While at the 611th Ord Company, in Meisau, Germany, I wrote over 50 DA form 2028's. The Military is REQUIRED to answer each and every one. I wont say its a fast process, but it WILL happen. I dealt mostly with TROSCOM, (US Army Troop Support Command) CECOM, (US Army Communications-Electronics Command) and twice with the TACOM, )US Army Tank and Automotive Command)
Of the Corrections I sent in, almost all, were accepted. BUT, and this is the big BUT. Getting changes out to the field, is the problem. How do you change something wrong in a TM? You issue a Change to the Technical Manual. Sounds easy. Well, you are talking big, big bucks. No TM will get changed unless there are not at least 20-30 changes that need to be made. Most are spelling and grammar screw ups. A few are important things, but even then, if you want 2-3 changes, no mater how important, it aint gonna happen.
Some other reasons are:
1. Age of equipment. If its old, and close to being shuffled off to Buffalo, aint gonna happen.
2. Spelling and grammar only get changed when an entire TM is issued NEW.
3. When money is tight, the Army's budget strained, aint gonna happen.
It cost, or so I was told by an irate TROSCOM wiesel, over 100,000 dollars to make one change. Why? There are two ways to change a TM. One, the normal way, is to save up 20-30 changes, and then print up ALL the pages that need to be edited, AND, often extra pages that have to be added. The package, (sometimes only 10-12 pages, but in the norm, 30 or more) have to be printed up, and sent out to units. Logistics alone are out of this world. Normally, if its an important change, the change is sent out to a unit that has the affected equipment. Say an ADA unit. With thirteen 60 KW generator sets per firing unit, three firing units per Battalion and another 10 sets in the Bn. That's 49 generators, and then 40 more copy's for the work shops, log guys, the unit TM library, the system WO's and others. Round it of to 90 changes for just one Bn. At one time, there were over 10,000 of this gen set in the Army. Not counting the Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and who knows who else. Every gen set is supposed to have a full set of TM's. Most did not. That is a lot of changes. All to keep from printing up NEW Tm's to send out to everyone.
And that's the second way to change a TM. Print a new one. That is about 1,000,000 dollars worth of cost, per TM type. To print up enough TM's to send everyone a new copy. And then the TM has to be changed. Whoever is printing it, has to insert the changes into the printing processes. Lot of work and money for a change.
Yes, there is a way to get changes out that are Safety Changes. A Safety Of Use Message, from Department of the Army, goes out to EVERY unit with the affected equipment. Normally a reply to that message is required, to D.A. to acknowledge complacence.
I was in the 611th Ord. from 1986 until 1993. I never saw a change hit the TM's that I had submitted, that had been approved. In 2004, when I started contracting for the Army here in Germany, I found two changes to TM's I had submitted. There may have been more, but I was not about to waste my time looking.
