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A concept I am developing for work
I find when I talk about political tensions within a nation of the type that lead to insurgency with civilians who work in other aspects of governance, they often have a hard time grasping the context. Too many years of military leaders talking of insurgency as "war" when what we are talking about is often definitely not war contributes to the ineffectiveness of talking in terms of insurgency. This is an effort I am working on to describe this dynamic in the context of "Sovereignty."
Any comment or feedback is most welcome and very helpful.
Slight regression in the thread but germane to the current topic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bill Moore
...so what are we actually doing, because it isn't FID, because the nation doesn't support much of what we're doing. In simple terms it seems we're conducting counter-rebellion or counter-resistance operations against those who oppose our will for their future.
Bill, you elsewhere mentioned the idea that SOF should be reinvented every 20 years. I agreed in principle but noted I'd been saying ten years for a long time -- and I've lately come to believe that five years would be even better.
Let me extrapolate that thought a bit. In WW II, all the belligerents formed ad-hoc groupings of not only SOF but 'conventional' forces as well. Most of these worked out rather well, the few that did not were quickly disbanded.
Those organizations were resoundingly disliked by the major forces, partly from jealousy, partly from the semi-valid complaint that they skimmed the cream of personnel but largely from the fact that with respect to both personnel and logistic support, they posed large burdens on the very bureaucratic support structure -- who strongly resented the added burden.
In essence, a bureaucratically inclined structure was forced to produce and support ad-hoc groupings of tactical and operational -- even strategic -- forces rather precisely tailored for missions. That worked and worked well for the most part, some poorly conceived efforts not withstanding. Some point to the Chindits and the Marauders as such failures but I suggest that they were not as effective as they might have been due to then available technology as much as any other failing. We have better -- or the capability to produce better -- tech today. We also arguably have better people and we certainly have the capability to train more effectively (if and when we wish to do so). :(
A problem resulted from those force developments. Many are still here and still doing what they found to be important at their birth. The world has changed significantly and they have not. :rolleyes:
That's a vast over simplification but one can grasp the idea and see permutations that are applicable. Indeed, the point can be made that the US Army as an entity is still stuck in WW II in a good many respects. The point can also be made that current technological advances should allow -- and does, when we want it to do so -- far more rapid fielding of purpose specific equipment. Unfortunately, our stifling bureaucracy and flawed cost avoidance measures do not allow for such adjustment of personnel or of unit structure on a total force basis -- even though with today's computational, logistic and information dissemination ability that should not be a problem...
We currently have fallen into a less than ideal situation where many elements of foreign policy have devolved to the Combatant Commands in the absence of a better National Security Council apparatus, a less assertive DoS and a few other factors. I think that should be changed but there is a plus to that in the near term -- potential military missions within an AOR can be identified early and fairly accurately, more so than is possible at a national level with a worldwide focus (or lack of focus...).
It would thus be possible to finitely tailor and train forces for FID or other missions -- to include assisting in various ways the maintenance of sovereignty and the precluding of gap seeking success -- for the periods envisioned as being required. Stand them up, train, deploy, bring them home, reconstitute into new (lesson learned included) organization and repeat. The Troops can cope with that. Whether the bureaucracy can cope is not really questionable -- that it will absolutely not want to do so is a certainty. :eek:
Nor will the wives and families wish to do so, cope, that is -- but the strong will do so as they have for years. Much of that problem can be ameliorated with sensible policies.
We could do that reinvention of units thing if we wished and it would likely be a significant practical and effectiveness improvement over the current process which relies on mass and not skill or finesse. Always of course with a weather eye for the fog of war...:cool: