Organizing for COIN at the Company and Platoon Level
SWJ Blog - Organizing for Counterinsurgency at the Company and Platoon Level by Captain Jeremy Gwinn, US Army.
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In today's military, the requirement to conduct tasks far outside traditional specialties is an accepted reality. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have taught leaders across the services the need for flexibility and creativity both in action and organization. The recently published FM 3-24 (MCWP 3-33.5) Counterinsurgency (COIN) manual provides an excellent framework for leaders to understand the demands of the COIN environment and draw from recent lessons. With regard to organizing for COIN, the manual makes several valuable recommendations such as establishing a company level intelligence section and identifying a political and cultural advisor. My purpose here is to go one step further, providing additional, specific recommendations for company level leaders organizing for counterinsurgency operations. Some of the ideas presented involve actual changes to task organization, while others involve developing skills internally that, by doctrine, only exist in specialized attachments. These steps are by no means prescriptive, but intended as a starting point for discussion among officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) at the company level...
One of our longer blog entries - well worth the read...
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CPT Gwinn has commanded an infantry company in Afghanistan and Iraq with the Army's 10th Mountain Division, and is currently attending graduate school en route to instruct at West Point.
Proving yet again the troops can do the job if
the old folks will just leave 'em alone... :)
Good find and glad Tom's picking that up for CALL.
Not everyone is enlightened...
James Joyner at Outside the Beltway - COIN at the Company and Platoon Level.
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...While the need identified is valid, the proposed solution is unworkable. The tasks in question simply require too much expertise to be handled by amateurs...
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, critical tasks go unmet - awaiting the pros from Dover to show... tick, tick, tick...
Outside the beltway? How far?
I guess we should not tell Joyner that small tactical units are in fact doing this and its working!
Hat tip to CPT Gwinn who has taken the time to write it down in a way that communicates the "how" and "why". Efforts like his help units hit the ground running vs. waiting for higher echelons to provide solutions. It also adds to the larger discussion about what we do!
Had never heard of him. Given his
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Originally Posted by
SWJED
James Joyner at Outside the Beltway -
COIN at the Company and Platoon Level.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, critical tasks go unmet - awaiting the pros from Dover to show... tick, tick, tick...
Exceptionally poor sensing on the Gwinn article, I'm glad he got out and went on to bigger and better things. :rolleyes:
He's obviously unaware that the world has changed since DS/DS. The 11-Bushes today are doing what the mighty Scroll Rangers used to do and said Ringlers are doing what the SF Hot Teams used to do and so on.
What he misses is that the kids will do what they're trained to do and while the US Army has absolutely mastered the technique of cramming two weeks instruction into six weeks, that is slowly changing and can be changed even more with a slight push.
Bill Slim said it well; any well trained infantry battalion can do most things the so-called elite units do.
He obviously doesn't know that many units are in fact doing what Gwin recommends and did.
As you say, tick, tick -- he offers another excuse for sitting on hands and letting the world fall in around someones ears.
Whatever happened to "Never explain, never complain, always be five minutes early and do something even if its wrong?"
He's out to lunch. Outside the Beltway sounds more like the bureaucracy inside it...
CALL Newsletter 08-05 Company-level Stability Operations, VOL 7 Organizing for COIN
Happy to say that CALL Newsletter 08-05 Company-level Stability Operations, VOL 7 Organizing for COIN went up today. It included CPT Gwinn's article as well as imput from CPTs Kranc and Holzbach.
Best
Tom