Mass Insanity: Latest Trend in Army Doctrine

http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...2-arnews01.htm

Phoncon (slightly modified for dramatic effect):

Smart old SOF Action officer (SOSAO): "I like this slide that shows the relative roles of SOF to Conventional forces across a spectrum of activities, and understand why you have placed "Unconventional Warfare" on the far right end of the scale where it is primarily "SOF enabled by GPF," but you're showing "Stability Operations" as the far left end of the scale for "GPF enabled by SOF." We need to add "Major Combat Operations" to the left end to recognize high end, state on state warfare, and then slide these IW mission set farther over into the SOF led realm."

Brilliant young Army major (BYAM): "Sir, 'Major Combat Operations" is no longer a doctrinal term."

SOSAO: "You have to be F'n kidding me. What do you use to describe war"?

BYAM: "Sir, 'war' is no longer a doctrinal term."

SOSAO: "Come on! Get out your F'n doctrine! We need to tell a complete picture here, and this slide fails to tell a complete picture because we are only recognizing one end and aspect of a broad spectrum of war and conflict."

BYAM: (incredulously) "Sir, did you just say 'F Doctrine'?

SOSAO: "No, damn it, I didn't use it as a F as a verb, I used it as an adjective. Are you going to tell me now that using 'F' as a universal military adjective is no longer in military doctrine either?

BYAM: "Sir, I've been in Afghanistan. In modern doctrine the army has recognized that our focus on Major Combat Operations left us unprepared to deal with the realities of the modern battlefield. Now we have "Unified Land Operations" (ULO) that cover all situations, and within that there are only "Combined Arms Maneuver" (CAM) and Wide Area Support (WAS). (Goes on to list a long list of doctrinal cites and direct quotes from memory).

SOSAO: Look, I appreciate that Senior Army Leadership is under tremendous pressure as we enter an era of constricting budgets, withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the most recently released Strategic Guidance from the President, SecDef and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The shift away from the 65 year old European mission and the demise of the Cold War land threats that demanded we sustain a large ground force; and the clear guidance that we will no longer resource the military for massive "COIN" operations such as we conducted recently in Iraq and Afghanistan puts the Army in a hard spot to justify force structure, but we need to be intellectually honest here."

BYAM: "Sir, you're killing me. First you tell me to F-off, then you accuse me of being intellectually dishonest! I've been in Afghanistan, you know."

SOSAO: (resisting urge to say 'thanks son, is your mommy or daddy home'?) "Relax, you know that isn't what I said. Now, lets get to the business at hand. We just received two high-level documents describing a major shift in strategic guidance and direction. We need to focus on how we work together to implement this guidance to best effect."

BYAM: "Sir, my guidance is focus on Lessons Learned from the past 10 years."

SOSAO: "So, besides rendering Major Combat Operations obsolete, what else have we learned"?

BYAM: "We have learned that conventional forces can do SOF operations, but that we need SOF trainers to prepare us at home station first so that we can go out and do their mission down range."

SOSAO: "Really."

BYAM: "Yes, sir. But we need to work together as fused teams as well, and to avoid the confusion that caused so much ineffectiveness over the past ten years we need to get to unity of command."

SOSAO: "Fascinating, so how do you propose we get to unity of command, when the conventional force has a physical mission, tied to terrain and threats, while the SOF commander has a functional mission tied to specific niche operations conducted across multiple BSO's area of operations"?

BYAM: "We provide forces to the GCC. The Theater SOF Commander (1-2 stars) must go to the Army Service Component Commander (3-4 stars) and coordinate all of his theater activities prior to taking them to the GCC. They will determine who has lead. So, if it is very SOF, like CT or UW, SOF would lead; otherwise it should be led by the Conventional Force Commander.

SOSAO: "This is what we've learned over the past 10 years"?

BYAM: "Yes sir!"

SOSAO: "Does anyone see it as problematic that this is a "lesson" directly derived from Iraq and Afghanistan; and that the new strategy is explicitly clear that we will work to avoid such operations in the future, and will not resource to them either"??

BYAM: "Sir, I've been in Afghanistan. The Strategy can say we need to avoid these types of conflicts, but it cannot guarantee they will not occur."

SOSAO: "Indeed. Not to be overly technical, but you realize these are not "lessons" learned at all, but rather are Army-centric solutions to lessons learned. This might be a more effective conversation if we peeled the onion back a bit and focused on the actual lessons that, for example, led the Army to divine that rotating conventional forces into SOF missions, such as FID, does not work well unless those forces are first trained by SOF forces, and then fused with SOF forces for execution. It sounds like the real lesson learned is that 'Conventional Forces are not trained, organized or equipped to conduct SOF operations; but in extremis, with special training and leadership, can be an effective supplement.'

