No one else does either, therefor, Congress, correctly will not fund it.
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Originally Posted by
Brandon Friedman
No idea. I mean, it's an important question that would have to be worked out.
There are also other problems...
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Fortunately, there's a lot of overlap--as in, Muslim culture has similarities from Indonesia to Morocco.
If you believe the cultures of Indonesia and Morocco have much in common, you need to travel more. Afghanistan and Iraq are far more closely located and they're two totally different cultures. Plus, who says the issues will occur in Muslim areas.
I spent 45 years training or helping others to train for a land war in Europe. Never been there but I've eaten a whole lot of rice on many occasions in several nations over a good part of those years...
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Also, because we don't start new conflicts every year, we could target relevant regions for languages. For instance, we're not leaving Afghanistan or Iraq any time soon, so you could start with Arabic and the Persian languages.
During the Viet Nam unpleasantness, we trained people to speak Viet Namese -- then sent a lot of them to work with Montagnards who did not speak Viet Namese. I have visions of Dari speakers playing with Urdu speakers -- or Arabic speakers. :D
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But it would likely have to also include a random mix of languages and customs (like Somali, Korean, Urdu, etc.)
That doesn't address the personnel turbulence issue -- US Army units typically rotate about 20-30% of strength annually, thus your Dari speaker goes on PCS to Korea. We may improve on the turbulence and we should but it will still affect your proposal.
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...that is, unless the Army went along with Schmedlap and started PCS'ing people every five or six years and sending units back to the same places. In that case, you could really target soldiers for regions.
That's the point -- do not target soldiers for regions, that will in any implementation fragment units. Units are very important even though the US Army due to a 1917 derived personnel system consistently refuses to recognize that. Individuals are trained to be a part of a unit; Reed and Schmedlap are right, once you get an individual trained to be a competent soldier, he or she goes to a unit and that unit trains to do its job; COIN or MCO, the differences in what that unit does are relatively minor. How well -- or poorly -- it performs is largely a function of its leadership (the collective).
You have to train Units for their job; the effort should be toward generic training with occasional forays into specialized training for various environments. For deployment to specific areas, Training Packages, tailored to echelon (Plat/Co; Bn/Bde; Div/TF/JTF) with language and cultural stuff and structured for rapid learning are used. Those package have to offer EXTRA information and guidance for NCO leaders, for Co Officers and for senior commanders (and their vastly oversized staffs). The Packages must contain not only cultural and custom information but also should be very current politically and culturally -- that currency would not be present in a School course; I spent seven years in TRADOC and they do not do current...
Well, not very well, anyway. :(
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Bottom line, I don't know. It's just an idea.
Nothing wrong with ideas, the more the better. However, in the end, the Army has to settle on ideas that are effective (not that it always does...); training individuals for specific locations faces the difficulties of which locations and how much training coupled with when and where those individuals are assigned. The bureaucracy doesn't handle those aspects at all well. The probability is that an excessive amount of training will be given on areas an individual never sees -- or that is dated and no longer relevant.
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I just think that having half a dozen trained and qualified counterinsurgents in each platoon would alleviate a lot of this debate on "fighting" versus "COIN."
I suggest that it would merely move that debate into the Platoon that had a half dozen 'counterinsurgents.' The Platoon should be focused as a unit on its job -- which can be performed in all spectrums of combat.
The key to that transition ability is well trained and competent leaders. For a variety of reasons, some valid, some specious, we do not address that fact as well as we should.
You mentioned Ranger School and the 'philosophy' of having Ranger trained folks scattered through out the Army to sort of stiffen everyone. Good theory; in practice it doesn't work. Nor does Ranger School develop superior combat leaders -- it is too short and too intense; too much important stuff has to be left out. What Ranger School does accomplish is teaching future leaders that they're tougher and can do more than they might think. That's a big plus and is applicable in any spectrum of conflict. I can see no pluses in a Counterinsurgency School that would be short, intense and leave too much out.
OTOH, if 'counterinsurgency' techniques which are universal were simply embedded in ALL training as it was at one time...
It ain't that hard.
When is language a capability?
The debate about language training has been ongoing in SF for years. How much time to dedicate to it, what combat training do you drop so you can conduct language training, what languages do we train on, etc.
It should be no surprise that there are several schools of thought in SF on this important topic, but of course the guy who has the most stars on his chest tends to carry the day on what school of thought is implemented. :)
A couple of thoughts on the topic that may be worth considering:
1. During the Cold War it wasn't unusual to have SF teams (ODAs) where everyone on the team spoke the same language, whether Polish, Russian, Chinese, etc., so just in case the ballon went up and we went to war they could deploy to that locale which they studied and conduct their mission (assuming they survived infiltration). IMO no argument, language was a critical capability for this mission set. You're not going to hire interpreters in a denied area.
2. Over the past 20 our so years (and there are still exceptions) teams general have Soldiers who speak different foreign languages. Not only does it make it tougher to manage training, but also is this really a warfighting or IW capability? If Joe speaks Urdu, and Bill speaks Korean, and John speaks Arabic, does Joe become an interpreter for the team when their in Afghanistan, or does he still focus on his main job (medic, engineer, team leader, weapons, etc.)? Or is just a guy on the team who has a relevant language for "this" mission.
3. For conventional forces I imagine the problems will be even more challenging, and as Ken states we rarely know where we're going, and in many countries they speak more than one language. I believe has at least 12 major languages for example. Even in long drawn out wars like OIF and Vietnam, which are somewhat predictable, we don't always get it right. There was at least one unit that recently was scheduled to go to OIF, and was diverted at the 11th hour to go to OEF-A. The Cdr being proactive and someone who gets the COIN fight, sent several of his Soldiers to Arabic language training, now they're going to Afghanistan. I'm not arguing that was a waste, but dedicating time and resources to language training (except for head start type train ups) involves some degree of risk. You're giving up other training venues in exchange for language training, so it is important to weigh that risk and not blindly go down the road that everyone needs to be a linguist. Not to mention it is a perishable skill, so it is the gift that keeps on giving.
4. For SF and for officers in general, I think it is valuable to learn a language in the training pipeline because it does make you more aware of other cultures, so there are benefits that are not necessarily tangible. If you simply realize that words represent concepts and shape the way you think, and that not everyone uses the English language, then you're one step ahead, even if you're a Korean speaker working in Afghanistan.
No recommendations at this time, just a caution to avoid thinking that language training for the GPF will solve the majority of our FID and COIN deficiencies. It is all about finding the right balance, which means conducting realistic risk assessments.