COIN v. Conventional Capability Debate [Archive]

Granite_State

05-06-2008, 05:52 PM

To what extent, if any, are people making distinctions between two pairs of issues:

(1) COIN as urban-warfare/kinetic ops rather than peacekeeping and policing

(2) Ability of soldiers and Marines, given proper training, to conduct both missions vs. service doctrine, procurement, training, etc., becoming focused on COIN to the detriment of potential developing situations

That is, for #1, I would certainly agree that troops are more than capable of conducting the kinetic side of COIN ops or engaging in high-intensity maneuver warfare, but you guys wouldn't agree that we've seen some issues in Iraq and Afghanistan with units having serious adjustments from kinetic combat ops to more policing-based stability ops?

Additionally, the example of the IDF and Lebanon in 2006 is a bit of a frightening precedent.

As for #2; the personnel themselves will be able to conduct themselves in either environment, but is there not a danger of gearing the Army's "tail" systems too exclusively for COIN?

And yes, I certainly see the irony in suggesting that after years of ignoring the problem we may now be too exclusively prepared for COIN. . .

Regards,

Matt

Good post. Although from the little I've read on Lebanon in 2006, it looks like the Israelis had a host of leadership and organizational problems that can't simply be explained away as the result of decades of West Bank and Gaza service.

Seems to me that procurement is the big elephant in the room. I saw General Sir Rupert Smith speak last year, and while it was a good talk, he repeatedly said "I'm not here to talk about equipment, it is how that equipment is used that has changed", which struck me as evasive. Ultimately, with a finite amount of money to spend (and maybe less and less, the financial shape we're in) choices need to be made. Not to turn this into another F-22 thread, but we can't invest in more light infantry, and spend a lot more on recruiting, retention, professional military education, etc., if we're buying tons of new fighter planes and destroyers at hundreds of millions of dollars a pop.

Hacksaw

05-06-2008, 06:04 PM

All,

I think we have all covered the philosophical aspects of this discussion in the past.

As a tip of the hat to WILF… There are obviously commonalities between COIN/LIC and Conventional/HIC. No debate there, and given the time and resources to train… I am sure that today’s crop of Soldiers and leaders could maintain competency in those aspects that are common and train to those tactics that differ… but make no mistake TTPs do differ based on the conditions/context.

Ken and wm … While the linked article highlights the larger philosophical debate regarding the Army's appropriate aim point on the spectrum of conflict. The impetus for the article was a white paper authored by three former BCT commanders that laments/warns of the crisis in the FA Branch in particular and several others in general. The gist of the white paper (sent to CSA, VCSA, and HQDA G3) was that the FA branch is broke from the perspective fire support competency. Also important to note that this was not a stone throwing event, rather that the cause of the problem is that FA units have spent so much time providing invaluable contributions to the current fight in anything but an FA role. War is NOT war in the sense that there is a very real difference in how you organize, train, and equip a force. As current events support, a good force balance for COIN does not equal a good force balance for HIC. A blinding flash of the obvious I know. I also acknowledge that the intensity of conflict at the individual/tactical level is directly proportional to your proximity to the fire fight. In that sense, war is war…. However, with respect to Title X type responsibilities – war is anything but war, and that is the level at which Gian has been beating his drum.

My lament regarding Gian is that he gets so much attention as the wild-eyed prophet screaming in the desert about a COIN-centric force, rather than his more important message… OK in some sense – certainly as it pertains to FA, the focus on COIN-specific training is very detrimental. Not so much that they are training in a COIN contect, but that they are training no traditional skills as opposed to the core competency as field artillerymen. However, the larger point that Gian raises routinely, but that I have seen no senior leader echo is that we, as a Nation, have lost complete balance between strategic objectives and resources. This is where we have become most discombobulated.

So that leaves us with three different options…

1. Curb strategic objectives (regarding democracy in ME… etc) pull back deployed forces and retool, refit, and reset conventional forces within current resources to deal with most dangerous contingencies. This has obvious implications regarding diplomatic power, encouraging extremists blah blah blah

2. Acknowledge strategic risk, remain engaged in ME and fight the war we have, and hope we’ll have the time and resources to retool, refit, and reset conventional forces before they are needed.

3. Match resources to current strategic objectives. Problem is $$$. Just not sure there is the $$$ or people available to support current strategic objectives unless we mobilize the Nation. That seems unlikely in current paradigm

No easy solutions

05-06-2008, 06:24 PM

Ken and wm … While the linked article highlights the larger philosophical debate regarding the Army's appropriate aim point on the spectrum of conflict. The impetus for the article was a white paper authored by three former BCT commanders that laments/warns of the crisis in the FA Branch in particular and several others in general. The gist of the white paper (sent to CSA, VCSA, and HQDA G3) was that the FA branch is broke from the perspective fire support competency. Also important to note that this was not a stone throwing event, rather that the cause of the problem is that FA units have spent so much time providing invaluable contributions to the current fight in anything but an FA role. War is NOT war in the sense that there is a very real difference in how you organize, train, and equip a force. As current events support, a good force balance for COIN does not equal a good force balance for HIC. A blinding flash of the obvious I know. I also acknowledge that the intensity of conflict at the individual/tactical level is directly proportional to your proximity to the fire fight. In that sense, war is war…. However, with respect to Title X type responsibilities – war is anything but war, and that is the level at which Gian has been beating his drum.

My lament regarding Gian is that he gets so much attention as the wild-eyed prophet screaming in the desert about a COIN-centric force, rather than his more important message… OK in some sense – certainly as it pertains to FA, the focus on COIN-specific training is very detrimental. Not so much that they are training in a COIN contect, but that they are training no traditional skills as opposed to the core competency as field artillerymen. However, the larger point that Gian raises routinely, but that I have seen no senior leader echo is that we, as a Nation, have lost complete balance between strategic objectives and resources. This is where we have become most discombobulated.

Hacksaw,
I suspect we were actually trying to make the same point. I only let one shoe drop in my post, expecting that folks would understand that we have training failures/shortfalls that need to be remedied. (I really hate teaching folks to suck eggs.) FA operations is not the only place where that happens to be the case; I believe that non-combatant control, among others (like air defense ops and probably combat engineering), is another sucking training chest wound.

You are correct about the inbalance between objectives and resources. The other drum. one that Ken beats routinely, that is being ignored is the need to resource training accounts (and that includes the personnel in training account) to reflect what really needs to happen to have a force trained and ready for the spectrum of missions it may be called upon to execute in at least the next 20-40 years. I use that time frame as one that covers a career and provides an overlap for the next two "generations" of military career holders.

ipopescu

05-06-2008, 06:35 PM

3. Match resources to current strategic objectives. Problem is $$$. Just not sure there is the $$$ or people available to support current strategic objectives unless we mobilize the Nation. That seems unlikely in current paradigm

No easy solutions

I wrote about this on a previous thread, so sorry for repeating myself a bit, but one aspect that I think does not receive sufficient attention in general in this debate is the financial trade-off that absent some major unforeseen event will need to be made by the future administration.

I agree with Wilf that it is largely a false dichotomy, but I suspect that the reason some people on the inside are seeing it as either/or is that, when it comes to resources, the budgetary requirements can be fairly divergent IMO - I would greatly welcome a good counter-arguments to this.

But I am thinking that, while being proficient at one could help with fighting the other (the war is war argument) if we think in terms training or doctrine, when it comes to resources it's rather different. If we spend $200 bil on FCS, a program clearly designed for force-on-force combat, we would have a very different army 10 years from now than if we would spend the same amount of money on COIN oriented capabilities, which could simply mean more soldiers to make longer-term campaigns more sustainable.

Rank amateur

05-06-2008, 06:54 PM

Entropy

05-06-2008, 06:57 PM

Seems to me that procurement is the big elephant in the room. I saw General Sir Rupert Smith speak last year, and while it was a good talk, he repeatedly said "I'm not here to talk about equipment, it is how that equipment is used that has changed", which struck me as evasive. Ultimately, with a finite amount of money to spend (and maybe less and less, the financial shape we're in) choices need to be made. Not to turn this into another F-22 thread, but we can't invest in more light infantry, and spend a lot more on recruiting, retention, professional military education, etc., if we're buying tons of new fighter planes and destroyers at hundreds of millions of dollars a pop.

Procurement, especially WRT the long lead and development timelines for new equipment, is certainly an issue. But so is the AVF. Even if most procurement money was diverted into manpower, recruiting, etc., how much more manpower could be raised? So far it looks like the Army will have trouble meeting the modest end strength increases it's received. Is it even possible to recruit the manpower we'd like to have for Iraq and Afghanistan - perhaps double the force we have now?

Furthermore, we must consider the scale of conflict. We need a COIN capability obviously, but how much do we need? Enough for another large Iraq-style operation or something smaller? Those kind of questions are what underpin the capability requirements in QDR's which determines where the money goes, etc. Personally, I see "small wars" being more the norm in the future, but I think it will be a generation or more before we do something like Iraq again which is a "small war" in name only.

Granite_State

05-06-2008, 07:08 PM

Procurement, especially WRT the long lead and development timelines for new equipment, is certainly an issue. But so is the AVF. Even if most procurement money was diverted into manpower, recruiting, etc., how much more manpower could be raised? So far it looks like the Army will have trouble meeting the modest end strength increases it's received. Is it even possible to recruit the manpower we'd like to have for Iraq and Afghanistan - perhaps double the force we have now?

Furthermore, we must consider the scale of conflict. We need a COIN capability obviously, but how much do we need? Enough for another large Iraq-style operation or something smaller? Those kind of questions are what underpin the capability requirements in QDR's which determines where the money goes, etc. Personally, I see "small wars" being more the norm in the future, but I think it will be a generation or more before we do something like Iraq again which is a "small war" in name only.

Absolutely, I think increasing the armed forces, especially given demographic and economic considerations, will be really hard. And in regard to your second paragraph, I used to believe the standard line, "we don't have enough ground troops, Bush/Rumsfeld should have made the Army much bigger after 9/11, etc.", but recently read an article Steve Metz co-wrote a few months ago, where he talked about how we shouldn't be basing our manpower needs on Iraq and Afghanistan, which are probably anomalous, we need to craft a grand strategy which suits our advantages. Really opened my eyes.

Still, if we're spending hundreds of billions on FCS, F-22, and other platforms, even much more meager funding for small wars specifics is going to be hard to come by. Not to mention, I'd tend to think that a service built around these super expensive, high tech platforms, and needing to justify them to Congress and itself, is going to be a service that plans its warfighting and service cultures around them (Air Force resistance to CAS, Big Army still in Fulda Gap mode).

Ken White

05-06-2008, 07:18 PM

Which may be why they are called problems.

Hacksaw, not to be simplistic or to ignore the many various complexities of this particular conundrum but many are of our own making and I believe it is important to acknowledge that before embarking on courses that create more problems -- a tendency at which the US Government excels...

With respect to the White Paper, I believe most of us are aware of that and that most agree with the definition of the problem to a greater or lesser extent -- I don't think anyone with any sense is in denial about the problem; the discussion is on the degree of trauma it could invoke. While it is true that FA and Armor have been used (wrongly in my view) as everything from MPs to Infantry to god knows what, most have also been doing their nominal mission. The counterpoint to FA not getting to train to their primary mission is that those that do get to fire are shooting at good targets under combat conditions and that they are shooting Excaliburs and GMLRS which few would get to do in CONUS; the Armor counterpoint is that a whole lot of Tankers haver gained a far better appreciation for what the Infantry contends with than they would have normally had -- that can only enhance combined arms efforts in the near future. there are pluses and minuses to everything and every action has a cost.

You say:
...However, with respect to Title X type responsibilities – war is anything but war, and that is the level at which Gian has been beating his drum.Arguable at best. My sensing is that the Army has the Title X responsibility to be the nations repository of land war fighting expertise and capability -- to my knowledge, there are no stipulations or caveats on to what sphere of land warfare that capability should be directed; it seems to me that full spectrum is implicit. Whose fault is it that the Army was not and is not prepared to do that within resource constraints -- which do not generally affect doctrine or training methodology?

