Is Irregular Warfare Really "Irregular" Anymore?

[Bodhi]

This is obviously a loaded question. Like most who contribute to this site, I’ve spent the better part of my career studying and occasionally participating in actions that many would classify as “irregular” warfare, yet I've never been able to quite put my finger on what defines a particular conflict or action as "irregular." The root of my question is that the word “irregular” implies that the alternative would be “regular.” However, in characterizing the conflicts that have occurred over just the past 20 years, it seems to me that very few actually fit the mold of what is generally considered to be “traditional” or “conventional” warfare. With the notable exceptions of the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War, and a scant few others, the age of Napoleonic-like formations and even traditional Westphalian state-on-state warfare seems to have devolved into the exception rather than the norm.

In other words, has what was once considered to be “regular” warfare become “irregular” itself? Likewise, have the conflicts that we once considered to be “irregular” morphed into “regular” warfare? I ask this because as we all have seen, DoD in general and specifically those of us stationed down here continue to struggle with the definition of “irregular” warfare. Does warfare itself fundamentally remain dominated by states in their role as the sponsor or target of aggression? States with democratic ideals would affirm such a notion, but those states and non-state entities with limited to no democratic leanings would surely disagree. Moreover, who actually defines a conflict as “regular” or “irregular”? Undoubtedly, there are many cases where a state has considered itself to be embroiled in an insurgency while the very insurgents or guerrillas with whom they were fighting viewed the conflict as essentially a conventional battle for their own survival.

Ultimately, and I do not intend to tread on the feet of those 4GW specialists who are far more well-versed in that topic than I ever will be, perhaps it is time to start treating “irregular” warfare as the norm rather than the exception; recent history would surely support such a supposition. Of course, if this were to occur, then true adherence would require a significant shift in resources dedicated to studying, training, equipping, and manning because as we all know, the only true way to find where priorities actually exist is to follow the money…However, back to the question at hand, I was just wondering what the members here thought of this one...Is Irregular Warfare really "irregular" anymore?

[Rob Thornton]

I think having the utility in in considering opposites is still useful. War/Counter-War, Insurgency/Counter-Insurgency, Conventional/Unconventional and Regular/Irregular are useful ways to think - as long as you don't constrain yourself to an either / or position. The key is to understand not only the characteristics that may indicate which side of a description the action is more akin to, but more importantly to try and understand the conditions and the environment in which they take place - the action(s) should not be divorced from the context of when and where they take place.

DoD will soon issue DoD directive 3000.08 on Irregular Warfare. I've seen the Draft (I think it is FOUO), and I think its good enough. It looks like 3000.08 may replace 3000.05. One of its best attributes is that it defines what is "regular" and what is "Irregular". This may seem trivial in some respects, but I think it can only really be appreciated in the context of the Joint, Inter-Agency and Multi-National environments where being able to converse using the same language turns so many other wheels. My opinion is 3000.08 is a better document then 3000.05, and shows we have a better sense of things maybe then we did in late 2005.

Best, Rob

[TROUFION]

By historical review it would seem that:

1) Irregular warfare is the norm
2) Regular warfare is the exception
3) Irregular warfare kills with a thousand small cuts (queitly like cancer)
4) Regular warfare kills far quicker and dramatically (loud like a car crash or sudden like a heart attack)

Regular warfare tends to get the most attention becuase it is dramatic, it is loud, the results tend to be decisive and it is generally short 4-6 years.

Irregular warfare tends to be forgotten about, pushed to the back pages of the newspapers, footnotes on the news. Generally a few people killed here and there brief flare-ups on occasion, hard to keep people interested. Last 10, 20 or more years. The level of conflict becomes accepted, the death toll becomes the price of doing business like the annual US Highway Deaths.

Basically irregular warfare exists to some extent all the time and when a regular war breaks out the two blend together. This is when difficulty arises-when the two blend to create, to steal the current phrase, a 'hybrid' war.

My best assesment is to view irregular warfare as a style of war similiar to the idea that Judo is a style of martial arts. As in Mixed Martial Arts you can fight with any style you want, but you can only fight with the style you know. If a Judo practitioner gets himself into a street fight, no holds barred, guns, knives, kitchen sink kind of fight he will use everything and anything. He'll just have to adapt and overcome to survive.

Regular warfare is also a type of war, and the same concept applys but becuase it is seen as so destructive and so costly it is most often avoided and can generally only be fought by Nation States because of the costs involved.

[SteveMetz]

"Irregular" has two distinct connotations. One is that the combatants are fundamentally asymmetric--a state versus a non-state entity. The other is that it is "abnormal." Those who use it that way mean to suggest that eventually "normal" war (state on state) will again become the most common or strategically significant type.

Within the U.S. military, I suspect both meanings are used (depending on the speaker).

[SteveMetz]

Hey! I just noticed that my comment above is my Battle of Hastings post!

[Surferbeetle]

Bohdi,

My take is that we in the west compartmentalize war into mental 'buckets' Regular, Irregular, MCO, COIN, etc. This leads to our inter-agency troubles among other things...

I am not so sure that this mindset is the case in other parts of the world. China's full court press across the DIME spectrum in Latin America and Africa, and Russia's internet, energy, economics play seem to provide examples worth studying.

[UrsaMaior]

Do I go too far when I say regulars are soldiers, irregulars are everybody else who actively participates in fighting (ie militia, partisans, insurgents)?

[TROUFION]

UrsaMajor--there have been many irregular forces made up of soldiers in history. It isn't what the unit is, or who is in it, it is how the unit acts and is utilized. Historically some main line units have switched back and forth between regular and irregular styles of fighting--it is a mission, a mindset and objective thing.

I agree with many here in that it is the seeming need of western forces (perhaps all industralized militaries) to specialize and over specialize that prevents the flexibility of a multipurpose unit. It is almost as if we have a hidden referee waiting behind a bush who will jump out and penalize us "hey you, yeah you regular infantry that mission appears too much like a SOF mission, go to the penalty box for 5." Specialization has made us very good but the associated compartmentalization and turf wars have been detrimental to overall flexibility and coordination.

[charter6]

I would argue that calling "regular" warfare "regular" has always been a misnomer. Over the course of human history, what we now term irregular or asymmetric is in fact far and away the dominant form of conflict. That's a throw-away point in the context of this discussion though.

More importantly to my way of looking at things is the fact that our division of warfare into regular and irregular is itself entirely artificial and very, very modern. The idea that armies only fight armies within a limited sphere of engagement and that anything else constitutes an aberration only dates back a few centuries, and has only ever been applied selectively. Before that, the distinction between regular and irregular breaks down, and, more importantly, people didn't seem to have been thinking about warfare as being divisible in that way.

Strategikon XI is a great example of what I'm trying to say. Maurice contrasts there the fighting styles of the different races the Byzantine Empire was at the time facing. His section on the Slavs has decidedly "irregular" undertones. He speaks for example of campaigning in the winter when enemy food supplies will be at their lowest, of how to deal with Slavic guerrilla warfare, and of how to pacify villages (clear and hold, rather than sweeping, incidentally). Go back a couple pages though, and he's talking about how to come to grips with Persian archer superiority, or how to deal with Frankish infantry in close battle. What I'm trying to get at is that the hard and fast line between fighting armies and fighting peoples just wasn't there, even in the most professional of pre-modern armies.

Even getting into the modern era I don't think you see the same division that we've had over the last half century or so. The pacification of the Caribbean was a decidedly irregular affair, as was colonial expansion through the 18th and 19th centuries. The British colonial wars of the early half of the 20th century (Ireland and Palestine in particular come to mind) were considered to be at least partially military exercises, despite the lack of a regular opponent. We always considered the Marine Corps to be an expeditionary force, and used it very irregularly throughout Central and South America. Professional militaries don't seem to have fully shied away from the irregular until the last couple decades really, even if the irregular component of the military experience might not have been as heavily treated in doctrine as what we call the regular component.

[Bill Moore]

I'm transferring my post from the blog to the discussion panel, because I know most of us knuckle draggers are mo comfortable in this forum. However, please refer to the blog to see the article and some excellent posts.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2008/12/irregular-warfare-everything-y/index.php

Glenn, thank you for your words of wisdom. Since you already addressed my concerns about confusing reality with dated doctrinal references, I will address a couple of other areas.

I found it interesting that the authors did not address recent IW examples such as Iraq where we initially made little to no progress when our effort was focused on the so called overt guerrilla elements. Progress wasn't made until the additional troops were sent in to protect the populace to break the coercive influence link between the insurgent and the populace.

