Burgoignesc Military Compte Rendu
The Burgoignesc Military Compte Rendu, is a (currently) annual top-secret report that is published by the Burgoignesc Security Forces about its strategies, tactics, posture, and most importantly, its gaps and failures. It is submitted as a corollary to the annual budget request for annual appropriations. It is released to the public 20 years after it is published and serves as a primary source for military historians on the needs and concerns of the Burgoignesc Security Forces at the time of its publication.
Background
During Operation Kipling, affairs with Urcea were becoming extremely fraught and there was a need to identify the root causes. Geo-politically, the relationship was decaying rapidly due to Burgundie's public openness to Caphiria despite the ongoing Occidental Cold War. However, it was the fact that Burgundie's wars in Audonia and Alshar were increasing, and none were coming to a conclusion, at the increasing expense of Urcea's youth and treasury, that resulted in introspection and change. In 1978, the Army of Burgundie commissioned a consulting firm to conduct an invasive review of its conduct of the wars that made up Operation Kipling. They were given 4 years to interview, ride along with, and observe soldiers and officers at all levels of the army. The move was not initially received will by troops or officers, but the soldiery eventually saw this as an opportunity, and they came around to the idea. The officers never trusted the process and were very guarded in their responses. As a result, the Army of Burgundie Compte Rendu (1982) showed the soldiers in a positive light and the officers less so. The key finidngs of the 1982 report were as follows:
- The Army of Burgundie has a preoccupation with winning battles, not wars.
- It conducts lighting raids very well, but it does not follow through to maintain a presence and instill confidence in its objectives with the inhabitants of the areas in which it operates.
- It is willing to sacrifice tactful employment of power and force to meet an objective.
- Its relationships with groups branded as terrorists by the international community, while tactically effective, is not strategically sound.
- The Army of Burgundie is resourced to fight massed combined operations battles in a world that is turning towards decentralized combat operations.
- The Army of Burgundie relies too heavily on the Royal Air Service of Burgundie for close air support.
- The Royal Air Service of Burgundie's remit is too broad to be strategically successful as a dominating fighting force. It is a global aerospace power protection agency, or an extension of the Army of Burgundie?
- The Army of Burgundie's reliance on captured infrastructure is its weakness.
Subsequent compte rendus
After Operation Kipling was wound down in 1984, the Army set about addressing some of the points of the report. In 1988 the government commissioned another compte rendu to track progress towards the objectives. It was a one-year process, and the findings were generally abysmal, the Legion was determined to have made much more progress than the general staff and the Metropole Forces. Generals were sacked, court-martialed, and put on probation left and right. A new general staff was promoted, primarily from the Burgoignesc Foreign Legion, from those who were not found at fault, and they were put on strict orders to turn the army around in 5 years. Another compte rendu was due to the government by the end of the fiscal year, 1993. This one showed more promise and officers who had shown initiative in the modernization and reform effort were promoted in a very public showcase. This created resentment amongst officers who saw this as creating a "commissar class" of political stooges in the higher ranks of the army. On December 7th, 1994 there was a leadership crisis as the disenfranchised officers threatened to leave the army en masse and form a political body to reverse the promotions and campaign to remove the ability of the civilian government to endorse or nominate officers for promotion. They received popular support and forced the government and the general staff to the negotiating table. The "Officers Strike" (called the Christmas Crisis by the media at the time) ended in early January when the ability of the government to endorse or nominate junior and senior officers for promotion was removed from the federal government, but those who received promotions were not demoted. The officers who had spoken out were pardoned and saved from court martial but were honorably discharged. Public outcry over the next three months saw most of them reinstated, about 80 officers chose not to return to the army.
This resulted in additional scrutiny being placed on the army. As a result, the Burgoignesc Foreign Legion tried to pre-empt any potential vindictive spending cuts but publishing their own compte rendu to accompany their budget request to the Army Chief of Staff in 1995. The report was not forwarded along with the whole army's budget request but it served as the basis for talking points for the Chief of Staff and while the overall army saw a budget decrease, the Legion did not. This tradition continued for another 3 years before the newly Chief of Staff saw the value of the reflective report and the use of perceived vulnerability as a bargaining chip during budget appropriations. He commanded a compte rendu for the whole army and used it for the 1999 fiscal year appropriations. For the first time since 1985 the army was allocated its entire budget request. The 1999 compte rendu is also the first one in which the importance of cybersecurity, especially the importance of network security to battlefield communications and situational awareness, was highlighted as a gap. This came as part of the Y2K panic and was largely overshadowed but a low level of technological literacy, but would resurface in the early 2000s as an example of the army strategists thinking well into the future.
Modern compte rendu
In 2003 the other branches saw the Army Chief of Staff being incredibly well briefed on the needs of the army and consistently able to articulate those needs well also adopt the compte rendu as a way to look for ways to improve their service and to identify key areas for investment of public funds. These culminated in 2009 with an Burgoignesc All Military Compte Rendu which was later shorted to the Burgoignesc Military Compte Rendu.
While most field/flag officers see it as a mechanism to secure funding each year, enterprising junior and senior officers use it as a roadmap for modernization and strategic forecasting. In its current iteration, it also looks at current combat operations outside of those conducted by Burgoignesc Security Forces which allows for a broader dissemination of battlefield expertise.
Because of her service in Defense Intelligence, Crown Princess Amelia had access to these reports and they served as the backbone of her proposed military reforms in the 21st Century Burgoignesc Power Projection Stratagem.
See also