That has been the case for my lifetime and the Army has varied over those many years in its ability to meet the requirement. Some of those variance have been due to the exigencies of the time, as now. Most, though, have been due to the Army unilaterally deciding to restrict or change its focus. I submit that since at least the early 80s, many of us -- and many in high places -- warned the nation and / or the Army of what was coming and that the senior leadership of the Army diligently ignored those warnings. During the 80s, their desire to focus on major war in Europe was understandable (if short sighted...); post 1989, their continuing, mostly, to do so was borderline criminal IMO. We are where we are with respect to force structure and state of training because they resisted change -- and IMO a lot of that was influenced by (not due to) branch parochialism.

You also say:
"...However, the larger point that Gian raises routinely, but that I have seen no senior leader echo is that we, as a Nation, have lost complete balance between strategic objectives and resources. This is where we have become most discombobulated."True. We have, as Americans, many advantages and an almost too pleasant life style for most people. We have never really balanced those two things well unless it was in every sense of the word, vital. That discombobulation is the price those who serve pay for the reasonably pleasant life led most of time. I have often railed about it but on balance after many years, came to accept it as that price -- and I think it's worth it (and did think that long before I hung up my war suit). YMMV.

On your three options, I think 1. would be a bad mistake for which we would pay later -- folks in the ME read such actions far differently than do we westerners. I also believe 3, as you seem to think, is not going to happen.

That leaves number 2. I'm quite comfortable with that. I think I have more confidence in the people in the Army and Marines (as opposed to the senior leadership thereof) than some who post here seem to, possibly as a result of having seen the services bounce back from circumstances worse than we see today on several occasions. I'm firmly convinced that both the Army and Marines are capable of doing far more than many seem to credit them with, that the shift and refocus ability is phenomenal and little understood or appreciated and that the biggest problem in the way of that is a lack of confidence, to include self confidence, on the part of some senior people -- and I think a large part of that is engendered by the lack of trust in subordinates that our flawed training regimen provides.

If commanders are not confident that subordinates can do the job, they will micromanage -- and fear failure. Today's commanders are products of a flawed system that has not trained the basics well to newly entering officers or EM so they expect poor performance. What kind of sense does that make?

General Bruce Clarke's "An organization does well only those things the boss checks" became Army watchwords in the 60s. Very bad mentality, that. Those words and that philosophy totally screwed up command relationships and duties.

You said, early in your comment:
"I am sure that today’s crop of Soldiers and leaders could maintain competency in those aspects that are common and train to those tactics that differ… but make no mistake TTPs do differ based on the conditions/context."True but that emphasizes my point on training -- conditions do vary; they always will. The task may or may not be the same but if it is, the conditions can shotgun all over the place. Our adoption of task, condition and standards training from civilian industry in the 70s was a terribly bad idea as was the ARTEP. Yet if one were to train to achieve a desired outcome under varying conditions...

Fort Jackson is doing some good things with CATC and outcome based training, hopefully it'll catch hold...

Off topic, that; back to the point. No question that major combat is our imperative and COIN is a desirable ability. Unfortunately, the focus now, rightly or wrongly, is COIN. The Army has no choice but to emphasize that. A lot of senior people are correctly pointing out we're losing the imperative conventional capability, just as they did -- and we did -- during Viet Nam. My belief is that we'll have adequate warning and prep time to adjust training and focus. As for equipment, no US Army has ever gone to any war with all the right stuff in place at the onset; that, regrettably, is unlikely to change (See Congress, U.S.).

In summary, I agree that a deterioration of mission capability on the part of some branches is a problem; that it needs to be addressed and that we are not doing that well. I also believe that much of the problem stems from flawed planning in the past and today in high places and that the extant problem is no where near crisis level at this time. I further think that much of the current discussion is at least partly engendered by branch parochialism -- and that is NOT to say anyone is dealing in bad faith, I simply mean we are all products of our experience and that branch loyalty within the Army is not unknown thus those two factors combine to give one a branch centric view of any problem. To me, that is perfectly understandable, natural and not wrong in any sense -- though I'd submit that it should be recognized as a factor.

We can do better.

Very long way of of acknowledging I hear what you're saying but disagree pretty strongly on the potential 'danger' at this time.

Ken White

05-06-2008, 07:24 PM

Macgregor says. "if there is no legitimate government to begin with, your intervention is doomed to inevitable failure."Macgregor is omniscient? I don't -- but I do think 'inevitable' is evitable.
To me this is the key point. We're using tactics designed for use against a single anti government insurgency, but we're fighting multiple factions, many of whom are part of the government.The guys in Iraq don't know this???

Hacksaw

05-06-2008, 09:12 PM

:o:DKen, wm, etal,

I suppose we are mostly talking past each other at this point… I can acknowledge/agree with most of what you say, those points that where we don't agree are issues of nuance and not worth the time to quibble over…

As I’m sure you could tell, I get a little heated when I hear 'war is war'. A broad generalization that at some levels works – e.g. reacting to an ambush is reacting to an ambush, firing an artillery mission is likewise – but the approach is unhelpful when it bumps up against reality at the Title X/Generating Base level.

You will get no argument from me wrt the fine quality of small leader and their competency that result from current operations. Additionally, leaders of that quality can and will adjust and regain a level technical and tactical competency in their MOS (Arty, AR, AD, whatever).

I suppose the question is what level of competency and whether you buy into the argument that we are in an era of persistent conflict, and that we will continue to conduct these types of operations (although admittedly to varying degrees of scope). As well as what that means wrt the aimpoint/weighting of training effort and said resources with regard to time, personnel and training resources.

It is easy to forget that we are neigh on 5 years into an era in which units, Soldiers, and leaders have formed, trained and deployed with a sole focus of COIN operations (for many outside their traditional mission) in the current operational theaters. We have a community of junior leaders (officer & NCO) who have never fired gunnery tables (FA, AR, AD, others I don’t know). The type of expertise that we have come to expect was built on these and other types of training experiences. I don't think you can get away from the fact that it is cumulative. The situation may not be critical today, but we ain’t far off.

As you surmised I think COAs 1 & 3 are more or less throw-aways but for different reasons (unacceptable/unfeasible respectively). However, I think it is unwise to assume we can continue on our current path COA 2. When viewed through a strategic lens, the US has passed its culmination point (specifically wrt to ground capability, but it appears the same is true wrt to maritme and air operations).

culminating point — The point at which a force no longer has the capability to continue its form of operations, offense or defense. a. In the offense, the point at which effectively continuing the attack is no longer possible and the force must consider reverting to a defensive posture or attempting an operational pause. b. In the defense, the point at which effective counteroffensive action is no longer possible. (JP 5-0)

I know plenty of bright people who think otherwise, I just can’t see it. We retain some freedom of action, but not enough to account for contingencies within the realm of the possible.

Thanks to all for their time and patience.

Live well and row

Ken White

05-06-2008, 10:05 PM

"As I’m sure you could tell, I get a little heated when I hear 'war is war'. A broad generalization that at some levels works – e.g. reacting to an ambush is reacting to an ambush, firing an artillery mission is likewise – but the approach is unhelpful when it bumps up against reality at the Title X/Generating Base level."With some experience in the force generation business, I understand your point but do not fully agree. The issue is to deliver competent forces to the battle area. My contention is that we have failed at that in the past to one extent or another (to include both current theaters) but we recover well.

One can and should make the point that we should not have to recover -- I agree but reality intrudes. My seeming digression into the training regimen, the discombobulation of the cost those serving pay for the life style we have and the Army's penchant for wrongful focus on occasion were all based on the fact that such failures are a fact of life and that we have (purposely, inadvertantly or by default is immaterial) elected to operate that way. It could possibly be changed to preclude that in the future but I'm doubtful of the true possibility and dubious that will occur.

Thus, IMO, to say the Title X responsibilities dictate that 'war is not war' is not stating an immutable fact, rather its a euphemistic phrase for 'it's really difficult to be ready for everything.' With that, I totally agree. I'd also submit that to do less than be prepared for everything to the extent possible in spite of the difficulties is a disservice to the nation, to the Army as an institution and to the troops. But that's just me...

WRT:
I suppose the question is what level of competency and whether you buy into the argument that we are in an era of persistent conflict, and that we will continue to conduct these types of operations (although admittedly to varying degrees of scope). As well as what that means wrt the aimpoint/weighting of training effort and said resources with regard to time, personnel and training resources.I think "buy into the argument" evades the point which to me is to be prepared for that to be the case. As Casey Stengel said, it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future. I have no clue whether such will be the case but I think it would be terribly remiss not to prepare for that at some level just as it would be terribly remiss not to prepare for a big war. It is not hard for me to say we have an obligation to be prepared for whatever the future brings; it is very hard for the Army to do that and I'm quite cognizant of that fact. Where I think we differ is that I'm pretty sure it can be done -- but that means breaking some Rice bowls and that is never easy (though I'm a long standing proponent of just such crockery smashing).
"As you surmised I think COAs 1 & 3 are more or less throw-aways but for different reasons (unacceptable/unfeasible respectively). However, I think it is unwise to assume we can continue on our current path COA 2. When viewed through a strategic lens, the US has passed its culmination point (specifically wrt to ground capability, but it appears the same is true wrt to maritme and air operations)."We can disagree on that. I agree with those other bright people :D

We will never be able to account for all contingencies; no democratic nation will -- and that's okay. What we have to do is be prepared, as best we can, for the likely contingencies. I submit our current capability to do that has been lessened but it's a long way from being in the tank. The doctrinal culminating point and many prophets of doom fail to account for the human dimension, the young guys can adapt. The issue is; will the old guys adapt?

Ron Humphrey

05-06-2008, 11:56 PM

Macgregor says. "if there is no legitimate government to begin with, your intervention is doomed to inevitable failure."

To me this is the key point. We're using tactics designed for use against a single anti government insurgency, but we're fighting multiple factions, many of whom are part of the government.

Rank,
I may be wrong but I think that statement is probably more specifically in regard to the necessity for planning to govern until good governance is established than don't go cause it's broke. And in that context I would think most everyone would agree with him.

Furthermore, we must consider the scale of conflict. We need a COIN capability obviously, but how much do we need? Enough for another large Iraq-style operation or something smaller? Those kind of questions are what underpin the capability requirements in QDR's which determines where the money goes, etc. Personally, I see "small wars" being more the norm in the future, but I think it will be a generation or more before we do something like Iraq again which is a "small war" in name only.

The one question that comes to mind in this regard is
If current ops are viewed in a world context has the precedent been set now that we may be required through no intentions of our own to attend to other areas in a similar fashion whether we like it or not.

We will never be able to account for all contingencies; no democratic nation will -- and that's okay. What we have to do is be prepared, as best we can, for the likely contingencies. I submit our current capability to do that has been lessened but it's a long way from being in the tank. The doctrinal culminating point and many prophets of doom fail to account for the human dimension, the young guys can adapt. The issue is; will the old guys adapt?

As usual I think your dead on but I do have a question for all regarding training/preparation now vs then.

(WARNING: Big time run on sentence coming):wry:
In the last two years I have seen what seems like immense changes in how and what we train. I'm quite certain they would be reflected in how we train what we train as well and as such is there a possibility that much of the training which would traditionally be expected to require X amount of time may actually take less time and or personnel to accomplish?

Ken White

05-07-2008, 01:09 AM

The one question that comes to mind in this regard is If current ops are viewed in a world context has the precedent been set now that we may be required through no intentions of our own to attend to other areas in a similar fashion whether we like it or not.Extremely good and quite important point, that...
In the last two years I have seen what seems like immense changes in how and what we train. I'm quite certain they would be reflected in how we train what we train as well and as such is there a possibility that much of the training which would traditionally be expected to require X amount of time may actually take less time and or personnel to accomplish?My perception is the you're very perceptive. I think that's the case.

Warning, diatribe approaching. We erred mightily in the 70s by listening to a lot of new hire Education (NOT Training, Education...) Specialists who had advanced degrees in Education. Nice guys but they didn't know much; they convinced the Army to do two really dumb things. Bear with me through the boring bit because these are important.

First they sold the Task, condition and standard training regimen -- bad deal, it worked for industry but if Eastinghouse screws up a run on widgets, they sell 'em at a discounted price, get a tax write off and keep on making widgets. We screw up and someone gets killed. Totally different milieus -- and rules. The principal problem with that approach is that the Task bit worked okay but the process could not and would not account for variables in condition. My pet example was, coincidentally, "Clear a building" Not difficult in many cases, very much so in others. Do you want me to clear the Chrysler building, the US Capitol, a medium sized mansion, a five bedroom ranch or a mud hut in SEA? The variance in conditions is humungous. It was and is an extremely poor training process and needs to be totally discarded.

