Nano Seconds and Guerillas
The fact of the matter is high tech has not reduced poverty, crime, mental illness, social unrest, corruption, inequitable distribution of goods and war. How much Officers per se have suscribed to technology as the real venue for attaining Utopia remains to be seen and it may be a variable previously unconsidered in this matter of attrition. Let's face it, you couldn't get a more severe existential dilemma then the shock 'n awe of high tech meeting IEDs and suicide vests. It has to be a real letdown for some, that amidst the usual bungling and incompetency and horrors of war, the failure of high tech to win the day comes raining down upon the weary shoulders.
A Force Structure for 3-5 day Operations?
In my Army of the 70’s and 80’s, we did this really stupid thing . Every quarter, we would go to the field to exercise for 3-5 days. We went flat out, balls to the wall, for those 3-5 days—no one slept and we all ran around with our hair on fire getting stuff done. On the last day, we would have some form of “war ending event” like authority to release nukes, declare ENDEX, pack up and roll back into garrison. For the next week or so, we would work at half time schedules recovering from the exercise. Then we would get ourselves geared up to do it again next quarter. It was rather pathetic to watch our performance degrade by the last day of these wonderful exercises. The bad news is that I do not think my senior leadership ever got it. They seemed to think that we would be able to maintain that 24 hour a day (with a few 5-10 minute catnaps) OPTEMPO indefinitely. I think our more recent efforts in DS and OIF went so fast that they confirmed to seniors that the 3-5 day exercise model that we had trained to really works in practice.
Now, however, I think the chickens are finally coming home to roost. Our forces burn themselves out because they are trying to operate with a force structure developed to implement the “3-5 day push, then rest for a week” format. Long-term operations just do not fit that model. As an example, I suggest a look at the way Petain rotated forces through Verdun to get an idea of what it really takes to sustain a military force that is engaged in sustained combat operations. (I chose the French at Verdun in particular because even though we are involved in active offensive operations in Iraq, I contend that we are actually more like a besieged force.) Then, we might get a better picture of the force structure that we need.
The really bad news for us right now is that, unlike the French and British in 1917, we do not have another nation waiting in the wings with a host of fresh troops to get us over the crisis.
LTC Nagl is departing uniformed service
Quote:
High-Profile Officer Nagl To Leave Army, Join Think Tank
By Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post Staff Writer
One of the Army's most prominent younger officers, whose writings have influenced the conduct of the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq, said he has decided to leave the service to study strategic issues full time at a new Washington think tank.
Lt. Col. John Nagl, 41, is a coauthor of the Army's new manual on counterinsurgency operations, which has been used heavily by U.S. forces carrying out the strategy of moving off big bases, living among the population and making the protection of civilians their top priority.
A Rhodes scholar, Nagl first achieved prominence for his Oxford University doctoral dissertation, which was published in 2002 as a book titled "Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons From Malaya and Vietnam." The introduction to a recent edition of the book was written by Gen. Peter Schoomaker, at the time the Army's chief of staff.
Nagl led a tank platoon in the 1991 Persian Gulf war and served in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 as the operations officer for an Army battalion in Iraq's Anbar province. "I thought I understood something about counterinsurgency," Nagl told the New York Times Magazine in January 2004, "until I started doing it."
After serving in Iraq, he became an assistant to then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz. Next, under the stewardship of Gen. David H. Petraeus, now the top U.S. commander in Iraq, he helped produce the Army's counterinsurgency manual. He then became the commander of a battalion in Fort Riley, Kan., that teaches U.S. soldiers how to train and advise Iraqi forces. He has continued to have a high profile, with interviews on National Public Radio, "The Charlie Rose Show" and "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart."
Nagl said in a brief telephone interview yesterday that he has filed his papers requesting retirement. "I love the Army very much," he said, but he added that he decided to leave after discussing his future with his family. "It's not the strain of repeated deployments," he said, but "a belief that I can contribute perhaps on a different level - and my family wants me to leave."
He said he plans to become a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a centrist think tank recently founded by Kurt Campbell and Michèle Flournoy, Clinton-era Pentagon officials. Nagl said he looks forward to working with them. "I hope to focus on national security for the remainder of my days," he said. "Obviously you don't have to do that in uniform."
Nagl's departure is a serious loss for the Army, said retired Marine Col. T.X. Hammes. "He's a serious student of warfare, he's smart, he's articulate, he's successfully led troops in combat, and he's worked at the highest levels of the Pentagon," said Hammes, himself the author of a book on contemporary war. "The Army just doesn't have that many officers with his set of qualifications."
Fred Kaplan has a story on Slate as well