What have we learned (2000-2010)?

[MikeF]

What have we learned (2000-2010)?

Over the course of the next several weeks, I will pose several questions for serious response and debate. Here is the first.

At the conclusion of the Vietnam War, the U.S. military spent a decade rebuilding, refitting, and reorganizing itself to face the perceived threat of an interstate conflict with the U.S.S.R. The hardened combat veterans that remained after Vietnam faced significant challenges in manpower, morale, and training. The military transformed itself from one of conscription to an all-volunteer force, BG(R) Huba Wass de Czege designed and developed the concept of AirLand Battle Doctrine to replace “Active Defense,” and future Secretary of State GEN Colin Powell adopted the Powell Doctrine. While some Army Officers on the fringes (http://www.amazon.com/The-Army-and-Vietnam-ebook/dp/B003KGBIIY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1283737209&sr=8-2)argued against such a narrow focus to war and warfare, events seemed to coalesce with the fall of the Soviet Union and the limited offensive of Operation Desert Storm.

Operation Desert Storm proved (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/30/AR2010083003773.html?hpid=opinionsbox1) to be a beginning, not an end, to the types of engagements we see today. Much has changed in the last decade. This question is broad, deep and wide, but it is specific to the military,

What have we learned?


-Mike

[Schmedlap]

Fighting a war is a tough slog when you've got no reasonable strategy and the President is incapable of rallying the public behind the effort.

Well, at least I hope we've learned that. It's something we should have already known.

[Ron Humphrey]

Fighting a war is a tough slog

Whether or not


you've got no reasonable strategy and the President is incapable of rallying the public behind the effort.



Well, at least I hope we've learned that. It's something we should have already known.

Though many have, Still not sure those who actually end up making the decisions have completely accepted it as such.

[Chris Otero]

I think one thing that we have learned is that there is a greater understanding of how to train foreign forces both an a micro level and at an industrial level. Prior to GWOT, the knowledge on how to train foreign forces in an applicable culturally acceptable manner primarily resided with Special Forces. Given the size and scope of the effort required to train ISF and ASF, the conventional force has had to learn the skill-set and apply it. One observation I have had over the past decade is that there has been an moving away from the foreign trainer role by SF except in certain special cases as they have been more DA focused and the lions share of the task has fallen on to the conventional force. This is less of a criticism and more of an observation given the scales required meant that only the conventional side could undertake it.

Anyrate, my primary statement is that we have built a body of knowledge and large cadre of Officers and NCOs that know how to train foreign forces. It is necessary that the conventional force realizes this and embraces it early on if we ever decide to engage in a moderate to large scale open-ended COIN fight ever again.

[MikeF]

Schmedlap/Ron- I'm not sure why that's something we didn't know previously.

Chris- Very good points on GPF picking up advisor skills.

I suppose that many of these lessons will be individual to each person/units experience, but I think that we should start asking these questions in order for us to determine, "what should we have learned?" Those answers will drive the Army after next.

[Fuchs]

Don't wage wars of choice.
They hurt more than peace.

[slapout9]

Maybe it is time to rethink Boyds highest trinity, the....Moral....Mental....and Physical levels of War.


For your listening pleasure and moral enhancement.....Jewel and "Who Will Save Your Soul"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG602tjDzGs

[Joske]

What about the transition between the more high-tech aproach to war before the "gwot" and the current focus on population-centric coin.

Or the fact that maybe military invasion/force might not be such a succesfull tool in some cases, and looking at the local circumstances a more effective aproach to countering irregular enemies can be found in a range of social, economic, informational, diplomatic ...etc aproaches. and off course if the circumstances favor a violence only aproach then winning "hearts and minds" is most likely a waste off time.

[jcustis]

I think we learned that we need to organzie our efforts better along a variety of Lines of Operation, as opposed to thinking in terms of simple kinetics.

[Global Scout]

I'll be the naysayer and argue most of what we learned since 2010 needs to be unlearned quickly.

Bad ideas that won't go away:

So called effects based operations continues to pollute our staff modus operandi resulting in multi slide briefs that have little to do with achieving our military or strategic objectives. There has never been a military operation conducted throughout history that didn't intend to achieve desired effects. Now we're foolishly trying to measure the results of our operations, while missing the large collective picture. The commander that relies on his intuition will defeat the commander who relies on his daily stats brief.

Lines of operation, effort, etc. are also a farce that have done more to enhance disunity of effort than any other CONOP. They are a very poor substitute for a real operational/strategic strategy and appropriate objectives. Yet again they look very pretty on a powerpoint slide and create the false perception that we actually know what we're doing.