I'll also pound one of my pet rocks here; one of the reasons it was admired and adopted was because it simplified things immeasurably for poor instructors (see ODB above; he's right on that...), a second reason was that it provided 'firm metrics' and 'removed the subjectivity from training.' Horse hockey, you absolutely cannot -- and should not -- remove subjectivity from training. My opinion of most metrics is well documented here so I needn't repeat that.

The second thing they did was run a slew of surveys which discovered that the average enlistee had a fifth grade reading level -- so they insisted on tailoring all training material at that level. Dumber than a box of stove bolts. fortunately, that got rectified fairly rapidly but it did some damage and it still persists in some quarters.

In short, we hired the very people who had produced a generation that read at a Fifth Grade level to fix a problem they had created in an environment they did not at all understand. I'm sure a lot of 'em are still in TRADOC. hopefully, they've gotten smarter.

Which gets to your question, as I said, I think you're correct; we are training better -- not great but better, I'll even go for a lot better -- and we have realized these kids today take to it like a duck to good bourbon. As I said above, the kids can and will adapt; I'll give the system beaucoup credit for trying to do so, now if we can just get the Pachyderms to follow and adapt instead of trying to return to business as usual...

William F. Owen

05-07-2008, 06:18 AM

@ Although from the little I've read on Lebanon in 2006, it looks like the Israelis had a host of leadership and organizational problems that can't simply be explained away as the result of decades of West Bank and Gaza service.

@ Seems to me that procurement is the big elephant in the room. I saw General Sir Rupert Smith speak last year, and while it was a good talk, he repeatedly said "I'm not here to talk about equipment, it is how that equipment is used that has changed", which struck me as evasive.

The more I study the operation in the Second Lebanon War, the more I become convinced that,

a.) a lack of funding was the critical problem. The cheap options on training, deployments and equipment, all had disastrous effects. The same lack of funding stuffed the British Army in 1940.

b.) there was a leadership failure, at the highest levels, to understand what would have been useful and how it should have been gained.

I don't like Rupert Smiths book, because it is short on solutions and advice, but he makes some good points. He and I had a fairly sharp exchange of views when he spoke at the House of Commons, two years ago, as to where the blame for the current situation lies. However, he is right about equipment. Fighting insurgents does not generally require specialised equipment, that does not have some application fighting other threats. MRAPS could be worth their weight in gold, as concerns some of what they bring to the party.

Ratzel

05-07-2008, 08:56 AM

What exactly is the major concern regarding the transition from COIN to HIC? If we look at the battle of Fallujah, it seems as if the Marines and Army were very capable in conducting HIC within the larger COIN environment?

Besides Fallujah, our ground forces have conducted large scale operations in Iraq and Afghanistan which were HIC in nature?

I've been out of the Army for about 4 years now so can someone please give an idea of what the major concern is? I would think that the military would be more "battle hardened" than it has been since Vietnam? Are units doing no HIC field exercises at home station?

Give me a scenario in which our "worst fears" would occur.

SteveMetz

05-07-2008, 09:05 AM

William F. Owen

05-07-2008, 09:09 AM

What exactly is the major concern regarding the transition from COIN to HIC? If we look at the battle of Fallujah, it seems as if the Marines and Army were very capable in conducting HIC within the larger COIN environment?

Besides Fallujah, our ground forces have conducted large scale operations in Iraq and Afghanistan which were HIC in nature?

Exactly. That's why I do not like the LIC/HIC description. You may need the same operational skills to fight insurgents, as you would any other enemy. In terms of capability, Insurgents are variations on light infantry.

The debacle in Mogadishu, in 1993, was a failure to understand the threat, and the capabilities they possessed. The type of conflict was utterly irrelevant, except that it confused people as to the capabilities required.

William F. Owen

05-07-2008, 09:24 AM

The major concern is that winning battles is not the key to success in counterinsurgency.

I concur. I don't see "winning battles" as accurately describing the capabilities required to defeat both insurgents and combined arms formations.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the only reason you restrict the application of force against Insurgents is to prevent civilian casualties, because you must protect the civilians. That gives you the freedom of action to do other things - elections, build schools etc.

If the insurgents are out in the jungle, away from civilians, you kill or capture them, like any other enemy, and making best use of resources - so capture is preferable because of exploiting intelligence.

If the enemy has a Motor Rifle Regiment parked in a town in Texas or the Ukraine, you are still going to have to destroy all his vehicles, without killing too many civilians. If the Motor Rifle Regiment is thundering across a desert somewhere, then "nuke it from orbit" - :)

SteveMetz

05-07-2008, 09:24 AM

William F. Owen

05-07-2008, 10:08 AM

'At least for the foreseeable future, only the military that plants its flag on the enemy’s hilltop is the victor.' - Ron Tira The Limitations of Standoff Firepower-Based Operations

So we've won in Iraq?

As Ron said t me over lunch the other day, "he does not completely agree with his previous position!" :) ...and to be fair, this is taking his quote out of context.

Actually, in terms of "victory" is believe this to be correct. In terms of "peace" it fails to be useful. Few, if any Insurgents have ever been defeated by a "military victory,". What seems to defeat them is "peace" - as in security and the denial of their ability to threaten it, so I think we may be in agreement.

Gian P Gentile

05-07-2008, 10:46 AM

Ratzel asked:

I've been out of the Army for about 4 years now so can someone please give an idea of what the major concern is? I would think that the military would be more "battle hardened" than it has been since Vietnam? Are units doing no HIC field exercises at home station?

The American Army (and Marines) are battle hardened after 6 years of Astan and 5 years of Iraq. No question about it; lots of hard-nosed combat experience. But it is a combat experience of a certain discrete type using certain types of discrete combat skills. We should not delude ourselves to think that just because we are good at coin and the types of combat ops that go along with it in Iraq that we are automatically prepared for other forms of higher intensity combat. I have used this example before but consider the fact that operational logistics in Iraq are node-based and carried largely by civilian contractors. What would happen if a couple of combat brigades in Iraq had to pick up, move in a certain direction and conduct a sustained land operation in the field without fixed bases for support for 3 months? You see the concern here? When was the last time in Iraq that a Division moved off of its fixed base and conducted a movement to contact? Not since I was a BCT XO in the march up in 2003. Clearly there is supreme tactical expertise at the small unit level with the combat outfits fighting in Sadr city now; but we should not confuse that expertise with the kind of expertise that it took the lead American armor divisions in the break out of St Lo. And again the Israeli experience in Lebanon is instructive here. Read Andy Exum's superb battle analysis of Hiz in that fight where they fought tenaciously as small squads of infantry and AT teams. The Israeli Army was woefully unprepared for this higher level of fighting after many years of conducting counter-terrorism ops in the Palestinian territories. These are the concerns that many of us in the American Army have today; and they are not made up and hyperbolic but real. Lastly, the British 7th Armored Division by 43 had themselves become battle-hardened after years of fighting the Germans in north Africa. But when that 7th Armored Division hit the beaches in Normandy and over the next few weeks tried to take Caen they ran into many problems due to unfamiliarity with the new terrain and a different German force. The point here is that battle experience of one type is not automatically transferable to another.

Wilf said:

That's why I do not like the LIC/HIC description. You may need the same operational skills to fight insurgents, as you would any other enemy. In terms of capability, Insurgents are variations on light infantry.

Agree, sort of. At the very small unit level of say infantry squads the skill set for hic/lic is similar. i mean in coin in Iraq do we really think that a private rifleman or cav scout is meeting with the nac chairman or imam? Of course not, he is doing basic stuff like providing security, shooting, kicking in a door, zip cuffing, observing and reporting, etc. But take things a number of levels up from there and that is the point where you start to run into problems and where it is important to distinguish between hic/lic so as to see where certain skills have atrophied.

SteveMetz

05-07-2008, 11:24 AM

As Ron said t me over lunch the other day, "he does not completely agree with his previous position!" :) ...and to be fair, this is taking his quote out of context.

Actually, in terms of "victory" is believe this to be correct. In terms of "peace" it fails to be useful. Few, if any Insurgents have ever been defeated by a "military victory,". What seems to defeat them is "peace" - as in security and the denial of their ability to threaten it, so I think we may be in agreement.

Fair enough!

I need to come up with some more pithy epithets that people use in their signature line. But that's not easy for me: I'm often described as pith poor.

05-07-2008, 11:37 AM

The American Army (and Marines) are battle hardened after 6 years of Astan and 5 years of Iraq. No question about it; lots of hard-nosed combat experience. But it is a combat experience of a certain discrete type using certain types of discrete combat skills. We should not delude ourselves to think that just because we are good at coin and the types of combat ops that go along with it in Iraq that we are automatically prepared for other forms of higher intensity combat.
(SNIP)
At the very small unit level of say infantry squads the skill set for hic/lic is similar. i mean in coin in Iraq do we really think that a private rifleman or cav scout is meeting with the nac chairman or imam? Of course not, he is doing basic stuff like providing security, shooting, kicking in a door, zip cuffing, observing and reporting, etc. But take things a number of levels up from there and that is the point where you start to run into problems and where it is important to distinguish between hic/lic so as to see where certain skills have atrophied.
As an another instance of the points Gian is making, I recommend a read of When the Odds Were Even, a discussion of 7th Army ops against the Germans in the Vosges during WWII. I cannot guarantee the historical accuracy of the the author's claim that this is about the only campaign where US and German forces fought at technical and strength parity. However, he concludes that the US was able to win handily because of better organization and interoperability at higher levels of organization. He points out that while the individual German soldiers were potentially as effective fighters as their American counterparts, they did not have the organizational "comraderie" required to be an effective combined arms fighting force. The bottom line argument in the book is that a signficant force multiplier for US forces in ETO WWII operations was that they had trained together for a year or more as a Division prior to deployment for combat. BTW, Rommel noted that he could have been even more successful in both 1940 in Belgium/France and 1941/42 N. Africa had he had more time to have his formations train together at Division level and above.)

I submit that something like this may be the real issue in the current "broken" Army debate. Ken may well be right that individual troopers will be able to find the well of personal resources they need to make it happen at their level. However, integrating all of what we used to call the BOS/battlefield operating systems (I think they now are called warfighting functions--WFFs --reflect on baseball, and think of what else is called a wiff :confused:) takes a lot of practice that I have a hard time believing is actually occuring either down range or back at home station train ups at much above the company level. I suspect that a root cause analysis would disclose that the current organizational structuring that Transformation has yielded is a significant source of the problem.

William F. Owen

05-07-2008, 12:17 PM

What would happen if a couple of combat brigades in Iraq had to pick up, move in a certain direction and conduct a sustained land operation in the field without fixed bases for support for 3 months?

Excellent point - so it's not hard to identify the areas of deficiency? What you seem to be talking about is Formation level manoeuvre. Am I correct?

Fair enough!
I need to come up with some more pithy epithets that people use in their signature line. But that's not easy for me: I'm often described as pith poor.

...and that Sir, is why you are both a scholar and a Gentleman.

Jack

05-07-2008, 12:40 PM

We addressed this subject with Col. Robert Abrams on a Bloggers Roundtable back in November. Here is the transcript:
http://www.defenselink.mil/dodcmsshare/BloggerAssets/2007-11/1105071546151105_abrams_transcript.pdf

According to him and others I've spoken with the gist of it is we must train for the fight we're in with an eye toward the future so there are no plans to quit combined arms training, but our deficiency today is in COIN. We'll be doing both now, but as soon as we get better at COIN we'll see more balance.

A friend of mine currently downrange had this to say in our discussion on this very subject yesterday:

"I just finished nearly 18 months of TRADOC schools at Fort Benning last year and the cadre were adamant about not teaching or facilitating COIN in the curriculum. They went out of their way to avoid delving in COIN discussions it seemed to focus basic skills and knowledge development in the core functional areas of conventional war fighting and military decision making. The reasons my instructors would give were of two sorts. First, they would indicate that the Tradoc command intent was to prepare for the battles and wars in the future, not the current ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. The second explanation was that as soon as we left our safe structured environ in Tradoc and joined a unit, we would mobilize and attend a COIN train-up giving us the latest TTPs and CALL experiences, delving into the COE in Iraq. They were right, much of my training to deploy this round was COIN centric. Although, much to my dismay, I am using NONE of it!"

Frontier 6 also has had much to say on this. I'm sure we can search around and find his comments, which I believe will probably bring us back to Col. Abrams take on it.

My point - we must first take out the 25 meter target.

Ratzel

05-07-2008, 01:11 PM

Ratzel asked:

The American Army (and Marines) are battle hardened after 6 years of Astan and 5 years of Iraq. No question about it; lots of hard-nosed combat experience. But it is a combat experience of a certain discrete type using certain types of discrete combat skills. We should not delude ourselves to think that just because we are good at coin and the types of combat ops that go along with it in Iraq that we are automatically prepared for other forms of higher intensity combat. I have used this example before but consider the fact that operational logistics in Iraq are node-based and carried largely by civilian contractors. What would happen if a couple of combat brigades in Iraq had to pick up, move in a certain direction and conduct a sustained land operation in the field without fixed bases for support for 3 months? You see the concern here? When was the last time in Iraq that a Division moved off of its fixed base and conducted a movement to contact? Not since I was a BCT XO in the march up in 2003. Clearly there is supreme tactical expertise at the small unit level with the combat outfits fighting in Sadr city now; but we should not confuse that expertise with the kind of expertise that it took the lead American armor divisions in the break out of St Lo. And again the Israeli experience in Lebanon is instructive here. Read Andy Exum's superb battle analysis of Hiz in that fight where they fought tenaciously as small squads of infantry and AT teams. The Israeli Army was woefully unprepared for this higher level of fighting after many years of conducting counter-terrorism ops in the Palestinian territories. These are the concerns that many of us in the American Army have today; and they are not made up and hyperbolic but real. Lastly, the British 7th Armored Division by 43 had themselves become battle-hardened after years of fighting the Germans in north Africa. But when that 7th Armored Division hit the beaches in Normandy and over the next few weeks tried to take Caen they ran into many problems due to unfamiliarity with the new terrain and a different German force. The point here is that battle experience of one type is not automatically transferable to another.

I guess there's two levels to think about then? It would seem as if you're talking more about the Battalion level and above when talking about your scenario. I'm not very familiar with that level of planning.

From the company and below, the soldiers are used to working in a stressful environment and have most likely gotten down the little things like "actions at the objective" or clearing a building. The company medevac and skills like calling for fire or even familiararity with equipment should be much improved. These skills work the same wherever one goes (except for issues of terrain of course).

The higher level is something I know little about. I'll take your word for it that nodal based logistics are less complicated than a long logistics train, (like the one up to Baghdad). I took part in the invasion as well, and am uncertain of why we would "loose" this ability though? I don't remember seeing many contractors on the way to Baghdad either (I'm not saying there weren't any I just didn't see any)?

My final point is this: If I had to choose between the current military after 5 years of combat with less HIC training compared to the military that existed before 911 that had loads of HIC training; I would choose the former any day. That's not to say we should be overconfident of course.

I will check out the reading your suggested, thank you.

Ken White

05-07-2008, 05:00 PM

He noted:
"...consider the fact that operational logistics in Iraq are node-based and carried largely by civilian contractors. What would happen if a couple of combat brigades in Iraq had to pick up, move in a certain direction and conduct a sustained land operation in the field without fixed bases for support for 3 months? You see the concern here? When was the last time in Iraq that a Division moved off of its fixed base and conducted a movement to contact?"That's of far more concern to me than is our ability to crash train and reorient units and people if required. Over reliance on contractors for logistic support is something that the Army cannot control for. My suspicion is that factor has not been adequately addressed in planning for any type of future operation; hopefully, I'm wrong...

Tom Odom

05-07-2008, 05:04 PM

He noted:That's of far more concern to me than is our ability to crash train and reorient units and people if required. Over reliance on contractors for logistic support is something that the Army cannot control for. My suspicion is that factor has not been adequately addressed in planning for any type of future operation; hopefully, I'm wrong...

Or try moving a BCT Headquarters...

Gian P Gentile

05-07-2008, 05:12 PM

Or try moving a BCT Headquarters...

To build on Tom's statement; or a Division Headquarters. This gets at another area of concern; command and control at battalion level and higher. Company and below the C2 skillks that we have from Iraq and Astan now I think are pretty easily transferable to a higher intensity fight. But battalion and higher it becomes on the mild side problematic and on the worse very worriesome.

gian

05-07-2008, 05:25 PM

To build on Tom's statement; or a Division Headquarters. This gets at another area of concern; command and control at battalion level and higher. Company and below the C2 skillks that we have from Iraq and Astan now I think are pretty easily transferable to a higher intensity fight. But battalion and higher it becomes on the mild side problematic and on the worse very worriesome.

gian

As far as C2 goes, it may not be as bad as we think. I do not see much value currently being added by HQs at Division level and higher anyway.:rolleyes:

I wonder how many more BCTs we could field with the manpower and payroll savings from eliminating/streamlining those bloated organizations.

Ken White

05-07-2008, 05:29 PM

to moving the Div Hq is to abolish it * -- but I know that's not likely to fly... ;)

The biggest detriment to shifting to major combat from or in any even moderately long COIN op is the static location of BCT and higher hq and the stasis that builds in mindsets and outlooks. Given a campaign ala Korea where in the early days the shift was from one form of warfare to the other in short time spans, that was not a problem. In Viet Nam with the slight exception of a couple of 'fire brigade' units, it was a problem.

* Only partly tongue in cheek, I know we aren't able to do that on several levels but once we get the log piece adjusted, I do believe a TF Hq setup that is truly attuned to accepting a mixed set of subordinates would be better; the current Div has a tie that is ephemeral and psychological to its subordinates (and vice versa) which inhibits fully flexible plug and play. As an aside, CentCom's ideas on that score are not particularly helpful...

Tom Odom

05-07-2008, 05:46 PM

As far as C2 goes, it may not be as bad as we think. I do not see much value currently being added by HQs at Division level and higher anyway.:rolleyes:

I wonder how many more BCTs we could field with the manpower and payroll savings from eliminating/streamlining those bloated organizations.

While I would agree with your latter points about no value added, the trend is just the opposite. All that "flattened" structure just like bread dough is starting to rise vertically once again.

Tom

Steve Blair

05-07-2008, 05:50 PM

While I would agree with your latter points about no value added, the trend is just the opposite. All that "flattened" structure just like bread dough is starting to rise vertically once again.

Tom

I suspect that at least a small portion of this centers on what many "flattened" civilian organizations are discovering....what do you do with people when you promote them?

With "up or out" chugging along, people in the military get promoted. And then you have to find something for them to do (or at least a chair to sit in)...and that breeds higher headquarters.

Sorry for the simplistic analysis/comments, but I'm on the fly here and this just occurred to me. I've worked in "flattened" civilian organizations, and morale tends to suck because there's no place to go within the organization. If the military flattens, then they have to find places to put all those O4s, O5s, and so on. Staffs tend to make good hiding places.

Just a random thought. YMMV, as always.

Tom Odom

05-07-2008, 05:55 PM

I suspect that at least a small portion of this centers on what many "flattened" civilian organizations are discovering....what do you do with people when you promote them?

With "up or out" chugging along, people in the military get promoted. And then you have to find something for them to do (or at least a chair to sit in)...and that breeds higher headquarters.

Sorry for the simplistic analysis/comments, but I'm on the fly here and this just occurred to me. I've worked in "flattened" civilian organizations, and morale tends to suck because there's no place to go within the organization. If the military flattens, then they have to find places to put all those O4s, O5s, and so on. Staffs tend to make good hiding places.

Just a random thought. YMMV, as always.

Oh by all means you are on target. Much of what has sprung up are the very structures that were flattened and pushed down to BCTs. It left quite a gap in targets for battalion and brigade command in the various CS and CSS categories. And of course, really getting rid of 3-star corps commands whenh we were calling them UeXs etc was unlikely at best.

Tom

05-07-2008, 06:11 PM

Oh by all means you are on target. Much of what has sprung up are the very structures that were flattened and pushed down to BCTs. It left quite a gap in targets for battalion and brigade command in the various CS and CSS categories. And of course, really getting rid of 3-star corps commands whenh we were calling them UeXs etc was unlikely at best.

Tom I am just waiting to see the MTOE changes that make all the BCT commanders one-star billets--shouldn't be too long :mad:

Tom Odom

05-07-2008, 06:20 PM

I am just waiting to see the MTOE changes that make all the BCT commanders one-star billets--shouldn't be too long :mad:

Honestly if they would maintain the flattened structure and ramp up actual combat power of the BCT (versus staff and all others), I would not mind that happening --if that BCT became and independent brigade like we used to have. But as you imply if it happens under current and emerging structures it would just be another case of rampant rank overkill.

Personally I always thought that Defense Attaches should be called Generalissimos or maybe just El Heffe Supremo with SLA Marshall oversized stars....:D

Tom

Ken White

05-07-2008, 06:26 PM

maneuver strength was that, come a war, they'd add a maneuver Bn, enlarge everything else, maybe add a GS Arty Bn and go to a one star. Y'all may be right, they may do it regardless.

Sigh...

Vic Bout

05-07-2008, 06:34 PM

Rick Atkinson mentioned in The Day of Battle, that the U.S. Army in 1943, exceeded 6 million and was "...led by 1,000 generals, 7,000 colonels, and 343,000 lieutenants."

How many of each are there today? In an army of what...522,000?

I think the question becomes not how many generals does it take to screw in a light bulb, but rather how many generals can we promote IOT enable light-bulb screwation.

Sorry to have declinated a few degrees off thread, but inflated GO billets rub me raw

Eden

05-07-2008, 06:41 PM

Division staffs are chock full of good, smart, professional people. They usually have competent, intelligent commanders. The problem, as we have transitioned to BCT structures and gotten involved in small wars, is that divisions (mostly morphed into JTFs) have less and less ability to influence the fight. Most of the resources are pushed down to the brigade level; a good chunk of the remaining forces are in self-contained, specialist task forces; logisitcs becomes routinized; there are no reserves to speak of. As a result the division becomes involved in parceling out a handful of helicopters or PSYOPs teams or whatever - there is rarely even a need to prioritize resources as the pace is slow enough that nobody ever goes without air support or MEDEVACS or ammunition. Due to human nature, the division staff and its leadership therefore begins to micromanage and meddle while turning into an information vacuum. At one point, CJTF-76 in Afghanistan had six (count 'em, six!) general officers, at least four of whom had only a single colonel to supervise.

The problem with just bagging the idea of the division is that someday we will be invited to a war involving brigades passing through each other, opposed river crossings, brigade-level deep aviation operations, commitment of reserves, terrain management, artillery that has to displace, and more targets than we can service simultaneously. Hell, maybe even integrated air defense!Some form of higher headquarters will have to do this (and be trained to do it before being called upon to execute). As others have pointed out, these are the kind of requisite warfighting skills that we are neither training for nor learning-by-doing.

05-07-2008, 07:00 PM

Ratzel

05-07-2008, 07:33 PM

Ken White

05-07-2008, 09:59 PM

...The problem with just bagging the idea of the division is that someday we will be invited to a war involving brigades passing through each other, opposed river crossings, brigade-level deep aviation operations, commitment of reserves, terrain management, artillery that has to displace, and more targets than we can service simultaneously. Hell, maybe even integrated air defense!Some form of higher headquarters will have to do this (and be trained to do it before being called upon to execute)...the BCT and below theater -- or Army, situation dependent -- level. I believe that a Hq on the original WW II concept of the Corps (fairly small, tactically oriented, no fixed units) with an as required two or three button an able to control two to six BCT is doable. Need to continue to tweak the log processes, obviously.
...As others have pointed out, these are the kind of requisite warfighting skills that we are neither training for nor learning-by-doing.WR to 'training for' makes one wonder what the Divisions here in the states are up to. Getting ready for the next trip, yeah -- but the staffs are certainly more than large enough to do multi-tasking...

ODB

05-07-2008, 10:58 PM

I would like to know the counsels thoughts on the lack of divisional control in the current fight? Could this be part of the many battlespace issues? The last I checked the Army's structure is in such a way that no one directly leads more than 4 men. For this we will look at a divisions structure, CG has how many direct subordinates? A fire team leader has how many direct subordinates? In theatre today what is the structure? Who really answers to who from the BCT level up? Then throw into the mix how many direct subordinates does the BCT commander have? IMO if your going to bump the BCT commander to a 1 star then he should have 2 full birds below him (kinda like a division). I cannot believe I just said that!!!!! Additionally then we must bump my SF brothers as well. (Officers and enlisted) Unfortunately in todays politically correct Army many will only deal with you if your of certain rank.

I have to ask this here. Why are units not training thier basic (conventional) tasks during their non-deployment time? This past off rotation for us we went back to the basics. Started with weapons, every weapons system in our MTOE was trained and shot (pistols to 81 mm mortars), day and night. Then we went and did basic FM 7-8 battle drill live fires. Imagine that an SF team doing movement to contact, through the woods day and night. Somewhere along the way we had leaders realize we were getting away from training the basics and needed to get back to it. As I look at the multitude of problems that ones are griping about my question is what are they doing to fix it? Why are they not doing their, wait here it comes, METL tasks? I gather by what is being said, we have thrown out our METL tasks and are doing our own thing? I understand repeat rotations, but I'm sorry if we can do it in six months between rotations why can't it be done in 12 months? Before someone says we have more resources and money, one might want to know that every piece of land here except 1 training area (for an entire SF group) has been given to the BCTs. Any training we want to conduct at home station we have to beg, borrow, and grease the palms of the BCTs. Figure that one out!

Maybe I am to simple minded and naive to look at this and that is why I think the way I do, but then again maybe others are too quick to not take the hard road. Yes I love family time and down time, but I love my life and my brothers lives even more. It is our job to train and be prepared for whatever is required of us. If this means a few more days or weeks away from the family then that is what it is. That is what we are paid (not enough) to do and what is expected of us. Man how I wish I could be SMA for a day!!!:D

Stevely

05-09-2008, 09:13 PM

Maybe we should start thinking of contractors as part of the force?

Or maybe the government should throw in the towel and admit that the mass outsourcing of functions to contractors in DOD was never the good deal it was promised to be, either financially or otherwise, and return those functions to military/ government personnel? This all got underway in the early 90s, IMO at least heavily influenced by the wild popularity of management cult gibberish and the downsizing/"rightsizing"/consolidations going on in business at the time. The military is not a business and what works in industry has limited application at best in the profession of arms.

EDIT: this is starting to drag the topic OT, my apologies... I'll shut up now.

Ratzel

05-13-2008, 09:38 AM

Or maybe the government should throw in the towel and admit that the mass outsourcing of functions to contractors in DOD was never the good deal it was promised to be, either financially or otherwise, and return those functions to military/ government personnel? This all got underway in the early 90s, IMO at least heavily influenced by the wild popularity of management cult gibberish and the downsizing/"rightsizing"/consolidations going on in business at the time. The military is not a business and what works in industry has limited application at best in the profession of arms.

I'm not sure that it would even be possible to "throw in the towel." The Army is having trouble meeting its goals for man power as it is, do you really think we could recruit the 150,000 troops that would be required to replace these contractors? I'm not trying to give you a hard time, but can you provide me with any data to support your claim that outsourcing certain functions is not "a good deal" financially? I would think, that if there's at least one very solid argument for outsourcing that it would indeed be financial.

Besides that, why should we waste precious man power on cooking, guarding the base camp, and driving trucks when we can have patriotic civilians do it? Many of the contractors we use are retired service people who have the skills and motivation to preform these functions and not using these people would be a major waste of human capital.

Contractors also have a comparative advantage at certain skill sets. Blackwater does a fine job at guarding diplomats. How many SF people would we have to divert from doing their missions if we didn't have Blackwater to preform this function? How many troops would we have to have back in Kuwait if we didn't have contractors repairing tanks and Bradly's in the rear? Before the invasion of Iraq, my unit was trained by ex-SF people for MOUT. This training was the best training I ever had in urban combat and I can say without a doubt that this training increased my units skills for the war. All of our trainers were ex-SF and Rangers with 20 years plus of experience and each one of them had seem combat. Why should these guys be back in the US when they can used to train people? What else should people of this caliber be doing while a war is going on? Perhaps they would be better off as the town sheriff or the sporting goods manager at the Wal-mart?

This is not to say there isn't negatives with contractors. We all know there's issues relating to accountability and the possibility of Special Forces personal leaving for the big money that some of these firms provide. But in general, I think a cost-benefit analysis would prove the contractors to be beneficial to the force.

Eden

05-13-2008, 02:05 PM

Let me try to tie this little sub-thread back to the main topic. I agree that contractors are for the most part patriotic, can-do, and competent. I also agree that we could not sustain the level of effort in Iraq and Afghanistan without them. I also think we need to constantly review what we contract out and exercise caution in those functions we allow to be executed by civilians.

I say this because there are real problems with contracting, even if we postulate that all individual contractors are qualified and all contracting companies provide honest service for a reasonable fee.

Contracting tends to reduce the flexibility of any military force. By replacing soldiers with contractors, you automatically reduce the pool of manpower available for mowing grass, raising the flag, providing individual augmentees for wartime operations, or manning the defensive perimeter when the Chinese break through the lines. This creates a problem that can only be solved by either further stressing the remaining soldiers...or hiring more contractors. This leads me to my next point.

Contracting is addictive. It is a simple fix for a variety of problems, and this leads to contracting creep. Functions that used to be off-limits for contractors are now routinely farmed out. Training, for instance; twenty years ago it was not considered a good idea to contract this function. It was seen as a core military function. Now, as previous posts point out, we see contractors doing this all the time. In TRADOC, contractors are increasingly doing our thinking for us as concept developers and doctrine writers. General officers, instead of training their own subordinates, rely more and more on retired generals to head up 'evaluation teams', presumably to free the active leaders for more important duties. Maintenance contractors are doing more and doing it further forward - or perhaps I should say closer to the action these days. It is a cycle - either vicious or virtuous - that shows little sign of abating.

Contracting creep leads to mission creep. I have been in organizations that, despite personnel and fiscal reductions, continue to do all tasks assigned and accept more. How? By contracting those functions out. It can become a death spiral fairly quickly.

Contracting erodes military skills. When fewer soldiers teach, or maintain, or cook, or develop training programs, or write doctrine, we produce leaders with an increasingly narrow skill set. It also deprives leaders of learning experiences that produce deeper understanding of 'how things work'. Consider the simple example of a maintenance shop. A leader with a 'military' maintenance shop must learn the grimy details of inspections, repair, dispatch, etc., in order to keep his fleet operational. The 'contract' maintenance shop, however, tends to be a black box, and the only skills the leader develops are contract maintenance.

Finally - and to bring us back to the COIN vs Con argument - we only have the luxury of extensive contracting because we operate in low-threat environments. Should we have to fight against a near-peer on a high-intensity battlefield, we may find ourselves having to reinvent numerous wheels. After all, the historical trend from, oh, 1792 to the recent past had been to reduce or eliminate contractors from the conventional battlefield, because they proved to be inadequate to the demands placed on them.

Ken White

05-13-2008, 03:01 PM

that the force structure folks should heed.

The statement that contracting is addictive is particularly true and contracting most training in particular is a dangerous course that has significantly eroded our ability to train and thus our total effectiveness. I submit a part of the problem that has forced us into contracting is legislative but the major flaw IMO is that we have not adapted to the size of the force dictated by costs. We're still largely trying to 'operate' the way we did in 1960 and that is simply not possible.

I'd also note that the contract security I've observed at the last three or four bases (Army, Navy and AF) I've visited make me seriously question the security thereon...

Entropy

05-13-2008, 07:49 PM

I'd also note that the contract security I've observed at the last three or four bases (Army, Navy and AF) I've visited make me seriously question the security thereon...

Well, hey, a lot of our nuclear weapons infrastructure is run by contractors, and they are great at security! :D

Ken White

05-13-2008, 08:10 PM

only gets 2,250,000 hits... :D

Ron Humphrey

05-14-2008, 02:22 AM

When referencing concern for contracting in training do most here include educational training as well? I ask because when I think about it in the other areas mentioned I can see the validity of the arguments but when it comes to good ol schoolin it still seems to me that the balanced if not slightly heavier civilian presence is a better thing. If for no other reason than the diversity of experience and approach to teaching it provides.

Thought's?

Ken White

05-14-2008, 02:52 AM

but too me, eddication and trainin is differunt. i'm well trained, not so well eddicated :D

I gree on the civilyun fackultee.

Anything less would be uncivilized... ;)

stanleywinthrop

05-16-2008, 11:49 PM

Forgive me for digressing from some of the themes developed here but a couple of points:

1. On the "ghosts of vietnam" thread, poster 'steve' made a comment "But, sadly, another historical reality seems to be that the American Army prefers to prepare for the enemy it wants to fight and not the enemy it has to fight. This has been the trend since the Revolution, and I see no real signs of it ending." I find it illuminating that no one acknowledged this comment, even to summarily dismiss it.

2. I am fascinated that certain parties find it disturbing that 90% of the U.S. army artillery is not certified. Why is that a problem? Are we expecting a dire need for 90% more artillery in Iraq or Afghanistan? Artillery, when you boil it down, is a science, and not a particulary difficult one at that. Point the gun on a certain azimuth, at a certain inclination, factor in wind, and a few other factors, and the projectile will fall at the desired target. Period. I learned how to do these calculations in high school. Modern technology virtually eliminates 'stubby pencil' errors. Of course running an efficient gun line is a lot more than that, but are the dire prognosticators telling us that you can't take a current unit to the field, supply them with sufficient training ammunition, and NOT have them operating at a proficient level within a few weeks? Huh? If that is really what is being suggested, my opinion of the Army will drop a few notches. My apologies to the cannon cockers here, I respect you very much and agree that you are very much needed in certain types of war, but the fact is proficiency in artillery can be regained within a few weeks. Proficiency in COIN, if ever gained, takes years.

To regurgitate some Kilcullen, our enemies will make us fight this type of war until we get it right, and while progress has been made we have not quite got it right yet.

Adam L

05-17-2008, 12:29 AM

2. I am fascinated that certain parties find it disturbing that 90% of the U.S. army artillery is not certified. Why is that a problem? Are we expecting a dire need for 90% more artillery in Iraq or Afghanistan? Artillery, when you boil it down, is a science, and not a particulary difficult one at that. Point the gun on a certain azimuth, at a certain inclination, factor in wind, and a few other factors, and the projectile will fall at the desired target. Period. I learned how to do these calculations in high school. Modern technology virtually eliminates 'stubby pencil' errors. Of course running an efficient gun line is a lot more than that, but are the dire prognosticators telling us that you can't take a current unit to the field, supply them with sufficient training ammunition, and NOT have them operating at a proficient level within a few weeks? Huh? If that is really what is being suggested, my opinion of the Army will drop a few notches. My apologies to the cannon cockers here, I respect you very much and agree that you are very much needed in certain types of war, but the fact is proficiency in artillery can be regained within a few weeks. Proficiency in COIN, if ever gained, takes years.

To regurgitate some Kilcullen, our enemies will make us fight this type of war until we get it right, and while progress has been made we have not quite got it right yet.

I understand the point you are trying to make, but I think you are going a bit too far. Yes, it is unlikely we are going to have a demand for a massive amount of artillery overnight, but part of the Army's job is to be prepared for that. If in the unlikely event we suddenly had to send a massive ground force into somewhere, we are going to need artillery (and a lot of other things) quickly. (Although I have no idea what is needed to certify the units and/or give them proper train up, I can guess it would be difficult to deal with 90% overnight. Money, ammo and instructors don't grow on trees.) One thing we have learned through out history is that we never fight the war we want and rarely the one we predict/expect. We also often found ourselves having neglected some very basic essentials.

Also, everything is more complicated or challenging than it seems. Never underestimate the difficulty of any task, especially when it will have to be performed in combat.

Adam L

Ken White

05-17-2008, 01:54 AM

Forgive me for digressing from some of the themes developed here but a couple of points:

1. ... I find it illuminating that no one acknowledged this comment, even to summarily dismiss it.Perhaps because it's true?
2. I am fascinated that certain parties find it disturbing that 90% of the U.S. army artillery is not certified. Why is that a problem? ... My apologies to the cannon cockers here, I respect you very much and agree that you are very much needed in certain types of war, but the fact is proficiency in artillery can be regained within a few weeks. Proficiency in COIN, if ever gained, takes years.First, for a number of reasons, the training problem is not quite as easy as you blithely say. Second and more important; proficiency in COIN does not take years and is easily gained; high intensity combat is more difficult than COIN -- both are necessary skills.
To regurgitate some Kilcullen, our enemies will make us fight this type of war until we get it right, and while progress has been made we have not quite got it right yet.There is no right -- or wrong; there are only acceptable outcomes to be aimed for. Enemies don't make you fight unless you choose to do so. War is war; but warfare mutates, we are seeing such a mutation and we're catching up rapidly enough. No worries.