In Vietnam securing and mobilizing the populace was critical (CIDG, Phoenix, etc.), and it was effective where applied, but unfortunately it was too little too late. Of course there were numerous parallels where the populace was critical in other IW conflicts such as Malaysia, the Philippines, El Salvador, Algeria, etc. How the counterinsurgent went after the population was different in each conflict. By focusing your efforts on the populace you are setting yourself in position to defeat the entire resistance organization, not just the overt guerrillas.

While the construct of guerrilla, underground, and auxillary can be a useful model to visualize an insurgency's structure, it is not dogma, and not all insurgencies or resistence elements organize along these lines(apparently we still find it odd that other groups and countries do not feel obligated to follow our doctrine). The lines between these categories are blurred more frequently than not.

Another disconnect in logic jumped out at me when the authors identified the strategic issue as the population, but wanted to narrow IW's definition to the tactical realm. First they claim that the strategic level of IW is the underground, and that the underground is largely focused on the populace (thus strategic victory = populace), but then they argue that IW should only be focused on the overt guerrillas, or at the tactical level? We tried that a few times in our history, and I can't think of a case where it was a successful strategy.

As the authors probably know, there may be several relevant population groups that the competitors may want to influence, to include external actors. This also applies to conventional war, but more so in IW, where the opponent's primary objective may be influencing the populace versus defeating the oppoent's military forces. The Vietnamese didn't intend to defeat us by defeating our military, most of their activities directed against us were focused on influencing our home population, which effectively led to political paralysis in the end. The take away is that the violence is ultimately directed at relevant population group, not defeating the opposing military directly, and that is the difference between IW and conventional war.

The terrorists who conducted the Madrid bombings were not focused on Spain's economy or security forces, but rather influencing the voting population, which in this case effectively resulted in the anti-war candidate being elected and the withdrawal of their military from Iraq. AQ's focus on various external population groups is plain to see, and they are trying to isolate their opponents by cutting off external support. War is war, but the strategy (not just the tactics) varies considerably between conventional and irregular warfare.

Furthermore it is hard to kill the bad guys you can't see, and since we can't win by only defeating the overt forces we need to be able to find the underground. If you want to find and defeat the underground then you have to control the populace to get the human intelligence necessary to purge the threat. Drive by COIN and targeting only overt guerrillas is clearly a recipe for failure.

[Tom Odom]

Bill

your baby is up on the net at CALL

09-03: Special Forces Population and Resource Control (PRC) Handbook (09-03: Special Forces Population and Resource Control (PRC) Handbook)

best

Tom

[slapout9]

Tom, is this open to all or is it secret stuff?

[Tom Odom]

Tom, is this open to all or is it secret stuff?

Slap it is FOUO limited to those with access to CALL.

[slapout9]

:wry:
Slap it is FOUO limited to those with access to CALL.

As much stuff as I posted for him to read....that is all skint up an stuff:wry: probably gonna steal my SBW stuff next.......to quote the line from the movie Vol. 2......Where's Bill?

[Bill Moore]

Slapout, I converting slapout combat and slapout targeting into Bill Moore combat and Bill Moore targeting, then putting it on a password protected site so you couldn't see it :D Yet somehow you knew? I suspect it has something to do with your detective skills.

I did borrow heavily from the ideas posted over the years on the SWJ council, and contacted many of the subject matter experts who contribute regularly to the SWJ to exchange ideas with them. The SWJ is mostly populated by an older and somewhat conservative crowd, but we're making the internet work for us very effectively.

When it came to the nug work of compiling the information into what we hope would be a useful product I had two OLD salty Sergeants Major keeping me in line, so it was hard to get to far off track. They actually stopped me from putting the Slapout Combat stuff in the handbook :(

[slapout9]

Slapout, I converting slapout combat and slapout targeting into Bill Moore combat and Bill Moore targeting, then putting it on a password protected site so you couldn't see it :D Yet somehow you knew? I suspect it has something to do with your detective skills.

I did borrow heavily from the ideas posted over the years on the SWJ council, and contacted many of the subject matter experts who contribute regularly to the SWJ to exchange ideas with them. The SWJ is mostly populated by an older and somewhat conservative crowd, but we're making the internet work for us very effectively.

When it came to the nug work of compiling the information into what we hope would be a useful product I had two OLD salty Sergeants Major keeping me in line, so it was hard to get to far off track. They actually stopped me from putting the Slapout Combat stuff in the handbook :(

All I can say is it must be a really good manual;) I guess I will have to go to one of those websites that gangs use and get a fresh copy.:D

[Tom Odom]

Bill

note that ALL appendices will be printed--minor victory of mine and Brice as we moved to final. We were originally going to have to settle for digital appendicies only. Better and more complete package when all is printed.

Best
Tom

[SWJED]

Random Thoughts on Irregular Warfare and Security Assistance (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2008/12/random-thoughts-on-irregular-w/) by Colonel David Maxwell, Small Wars Journal

Random Thoughts on Irregular Warfare and Security Assistance (Full PDF Article) (http://smallwarsjournal.com/mag/docs-temp/159-maxwell.pdf)


As we continue the debate on how we are going to organize our forces for operations in the Irregular Warfare and we think about enabling other forces would like to think a couple of things before we chase new “shiny things” as in new “designer organizations.”

First we need to look at ourselves critically and ask if we have been able to develop effective strategies and campaign plans and then support and execute them, respectively. I think that most all of our challenges can be attributed to our strategies and campaign plans (and I will caveat this and say we need to understand that in this world of irregular warfare, complex operations and hybrid warfare there is no cookie cutter strategy or campaign plan template that will work the first time, every time. We need to be agile and flexible and be able to adapt to constantly morphing conditions). But I would say that this is where we need to focus most of all because our forces at the tactical level from all Services have proven very adept and capable and have demonstrated that they are truly learning organizations.

The second point that no one talks about are authorities and processes. If we are going to truly be effective in the Security Force Assistance, Building Partner Capacity, Train, Advise and Assist, COIN, Foreign Internal Defense areas (or whatever we what to call these types of operations – what is the flavor of the month right now?? J But I digress with my sarcasm). Our security assistance processes are broken and not supportive of whatever strategies and campaign plans we may develop. We do not have agile processes that allow us to rapidly and effectively support our friends, partners, or allies. We have Congressional constraints and limitations placed on us for political reasons that are sometimes (and perhaps often) counter to objectives or end states we are trying to achieve from a security perspective. But all the talk of an Advisory Corps whether in the military or a combined civilian-military one will be moot if we do not update, simplify, streamline, and make effective our security assistance processes and redesign them so they can support national and regional and Country Team strategies and campaign plans...

[TheLapsedPacifist]

First, have I arrived at this debate a YEAR late...your post are all 2008?!

I've finished recently a paper on IW...can't release it yet but I'm presenting it soon. Having spent some time thinking about it - like the rest of you - may I offer:

The thing here is, I believe, that IW is a confusion of two issues...

- The first is UrsaMaior's point of Irregular Forces...

- The second is TROUFION's point of Irregular Actions.


Some definitions on which I build my analysis:
a. Definition: Regular forces belong to a nation state or some legally recognised entity (say UN).

b. Definition: Irregular forces don't!

c. For brevity I won't define Regular and Irregular Actions here, but I do in my paper.

My paper sets out that IW is related to the combinations of these...so the crux of my analysis is...

1. Regular Forces fighting Regularly (conventional state on state)...

2. Irregular Forces fighting Regularly (Hezbollah 06, Balkans militias)...

3. Regular Forces fighting Irregularly (I suggest SOF UW)...and

4. Irregular Forces fighting Irregularly (Insurgents)

The issue is then what is IW? 2..3..4 or some combination of two or all three? I argue for a specific combination, but I feel that the building blocks of a robust definition can be found above...

If any of you are at a particular meeting next week discussing this, perhaps we can chat over a beer?

LP

[George L. Singleton]

1. Use of human shields took place in the Korean War, Vietnam, and now today in Iraq, Afghanistan, and parts of Pakistan.

2. Today I think intel does a good enough job to target insurgent leadership who have/use human schields, to include members of their own families.

3. If we are good enough to target insurgents off the so-called battlefield, at rest or at their "office" then the ways and means we target them suggests to me that we are doing much better at this war (irregular or whatever anyone wants to label it) than the media gives us credit for.

4. Finally, winning "Hearts and minds" of often blood kin Pakhtuns, some of whom are belligerant Taliban, some of whom are not belligerants but grew up with those who have become belligerants...then the so called winning of hearts and minds gets "muddled" and ethnic loyalties, in common religion and such makes specific actions in specific places a matter of deciding to kill off enemy terrorist leadership and forgetting about the so-called hearts and minds aspect.

5. The upside of such irregular actions by us against them is that the vast majority, over 85% of the Pakistan population (this is not true of course in Afghanistan) are not Pukhtuns, did not grow up and play with as children the terrorists, and would be glad to be rid of as many Puhtun terrorists as possible.

My two cents. We have developed sufficient tools, ways and means, but are hindered by the difference in populations between and among Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the large "other areas" of Paksitan which are non-Pukhtun to repeat myself and shut down now.

[William F. Owen]

Sorry folks, but why is this important? Seriously? I argue it is not. The important thing is the political objective of the operations, and how to achieve them. Ways and means, not who and where.

Irregular or regular is mostly utterly irrelevant, if you have thought the problem through. Focussing on the question just forgives pre-conceived ideas and some stupidity. Your own forces conduct is far more important than the conduct of the enemy.

It may help to codify certain distinctions between the two, as concerns conduct at the tactical level, but ultimately that is where it stops.

I now think, that for people at the policy level to be debating this stuff is verging on the embarrassing. It strongly implies that folks don't understand the problem.

[TheLapsedPacifist]

William,

A quick fire response, over my morning Joe. I feel that you have missed the point by some significant margin. Perhaps still early in the morning?

<The important thing is the political objective of the operations, and how to achieve them. Ways and means, not who and where.>
If you don't understand who, then you don't understand why.

<Your own forces conduct is far more important than the conduct of the enemy.>
Seriously? Is that where we are at?

<concerns conduct at the tactical level, but ultimately that is where it stops>
In this age of Strategic Compression, the 24/7 Media, etc what happens tactically has significant implications at the Political level.

We have armies that are good at beating other armies... without an understanding of the Operational and Tactical implications of our opponents, we won't get the right capabilities into the field.

LP

[Jedburgh]

Chapter Two of the 27 Jan 09 RAND pub, Assessing Irregular Warfare: A Framework for Intelligence Analysis (http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG668.pdf), is focused on defining Irregular Warfare in the context of DoD efforts to define the term. Following a review of current doctrine, the authors present this conclusion:

...When one steps back from the details of a review of IW definitions, operation types, and LLOs, IW can be thought of in terms of two stylized, ideal types. The first of these, which we call population-centric IW, is perhaps best evidenced by typical counterinsurgency operations, such as those being conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the focus is primarily on building indigenous public support (or tolerance) for U.S. aims. As described above, this type can involve a wide range of military missions, including, among others, combat and training of host nation security; but the outcome most often depends on the success of intrinsically political efforts to reach a stable political equilibrium underwritten by improvements to personal security for the population, restoration of essential services, and economic development and good governance. In this ideal type, the weight of effort is focused less on military than on political, psychological, informational, and related efforts, less on defeating enemy forces than on persuading those who can be persuaded to support the U.S.-supported aims and government.

As described in the February 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Report (http://www.defenselink.mil/qdr/report/Report20060203.pdf), the second ideal type is IW against “dispersed, global terrorist networks that exploit Islam to advance radical political aims.” This type focuses on the Al Qaeda organization umbrella of ideologically connected, cellular-structured groups; it targets specific individuals or small cells widely dispersed across the globe and requires an exquisite level of precision and timeliness in intelligence, targeting, and striking capability. This form of IW is highly tactical and technical in nature and generally does not rely on general-purpose forces. Instead, the principal application of military power consists of direct action by small numbers of SOF and, presumably, precision strikes by manned or unmanned aircraft. It also can be prosecuted by non-military partners, including law enforcement or paramilitary direct action.....

[marct]

Hi LP,


If any of you are at a particular meeting next week discussing this, perhaps we can chat over a beer?

You wouldn't happen to be talking about a meeting in sunny Monterey on Tuesday and Wednesday, would you? If so, the I suspect we could definitely chat over a few pints.

Cheers,

Marc

[slapout9]

I would argue that calling "regular" warfare "regular" has always been a misnomer. Over the course of human history, what we now term irregular or asymmetric is in fact far and away the dominant form of conflict. That's a throw-away point in the context of this discussion though.

More importantly to my way of looking at things is the fact that our division of warfare into regular and irregular is itself entirely artificial and very, very modern. The idea that armies only fight armies within a limited sphere of engagement and that anything else constitutes an aberration only dates back a few centuries, and has only ever been applied selectively. Before that, the distinction between regular and irregular breaks down, and, more importantly, people didn't seem to have been thinking about warfare as being divisible in that way.

Some good stuff here.

[William F. Owen]

William,
Lapsed, called me Wilf

A quick fire response, over my morning Joe. I feel that you have missed the point by some significant margin. Perhaps still early in the morning? Perhaps. I wrote my response over a cup of Turkish coffee and a mouthful of sweet hala.

<The important thing is the political objective of the operations, and how to achieve them. Ways and means, not who and where.>
If you don't understand who, then you don't understand why.
So explain to me how this differentiates the Viet Cong from the North Vietnamese Army, the INLA from the IRA, or Hamas from Hezbollah? With limited resources, the ways and means of applying military force are not that varied.

<Your own forces conduct is far more important than the conduct of the enemy.>
Seriously? Is that where we are at?
If you are concerned about the moral dimension to conflict, of course it does. There was never any doubt the US was going to win in Fallujah. Enemy conduct was largely irrelevant (what could they really do?). The only question mark was who died, when and by cause.
It has more or less been conclusively proved that the IDF's not so great performance in the Lebanon in 2006 was due to their failings, not anything Hezbollah ever managed to do.
To paraphrase Foch, you don't so much win as the other guys looses.
To paraphrase the Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA, "we only have to get lucky once," meaning their entire MO was predicated on detecting lapses in British Army tactical doctrine, not an attempt to compete with it.


<concerns conduct at the tactical level, but ultimately that is where it stops>
In this age of Strategic Compression, the 24/7 Media, etc what happens tactically has significant implications at the Political level.
Not true. Very rarely, some tactical action, have disproportionate effect when moral questions are framed around them. It's not a new phenomena, to anyone with a solid grounding in military history. I can cite numerous examples.

We have armies that are good at beating other armies... without an understanding of the Operational and Tactical implications of our opponents, we won't get the right capabilities into the field.
I'm not sure who the WE is here, but WHAT tactical and operational implications? That's THE game. It's not new. That IS the history of warfare. How you beat other armies is how you beat anybody. Only the detail changes.
The US couldn't beat the North Koreans and the PLA (big armies) and the if the US lost in Vietnam they lost to Main Force NVA, not the "VC", who they basically wiped out.
How you defeat a Motor Rifle Regiment is basically the same as how you defeat a Machine Gun Artillery Brigade, yet your enemy is using substantially varying methods. Insurgents on the other hand have very limited means and thus limited aims.

[TheLapsedPacifist]

Wilf,

I don't want to pick a fight, but I disagree with quite a few things you said. I'll argue one point and let's see where it takes us...

My point: We have armies that are good at beating other armies... without an understanding of the Operational and Tactical implications of our opponents, we won't get the right capabilities into the field.

Your comment: I'm not sure who the WE is here, but WHAT tactical and operational implications? That's THE game. It's not new. That IS the history of warfare. How you beat other armies is how you beat anybody. Only the detail changes.

If I ignore the the 'only the detail changes' cos you could hide a whole heap under that one statement...

Let's think about how we beat conventional forces. Two armies manoeuvring, attempting to secure a superior position on the battlefield. Terrain is important - there are key pieces of terrain to hold or seize. Say we're the offense, we need to dislodge an enemy force that is defending a hill, which overlooks some key town. I want to be able to suppress the enemy, close with him, and remove him from his defensive position. I want lots of firepower going down range - to keep his head down - I want machine guns, I want my soldiers to shoot a lot, I want grenades and bayonets for the trenches. So let's look at our soldier's rifle...this piece of kit is now optimised for a force on force conflict...get lots of rounds down range accurately. Effective fire, especially volume of it, is very important. We have, at least in the NATO nations, standardised to a 5.56mm round. It's a compromise - there's a presumed range that it will be used at, the size of the round means that our soldiers can carry lots of it (it might take a long time to dislodge our opponent), it's lethality assumes that a wounded enemy is as good - if not better - than a dead one.

