Iraq education and training (merged thread)
4 Nov. Reuters article: Army Adapts to 'War of the Flea' in Iraq. Excerpt follows:
"In small steps and without fanfare, the U.S. Army is adapting its training to 'the war of the flea,' the type of hit-and-run insurgency that is gripping Iraq, where more than 2,000 American military personnel have been killed."
"Counterinsurgency training, military experts say, largely vanished from the curriculum of Army schools after the Vietnam War. It began a slow comeback after the Iraq war, which opened with a massive ground and air assault, turned into a protracted conflict of ambushes, bombings and hit-and-run attacks."
"Now, there is counterinsurgency (instruction) at every level, from the warrior leader course (for front-line sergeants) through to the war college, said Brig. Gen. Volney Warner, deputy commandant of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College."
Galula had an opinion, it isn't gospel
I don’t think we should take Galula’s comments out of context, nor assume his comments are a gospel that must be followed. We can fall into the same mental trap that big Army was stuck in for years, when they assumed their Fulda Gap doctrine would apply to all conflicts around the world equally. While Galula’s comments reference armor are probably spot on in several case studies, such as fighting a small war where the foe is using Maoist tactics and the terrain limits maneuver of Armor as it did in Vietnam, Cambodia, El Salvador, etc. However, a sound argument can be made that armor facilitates infantry maneuver in Iraq. Can you imagine how long and how costly the battle for Fallujah would have been without armor enablers? It is the right tool at certain times and locations. Note we don't have armor to any great extent at all in Afghanistan.
As for the Army's PME being shortened in length I would caution to avoid associating length with quality. The Army has a long habit of cramming four weeks of solid instruction into three months. I strongly recommend shortening the PME pipeline where we can, so we can get our soldiers back into the fight. You’ll learn more about waging so called small wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, than taking a couple of COIN electives at Ft. Leavenworth. As for professional reading assignments, why can’t we do those via distance learning and save the Army (and tax payers) money, and allow the soldier to spend more time at home with his family?
Small Wars and Counter-Insurgency Warfare: Lessons from Iraq
Just in via e-mail from Major M. W. Shervington to the SWJ and posted on the SWJ Operation Iraqi Freedom / Telic / Falconer / Catalyst page in the Reference Library.
Small Wars and Counter-Insurgency Warfare: Lessons from Iraq - Major M. W. Shervington, British Army. Cranfield University thesis, July 2005.
On 1 May 2003, President George W. Bush stood aboard USS Abraham Lincoln, in front of a banner stating ‘Mission Accomplished’, and declared that ‘major combat operations have ended. In the battle for Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.’ The President’s declaration has proved to be a false dawn. Despite a breathtaking conventional military campaign that removed Saddam Hussein’s regime in 43 days, the US-led Coalition has since been embroiled in countering an increasingly violent, diverse and unpredictable insurgency.
This dissertation provides some historical perspective to the development of insurgency and counter-insurgency. It traces the background to the creation of the modern state of Iraq. It examines the post-conflict insurgency in Iraq. It considers those decisions made by the Coalition that most contributed to its emergence and growth. It analyses those lessons that should contribute to future British counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine.
The paper addresses four themes. First, the US military alone in Iraq is conducting a COIN campaign against an insurgency that is unprecedented in history. Secondly, key lessons for British COIN doctrine must be learnt from the American politico-military experience; the British Army must therefore be receptive and open-minded. Thirdly, Iraq has witnessed a continued failure by American and British policy-makers to learn the lessons from history. Lastly, COIN operations in Iraq have to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people as they have to do with the perceptions of the wider Muslim world and the American and British electorates. It is a battle of perceptions in a war over ideas.
Boyd on Counterinsurgency Warfare - Moral Dimension
Check slides 105 -111 with emphasis on 108
Patterns of Conflict:
Understand the concept, not the application
Thanks for the patterns of conflict of brief. I read the biography on Boyd a little over a year ago, and only wish I had read it sooner. I still wonder how such a profound thinker came out of the seat of fighter jet, but the answer was in his bio, he applied the principles of physics to war and sociology.