Sargent

05-17-2008, 01:56 AM

Besides that, why should we waste precious man power on cooking, guarding the base camp, and driving trucks when we can have patriotic civilians do it? Many of the contractors we use are retired service people who have the skills and motivation to preform these functions and not using these people would be a major waste of human capital.

Because, when it comes to operating at the front lines, private contractors won't cook, guard base camps, or drive trucks. This was the first lesson of American military history, in the War for Independence. It's why George Washington took one of his best combatant commanders, Nathanael Greene, and made him the Quartermaster General -- because the sutlers and other contractors weren't getting the food and other materiel to the troops, causing very serious problems with the line troops.

A memorial was erected at Antietam to McKinley, for bringing a hot meal and coffee to the battle weary troops. A bit of a political move to build the memorial, no doubt. However, the action was genuine, and to the troops fed, it was no joke.

In WWI, kitchen trucks were frequently shelled getting food to the front line troops.

In WWII, soldiers were killed when the German arty opened up on them as they tried to get a Thanksgiving dinner to others in the frontlines.

At Chosin, the cooks and other support staff of 1st Marines had drop their spoons and mops and grab rifles to fight the Chinese.

Fast forward to the winter of 2007, and there was a MTT sitting in the city center of Fallujah, not getting fed. For three months they tried to figure out an answer, and finally, the only one guaranteed to work was to send the SINGLE Marine messman stationed at the FOB out to them to cook for them. Of course, they still couldn't get anyone out to empty the portajohns, but that's another story.

We've decided to unlearn our first lesson in war, one supported by 200+ years of subsequent history.

Contractors can quit. They have no bond to the people they support. (Consider the analogy to Marines preferring Marine aviators flying CAS for them -- they know that these guys have, before doing their flight training, spent six months at TBS, learning the job of the guy on the ground, thus being bound to him in a way that no other aviator really ever can.) If they don't do the job, it's very hard to get the money they've been paid back -- the government does anything about it, takes it as a sunk cost. Look at all the unfinished/badly finished projects in Iraq. Also, a lot of the contractors in Iraq aren't all patriotic Americans -- this is not a criticism, I'm simply pointing out the fact that they're not, and therefore cannot necessarily be counted on to care that much about what America or Americans want.

Maybe there's something useful that can be done with the former service personnel -- a draft? If they're so keen to serve, why not go back on active duty? Oh yeah, because for doing the same jobs they get paid way more than the military personnel. And if it costs less to hire one of them than to send a Lance Corporal, it's because we the tax payers have already paid for their training, which the private corporations get to leverage at no cost to their own bottom lines. (Maybe we should demand a rebate from them?) But I think the cost savings is more like a shell game -- I don't think it's really costing us less in the long run.

So, I'm not much of a believer. War is not business, and it cannot be run like one. It has costs, and trying to minimize those costs according to business principles is a bad idea all around. If we cannot afford those costs, then we need to rethink how we fight. Or we need to consider whether the effort is worth the cost. But to think we can cheat the costs of war is a foolish game.

V/R
Jill

ODB

05-17-2008, 02:39 AM

Maybe there's something useful that can be done with the former service personnel -- a draft? If they're so keen to serve, why not go back on active duty? Oh yeah, because for doing the same jobs they get paid way more than the military personnel. And if it costs less to hire one of them than to send a Lance Corporal, it's because we the tax payers have already paid for their training, which the private corporations get to leverage at no cost to their own bottom lines. (Maybe we should demand a rebate from them?) But I think the cost savings is more like a shell game -- I don't think it's really costing us less in the long run.

So, I'm not much of a believer. War is not business, and it cannot be run like one. It has costs, and trying to minimize those costs according to business principles is a bad idea all around. If we cannot afford those costs, then we need to rethink how we fight. Or we need to consider whether the effort is worth the cost. But to think we can cheat the costs of war is a foolish game.

V/R
Jill

In the long run it is cheaper. No VA claims, no retirement, no family medical coverage. Think how much of this comes out of the defense budget alone. Is there anything wrong with me benefiting from my training? Afterall it was my time, blood, sweat,and tears that went into it? Is it any different than any other person out there? If said company trained me,then their competition comes along and offers me twice the money, do they owe them anything? Problem now is the knee jerk reaction, especially in SOF. Let's see, I can continue to do 6 month rotations making $50-$60 thousand a year or I can do contract work making 3 times that in the same amount of time. For me money isn't everything, besides I refuse to work with subpar organizations, very few of these PMCs today hire quality over quantity and the ones who do you never hear about unless it's them contacting you personally. Unfortunately as is the nature of todays world many quality guys jumped on this early on,got their share of the money,saw it wasn't what they thought it was and moved on, but not back into service. No thanks keep your money and subpar employees.

mmx1

05-17-2008, 04:44 AM

Contracting tends to reduce the flexibility of any military force. By replacing soldiers with contractors, you automatically reduce the pool of manpower available for mowing grass, raising the flag, providing individual augmentees for wartime operations, or manning the defensive perimeter when the Chinese break through the lines. This creates a problem that can only be solved by either further stressing the remaining soldiers...or hiring more contractors. This leads me to my next point.

I disagree in general principle. Contracting increases the flexibility of the military in giving it a fairly responsive ability to supply additional manpower and skillsets in response to demand, faster than the military can do so itself by either retraining existing personnel in other MOS's or increased recruiting.

When the hazards are fairly low for contracting to represent a viable economic alternative to civilian jobs, it is a cost-effective way to get skillsets found in the civilian sector (logistics, maintenance, personal protection), where the civilian market for their skills pays for their sustainment between periods of demand, rather than the military paying them to practice in peacetime.

Finally - and to bring us back to the COIN vs Con argument - we only have the luxury of extensive contracting because we operate in low-threat environments. Should we have to fight against a near-peer on a high-intensity battlefield, we may find ourselves having to reinvent numerous wheels. After all, the historical trend from, oh, 1792 to the recent past had been to reduce or eliminate contractors from the conventional battlefield, because they proved to be inadequate to the demands placed on them.
Agreed that the utility of contractors drops off sharply as risk increases. Well, since the thread is about the HIC/LIC balance, why not utilize the savings in costs and manpower from contracting in a low-threat environment to enable more of the force to sustain their HIC training even during a LIC? Just because contractors are not a viable resource for HIC doesn't mean we can't leverage their abilities in LIC to ease the strain on the active force.

And if it costs less to hire one of them than to send a Lance Corporal, it's because we the tax payers have already paid for their training, which the private corporations get to leverage at no cost to their own bottom lines. (Maybe we should demand a rebate from them?) But I think the cost savings is more like a shell game -- I don't think it's really costing us less in the long run.
People will inevitably leave the service and take their skills with them. Do you expect every service member to remain active or reserve until retirement? Their skills remain useful to them and to others. The option of contracting gives us a very quick way to retain those skills without resorting to measures like a draft that would dramatically decrease recruitment. Yes, there's a short term cost in decreased retention, but the pool of people getting out early to cash in on contracting is far smaller than the pool that we are drawing from.

I agree that contracting as a long-term solution can be addictively poisonous if contracting subsumes military functions rather than augments them, and becomes a long-term solution rather than a flex capacity. I gather that comes (as it does in business) from a misunderstanding of the real costs and benefits of contracting.

So, I'm not much of a believer. War is not business, and it cannot be run like one. It has costs, and trying to minimize those costs according to business principles is a bad idea all around. If we cannot afford those costs, then we need to rethink how we fight. Or we need to consider whether the effort is worth the cost. But to think we can cheat the costs of war is a foolish game.

I can think of few things more dangerous. The costs of war are not fixed, and even in a national wartime footing, are always subject to constraints. Today, military spending and recruiting competes in a vastly larger national economy. Our ability to generate combat power at the tip of the spear is inextricably linked to the costs at the other end. It appears you are confusing business principles of "best allocation of limited resources" for "minimize costs regardless of the consequences".

Sargent

05-17-2008, 01:56 PM

In the long run it is cheaper. No VA claims, no retirement, no family medical coverage. Think how much of this comes out of the defense budget alone. Is there anything wrong with me benefiting from my training? Afterall it was my time, blood, sweat,and tears that went into it? Is it any different than any other person out there? If said company trained me,then their competition comes along and offers me twice the money, do they owe them anything? Problem now is the knee jerk reaction, especially in SOF. Let's see, I can continue to do 6 month rotations making $50-$60 thousand a year or I can do contract work making 3 times that in the same amount of time. For me money isn't everything, besides I refuse to work with subpar organizations, very few of these PMCs today hire quality over quantity and the ones who do you never hear about unless it's them contacting you personally. Unfortunately as is the nature of todays world many quality guys jumped on this early on,got their share of the money,saw it wasn't what they thought it was and moved on, but not back into service. No thanks keep your money and subpar employees.

It's not cheaper if the war is lost. If we only look at combat service support, contractors almost cost us our independence, and I don't think the peril associated with hiring others to do that job has ever gone away.

As for the issue of what former service personnel and their skill set, there's nothing "wrong" with what individuals are doing with their training. There is no law against it, and I don't even think it's unethical. And if the contractors are making money hand over fist, the companies themselves are making even more. And I'll point out that it was the companies which were the object of criticism regarding the training investment made by the taxpayer, not the individual service members. Look, the question was asked, what to do with these former service personnel who are an asset. The assumption was that we are best served by them in a PMC. I don't think that's true, and I gave an analysis of why it's not. It's nothing personal.

I don't believe that the true costs of the contractors are being properly accounted. Alternatively, I don't think that the value of what may be gotten via the military benefits are well accounted for either. Does it cost more to constantly retrain new people or to retain them? In order to retain people, you have to give them a reason to stay. I'm absolutely certain that someone did a cost-benefit analysis and realized that even with the costs you list above the long-service family man/woman was still the better option, that even if they cost more in dollars, the intangible benefits were well worth it. Besides, again I have to say that the costs of war cannot be minimized in the same way that they can be for business.

Let me offer another way to look at the contractor issue. I can't help thinking that part of the contracting objective is to minimize the number of "troops" we have deployed, because the American people might look at things differently if it were the case that we had 300,000 or so troops in Iraq. It would give them an entirely different sense of the war. So, in effect, there is a bit of a lie involved, in order to maintain public support. And that's a problem, because at some point the lie is going to catch up with them.

MMX wrote: It appears you are confusing business principles of "best allocation of limited resources" for "minimize costs regardless of the consequences".

I wasn't just talking about business principles and cost. I'm talking about the application of a business philosophy to warfare in general. There are many things that don't translate. But it's really at the heart of things where the translation breaks down: business seeks to achieve efficiency, whereas the application of that same idea to warfare does not work. Armed forces must be effective, and often to achieve that, they must be inefficient. So, while a throwaway B-school buzz-line like "best allocation of limited resources" might be vaguely transferable, what you realize in the conduct of warfare is that what constitutes "best" bears no resemblance to its definition in the civilian sector. Once you get beyond the platitude, the applications diverge widely.

Please don't confuse this with a suggestion that profligacy is the only way to fight a war or manage one's armed forces. But it's a whole 'nother post to get into to consider how the military could do with a bit more wisdom in the allocation and use of resources.

V/R
Jill

Old Eagle

05-17-2008, 03:08 PM

Can someone pull this back over to the contractor thread or start a new contractor thread?

As I recall, we were here to drain the conventional/COIN swamp, not play with the contractor alligators.:confused:

Ken White

05-18-2008, 04:10 AM

The contractor stuff is mixed with some pertinent, some not.

Dave, Bill or one of the other mods may wish to move those posts but I decided not to move 'em due to vague applicability (he said as he guiltily slunk away :o).

That said, we should try to stick to the topic which is COIN vs. Conventional Capability

Old Eagle

05-18-2008, 04:52 PM

Big Purple (not just Army) isn't buying into the COIN/FID/SFA stuff. It's all about fighting and winning the nation's wars --- as long as those wars are only MCOs against other near peer nation states and have to be done with expensive high tech equipment.