BYAM: "Sir, are you calling me intellectually dishonest again? This lesson learned came straight from the Center for Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth. It does not say what you are suggesting at all."

SOSAO: "Ok, I've got to get back to work, but I want to make sure I'm clear: War and Major Combat Operations are obsolete; Army lessons learned from 10 years of operations trumps the current POTUS, SecDef, CJCS strategy telling us to avoid the same in the future through the application of new, less expensive and invasive approaches; and conventional forces are the new SOF?

BYAM: "I think you are starting to get it sir!"

"Not to be overly technical, but you realize these are not "lessons" learned at all, but rather are Army-centric solutions to lessons learned."

This would work better as an Xtranormal video. In fact...

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Originally Posted by Starbuck

This would work better as an Xtranormal video. In fact...

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I'll go make some popcorn.

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Originally Posted by Bob's World

Phoncon (slightly modified for dramatic effect):

BYAM: "I think you are starting to get it sir!"

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:eek: OMG!!!... :rolleyes:

Is this new or extraordinary?

To me, U.S.Army doctrine stuff looked about like this ever since Shinseki panicked about "relevance" in '99 in the aftermath of the race to Pristina.

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Originally Posted by Ken White

:eek: OMG!!!... :rolleyes:

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Minor exaggerations for dramatic effect, but yeah, I'm scared as well. We've been working down the slippery slope of drawing far too much from the "lessons learned" from the past 10 years as an oracle of the future. We've watched Irregular Warfare, Security Force Assistance, and now Unified Land Operations (ULO) with Combined Arms Maneuver (CAM) and Wide Area Support (WAS) all under a unified Mission Command (MC).

Frankly I think we have expanded "war" to mean so much that really isn't war at all, that to write a new definition for war that covered it all looked so rediculous that it was easier to just delete it and kick it under the carpet.

This effort to delete "war" and "Major Combat Operations" is mused upon in the The CCJO Activity Concepts in the first highlighted section below. We have stopped defining the term, but persist in using it throughout doctrine regardless. We may be outsmarting ourselves a bit on this one. I’m on the current CCJO writing team, so we will need to add this quirk to the agenda.

Most dangerous will remain the higher end, which will apparently remain nameless for now (perhaps we can just give it a symbol, like “the singer formerly known as Prince” used to use.) A symbol would take up much less room than writing out “the conflicts formerly known as war.”

Cheers!