Good governance and economic development first, then focus on defeating the enemy by offering ice cream and other nice incentives, while ignoring a credible coercive element. We have wasted billions of tax payers dollars in failed economic development projects, largely because we attempted to substitute economic development for fighting. We embrace these ideas with great faith despite the facts pointing to opposing conclusions.

While technology has always played a role in war, and sometimes a decisive role, it does not eliminate the human element of war. One lesson we claimed to learned is we now do a better job of understanding the populace, but I think the reality is quite different. Despite the hoards of social scientists now roaming the battlefield, we still don't seem to understand how to influence the local populace as effectively as our foes. Learning about the local culture is not a new idea, and I would argue we probably did a better job of it prior to 9/11.

Excessive use of contractors and private businesses has resulted in a corrupt wartime/conflict economy where there is now financial incentive to continue the conflict. How many millionaires/billionaires were created since 9/11 based on providing services and equipment to the war effort? How much of them really contributed something worthwhile to the fight.

I hope we learned that half stepping doesn't work, and it still isn't clear to me why we had to wait for several years to implement a surge in Iraq? I remember, our economic development efforts were supposed to take the wind out of the insurgent's sails.

The military was not wrong to focus on winning the big wars, but they were wrong for largely ignoring the unique characteristics of irregular warfare. However, it can be argued that they're learning the wrong lessons now based on political correctness versus what actually works.

As for conventional forces getting involved in training local forces, I think the results speak largely for themselves. Our conventional force training efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan were largely a failure (we generated large numbers of troops that couldn't and / or wouldn't fight). Just recently we started making the advisor positions command select positions (a lesson learned that good people are required to do this).

The list could go on for two pages, but since we're overly focused on force protection (JIEDDO), we have focused a good portion of our efforts/investment in developing a force that is IED proof, and less effort in actually defeating the enemy.

I would be very careful in identifying which lessons we learned since 2000 that are worth keeping.

[Ken White]

He essentially has written what I have not because am too concerned -- and disgusted with respect to our direction as I see and hear of it -- to write. Any attempt now would be little other than a rant. I think he's quite correct in his assessment and if I get to the point where I can write constructively, I may add some more... :mad:

We are losing the bubble.

He's quite correct in his summation -- we need to be extremely careful in identifying which lessons we learned since 2000 that are worth keeping. We retained mostly wrong lessons from Viet Nam and appear about to do that again...

[Starbuck]

Fighting counterinsurgencies in foreign countries is always a tricky proposition. Even the British had trouble maintaining popular support and had competing strategic objectives during the American Revolution.

[Entropy]

We've learned the Air Force and Army can actually work together. Hopefully it sticks, but with budget cuts on the horizon I'm betting there will be a countermarch back to parochialism in short order.

[MikeF]

I can certainly empathize with Global Scout and Ken White's pessimism, and I would suggest that their concern drives a follow-on question,

What should we learn from the last decade?

I appreciate the comments thus far. Here is my summarization of the discussion,

"Good" Habits
-War is difficult and rarely cheap, easy, or simple
-Due to our protracted involvement, GPF forces are relearning how to work as advisors
-Air Force and Army working together
-High-tech solutions are rarely solutions and do not necessarily simplify
-Mission planning requires more than just destroying the enemy

"Bad" Habits
-Some SF units have moved away from advising towards direct action
-Excessive use of contractors
-Excessive reliance on EBO
-Continued struggles with Unity of Effort
-Lack of some leaders to understand the value of coersion, bluffing, and posturing
-Lack of deception and propaganda operations replaced by "narrative"
-Overly focused on Force Protection

Undetermined Positions
- "Good" Governance versus "Military" Solution
- Use of social scientists on the battlefield
- The long term utility of FM 3-24

I'll turn it back over to y'all for critique and continued discussion.

-Mike

[jcustis]

What should we learn from the last decade?

Appropriate investments in the small unit leader, in the way of training, equipment, and education, can make him a force multiplier beyond our wildest imagination. I have seen it in some of the young men who fill billets that I had direct command over during the invasion of Iraq. There is a definite difference between the strategic corporal of then, and now. Can't quite put my finger on exactly what, but it's there.

[Steve Blair]

I think another important question is "how much of this will we REALLY learn?"

I've always looked at this conflict through a slightly different lens when it comes to the inevitable Vietnam comparisons. In this conflict, the military certainly adapted on the battlefield much faster than they did during Vietnam. But I still question how lasting the adaptation was the further away from the battlefield (and the higher in rank) one was.

The Army learned a great deal in Vietnam (some good, some bad...but that's another question for another time), but what was truly fascinating was how quickly those lessons were either shed or buried in obscure training manuals. Even leaders who should have know better turned the majority of their training focus away from the lessons of Vietnam (in terms of small unit tactics and operational practices) and started focusing on Central Europe. This quickly became something of a doctrinal stampede, and we ended up having to relearn everything the hard way (again).