Outsourcing the wars of inconvenience, since they are beyond what current SOF can handle, is the obvious approved solution. The RFP for advisor support from IAG is just one data point. ACOTA, which used to be led by the uniformed military, has basically been outsourced to civilian contractors. Luckily, many are former advisors from previous excursions abroad.

What think?

Ken White

05-18-2008, 05:27 PM

As to what should happen, I'm not at all sure I disagree with what probably will happen. I do not think the American psyche is attuned to the patience level required for major COIN efforts; we have dumbed-down the education system, elected selfish politicians-for-life and developed a culture of dependency that does not bode well. Fortunately, most of the rest of the world is headed the same way and is slightly ahead of us. Regrettably, too few realize that everyone in the world is not nice and there are those that just do not play well with others. (/curmudgeonly rant) :D

Pending the arrival of the Slapout Based Warfare doctrine, I'm inclined to emphasize conventional capability, develop a strategy that avoids COIN to the extent possible -- and I think that is an achievable goal -- while being prepared to wage a hybrid intervention or two employing a large stick in unfriendly neighborhoods coupled with post op massive spending of $$ to farm out the cleanup.

That is not a case of wanting the bad guys to fight the war we want, it is a case of playing to our strengths and avoiding being sucked into an ambush designed by said bad guys to play on our weaknesses.

Ron Humphrey

05-18-2008, 10:35 PM

As to what should happen, I'm not at all sure I disagree with what probably will happen. I do not think the American psyche is attuned to the patience level required for major COIN efforts; we have dumbed-down the education system, elected selfish politicians-for-life and developed a culture of dependency that does not bode well. Fortunately, most of the rest of the world is headed the same way and is slightly ahead of us. Regrettably, too few realize that everyone in the world is not nice and there are those that just do not play well with others. (/curmudgeonly rant) :D

That is not a case of wanting the bad guys to fight the war we want, it is a case of playing to our strengths and avoiding being sucked into an ambush designed by said bad guys to play on our weaknesses.

But I just hope we continue to have at least some leaders who are aware enough of whats going on behind the scenes rather than simply going with what sells. If not our strengths as it were, may not be as immutable as we would hope.:(

Bill Moore

05-19-2008, 02:26 PM

Pending the arrival of the Slapout Based Warfare doctrine, I'm inclined to emphasize conventional capability, develop a strategy that avoids COIN to the extent possible -- and I think that is an achievable goal -- while being prepared to wage a hybrid intervention or two employing a large stick in unfriendly neighborhoods coupled with post op massive spending of $$ to farm out the cleanup.

That is not a case of wanting the bad guys to fight the war we want, it is a case of playing to our strengths and avoiding being sucked into an ambush designed by said bad guys to play on our weaknesses. Ken

These words seem to be an attempt to resurface the "Powell Doctrine," which I find concerning. While we obviously want to play to our strengths, the very nature of so called "asymmetric warfare" is that a thinking enemy will play to our weaknesses, not our strengths. One can make an argument that part of the reason that 9/11 happened is because we pulled out of Somalia, thus demonstrating we didn't have the will to stick it out after getting a bloody nose.

We could have responded to 9/11 in multitude of ways, to include launching a few cruise missiles and calling it day to conducting massive offensive operations followed by a rapid exit with the promise of returning if they don't play nice in the future. It may have worked, but as we all know it is hard to anticipate what the actual second order effects of any operation will be.

Going back to the war is war comments (I don't agree), the way to win a war is to control the terrain, and in this type of war the terrain is the population. There are different ways to control a population, but we're not going to use all out terror for obvious reasons, so our response must be "COIN like".

Here is my hypothesis: to win a war we have to control the terrain (the Air Force may disagree, but they can post their counter arguments here). In this conflict the terrain is the population; therefore if we're going to win we have to conduct COIN like operations to control the population. This is definitely a real war, and one that is as important to our national security as the Cold War was. Terms like "Small War", COIN, stability operations, etc., can be misleading in the case of GWOT (or the Long War), because these terms imply we're helping allies, or have limited objectives, and perhaps we have the option of saying it isn't worth staying in the fight. We don't have the option of withdrawing from this fight, so instead of arguing over the fact that we're losing some of our ability to fight a peer competitor (that doesn't exist), we need to focus on how to win this critical fight we're in today. We're shaping history now, and if we don't win this fight, we may not have to worry about the peer competitor fight later.

Our mission is to win our nation's wars, not to win a specific type of war.
Based on the argument above, I leave you with this question: How can we over do our adaption to this type of war, if it is essential that we win it? Why is TRADOC worried more about preparing Soldiers for a fictional future fight, instead of winning the war we're in now?

What is interesting about this debate is that it is a debate to begin with.

Ken White

05-19-2008, 04:45 PM

These words seem to be an attempt to resurface the "Powell Doctrine," which I find concerning.the Weinberger Doctrine and both were a flawed attempt to avoid any FID process or COIN ops. Both were flawed and doomed to fail. Not least because they espoused 'winning' with 'overwhleming force.' Not always possible -- or necessary.

Edited to add: They also mentioned support of the US populace and international support; both are desirable but will not always be attainable or necessary. Nor is overwhelming force always required, in many cases as you well know a precisely tailored and effective small force package can be more effective if the objective is limited in the tactical sense.

I'm simply suggesting that we have an ability to pick our fights -- we have NOT done that well in the past -- and that we can develop the capability (which we should have started on after Eagle Claw. I know we did but only half heartedly due to a number of factors) to respond to provocations in a slapdown mode that can often, not always, negate the requirement to get too deep in the FID woods in a combat mode as opposed to a pre-combat mode which we should expand.
While we obviously want to play to our strengths, the very nature of so called "asymmetric warfare" is that a thinking enemy will play to our weaknesses, not our strengths. One can make an argument that part of the reason that 9/11 happened is because we pulled out of Somalia, thus demonstrating we didn't have the will to stick it out after getting a bloody nose.Of course he will, so would you or I if we were he. My question is simply; why does 'he' always get to pick? Why do we allow that? Best way to stop a charge from detonating is interrupt the priming cycle...

I submit 9/11 happened because of Carter's failed response to the Tehran Embassy seizure -- that could've been short circuited without a shot being fired -- plus Reagan's dumb decision to interfere in Lebanon and, worse, to tolerate with minimal response the bombs and kidnappings in Lebanon. Follow that wih Bush 41s failure to go to Baghdad in 91 -- been easier then than it is now -- and to even enter Somalia. Top that off with Clinton's ridiculous "get Aideed" command there to be followed by some screwups on the ground and a rapid withdrawal (and as an aside, Kosovo was nor help...). That's four President's worth of failure that led to 9/11. Note that in every case, the poor response was the effector...
We could have responded to 9/11 in multitude of ways, to include launching a few cruise missiles and calling it day to conducting massive offensive operations followed by a rapid exit with the promise of returning if they don't play nice in the future. It may have worked, but as we all know it is hard to anticipate what the actual second order effects of any operation will be.Wouldn't have worked; Bush 43 did what HAD to be done IMO and though the Army didn't do it well, that's not Bush's fault. Had the Army done it well (I know there were other players and factors but the Executive Agent...), it would've been a little easier and a rapid withdrawal could probably have been effected. No matter, really, we are where we are.
Going back to the war is war comments (I don't agree)That's cool; your prerogative but I think it is -- war is violent confrontation between two or more belligerents, period. Killing and dying, that simple. WarFARE, OTOH, differs wildly in many ways. War is war; the type of warfare determines who does what to who. That's not semantic B.S., it is a critical diffrentiation.
...the way to win a war is to control the terrain, and in this type of war the terrain is the population. There are different ways to control a population, but we're not going to use all out terror for obvious reasons, so our response must be "COIN like".I don't dispute that and I certainly do not advocate no capability, on the contrary, that capability must be grown, enhanced and retained to be used when necessary. I do think we need to look at when it is necessary...
Here is my hypothesis: to win a war we have to control the terrain (the Air Force may disagree, but they can post their counter arguments here). In this conflict the terrain is the population; therefore if we're going to win we have to conduct COIN like operations to control the population. This is definitely a real war, and one that is as important to our national security as the Cold War was. Terms like "Small War", COIN, stability operations, etc., can be misleading in the case of GWOT (or the Long War), because these terms imply we're helping allies, or have limited objectives, and perhaps we have the option of saying it isn't worth staying in the fight. We don't have the option of withdrawing from this fight, so instead of arguing over the fact that we're losing some of our ability to fight a peer competitor (that doesn't exist), we need to focus on how to win this critical fight we're in today. We're shaping history now, and if we don't win this fight, we may not have to worry about the peer competitor fight later.Nor do I disagree with that.
Our mission is to win our nation's wars, not to win a specific type of war.That is totally correct and I would emphasize the plural; wars, type immaterial. I'm merely saying that we have the capability to shape the potential battlefields instead of reacting to the other guy. I submit we have not done that at all well and we need to get a whole lot better at it.

Based on the argument above, I leave you with this question: How can we over do our adaption to this type of war, if it is essential that we win it? Why is TRADOC worried more about preparing Soldiers for a fictional future fight, instead of winning the war we're in now?Agreed for here and now -- but my sensing is that TRADOC is trying to balance competing priorities and they have to do that. What about 2018? 2038?
What is interesting about this debate is that it is a debate to begin with.Disagree. it is an important debate. Do we continue to react -- frequently, react poorly -- or do we initiate or preempt? Defuzing is better than demolition. I suggest it's better to cut the fuze than to clean up after the explosion.

That means total preparedness to the best of our ability for whatever type of war comes down the pike; providing the FID and COIN support BEFORE the pot boils over, an ability to respond with tailored and effective force to provocations (and that may include everything from a Predator fired Hellfire on a car in Bafloofistan to a door kicking raid in the middle of the night 2,000 clicks from nowhere to minor FID work before a problem develops to a major FID and COIN op to full scale conventional war) and importantly an Intel community that does a better job. We have got to be prepared to do it all; ain't easy. Soldiering rarely is...

ipopescu

05-19-2008, 06:17 PM

I am getting more and more confused by the way people use various terms and concepts in this "conventional vs. COIN" debate. I'll use the above post just as an example, not because it is any better or worse than others in similar vain.

While we obviously want to play to our strengths, the very nature of so called "asymmetric warfare" is that a thinking enemy will play to our weaknesses, not our strengths.

If that's the "nature" of assymetric warfare, all wars against thinking enemies are assymetric, which actually is close to being true in the sense that wars are "duels" where one tries to take advantage of the enemy's weak points.
"Assymetric" or "irregular" are terms which only have meaning when contrasted to something else - i.e. the symmetric (or regular), warfare. Unless someone also provides a definition of how exactly "regular warfare" looks like in today's day and age, then talk of assymetric to me simply seems to say that the other guys fight differently than we would want them to. Fine. But I don't see how this is particularly enlightening for the debate.

Going back to the war is war comments (I don't agree), the way to win a war is to control the terrain, and in this type of war the terrain is the population. There are different ways to control a population, but we're not going to use all out terror for obvious reasons, so our response must be "COIN like".

Winning a war is accomplishing your political objectives. Period.

Sometimes, those objectives require controlling enemy territory, sometimes require control of the population, sometimes neither. It all depends on the extent of your objectives in that particular conflict.

And "war is war" doesn't seem to me like a statement that's open to debate,
if only because one would probably commit a logical fallacy by denying it. More substantively, I suspect that you mean that there are such large differences between "conventional" and "COIN-like" conflicts that these two missions need to be treated in largely distinct manners. This is debatable, and I think there are already enough arguments on this thread one way or the other.

Here is my hypothesis: to win a war we have to control the terrain (the Air Force may disagree, but they can post their counter arguments here). In this conflict the terrain is the population; therefore if we're going to win we have to conduct COIN like operations to control the population.
This is definitely a real war, and one that is as important to our national security as the Cold War was.

Terms like "Small War", COIN, stability operations, etc., can be misleading in the case of GWOT (or the Long War), because these terms imply we're helping allies, or have limited objectives, and perhaps we have the option of saying it isn't worth staying in the fight.

Which population? And what exactly do you mean by "control"? I don't mean to sound flippant, but unless you are precise about what you have in mind when applying the war terminology to the "War on Terror", as you do in the next paragraph, I cannot make an intelligent appraisal of your arguments. I can understand applying COIN models to specific cases like Iraq and Afghanistan; but when you talk about the war on terror as the equivalent of the Cold War in size and scope, I'm at a loss in comprehending what "controlling the population" looks like in that context and how exactly is the US military going to achieve that.