Now let's look at an urban counter insurgency...predominately the enemy isn't holding any ground, so a rifle with capability to suppress is potentially pointless. If he is suppressed, he'll flee. We win the street. He comes back later. He's fleeting, if we get the chance to shoot at him, we must hit and we must incapacitate or kill. A wounded insurgent doesn't think he's going to be a POW, he isn't going to ask for quarter or wave a white flag. This calls for a different kind of rifle. It needs to be very accurate and highly lethal - we don't need to carry lots of ammunition. This might lead us to thinking about larger calibres... perhaps we can drop the bayonet.

There are lots of things that our soldiers have that are useful for force-on-force situations and much less beneficial for COIN. So beating armies and beating the anyone else might require quite different capabilities.

So we need to understand how our enemy manifests itself on the battlefield because this drives capability requirements...

[William F. Owen]

I don't want to pick a fight, but I disagree with quite a few things you said. I'll argue one point and let's see where it takes us... I don't want to to pick a fight either, I just believe in holding arguments to rigour.

This calls for a different kind of rifle. It needs to be very accurate and highly lethal - we don't need to carry lots of ammunition. This might lead us to thinking about larger calibres... perhaps we can drop the bayonet.
Very happy talking light weapons doctrine (http://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets/Owen,_UK_Platoon_Weapons.pdf).
a, this is not true, and b, history and operational analysis does not support it. No army I know of, has ever had a COIN rifle. Bayonets are largely irrelevant, and have been since about 1918. No army has ever suffered tactically through lack of bayonets. There is an extensive thread on Bayonets here (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=4765). Nothing in the conduct of the Northern Ireland conflict changed when the British Army swapped it's 7.62mm L1A1 for the 5.56mm L85.


There are lots of things that our soldiers have that are useful for force-on-force situations and much less beneficial for COIN. So beating armies and beating the anyone else might require quite different capabilities.
Like what? The British Army has fired it's entire war store of Javelin Missiles (an ATGM) doing "COIN" in Helmand province. 35 years of operations in Northern Ireland saw virtually no specialised (with the exception of EW and search kits) equipment or weapons on general issue.


So we need to understand how our enemy manifests itself on the battlefield because this drives capability requirements...
We understand our insurgent enemies capabilities very well. There is no area of debate or mystery. Actually China is a bit more of a mystery, but not a big mystery.
Again the idea that "the enemy" drives our capability requirements, does not support characterising enemies as regular and irregular. What is more, I do not believe it to be true, unless you want to get into very simplistic equipment comparisons, like M1A2 v T-80U.
Warfare drives capability requirements, and the "enemy" is one tiny part of that. What is more you never know where and who you are going to fight, so the capabilities have to be pretty broad. This article (http://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets/RDS_OwenAFV_Feb09.pdf) tackles that very issue.

The simple fact is that no army can afford to have COIN equipment and WAR equipment. It's nonsensical, intellectually flawed and doctrinally lazy - so the grounds for making this A & B differentiation of Regular and Irregular, serves no purpose, once the basic flaws have been recognised. Are there differing conditions of warfare? Very much so, but they do not line up along regular v Irregular. They line up across every possible conflict.

How come the UK's excellent set of COIN skills did not translate into overwhelming operational success in Basra? All conflicts are different. I just can't see why saying "Irregular threat" or "regular threat" helps, especially as the latest fad of "hybrid" seems to blur the distinction to irrelevance.

[max161]

The Lapsedpacifist said:
"My point: We have armies that are good at beating other armies... without an understanding of the Operational and Tactical implications of our opponents, we won't get the right capabilities into the field."

As we enter into the QDR period again, I would be interested in knowing what capabilities we need to "get right". Please tell me what unique capabilities we need to buy based on our understanding of the "operational and tactical implications of our opponents?"

More to the point what are the platforms that we need to buy that are unique to Irregular Warfare, Complex Operations, Hybrid Warfare, etc, that we do not need for Major Combat Operations or "Regular" warfighting? Please enlighten us and you might find you have a job at OSD developing the new QDR requirements. Do you really believe there is such a thing as a "COIN rifle"?

[Bob's World]

"Counter-Irregular Warfare"

I participated in a TRADOC-run conference this week to discuss the Future Operating Environment (FOE); what it is, and the ramifications. Their work will work to inform the army senior leadership, just as the JOE (Joint Operating Environment and son of earlier army FOEs) informs the joint community; and Strategic Appreciation informs the SOF community. Good eclectic group of presenters and feisty breakout sessions. During the brief backs on the final day one of the groups had incorporated the term "counter-irregular warfare". No discussion, just a phrase buried in a slide; and I didn't participate in that breakout, so I don't know what led to it being used. But it works.

IW is a sound concept being promoted by talented and informed leaders (Sec Gates, ASD Vickers, and ADM Olson to name a few) for good and valid reasons. But it is as yet horribly named (you have to get your narrative right so that your principles, intent, actions and words all line up, and this "narrative" is considerably off azimuth in the minds of most of the larger interagency and within DoD for that matter. God know how it is perceived by those who live where we intend to bring it to "help" them...) and poorly defined (the current definition, viewed through a Clauswitzian lens, could define virtually all warfare).

Sage experts like Huba Was de Cega also are very concerned, and quick to point out, that this is a term that already has a widely accepted and negative meaning. Somali pirates conduct irregular warfare. Most insurgents conduct irregular warfare. We, as representatives of a State, and agents of her populace, operating under a legal mandate of legitimacy do not. I think the concept of "Counter-Irregular warfare" is one workable way to address the flaws in the current naming convention.

1. It doesn't throw the baby out with the bath.

2. It converts the current term to one that does not propose a state of continual, WOG warfare (which, no one wants). Just like COIN, CIW would be something done both in conflict and in peace (conflict prevention) and largely civil led and always civil enabled.

3. It does not paint us with a brush of illegitimacy by naming our conduct as "irregular." I think Huba would probably be able to get on board with CIW. I think our Ambassadors will have an easier job explaining why they would like to bring in US capabilities to a partner to work with their government to build capacities in the name of CIW far easier than under the name of IW. (Our SOF guys run into the same problems when we show up at an embassy and try to explain a proposal for some unconventional warfare named activity. Horrible narrative. "You want to overthrow the government???" asks the Ambassador. "No, no, no, just the opposite," explains the well intentioned operator. Then say "just the opposite" in the first place and avoid the confusion. SOF could profit from developing "Counter unconventional warfare" as a tool in our kitbag.

So, as the environment continues to change (become more irregular?), at an ever accelerating pace on the back of globalization driving technologies, we do need some new constructs to guide our future engagement and our current planning, organizing, and equipping to support those future engagements. Perhaps a couple of 'Counter-concepts" will help us get there.

Any thoughts on either Counter-IW or Counter-UW??

[William F. Owen]

Somali pirates conduct irregular warfare.

No they do not. They are criminals. They have no interest in gaining any political power other than that which helps them conduct piracy.
The RUF in Sierra Leone, were criminals sometimes masquerading as insurgents, and sometimes actually having to be insurgent in that they were aiming to take and hold ground to exploit carbon resources. In the end they screwed up by becoming a political threat, and thus attracted an international military response.
If the Somali pirates seek to hold ground of over throw local government for the exercising of policy rather than criminality, then they'll be conducting warfare. Piracy is a land based problem, so they may have to hold ground, but no political aim, no warfare.


IW is a sound concept being promoted by talented and informed leaders (Sec Gates, ASD Vickers, and ADM Olson to name a few) for good and valid reasons.

Why is it sound? How does this help? Why do you want binary code all the possible threats on the planet into two boxes? What good does it do you?


(the current definition, viewed through a Clauswitzian lens, could define virtually all warfare). Correctomundo! It does. Why is it so important to define warfare in a way different to that which Clausewitz, did, when it has served military thought so well?

You have one army, with one set of equipment, and limited time and budget to train. Within that it has to able to fight every type of armed force on the planet. Who, where and why is irrelevant to answering the exam question.

The British Army answered this question in 1961, when they said there would be enemies with tactical nuclear weapons, conventional capability, and some very limited capability. They all had to be dealt with using the equipment and weapons in the stores, and the range of training available. Over the next 22 years, that proved generally correct.

[Ken White]

The British Army answered this question in 1961, when they said there would be enemies with tactical nuclear weapons, conventional capability, and some very limited capability. They all had to be dealt with using the equipment and weapons in the stores, and the range of training available. Over the next 22 years, that proved generally correct.at about the same time with the same result. Difference is our memory is impaired... :rolleyes:

Or ignored. :mad:

[Bob's World]

No they do not. They are criminals. They have no interest in gaining any political power other than that which helps them conduct piracy.
The RUF in Sierra Leone, were criminals sometimes masquerading as insurgents, and sometimes actually having to be insurgent in that they were aiming to take and hold ground to exploit carbon resources. In the end they screwed up by becoming a political threat, and thus attracted an international military response.
If the Somali pirates seek to hold ground of over throw local government for the exercising of policy rather than criminality, then they'll be conducting warfare. Piracy is a land based problem, so they may have to hold ground, but no political aim, no warfare.