Bob



2. THE NATURE OF COMBAT
Combat is organized action to defeat an armed enemy through the application of force to kill, destroy, or capture by all available means.4
4 Organized here means that the actions are not random, but rather have some rational aim, involve some level of planning, are conducted by combat forces (though not necessarily regular forces) assembled specifically for that purpose, and are conducted according to some tactical system. Defeat is defined as: “A tactical mission task that occurs when an enemy force has temporarily or permanently lost the physical means or the will to fight. The defeated force’s commander is unwilling or unable to pursue his adopted course of action, thereby yielding to the friendly commander’s will and can no longer interfere to a significant degree with the actions of friendly forces.
Defeat can result from the use of force or the threat of its use.” U.S. Army, Field Manual 3-90, Tactics (Washington: Department of the Army, 2001), Glossary-9.
CCJO Activity Concepts v1.0
JCC-4
Combat seeks to destroy an enemy or by threatening destruction to compel capitulation. In practice, however, combat can support a variety of political objectives short of that. Moreover, the mere demonstration of credible combat power may deter a potential aggressor. For U.S. joint forces, therefore, the first requirement of combat is that its conduct conforms to the strategic objectives. At the same time, an understanding of the requirements and limitations of combat as a strategic instrument should inform the political decision to resort to combat.
Combat can assume a variety of forms and occur in a variety of circumstances, both in war and during times of nominal peace. It may take place on land, on and under the seas, in the air, and increasingly in space and cyberspace.5 It can range in scale and duration from limited, isolated strikes or raids lasting hours or days to major campaigns involving large land, naval, and air formations lasting months or years.6 It can vary in form from brutal close combat at distances of mere meters using basic individual weapons, sometimes improvised, to standoff combat from distances of thousands of miles using advanced long-range weapons and platforms, often controlled remotely.
Even when conducted with advanced weaponry, combat remains ultimately an intensely human activity, taking a physical and The current version of JP 3-0 does not define combat or discuss its nature or dimensions, although it mentions the term frequently. Under the section titled “Nature of Warfare,” it discusses “traditional warfare” and “irregular warfare,” but it does not discuss a mixing of forms. The final draft revision of JP 3-0 dated 15 July 2010 incorporates the constructs, future environment and precepts from the CCJO, including a discussion of the four categories of activity. JP 3-0, I-5 to I-6; U.S. Joint Staff, Joint Publication 3-0, Joint Operations Revision Final Coordination (Washington: Department of Defense, July 15, 2010), I-20 to I-23.
5 Space: “A medium like the land, sea, and air within which military activities shall be conducted to achieve U.S. national security objectives.”
Cyberspace: “A global domain within the information environment consisting of the interdependent network of information technology infrastructures, including the Internet, telecommunications networks, computer systems, and embedded processors and controllers.” Cyberspace operations: “The employment of cyber capabilities where the primary purpose is to achieve objectives in or through cyberspace. Such operations include computer network operations and activities to operate and defend the Global Information Grid.” All definitions from U.S. Joint Staff, Joint Publication 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary for Military and Associated Terms (Washington:
Department of Defense, 2010); available from http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/dod_dictionary/index.html. (Hereafter cited as JP 1-02.) U.S. Executive Branch, National Security Strategy 2010 (Washington: White House, 2010), 22. (Hereafter cited as NSS 2010.)
6 Examples of the former include Operation Urgent Fury, the U.S.-led intervention in Grenada from 25 October-2 November 1983, and Operation El Dorado Canyon, the punitive U.S. air strike against Libya on 15 April 1986. Examples of the latter include the campaigns of the Second World War, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
CCJO Activity Concepts v1.0
JCC-5
psychological toll on those who experience it and requiring arguably greater stores of fortitude, stamina, and strength than any other human endeavor. Although the CCJO argues that joint forces must be adaptive in all situations, this is truest of combat, which entails competing with a hostile and intelligent enemy who also will adapt.
Combat power may be applied against various targets, including enemy fighting forces, the political leadership that directs those forces, the economic or other institutions that create and sustain them, or the population from which they are drawn. Combatants might restrict themselves, for moral, cultural, legal, or strategic reasons, from attacking certain targets in particular situations, but these are self-imposed restrictions not intrinsic to combat. For example, the United States and many other nations reject the targeting of noncombatants, whereas some combatants intentionally target civilians.7 Finally, combat may vary in the forces and fighting methods used.
On one hand, it may be conducted by or against the regular military forces of a national government, who wear uniforms, are more or less regulated by law and custom, and are equipped and sustained by the national industrial base. Those representing modern states typically operate in identifiable combined-arms formations using advanced land, sea, and air-fighting platforms designed solely for that purpose.
Increasingly, many also operate in space and cyberspace. Some possess air and maritime power-projection capabilities. All tend to employ dedicated military command-and-control and logistics systems that are distinguishable from their civilian counterparts.
On the other hand, combat may be conducted by or against irregular forces, whether paramilitaries in aid of a nation’s regular military forces, the combatant arm of an insurrection, a terrorist organization, or outright criminals. Lacking ready access to a national industrial base and thus materially disadvantaged in relation to regular forces, irregular combatants tend to employ guerrilla warfare and terror tactics, often in violation of established laws and customs of warfare.Because they tend to blend into the larger population and subsist, at least in part, on the civilian infrastructure, attacking them may well risk collateral damage and increased popular disaffection.
As they have in the past, future combat challenges most likely will present a mix of these forms, whether involving an essentially irregular force enjoying some of the advanced capabilities of regular forces, such
7 Note however that the United States has not always taken that view. In the latter stages of World War II, both the United States and Great Britain conducted massive bombing raids against populated areas intended to break German and Japanese morale.
CCJO Activity Concepts v1.0
JCC-6
as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, or an essentially regular force that employs irregular combatants and methods to complement its regular operations, as the North Vietnamese did during the Vietnam War. Moreover, the form that combat takes in any prolonged military contest likely will change over time. Future joint forces must be able to defeat such evolving hybrid threats whatever their complexion.

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Originally Posted by Bob's World

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as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, or an essentially regular force that employs irregular combatants and methods to complement its regular operations,

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What's irregular about that?
It's merely not the American Way of War with trillions of tons of ammunitions and fuel.


Even snatching some hostile soldiers as captives is totally regular; even the U.S.Army did it all the time, usually for interrogations.