Contrary to what you write, I believe almost everyone would agree that one of the most effective ways of defeating Salafist terrorism is by helping local allies address local threats on their own. And that we do have limited objectives in this conflict, just like in most conflicts. How would "unlimited" objectives look anyway in the current situation? I don't see how your next statement ("perhaps we have the option of saying it isn't worth staying in the fight") follows from the previous two.

T We don't have the option of withdrawing from this fight, so instead of arguing over the fact that we're losing some of our ability to fight a peer competitor (that doesn't exist), we need to focus on how to win this critical fight we're in today. We're shaping history now, and if we don't win this fight, we may not have to worry about the peer competitor fight later.

I think it's a little bit too much of a straw-man argument to imply that people worrying about losing our ability for HIC are motivated by the desire to prepare fighting against a "peer competitor that doesn't exist" and that they would jeopardize today's missions for that reason. I believe there are a good number of potential adversaries today (Iran, NK, China in a Taiwan scenario) which could test the US military's preparedness for missions closer to HIC than we see today in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, of course, the deterrent effect from our conventional capabilities is a cornerstone of our overall national security - the more stories one gets of an overstretched military bogged down in Iraq and unable to train for some of its basic missions - the worse it must be for deterring states like Iran from causing havoc wherever they can. Having said that, there is of course a good deal of common sense in the administration's argument that nothing would be worse than a "defeated military" - I'm just saying that sometimes people tend to paint this debate too much as "good" vs. "bad" guys.

Our mission is to win our nation's wars, not to win a specific type of war.

Yes, and largely uncontroversial I believe. The real questions are more along the lines of "What are the opportunity costs that we are willing to pay for today's wars versus preparing for future ones?", or "How do we best use our current limited (and likely declining) financial resources dedicated to defense in the near future to best accomplish our overall global strategic interests for the next couple of decades?" I suspect that my answer are really closer to your's than this post might imply, but I think these issues are really worth pondering and they are clearly not as black and white as you suggested.

selil

05-19-2008, 08:06 PM

All insurgency, assymetric conflict, military operations other than war, and associated terms are under the legal heading of low-intensity-conflict. That is how they are dilineated in the original budgets. Or, so I've been led to believe.

Bill Moore

05-19-2008, 09:03 PM

ipopescu,

My comments in this forum are not designed to stand up to academic rigor (at this time), but simply offer some counterpoints. I don't disagree with your critiques, and will respond appropriately when time permits. In short, my comment on why I don't agree with the "war is war" statement, must be taken in context. As you stated winning is defined by achieving your political objectives. While war is war at one level, as Ken stated, on another level it varies widely. For example, we fought a Cold War with the USSR. A war that had a few hot spots, but if it ever turned into a war where we had to defend Western Europe from the Red Hordes, then the nature of that war would have been very different, than say our participation in El Salvador. I personally find the comment that "war is war" can be misleading, overly simplistic, and potentially dangerous for policy makers. Clausewitz said the most important thing a policy maker/General (loosely paraphrased) must do before going to war is understand the nature of the war he is embarking on. Failure to do so, can lead to..........., well an OIF. On one level war is war, but what is the utility of that statement? Can I prepare an Army to fight in North Korea the same way we're countering insurgency in Iraq?

Furthermore, as you noted throughout this thread, there is much concern that the Army is overly adapting itself to fight a COIN like war, thus some draw the conclusion that we're losing the ability to conduct so called conventional war. The argument is probably valid if you project into the future, but my point is we have to win the fight we're in, so the balancing act should tilt towards winning today's fight, with a distant eye on the war in the future.

As for controlling the populace, that means preventing the enemy from using it to achieve his ends. In many cases that may be a relatively simple matter of countering radical ideology, building local government legitimacy, etc., while in other areas it will require robust security forces (as we see in Iraq) to loosen the grip the insurgents have over the populace. The strategy required will vary based on the threat, the populace, our capabilities, and our political objectives.

I'm making a post for discussion, I'm not writing a thesis. Your points are valid, but you could make similiar points throughout the forum on numerous posts. I think we should be semi-casual in the post mode, and much more academic when we write articles. Otherwise we run the risk of reducing the discussion, which is normally a lot of give and take, and I think everyone leaves the forum a little wiser. My thoughts evolve overtime based on the comments on numerous contributers on SWJ. Thoughts? Bill

Ken White

05-19-2008, 10:37 PM

discussion forum such as this isn't called for or necessary.

OTOH, I disagree with Bill on this:

...While war is war at one level, as Ken stated, on another level it varies widely. For example, we fought a Cold War with the USSR. A war that had a few hot spots, but if it ever turned into a war where we had to defend Western Europe from the Red Hordes, then the nature of that war would have been very different, than say our participation in El Salvador. I personally find the comment that "war is war" can be misleading, overly simplistic, and potentially dangerous for policy makers. Clausewitz said the most important thing a policy maker/General (loosely paraphrased) must do before going to war is understand the nature of the war he is embarking on. Failure to do so, can lead to..........., well an OIF. On one level war is war, but what is the utility of that statement? Can I prepare an Army to fight in North Korea the same way we're countering insurgency in Iraq?Not that he's incorrect in what he says but that the statement cuts both ways. War means combat, killing and dying. Period. If you start a war people are going to die -- Politicians need to understand that and remember it.

If one tries to shade that fact by offering modifiers like LIC, COIN and so forth in an effort to show how 'professional' one is and impress the dumb civilians, one removes the the onus of WAR from the discussion and the Politicians will always jump on that and try to do it on the cheap -- as Korea, Viet Nam and OEF /OIF all prove. If they think they can pull off an easy war -- when there is absolutely no such thing in reality -- then they will try to do so. We should also not talk about 'winning' and 'victory' particularly in a COIN op where the best you can hope for is an acceptable outcome.

War is war; warfare is quite varied and there are many levels, types and nuances to include variance over the years in weapons and methodology. There is, for example, air warfare and there is ground warfare -- the two are not really interchangeable and that's sort of obvious if you phrase it that way. However, if one tries to sell an 'Air War' one might confuse the issue enough to convince the uninitiated that one can win a ground war from the air...

Billy Sherman said two things on the topic that every politician should be made to say publicly when he babbles of war; "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it." and "Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster."

Warfare IS the nature of a particular war, that we can have some control over...

ipopescu

05-19-2008, 11:07 PM

ipopescu,

I'm making a post for discussion, I'm not writing a thesis. Your points are valid, but you could make similiar points throughout the forum on numerous posts. I think we should be semi-casual in the post mode, and much more academic when we write articles. Otherwise we run the risk of reducing the discussion, which is normally a lot of give and take, and I think everyone leaves the forum a little wiser. My thoughts evolve overtime based on the comments on numerous contributers on SWJ. Thoughts? Bill

I totally agree with that, and my feelings on the nature and role of the discussion are identical. I'm sorry if my comments seemed pedantic or academic; I assure you they were most certainly not meant in that way. Must be some early signs of beginning to think like an academic, and this really worries me as I am still so young :(

Uboat509

05-19-2008, 11:46 PM

I tend to agree with Bill on this one. I certainly see your point, Ken, but I don't like the broad sweeping statements like war is war. Broadly that is certainly true. It is a conflict between two or more entities, but I think that when you don't define the type of war that you are in or preparing to be in ie COIN, LIC, conventional etc. you leave it up to the listener to decide what the term war means to them. I think that the problem then becomes less about making John Q. Public understand that there is no such thing as an easy war but that it becomes an issue of making commanders prepare for the war as it will be fought not the war as they would like it to be fought. The US military has always prepared for war pretty well. The problem is that it has not always prepared for the right war. I have no doubt that had twenty Russian Guards tank divisions come screaming out of the Fulda Gap that we would have taught them the error of their ways. Unfortunately, reality had other ideas and we have just not found the fight we were prepared for but by God we were going to keep preparing for it. As has been bemoaned many times on this board, this is hardly our first COIN fight but not so you could tell by how it went for the first couple of years or so. Ask any of the commanders what they have been doing since Vietnam and they will tell you that they have been training their men for war, just the wrong kind of war. I think that these other terms like LIC and COIN and conventional warfare, which all broadly fall under the definition of war but have different requirements, are needed in order help keep commanders focused.

There are a number of people now who are upset that we, as a military are so focused on COIN that we are letting our conventional warfare skills atrophy. I agree but I also believe that as soon as we are out of Iraq we will see a slow but steady shift in the other direction and eventually we will be back to the status quo, COIN is SF's problem, we fight the conventional fight, and we will go back to spending the majority of our resources and time preparing to fight a peer competitor threat that may not even realistically exist. Currently there is not one. Russia is rebuilding but that is going to take a long time. China lacks any real force projection capability and seems to be enjoying here growing economic power. The ROK army will Kim Jong Il's lunch if he tries to bow up. And Iran wouldn't likely be a conventional fight. I suspect it would be a repeat of Iraq with the part of insurgent being played by a professional army with much better equipment.

SFC W

Ron Humphrey

05-20-2008, 12:02 AM

discussion forum such as this isn't called for or necessary.

If one tries to shade that fact by offering modifiers like LIC, COIN and so forth in an effort to show how 'professional' one is and impress the dumb civilians, one removes the the onus of WAR from the discussion and the Politicians will always jump on that and try to do it on the cheap -- as Korea, Viet Nam and OEF /OIF all prove. If they think they can pull off an easy war -- when there is absolutely no such thing in reality -- then they will try to do so. We should also not talk about 'winning' and 'victory' particularly in a COIN op where the best you can hope for is an acceptable outcome.

War is war; warfare is quite varied and there are many levels, types and nuances to include variance over the years in weapons and methodology. There is, for example, air warfare and there is ground warfare -- the two are not really interchangeable and that's sort of obvious if you phrase it that way. However, if one tries to sell an 'Air War' one might confuse the issue enough to convince the uninitiated that one can win a ground war from the air...

Billy Sherman said two things on the topic that every politician should be made to say publicly when he babbles of war; "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it." and "Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster."

Warfare IS the nature of a particular war, that we can have some control over...

I have had the opportunity to listen to several conversations related to this with somewhat of a more civilian tint to the questioning and it seemed readily apparent that first and foremost pols must be encouraged to understand and accept as fact what real costs ANY form of conflict carries and that they have to pick a side if they choose to lean towards said conflict.

The inherent costs don't seem to be a big part of the upfront decisions otherwise. Acknowledging my limited exposure to this phenomenon compared to many others here I would however be willing to admit a lack of in depth experience in actual political forums.:wry:

Ken White

05-20-2008, 12:11 AM

Few points...

...but I think that when you don't define the type of war that you are in or preparing to be in ie COIN, LIC, conventional etc. you leave it up to the listener to decide what the term war means to them.That presumes the listener understands what you mean by your professional terminology. The public is not the problem; the politicians are -- and they are mostly clueless, more so than is the mass of the public.
The US military has always prepared for war pretty well.My life and experiences in it tell me you're way wrong on that. I spent forty five years training or helping to train for a land war in Europe. Never even been stationed there but I've eaten a heck of a lot of rice on multiple occasions in five countries while getting shot at. If we had been prepared for war, full spectrum, none of those would've been a problem. Because we prepared for the wrong kind of warfare (HIC vs. MIC and LIC), all of them were problems.
Ask any of the commanders what they have been doing since Vietnam and they will tell you that they have been training their men for war, just the wrong kind of war.Not all of them, just most -- and at the direction of their commanders...
I think that these other terms like LIC and COIN and conventional warfare, which all broadly fall under the definition of war but have different requirements, are needed in order help keep commanders focused.(emphasis added / kw)I agree and I really like your choice of words... ;)
...Currently there is not one. Russia is rebuilding but that is going to take a long time. China lacks any real force projection capability and seems to be enjoying here growing economic power. The ROK army will Kim Jong Il's lunch if he tries to bow up. And Iran wouldn't likely be a conventional fight. I suspect it would be a repeat of Iraq with the part of insurgent being played by a professional army with much better equipment.All true. You left out Venezuela -- another LIC??? -- and the EU, not to mention a few others. Or that the ROK Army will expect some support. Or the new Prez decides to go to Sudan with a coalition...

Hard to predict the future. We'll see what happens.