Why is it sound? How does this help? Why do you want binary code all the possible threats on the planet into two boxes? What good does it do you?

Correctomundo! It does. Why is it so important to define warfare in a way different to that which Clausewitz, did, when it has served military thought so well?

You have one army, with one set of equipment, and limited time and budget to train. Within that it has to able to fight every type of armed force on the planet. Who, where and why is irrelevant to answering the exam question.

The British Army answered this question in 1961, when they said there would be enemies with tactical nuclear weapons, conventional capability, and some very limited capability. They all had to be dealt with using the equipment and weapons in the stores, and the range of training available. Over the next 22 years, that proved generally correct.


WILF, good catch, Piracy may not be the best example. Agree that they are a criminal enterprise and also that the solution for dealing with them must include a decisive land aspect. We'll have to differ though (as usual) that all war is war. State war is simply very different from populace war. Defeat a state's military and you may well win the war (though as we learned in WWI when all you do is defeat the military but leave a very undefeated populace, it can come back to life again once boths sides breed a new generation of soldiers). In populace/insurgency based wars, though also for political purpose, you simply cannot win an enduring solution by simply conducting military operations to defeat the military arm of the insurgency. I know I can't think of a good example of where this has worked, and by worked, I mean where it did not erupt back into insurgency again some 10-20 years later.

The 60s taught us a lot of great lessons, but with the information tools of globalization in play, many of those tactical lessons must be modified to take this into account. The Malaysian model of isolating the populace from the Insurgent is largely obsolete as it simply is not feasible anymore. It is also harder to simply suppress the military arm for the same reasons. Now more than ever populace-based conflict must be addressed by identifying and repairing the underlying casuation (not to be confused with the most recent motivation) for conflict.

War doesn't change much. Neither does Insurgency. The environment has made a major change though, and we need to recognize this and adjust. I believe that COIN is still something that demands Civil leadership; but I also believe that military today can no longer assume the luxurious position of saying "not my job" in helping with addressing those underlying causes. We're in this together; and yeah, I think CIW helps us wrap our brains around that concept.

[William F. Owen]

In populace/insurgency based wars, though also for political purpose, you simply cannot win an enduring solution by simply conducting military operations to defeat the military arm of the insurgency.
I agree, but that's not the issue. If you don't suppress/disrupt/defeat the military side of the insurgency, you can't do anything else. In the end the insurgency is be defeated because power resides with the government. The insurgency has not power and isn't even an insurgency if it has no MILITARY means.

Now more than ever populace-based conflict must be addressed by identifying and repairing the underlying casuation (not to be confused with the most recent motivation) for conflict.
...but this assumes their is an underlying causation, that can be addressed or repaired. It assumes a snap shot of only one type of insurgency. Insurgencies are sometimes just bad people doing bad things for political aims. Sometimes the peoples perception of being victims is a invented narrative to justify their own failings.

I believe that COIN is still something that demands Civil leadership; but I also believe that military today can no longer assume the luxurious position of saying "not my job" in helping with addressing those underlying causes.
For me all leadership is Civil, because the military is an instrument of policy. No argument there. If you want the military to engage in social services and the provision of social structures and political administration, then you are going to have to have a very large part of the US Army, not being an Army any more, and that will cost you when it comes to doing other things.

[Entropy]

I think our Ambassadors will have an easier job explaining why they would like to bring in US capabilities to a partner to work with their government to build capacities in the name of CIW far easier than under the name of IW. (Our SOF guys run into the same problems when we show up at an embassy and try to explain a proposal for some unconventional warfare named activity. Horrible narrative. "You want to overthrow the government???" asks the Ambassador. "No, no, no, just the opposite," explains the well intentioned operator. Then say "just the opposite" in the first place and avoid the confusion. SOF could profit from developing "Counter unconventional warfare" as a tool in our kitbag.


I learned a long time ago that using "guild" terminology with people who aren't in your "guild" is going to breed misunderstanding despite one's best intentions. I would submit that the Ambassador doesn't need to know about your doctrine or the specific terminology you use and isn't likely to understand CIW any better than another term. This is a case where knowing your audience is important (actually, when is it not important?). Therefore, I think a SoF team in the example you give needs to explain it to the ambassador without jargon in a way that he/she will clearly understand. Maybe that SoF team needs to learn DoS jargon so they can effectively communicate what they want to do. Once that is done, THEN you can add at the end, "btw, if you hear us mention CIW/IW amongst ourselves, that term is our short hand for what I just explained to you."

My point in all this is that I don't think it ultimately matters what term is used in your doctrine as long as there is a consensus of meaning among the stakeholders of that doctrine. To relay those concepts in concise terms to outside groups and organizations has always been problematic and probably always will be. In such cases, jargon should be minimized or eliminated to facilitate understanding. On the other hand, perhaps what really needs to happen is to get a bunch of DOS, DOD, academics, NGO's and others together to hash out a common taxonomy that everyone understands.

[Bob's World]

I learned a long time ago that using "guild" terminology with people who aren't in your "guild" is going to breed misunderstanding despite one's best intentions. I would submit that the Ambassador doesn't need to know about your doctrine or the specific terminology you use and isn't likely to understand CIW any better than another term. This is a case where knowing your audience is important (actually, when is it not important?). Therefore, I think a SoF team in the example you give needs to explain it to the ambassador without jargon in a way that he/she will clearly understand. Maybe that SoF team needs to learn DoS jargon so they can effectively communicate what they want to do. Once that is done, THEN you can add at the end, "btw, if you hear us mention CIW/IW amongst ourselves, that term is our short hand for what I just explained to you."

My point in all this is that I don't think it ultimately matters what term is used in your doctrine as long as there is a consensus of meaning among the stakeholders of that doctrine. To relay those concepts in concise terms to outside groups and organizations has always been problematic and probably always will be. In such cases, jargon should be minimized or eliminated to facilitate understanding. On the other hand, perhaps what really needs to happen is to get a bunch of DOS, DOD, academics, NGO's and others together to hash out a common taxonomy that everyone understands.

"Irregular Warfare is the term the Pentagon is running with, and not particularly concerned with how a world-wide audiance with no access or inclination to check the joint pub definition will interpret it. They will judge through all of their own respective national or institutional lenses applying lay definitions of "irregular" and "warfare"

We changed the name of the "War Department" to the Department of Defense because we apparently felt the old name sent the wrong message. Now we adopt a term that says we are coming to town once again to conduct "war." Probably still not a good idea. I stand by my contention that tossing a "counter" in front of it improves the narrative, regardless of the audiance.

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Bob's World,
The Malaysian model of isolating the populace from the Insurgent is largely obsolete as it simply is not feasible anymore. It is also harder to simply suppress the military arm for the same reasons. Now more than ever populace-based conflict must be addressed by identifying and repairing the underlying casuation (not to be confused with the most recent motivation) for conflict.

Why is it unfeasible? Furthermore, if you think you can reduce war to a debate over ideas you're wrong. I can sit in my castle and espouse the grand values of democracy and free markets, while my opponent can espouse the values of Sharia Law, by the way my opponent is holding a knife to the neck of the audience, while we sit back and dismiss the most basic rule of COIN which is protecting the populace. If you can't protect the populace from coercive elements within the society, then you can't win. This is exactly what population centric means. Of course we're not going to completely drain the swamp, or provide 100% protection (we don't do that in the U.S.), but our set backs in Afghanistan were largely due to our inability to separate the insurgent from the populace. We made empty promises, and the insurgent delivered upon his threats. We are talking about a war, not an election.

Wilf,

What's the purpose of IW? Once again it is a forcing mechanism to expand our concept of war. Unfortunately our professional military education institutions have intentionally or unintentionally failed to address IW, and we habitually perform in a substandard manner when we are in an IW conflict. It is unexcusable that we fail to learn and apply the lessons of the past. You're right, IW is just warfare, but it a slice of the whole we are not good at. We need this concept to get past our traditional mindsets.

BW,

I think the idea of organizing our doctrine around C-IW our C-UW is useful on many levels. Hopefully it will gain some traction.