We've also learned (yet again) that some of our core personnel and training systems simply don't work with an all-volunteer force. Will we actually fix it this time?

The interesting thing, to me, is that most of the lessons you've summarized, Mike, could have come from Vietnam as well. The more things change...

[Tom Odom]

Appropriate investments in the small unit leader, in the way of training, equipment, and education, can make him a force multiplier beyond our wildest imagination. I have seen it in some of the young men who fill billets that I had direct command over during the invasion of Iraq. There is a definite difference between the strategic corporal of then, and now. Can't quite put my finger on exactly what, but it's there.

This is what I hope will be the enduring lesson. I fear however because it is neither sexy in terms of procurement nor revolutionary in its inherent truth it will be shelved as too obvious and too simple to excite the collective id of the Big Army.


Tom

[Steve Blair]

This is what I hope will be the enduring lesson. I fear however because it is neither sexy in terms of procurement nor revolutionary in its inherent truth it will be shelved as too obvious and too simple to excite the collective id of the Big Army.


Tom

I really hope you're wrong, Tom, and that they do learn that lesson. However, if history is any guide I think it's very likely that they won't.

[MikeF]

I just read this from Andrew Bacevich in a blog post (http://www.tnr.com/blog/foreign-policy/77356/obama-wants-us-forget-the-lessons-iraq) on The New Republic.


The United States leaves Iraq having learned nothing.

[Joske]

- "Good" Governance versus "Military" Solution

As i see it both are possible ways to accomplish the goal of defeating an enemy, and the decision on which one to use should be decided by the specific circumstances of an individual conflict and according to what will be the best and most effective option according to the pre-stated political objective.

So both methods should be studied and particularly when looking at an insurgency both options should be kept in mind.

[jmm99]

"Political Solution" and "Military Solution", if you use the latter; or perhaps better, in the terms used by brothers Mao and Giap, "Political Struggle" and "Military Struggle". The appropriate mix of the "Political" and the "Military" in a given situation is really the graduation question, isn't it.

One point of confusion regarding the "Political Struggle" is that its "politics" are not necessarily the same as the "politics" that drive the "policy" - of which, the "Military Struggle" and the "Political Struggle" are continuations.

E.g., In both China and Vietnam (I and II), land reform was the major component of the anti-feudal "Political Struggle"; and would have resulted in a vastly increased number of independent farm owners. However, the Communist politics and policy required ultimate collectivization of farming, with "land reform" being only an intermediate step (sufficient to bring the communists to power).

We (US) are far from integrating the "Political Struggle" and the "Military Struggle" into our doctrines concerning armed conflicts.

Regards

Mike

[slapout9]

I was going to post this on my thread about the second american revolution because it is probabaly one of the most important documentaries I have ever seen. With the recent events about book burning and mosque building it is more important than ever. It origanlly aired September 7, 2010 so I could not post it on the other thead but it will air again on September 11,2010 check local HBO listings. It is the story of a reporter/writer/producer who tried to understand AL-Qaeda and find out why they attacked out country and what we need to learn about it. And yes he uses good old police methods:)so you know it is good stuff! A link to the short conclusion is below. His conclusion is so important I will write it out even though I kant spel stuff two good.:D

http://www.lawrencewright.com/scripts.html

"The country that we were is being sucked inside. Al-Qaeda cannot destroy our country only we can do that to ourselves!"

[Fuchs]

Cross-posted from my blog:


Years ago (2004) I watched a video of an Iraqi insurgent kneeling on a street (http://www.hk94.com/images/iraqi%20shot%20ultraslomo.avi), aiming a RPG-7 and getting shot (by a Bradley IFV's coax machine gun). Like probably most Western viewers of that video, I though "What an unskilled moron. Kneeling on an open street - no camouflage, no concealment!".

Well, today I had a Déjà vu (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/07/afghanistans-insane-fight/#more-51231).


The apparently ultra-low marksmanship skill of the average current opponents coupled with hard body armour plates will probably burn very, very stupid lessons into Western armies' institutional memories.
Remember the blunders of Israeli army forces in Lebanon 2006 after raiding marginally defended Palestinian territories for years!

[derekraeapfa]

I guess we all know what we should learn not only within this 10 years' timeframe, but since aeons ago that war isn't a solution to problems.

We have kids at home watching on TVs seeing that adults solve problem with violence, and we all know kids learn from examples.

We know and teach that violence can't solve problems, but we aren't practicing what we preach.

The world has been teaching us the same thing ages after ages, but humans have to open their heart and accept that teaching. That is what I think we all are lacking.