Trust me, if I could start tossing things into a doctrinal dust bin, "Irregular Warfare" would go in first, and "Security Force Assistance" would be hot on its heels. Then I would take all of the "IW" missions like FID, UW and COIN that have been so vigorously massaged to reflect current whims and good ideas, and rescrub the entire family to get back to basics, filter out the colonial / cold war biases, and clean up the overlaps and gaps.

This ULO, CAM, WAS, MC business I'd have to look at a bit, but I think it could go in as well with no loss to national security.

I am trying to find a link but I just saw on the news another new Doctrine trend. I am serious I really saw this on TV. The new Army fitness instructor doctrine requires Male instructors to wear fake Pregnancy outfits to learn what it is like to be a Pregnant Female soldier taking PT or Fitness training whatever the Army is calling it now:eek::eek::eek: Is it time to just go ahead and disband the Army? they are just loosing it completely!


Found it!!! Here is the link.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012...aining-course/

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Originally Posted by Bob's World

Smart old SOF Action officer (SOSAO): "I like this slide that shows the relative roles of SOF to Conventional forces across a spectrum of activities, and understand why you have placed "Unconventional Warfare" on the far right end of the scale where it is primarily "SOF enabled by GPF," but you're showing "Stability Operations" as the far left end of the scale for "GPF enabled by SOF."

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The word slide means powerpoint which means the whole thing was doomed before it started.

Carl,

Agree that PowerPoint is a mixed blessing, but it was the least of the problems in this case. Our "understanding" of the past 10 years has sent our doctrine into a death spiral of well-intended bad ideas that have all fed on each other until we are now entering a true crisis of doctrine. The spin being applied by the services currently to preserve their self-interests in the budget crunch may well be what pushes us over the edge, as now bad ideas are being twisted by worse motivations, and the results are predictably sad.

I deal with this at some level almost every day, but even I had not realized how far gone we were until the good major and I had our little chat...

It is pretty strange that unlike many other endeavors, we feel the need to constantly recreate a taxonomy of warfare.

Posted by Bob,

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Trust me, if I could start tossing things into a doctrinal dust bin, "Irregular Warfare" would go in first, and "Security Force Assistance" would be hot on its heels. Then I would take all of the "IW" missions like FID, UW and COIN that have been so vigorously massaged to reflect current whims and good ideas, and rescrub the entire family to get back to basics, filter out the colonial / cold war biases, and clean up the overlaps and gaps.

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The entire IW issue since 9/11 has been a less than honest effort to transform the force to deal with what is probably better categorized as low intensity warfare, but all categorizations will miss key elements. IW was used by the services and other elements to justify historical roles. The definition was locked in stone by the former SECDEF, and somehow we managed to describe it as encompassing five our doctrinal missions (CT, COIN, FID, UW, and Stability Operations). Since we were stuck with that to begin with, there was really no need to exert further effort into IW, since we already had doctrine for each of these categories. We missed an opportunity to look at the world from a more holistic view.

As for SFA, I don't follow your resistance against the desire to fix the massive shortcomings in our polices to effectively build partner capacity. SFA is not the same as FID as some (to include some senior SOF officers) frequently claim it is. The fact of the matter is we have bureaucratic processes, laws, and policies that prevent the effective execution of building partner capacity that need to get fixed. It is the right thing to do for the nation, because if we get it fixed we'll actually save billions of dollars over time, and the money we do invest in this endeavor will actually result in partner capacity being developed. We have very few examples of success in this area, especially in recent years. There is much more to it than laws and policies, we need to learn to get away from creating forces and force structure that mirror U.S. forces, but that will be easier if we minimize, not remove, GPF's role in many cases. GPF does what it does, and that is build large and expensive bureaucracies. The return on investment is questionable. In my view we have to get SFA fixed, I don't care what we call ultimately call it, as long as people realize it is larger than FID.

One critical question that we rarely truthfully and wisely address is "capacity to do what?"

The preservation in power of those who we believe will support our interests, but who ride significant segments of their own populace hard, and who offer no true means for the same to legally address their concerns with governance is bad business.

We delay the inevitable and make enemies of populaces all at once, and those populaces then become rich recruiting grounds for those who would conduct acts of transnational terrorism against us.

Now, if this capacity we seek to build is to employ against as a hedge against some aggressor state? Sure. Lets lend a hand to a friend. But if it is capacity to suppress and oppress one's own populace? That is a mission we need to start working our way out of.