[slapout9]

How about 2 manuals are all you need for the whole Army. Stabilizing Operations and Destabilizing Operations. From a Systems perspective those are the only 2 things you can do or need to do to the target system. You add positive energy to the system or you delete negative energy from the system until it Stabilizes or Destabilizes which ever you prefer. We should have a race to see how many terms and manuals could be deleted and still accomplish all missions.:)

[Bob's World]

Posted by Bob's World,

Why is it unfeasible? Furthermore, if you think you can reduce war to a debate over ideas you're wrong. I can sit in my castle and espouse the grand values of democracy and free markets, while my opponent can espouse the values of Sharia Law, by the way my opponent is holding a knife to the neck of the audience, while we sit back and dismiss the most basic rule of COIN which is protecting the populace. If you can't protect the populace from coercive elements within the society, then you can't win. This is exactly what population centric means. Of course we're not going to completely drain the swamp, or provide 100% protection (we don't do that in the U.S.), but our set backs in Afghanistan were largely due to our inability to separate the insurgent from the populace. We made empty promises, and the insurgent delivered upon his threats. We are talking about a war, not an election.



Bill,

In no way am I suggesting that there is not a requirement for military operations against the insurgent both to defeat his military capacity and to secure the populace. My point is two fold: first, that defeating the insurgent alone has never been sufficient to actually defeat an insurgency; and second that in today's information environment tactics of isolation and control are ineffective due to the speed and availability of global information to virtually any person, any where, any time.

Fact is that historically the counterinsurgent has rarely even wanted to truly address the underlying causation for the insurgency and has simply wanted to make the insurgent stop conducting a disruptive level of violence so that they can keep on with business as usual. The reason for this is simple, it’s because insurgency happens when governments fail, and rare is the government that wants to even admit its failures, let alone be forced to change their mode of conduct simply because some aspect of the populace doesn't like it. Crush the squeaky wheel, and the rest of the populace will typically fall back into line; particularly when the government can largely shape and control the information available to that populace.

So my theory is that in today's world governments no longer have the luxury of this time proven tactic, and that today they must actually listen to their populace and truly attempt to address legitimate grievances in addition to crushing the squeaky wheel if necessary (adding oil may be all that is required if addressed soon enough).

Where Wilf and I appear to depart is that he sees insurgency as just the conflict portion of this disagreement between a populace and its governance. I believe that it is more constructive to take a more holistic view and see insurgency and counterinsurgency as a continuous spectrum of friction between every populace and every governance every day. Most are bumping along happily down in what the 1980 State Department COIN manual calls "Phase 1 Pre-insurgency" (with phase 2-4 being Mao's 3 phases). Call it that or call it "Phase 0 Peace," the concept is the same. Populaces will always have grievances, needs, and wants; and governments must always be working to address them. As governments fall behind in this mission the tension rises into more active and more organized dissent, ultimately, if unchecked, resulting in violence. The goal of good governance and good counterinsurgency (the same thing in this view), is to work to stay as low in Phase 0 as possible. The military is only called in to assist in COIN when the governmental failures become so great that they require the added capacity of the military to create conditions that allow the civil elements to regain sufficient control to be able to implement the changes required to address the populaces concerns.

The military should not be a hammer brought in to punish the populace for being dissatisfied, which makes "problems" go away so that the civil government can continue merrily along with its family of failed conduct that gave rise to the insurgency in the first place. This is why governments tend to blame insurgency on the insurgent leadership or on "radicalism" or some "ideology." Total BS.

All of those are critical enablers of the violent movement, but the causation of insurgency is always some real or perceived failure of the government in the eyes of the governed, that the populace feels they have no recourse to resolve through peaceful means.

America's, and perhaps the world's, most successful COIN campaign ever was the passing and enacting of the Civil Rights Act. Certainly it is the most successful of all the widely touted COIN efforts of the 1960s. The government recognized that it was wrong and made major concessions and changes to address the legitimate grievances of a major segment of its populace. That is good COIN. I personally thought that operation was over until I saw how the African American populace reacted to President Obama's election, and I realized that it was low into "Phase 0," but not nearly as low as most of us thought it was. COIN operations are never over. They are continuous, and are usually done in Peace.

(As to our challenges in Afghanistan, that is a whole other chapter, but think about this theory presented here, and how it might apply to what has happened there to date, and how it could inform what we do as we move forward)

[William F. Owen]

Where Wilf and I appear to depart is that he sees insurgency as just the conflict portion of this disagreement between a populace and its governance. I believe that it is more constructive to take a more holistic view and see insurgency and counterinsurgency as a continuous spectrum of friction between every populace and every governance every day.

You may be right, so to revert to an analogy, I see Insurgency as being the burst pipe that requires the emergency plumber. I need to stop the flood, not think about what the builder and decorator are going to do, because while water still flows, nothing else can be done. No plumber, no builder or decorator will be able to work. So, Stop the killing, as in provide security, all else will follow.

If the leek is very small, then a normal plumber, ( a policeman) might suffice.


SLAPOUTHow about 2 manuals are all you need for the whole Army. Stabilizing Operations and Destabilizing Operations. From a Systems perspective those are the only 2 things you can do or need to do to the target system. You add positive energy to the system or you delete negative energy from the system until it Stabilizes or Destabilizes which ever you prefer. We should have a race to see how many terms and manuals could be deleted and still accomplish all missions.

Exactly. That's my point. I would submit "Combat Operations" and "Security Operations" - nothing to do with any supposed nature of conflict. Your/our conduct is what matters, not what the other clown is up to, or where or how he is up to it, because that will differ vastly.

[slapout9]

Exactly. That's my point. I would submit "Combat Operations" and "Security Operations" - nothing to do with any supposed nature of conflict. Your/our conduct is what matters, not what the other clown is up to, or where or how he is up to it, because that will differ vastly.


Hi Wilf, you said something else on another post (and I can not find it)so I will paraphrase....so if I get it wrong it is my fault. You said something to the effect that we should not worry so much about the End State as we should just install a good Process and the End State will take care of itself.

Whenever you deal with living systems that is all you can do or should want to do....as long as we are alive there is no End only adaption. As long as the system is alive it will adapt and you have to be prepared for that from the beginning. Law Enforcement is a process to suppress crime, we cant, nor could we ever stop crime, because we are dealing with a living system that adapts. So as long as everyone is alive the End State can only be continuous improvement....always strive to maintain the initiative. If we do this we will find that situations will not be perfect but they will be better than before and that will be rather pleasant if we give it a chance to work.

[Ken White]

If the leek is very small, then a normal plumber, ( a policeman) might suffice. :D I too can kill me too...
Exactly. That's my point. I would submit "Combat Operations" and "Security Operations" - nothing to do with any supposed nature of conflict. Your/our conduct is what matters, not what the other clown is up to, or where or how he is up to it, because that will differ vastly.However, on a serious note, I think you and Slapout are on to something. Add to that my Son's advisory that any Manual over 100 pages is likely full of garbage and, regardless of worth, is unlikely to be read and / or used by most...

The two-manual process would work. Apply it to echelon, two for individuals, two for Platoon / Company, two for Bn / Bde, etc. Seriously.

ADDED:
"...always strive to maintain the initiative. If we do this we will find that situations will not be perfect but they will be better than before and that will be rather pleasant if we give it a chance to work."True dat, Slap...

[William F. Owen]

Whenever you deal with living systems that is all you can do or should want to do....as long as we are alive there is no End only adaption. As long as the system is alive it will adapt and you have to be prepared for that from the beginning.

I can dig that. Makes sense and improves upon my "do it right and you'll get it right," schtick.

For sure, the enemy will adapt, so being better at the fundamentals is pretty much the only way forward, and hopefully you can stop adapting when the other system is dead!

[William F. Owen]

:D I too can kill me too...However, on a serious note, I think you and Slapout are on to something. Add to that my Son's advisory that any Manual over 100 pages is likely full of garbage and, regardless of worth, is unlikely to be read and / or used by most...

The two-manual process would work. Apply it to echelon, two for individuals, two for Platoon / Company, two for Bn / Bde, etc. Seriously.

ADDED:True dat, Slap...

Ooops. Me and spelling ... or is that swelling... selling... :)

I think your son sounds a smart as his Dad. However there is a huge "human bye-in" to lengthy manuals. It think FM3-24 maybe demonstrative of that. FM23-10 (Sniper Training) is at least 150 pages too long, while the 1965 FM7-15 (Rifle Platoon and Squad) may not have been great of even useful, but it covered what had to be covered - albeit not well - but is shorter than the current FM23-10!