I understand the the concept behind your argument that we must win on the moral level, but remain sceptical that removing our Strykers and Armor will put us on the moral high ground. Regrettably I have to over simplify your arguments to keep this short. The question I asked before remains unanswered, how do we win the moral battle in Iraq?
Using Boyd's three forms of conflict, I think it is safe to say we won the maneuver fight, and we're now waging a war of attrition and a war on the moral front. The war of attrition doesn't need explanation, it may or may not be decisive.
The moral war is extremely challenging on at least three different levels: the moral war with the homefront, a moral war with the global audience, and most importantly a moral war with the Iraqi people (or more accurately peoples/tribes).
I won't belabor our challenges for gaining the moral high ground on the home front and with the global audience when the alleged reasons we went to war didn't bear any fruit yet. This is an extremely difficult obstacle to surmount, and the only mitigating factor may simply be time.
Winning the moral war with the Iraqi people is just as, or more, challenging outside of Kurdistan, as winning the moral war on the home and global fronts. We destroyed the Iraqi government and put a band aid in its place, and then we wonder why they can't respond to a crisis that is much more significant in scale than Huriccane Katrina? That is why I argue that OIF isn't a true counterinsurgency; furthermore, if this is true, then it is probable that strictly counterinsurgency strategies will probably fail to get us to the endstate we desire. Regime change requires a doctrine that is separate from counterinsurgency, even if many (if not most) of the lessons from previous counterinsurgencies are relevant.
Winning the moral war with Iraqi people will be extremely challenging when we attempt to establish a political system that flies in the face of their culture and history. Radical changes probably requires radical supporting actions like Mao and Lenin implemented. Obviously we don't want to go down that route. To compound the matters you have several different ethnic groups that do not trust one another, almost as bad as the Democrats and Republicans.
In the end I agree with the concept of winning on the moral level, but I think we better find other viable options in the meantime until we figure out how to achieve this concept on the ground.
On a happy note, I believe that if we stick with it we'll triumph, because our enemy is his own worst enemy. While we're struggling to define and obtain the moral high ground, our enemy doesn't even understand the concept. In time the Iraqi people will see this, and we'll have a cascading success.
From my little piece of the pie...
I agree that the Army is not fighting a counterinsurgency here in Baghdad. There is most certainly an insurgency going on, but much of what we do isnt aimed at defeating it, just protecting ourselves. The use of tanks and Bradleys is necessary in some situations, and I wouldnt remove them from theatre, but I would greatly scale back their use. However, this would require drastic changes in the way the Army conducts operations here, changes that arent going to happen. Here's the problem: IEDs are far and away the biggest killers of Coalition and Iraqi troops. Where are most of the IEDs? On the MSRs. What do we INSIST on using to get around Baghdad? The MSRs. And this is why we use tanks and such here: route security. Because HMMWVs dont fare as well as a tank in IED attacks. So we use tanks and Bradleys to patrol routes and find IEDs.
Why don't we just stop using the MSRs? Hell if I know.
Are there any aviation knowledgable people here who can tell me why we cant move people and stuff by helicopter, like in Vietnam? We move a little by air, but not much. (Rather ignorant of this aspect, really. Please correct me if Im wrong.)
In the urban environment, I believe the Bradley to be the ideal vehicle. Lighter and more maneuverable than a tank. The tank has more firepower, but very rarely do you need 120mm sabot rounds on the flimsy structures here. The 25mm rounds are quite sufficient, and cause vastly less collateral damage. Best of all it carries it's own dismounts ("dirtmounts" according to one of my old section sergeants...). For these reasons, I'd keep at least some Brads around for heavy street fighting occasions, and some tanks too, in smaller numbers.
But a change in the way we operate would largly eliminate our need for them. We would stay off the MSRs almost entirely. My battalion has proven this works. Our LTC said "No more route security on this route. So, no driving on this route, except in an emergency or with my personal approval." Lo and behold, we freed up half the battalion for other things, there has been no interference with our operations, and no one's been hurt on that route since. Would this not work on a larger scale with a guy wearing stars making the same proclaimation? I think it would.