We need to ask: "Are we here to liberate the oppressed? Or are we actually here to strengthen the oppressor?" Too often we are the latter, and while that used to be a reasonable way for a powerful state to secure its interests abroad, I believe it is now due for a belated retirement. We look for smart ways to assess security force capacity. What we really need is a smarter way to assess the nature of the grievance between the government and the segment(s) of their populace they intend to use that capacity against.

Times are changing. We need to change as well. But the changes that we've been working into doctrine over the past 10 years are largely headed in the wrong direction.

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Originally Posted by Bob's World

We look for smart ways to assess security force capacity. What we really need is a smarter way to assess the nature of the grievance between the government and the segment(s) of their populace they intend to use that capacity against.

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Germany has had a foreign policy which included civil society support abroad;

Student exchanges, free university studies here for foreigners - to bring some 'western' liberal ideas into the world

Goethe Institute - basically cultural embassies which teach German language (good for trade, direct investment), promote German arts etc

Supporting intellectuals and opposition parties (in part even meeting them on a visit by the chancellor) by recognising them and speaking with them.


It's all very secondary and low-key, but it might be worth a look at. After all, it may have worked fine. Germany ranks really well whenever the BBC or another source asks world-wide about favourability ratings for countries.

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Imagine Obama launching a student exchange program with Saudi-Arabia; I bet the domestic political reactions would not be very "mature".

I think Bob is DoctrineMan.

Where our views diverge is you see SFA as a mission, which isn't necessarily incorrect, but I prefer to look at it as a capability to accomplish a task which is build whatever partner capability that the policy dictates. I think that when we decide to do it, that we need to be able to it effectively, and off line I can offer examples of how our flawed security assistance and title 10 programs fall short, and we end up spending millions (if not billions) and get little return on our investment because of it.

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Now, if this capacity we seek to build is to employ against as a hedge against some aggressor state? Sure. Lets lend a hand to a friend. But if it is capacity to suppress and oppress one's own populace? That is a mission we need to start working our way out of.

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The first point isn't open to debate, and of course we do lend a helping hand to our friends to help them protect themselves against hostile states. The second issue is a loaded with controversary. Should our national strategy be focused on liberating the oppressed? In that case should we undermine our economic interests that are intermingled with China's to help liberate Tibet? Our is China right, that Tibet is living in the past and they are trying to bring them into the future and liberate them from old and oppressive religious ideas? Is helping to professionalize the Philippine security forces detrimental to the citizens of the Philippines, or does it benefit them? It has been my observation that forces that are better equipped and trained are less likely to abuse their citizens than the poorly equipped, paid and trained security forces that are more thug like than security force like. I suspect we have no idea how the situation will turn out in Libya, will the new government and its security forces oppress its people? Will we mitigate that risk by training them? Is the risk greater that extremists will take over if we don't develop their security forces? There are no black and white answers to your final point, it is policy dependent, and we can only hope that policy is sound.

Doctrine writers are still thinking in terms of the Enemy as a country or an Army as opposed to the Enemy as a System. Until we begin to truly understand and accept that....there is no fix to our doctrine. The 4GW guys were on to something.

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Originally Posted by Morgan

I think Bob is Doctrine Man.

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LMFAO. I like Doctrine Man's stuff. I follow the D-Man on Facebook. But I don't even know who he is.

My boss does call me a heretic ("Heretic: a professed believer who maintains religious opinions contrary to those accepted by his or her church or rejects doctrines prescribed by that church")

I guess in a way that makes me the opposite of Doctrine Man. "Anti-Doctrine Man" perhaps.

The Naval Services loves tradition and are bound by it. The Army loves Doctrine, and is bound by it. The Army loves to Write, Read, Memorize, Change, Apply, Assess with, Employ, Quote, etc, etc, etc, Doctrine. 15 years ago Bob and Doctrine Man were both probably a great deal like BYAM in this little saga. Hell, I got "the white brief case" at CGSC and was #1 in my Advanced Course Class. I was BYAM. Nothing wrong with that, it is the Army way.

But the world is changing far faster than BYAMs can write and memorize doctrine. In many ways doctrine is becoming as much a part of our problem as it is part of our solution. As an example, at a recent session to update the Capstone Concept for Joint Operations, a document that is likely to be a statement of the Chairman's vision and intent for how the military approaches this rapidly evolving world do you know what the Army's primary input was??? "You can't make this too different from the old vision because we just got doctrines X Y and Z signed, and this would force us to have to change them again!" We need to get back to where doctrine is a guide for thought, not a prescriptive checklist for action. Soon.