[Ken White]

Ooops. ... or is that swelling ... :)

but is shorter than the current FM23-10!bigger is not always better... ;)

[Bill Moore]

BW, I don't disagree with many of your points, but I don't think they apply as widely as you apparently do. I offer the following to see how your theory stands up against these criticisms.


defeating the insurgent alone has never been sufficient to actually defeat an insurgency; and second that in today's information environment tactics of isolation and control are ineffective due to the speed and availability of global information to virtually any person, any where, any time.

1. Defeating the insurgent requires defeating the insurgency, which in the West is usually more than military in nature, but in some parts of the world they are effective at suppressing an insurgency with a repressive military approach. Syria and Iraq both put down insurgencies with brutal military operations. You can argue that the underlying motivation of the insurgents still exists, but they were effectively defeated and could not act on their desire to force political change. There were no effective insurgencies within the USSR, PRC, Cuba or North Korea. Brutality and total control may not be politically correct, but it works. We ignore it because it isn't the Western way of waging war (nor should it be), but I offer these examples to simply challenge your theory that such an approach doesn't work.

2. As for information being available worldwide 24/7 at the speed of light or sound, I think this is a critical consideration, but it is over hyped. India probably has more information techs than any other country, but I read that less than 15% of the population had access to the internet. What information is available to the people in Burma, DROC, etc.? In many places information is spread the old fashion way, at the grass roots level, face to face.


The reason for this is simple, it’s because insurgency happens when governments fail, and rare is the government that wants to even admit its failures, let alone be forced to change their mode of conduct simply because some aspect of the populace doesn't like it. Crush the squeaky wheel, and the rest of the populace will typically fall back into line; particularly when the government can largely shape and control the information available to that populace.

In some cases, and maybe most, there is some truth to this argument, but more accurately it is the perception of the insurgents that the government has failed. Therefore, those key "leaders" that fan the flames of discontent are critical, and the fact remains that some insurgencies are based on personality cults. Populations are not prone to raise up against their government without leadership to motivate it to do so. Someone(s) must provide a plan that convinces the population they can force change effectively, otherwise why assume the risk? Frustration in many countries is simply not acted upon.


So my theory is that in today's world governments no longer have the luxury of this time proven tactic, and that today they must actually listen to their populace and truly attempt to address legitimate grievances in addition to crushing the squeaky wheel if necessary (adding oil may be all that is required if addressed soon enough).

I'm going to narrow my counter argument to Islamist insurgencies. It "appears" to me that the majority of people in Muslim countries have no desire to live under Taliban like rule. Most Islamist insurgencies have failed over the years because they do not have a viable political plan (unlike the communists who were very good in this respect). The real underlying issue in many of these cases is that the government fails at the most basic level, and that is providing security for its people. I think the way you phrased your arguments points at the government always being at fault, and too easily dismisses the power of coercion (terrorism at the village level, join us or suffer dearly). While the government may not be ideal, that isn't always the issue, the issue is much more immediate (safety). That is why our find, fix, finish approach is deeply flawed. The first line of operation "must" be providing security to the population, then as you state establishing or re-establishing legitimacy between the gov and the governed, THEN the find and destroy the enemy piece is relatively easy. We let some individuals in the SOF community shape this fight the wrong way (focus on capture/kill), defeating an Islamist insurgency should have been relatively easy. We got it right in Iraq late, and Afghanistan we don't have it right.


The military should not be a hammer brought in to punish the populace for being dissatisfied, which makes "problems" go away so that the civil government can continue merrily along with its family of failed conduct that gave rise to the insurgency in the first place. This is why governments tend to blame insurgency on the insurgent leadership or on "radicalism" or some "ideology." Total BS.

In some cases this is correct, but in a place in Afghanistan where the people are begging to live in relative peace (the term relative is important), the insertion of security forces is critical. I think we tend to rely too much on our dated UW and COIN doctrine which was designed to counter communist insurgencies, what we're facing now in "some" parts of the world is different, and our approach needs to be modified accordingly.

Food for thought, eager to see your responses.

[Bob's World]

BW, I don't disagree with many of your points, but I don't think they apply as widely as you apparently do. I offer the following to see how your theory stands up against these criticisms.



1. Defeating the insurgent requires defeating the insurgency, which in the West is usually more than military in nature, but in some parts of the world they are effective at suppressing an insurgency with a repressive military approach. Syria and Iraq both put down insurgencies with brutal military operations. You can argue that the underlying motivation of the insurgents still exists, but they were effectively defeated and could not act on their desire to force political change. There were no effective insurgencies within the USSR, PRC, Cuba or North Korea. Brutality and total control may not be politically correct, but it works. We ignore it because it isn't the Western way of waging war (nor should it be), but I offer these examples to simply challenge your theory that such an approach doesn't work.

2. As for information being available worldwide 24/7 at the speed of light or sound, I think this is a critical consideration, but it is over hyped. India probably has more information techs than any other country, but I read that less than 15% of the population had access to the internet. What information is available to the people in Burma, DROC, etc.? In many places information is spread the old fashion way, at the grass roots level, face to face.



In some cases, and maybe most, there is some truth to this argument, but more accurately it is the perception of the insurgents that the government has failed. Therefore, those key "leaders" that fan the flames of discontent are critical, and the fact remains that some insurgencies are based on personality cults. Populations are not prone to raise up against their government without leadership to motivate it to do so. Someone(s) must provide a plan that convinces the population they can force change effectively, otherwise why assume the risk? Frustration in many countries is simply not acted upon.



I'm going to narrow my counter argument to Islamist insurgencies. It "appears" to me that the majority of people in Muslim countries have no desire to live under Taliban like rule. Most Islamist insurgencies have failed over the years because they do not have a viable political plan (unlike the communists who were very good in this respect). The real underlying issue in many of these cases is that the government fails at the most basic level, and that is providing security for its people. I think the way you phrased your arguments points at the government always being at fault, and too easily dismisses the power of coercion (terrorism at the village level, join us or suffer dearly). While the government may not be ideal, that isn't always the issue, the issue is much more immediate (safety). That is why our find, fix, finish approach is deeply flawed. The first line of operation "must" be providing security to the population, then as you state establishing or re-establishing legitimacy between the gov and the governed, THEN the find and destroy the enemy piece is relatively easy. We let some individuals in the SOF community shape this fight the wrong way (focus on capture/kill), defeating an Islamist insurgency should have been relatively easy. We got it right in Iraq late, and Afghanistan we don't have it right.



In some cases this is correct, but in a place in Afghanistan where the people are begging to live in relative peace (the term relative is important), the insertion of security forces is critical. I think we tend to rely too much on our dated UW and COIN doctrine which was designed to counter communist insurgencies, what we're facing now in "some" parts of the world is different, and our approach needs to be modified accordingly.

Food for thought, eager to see your responses.


First, while I do believe there are fundamental underlying principles rooted in the relationship between the governed and the government; every case is different based on the "environmentals": terrain, weather, culture, nature of the government, dissident leadership, effective ideologies, outside influence to either side, etc.

So, yes, if you run a dictatorship form of governance you can simply keep crushing the opposition every time it raises its head. But when you lose the wherewithal to do this look out, because if never went away, and ever act of repression intensified the brew. We often are the ones who take that lid off and look inside. Yugoslavia and Iraq both come to mind. All that released pressure blew up in our faces. Number one country we should be looking at today is Saudi Arabia. The King plays us like a fiddle and crushes rebellion at home under our conveniently provided label of "terrorists." He also doesn't do much to stem these nationalist dissidents from acting on their belief that they must break the support of the US to the King in order to have success at home. Thus why 15 of 19 9/11 attackers and 40% of foreign fighters in Iraq being Saudis. We make it all about us. Typical American hubris. We're just in the way.

Next on key leaders and ideology. I chalk this up to the difference between "causation" and "motivation." The American Revolution is a good case study for this. Causation was largely the British belief that a British citizen born in the Colonies was a lower class than one born in England. Certainly this rubbed the upper class in the colonies harder than it did the average working Joe, and without the efforts of men like Sam Adams, Thomas Paine, and Patrick Henry to stir up the emotions; or men like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin to provide the intellect that designed a new form of governance; or men like George Washington, denied the opportunity to serve in the Regular Army due solely to his place of birth, to lead a long fight; we would have most likely been like the rest of the commonwealth. Acts like the Stamp Tax, the Boston Massacre, and Concord Square served as catalysts and also aided the words in providing motivation to the masses. When everything comes together things flare up quicker and perhaps with more violence, but when the underlying conditions persist, populace driven change is inevitable.

Perception is in fact key. Facts and truth are early casualties, and it is perception that drives such conflicts. Today's communications accelerate this tremendously, and where computers are rare, cell phones are often quite common. Still some dark spots out there, Burma is a good example, and North Korea a better one. But they are exceptions.

