstrom, 22 Mar 62, on Carlisle Barracks Briefings.

The creation of a logistics command, General Illig and Dr. Garvin said, was preferable to the situation that had developed since the Palmer reorganization of 1954-55 were there was no effective direction and control over the technical services short of the Chief of Staff himself. The evil, as they saw it, and the great “divisive" influence within the Army was the progressive "functionalization" of Army operations, programs, and budgets. "The preoccupation of multiple Army staff agencies with specialized functional areas and related programs and budgets had impaired the command integrity of the Technical Services and prevented effective management of their several functions towards a common end." The technical services were the victims rather than the cause of the trouble. Illig and Garvin believed a Systems and Materiel Command such as the Hoelscher Committee proposed was clearly preferable to the evil consequences of the creeping functioralization of the past. decade.

They did not agree with the Hoelscher Committee's contention that the Army staff should divorce itself from operations. The technical services had long and successfully exercised both staff and command functions. Detailed control by the Army staff was necessary to answer questions and meet criticisms from the Bureau of the Budget, the General Accounting Office, and Congress. Increasing costs, decreasing appropriations, and technical problems encountered in the earlier stages of research and development were other reasons why DCSLOG and other Army staff agencies had to exercise detailed controls over operations. 43

Concerning the organization of the Army staff General Illig and Dr. Garvin opposed continued separation of research and development from production, preferring an arrangement which separated development and production from supply and distribution. They opposed a separate Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategy and International Affairs, suggesting instead creating an operating deputy for JCS affairs within the Office of the Chief of Staff. They objected to the proposal for a Director of the Army Staff as an additional unnecessary staff layer. This

43 Memo, General Illig and Dr. Garvin for Mr. Hoelscher, 27 Sep 61, sub: Comments on Study of the Functions, Organization, and Procedures of the Department of the Army, pt. III, Inclosure 1, pp. 1-8, PAC Comments. Quotation is from page 8.

was the Vice Chief of Staff's responsibility. An assistant to the Vice Chief of Staff who would direct Army staff programing and systems management was preferable to the proposed deputy for these functions. The heads of Army staff agencies also should retain their right of personal access to the Chief of Staff. No change in traditional Army staff procedures which eliminated this right was acceptable.**

General Illig and Dr. Garvin agreed on the creation of a separate combat developments agency. They opposed making CONARC responsible for all technical training because technical service specialists, including civilian experts, not only worked with the combat arms but also within the Army's wholesale logistic system and in jointly staffed defense agencies like the new Defense Supply Agency on functions unrelated to CONARC's training mission. For similar reasons Illig, Garvin, Colglazier, and the technical service chiefs opposed transferring technical service military officer personnel management to the proposed Office of Personnel Operations where the influence of the combat arms would be predominant. They simply did not believe combat arms oriented agencies like CONARC or OPO could produce the kind of skilled technicians required in an era of rapid technological change for service throughout the Army and Department of Defense. It was clear from all their comments that DCSLOG and the technical service chiefs objected more to losing responsibility for military training and officer personnel management than any other features of the Hoelscher Committee report.

Under the alternative organization proposed by Illig and Garvin, responsibility for individual training and personnel management would remain under the technical service chiefs as Army staff agencies. To the new Systems and Materiel Command they proposed also transferring "career management and personnel operations" of the Army's wholesale logistic establishment as part of "the command function of the Technical Services" it would inherit. In summary, they recommended that

the Army assure the retention at departmental headquarters of a strong technical staff to perform all staff functions currently prescribed "Memo, General Illig and Dr. Garvin for Mr. Hoelscher, 20 Sep 61, sub: Review of Draft Report-Project 80, pp. 2-3, and Inclosure 1, pp. 6-8, 13, 15-18.