[slapout9]

Number one country we should be looking at today is Saudi Arabia. The King plays us like a fiddle and crushes rebellion at home under our conveniently provided label of "terrorists." He also doesn't do much to stem these nationalist dissidents from acting on their belief that they must break the support of the US to the King in order to have success at home. Thus why 15 of 19 9/11 attackers and 40% of foreign fighters in Iraq being Saudis. We make it all about us. Typical American hubris. We're just in the way.


Yep!!

[Entropy]

"Irregular Warfare is the term the Pentagon is running with, and not particularly concerned with how a world-wide audiance with no access or inclination to check the joint pub definition will interpret it. They will judge through all of their own respective national or institutional lenses applying lay definitions of "irregular" and "warfare"

We changed the name of the "War Department" to the Department of Defense because we apparently felt the old name sent the wrong message. Now we adopt a term that says we are coming to town once again to conduct "war." Probably still not a good idea. I stand by my contention that tossing a "counter" in front of it improves the narrative, regardless of the audiance.

I understand your point, and concede its possible, maybe even likely, that the narrative will improve for some, but I think it's equally possible/likely that you'll lose people on the way as well. We're in our 8th year of fighting an "irregular" opponent and I don't see how changing terminology does much at this point for us unless CIW represents something much more than a name change.

This is a bit of a soap-box topic for me, and upon rereading what I wrote earlier, I see that I probably came across more harshly than I intended - so my apologies for that. For me, changing terminology is a big pet peeve of mine that causes all sorts of problems and confusion. The best example I can think of is the various acronyms for the people we're fighting. In Afghanistan specifically, I've seen the following used as general terms for the violent opponents to the government of Afghanistan and the coalition: Taliban, ACF, ACM, AOG, AQAM, OF, OMF, TB, Militants, Insurgents, Terrorists. I think there are some I'm forgetting. Why do we need so many terms? Why do can't we pick a term and stick with it? What is the functional difference between anti-coalition militants, anti-coalition force, armed opposition groups and opposing militant forces, for example? There isn't any.

FOB names are another example. I know of a couple of FOB's that have changed names a few times over the years in Afghanistan. A lot of people still use the "old" names, which creates a lot of confusion. "Kamp Holland," FOB Ripley and Tarin Kowt are all the same thing and people regularly use all three to represent the same grids. Some places have "unofficial" names as well. Eventually, everyone who deploys to Afghanistan figures out what all the names mean.

And that gets to my point - changing IW to CIW risks creating more confusion, not less since a lot of people (being creatures of habit) will probably keep using IW regardless, or will make false assumptions about what the new terminology means. IOW, what may be clearer terminology to me and you may only confuse things for others.

Finally, I think there's a lot of wisdom in your last comment to Bill Moore. Good food for thought there.

[Bob's World]

I understand your point, and concede its possible, maybe even likely, that the narrative will improve for some, but I think it's equally possible/likely that you'll lose people on the way as well. We're in our 8th year of fighting an "irregular" opponent and I don't see how changing terminology does much at this point for us unless CIW represents something much more than a name change.

This is a bit of a soap-box topic for me, and upon rereading what I wrote earlier, I see that I probably came across more harshly than I intended - so my apologies for that. For me, changing terminology is a big pet peeve of mine that causes all sorts of problems and confusion. The best example I can think of is the various acronyms for the people we're fighting. In Afghanistan specifically, I've seen the following used as general terms for the violent opponents to the government of Afghanistan and the coalition: Taliban, ACF, ACM, AOG, AQAM, OF, OMF, TB, Militants, Insurgents, Terrorists. I think there are some I'm forgetting. Why do we need so many terms? Why do can't we pick a term and stick with it? What is the functional difference between anti-coalition militants, anti-coalition force, armed opposition groups and opposing militant forces, for example? There isn't any.

FOB names are another example. I know of a couple of FOB's that have changed names a few times over the years in Afghanistan. A lot of people still use the "old" names, which creates a lot of confusion. "Kamp Holland," FOB Ripley and Tarin Kowt are all the same thing and people regularly use all three to represent the same grids. Some places have "unofficial" names as well. Eventually, everyone who deploys to Afghanistan figures out what all the names mean.

And that gets to my point - changing IW to CIW risks creating more confusion, not less since a lot of people (being creatures of habit) will probably keep using IW regardless, or will make false assumptions about what the new terminology means. IOW, what may be clearer terminology to me and you may only confuse things for others.

Finally, I think there's a lot of wisdom in your last comment to Bill Moore. Good food for thought there.

The past several years have been a run up a tremendous learning curve for everyone. Even within the SOF community there are several divergent perspectives as to what exactly we are dealing with and how to best do so. For the conventional community even more so; with Iraq being one tough school of hard knocks, but with the lessons being largely attributed to "CT" and "COIN", when if fact we have been through a wide range of operations against multiple opponents with an even broader range of motivations in that conflict.

As the guys at the very top attempt to sort this out, and to create a classification of operation that allows them to adjust budget priorities the concept that stuck was "Irregular Warfare." While it will probably serve that purpose well enough, it is the second and third order effects that concern me. How those outside DoD perceive IW; how those outside the US perceive IW, etc.

The main concept driving this is the belief that while we must always be prepared for conventional, state on state conflict, we expect that the majority of operations in the forseeable future will be dealing with some aspect of other peoples insurgencies: dealing with non-state actors conducting unconventional warfare like AQN; and dealing with quasi-state actors like Hezbollah that happily takes advantage of new form of "status sanctuary" that we grant them because we haven't figured out what to do with them yet. All of this is bundled as "irregular."

So, my take upon seeing the 'Counterirregular warfare' term this past week was that it was a good compromise between the proponents for IW and those who have grave, and legitimate concerns. Better to make it as good as possible now, to avoid another messy name change a couple years from now when those higher order negative effects begin to manifest.

[Entropy]

Bob,

Thanks for the reply and thoughtful comments, as always.


As the guys at the very top attempt to sort this out, and to create a classification of operation that allows them to adjust budget priorities the concept that stuck was "Irregular Warfare." While it will probably serve that purpose well enough, it is the second and third order effects that concern me. How those outside DoD perceive IW; how those outside the US perceive IW, etc.

Serious question here: Do you know how they will perceive CIW? How can you be sure those outside DoD will understand that better than what we currently have and how can you estimate the relative impact of making that change in terminology versus something else or even the status quo?


So, my take upon seeing the 'Counterirregular warfare' term this past week was that it was a good compromise between the proponents for IW and those who have grave, and legitimate concerns.

How do you know that?

If the goal is to bring everyone into the same tent, then why not include those who have "legitimate concerns" in the process of crafting new terminology? Maybe what is needed is not new DoD definitions and terminology, but new definitions and terminology at the inter-agency level.

[Bob's World]

I think in this case, the name was selected fairly high up the food chain, along with a rough concept of what it described. It was then tossed down to the AO level to define and describe in detail. There as been plenty of discussion about the problems with both the name and the definition as this snow ball has picked up both mass and momentum; and frankly I think at this point there isn't anyone with the required combination of rank, position and inclination to change it.

As to "how do I know," well, this isn't some objective item that can be measured, weighed, and truly "known," so reasonable minds can differ.

It is, however, something falls fairly near to my area of expertise, and I do interact with the gentlemen tasked to breath live into this concept on a fairly regular basis (some have even stopped cringing when they see me coming). So, its just my opinion, but it is a thoughtful and informed one.

[Entropy]

I guess at my low level there is a lot I'm missing and perhaps my skepticism is therefore unwarranted. Nothing unusual there. If your efforts can bring more coherence at all levels, then that is a good thing.

[slapout9]

This thread is over lapping on another thread so I am linking my response here. If we fail at the US Constitutional System level of what war is and is not it doesn't matter what we call the rest of it.



http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?p=68948#post68948

[Bob's World]

From the current issue of the Journal of International Security Affairs, the U.S. Special Operations Commander lays out what he thinks IW is, and why he thinks its important.

" To successfully deter and confront the global insurgency threatening the world and our nation today, the U.S. military must be able to employ a balanced approach to warfare, carefully blending the full spectrum of military, para-military and civil action to achieve success. It is an approach I refer to as “balanced warfare.” It is the manner in which our nation’s Special Operations Forces are combating terrorism today, and it is the guiding principle behind the Department of Defense’s campaign plan to combat global terrorism."

Full article:

http://www.securityaffairs.org/issues/2009/16/olson.php