Spec Ops Leaders Want Return to Fundamentals
27 June AP via Marine Corps Times - Spec Ops Leaders Want Return to Fundamentals by Richard Lardner.
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Almost six years after the worst attack ever on U.S. soil, special operations commanders believe that simply killing terrorists will not win a war against an ideologically motivated enemy.
That view is reflected in a series of transitions in special operations leadership posts. New senior officers are expected to give greater weight to an indirect approach to warfare, a slow and disciplined process that calls for supporting groups or nations willing to back U.S. interests.
Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld turned special operations forces into a “giant killing machine,” said Douglas Macgregor, a former Army colonel and frequent critic of the Defense Department.
Now, with Rumsfeld gone and Navy Vice Adm. Eric Olson about to take control of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), Macgregor anticipates a return to the fundamentals drilled into Army Green Berets, Navy SEALs and other specially trained troops.
“The emphasis will be on, ‘If you have to kill someone, then for God’s sakes, kill the right people,”’ Macgregor said. “In most cases, you’re not going to have to kill people and that’s the great virtue of special operations. That’s been lost over the last several years.”...
SOCOM Indirect and Direct Approach
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Originally Posted by
pcmfr
I think COL Macgregor's premise is wrong. Rightly or wrongly, if SECDEF really wanted to emphasize the "indirect" methods in GWOT, then the new SOCOM and his Deputy wouldn't have both come from high-end DA backgrounds.
First, ADM Olson's public remarks and actual actions since taking over SOCOM have demonstrated he is looking for the right balance of the direct and indirect approaches. They are not "either/or" or mutually exclusive - they can be mutually supporting and reinforcing if applied correctly. Second, you have to look beyond the Cdr and the Deputy but also to the Director of the Center of Special Operations which is the element within SOCOM charged with synchronizing the WOT and the director is one whose experience is the indirect approach from Bosnia to Haiti to the Philippines. So I am optimistic that SOCOM is working on getting it right.
I'm not a big fan of Goldwater-Nichols.
It did some things that needed doing, no question but as is true of anything of that magnitude, it carried unintended consequences; too many, I believe. While no one can think of everything, in my observation big omnibus laws and government reorganizations on a massive scale almost invariably introduce more problems than they solve (witness the DNI and DHS).
G-N gave too much power to the CJCS (who, luck of the draw, may or may not be up to the job. As we have seen... :mad:) and allowed DoD to both deliberately and inadvertently become the point man for the USG overseas -- that is NOT a good thing, among other things because it badly skews both interagency relationships and funding.
My fear is that a civilian agency variant in an attempt to foster better interagency cooperation would create another layer of bureaucracy and do as much or more harm than good. The partisan division in Congress at this time would have a terrible impact on what was done.
Today, the problem with getting interagency cooperation is partly the power of the Executive being diluted by Congress who will react to things like the AFGE and the AFSA disagreeing with directives; the Intel community and others fighting turf battles behind the scenes (not always... ); and other such borderline criminal foolishness. As an aside, anyone who thinks the Bush 43 Presidency has been one massive executive power grab obviously wasn't around when FDR was in town. Point is that outside an existential threat like WW II, partisan bickering and foiling political opponents while raking in $$$ for the districts is far more important to most in Congress than is the good of the United States or supporting and defending the Constitution. Not that the Executive is error free, they aren't but most of the problems trace to Congress and the way it does business.
The other factors impeding that cooperation are structural -- with a Federal structure and (compared to many nations) little government direct involvement in most activities, we do not have agencies with the size and depth to do much in other nations -- partly agency specific cultural and mostly turf oriented. Congress fosters and encourages both those factors; the former by some on ideological grounds, the latter by most because it gives said Congroids power -- all they have to do is pick up the phone and suggest something, hinting of a fund or program blockage and every Agency in the USG falls over its feet trying to comply. Sad business.
It's all about partisanship, egos and $$$ :rolleyes:
Contrary to what some here will tell you, I'm too young to have gone to Haiti or Nicaragua with Smedley and Herman ;) but I'm old enough to have talked to guys that went and their forays, in their day, were routinely press-bashed and railed against in Congress. Point of that is I think the cost benefit ratio discrepancy in Afghanistan and Iraq is more a matter of scale than anything else. I also think that a few years from now it'll look like a far better deal.
Been my observation that other than as a
very broad indicator of trends, good units neither count nor note the number killed. Individuals may, depending mostly on how close they were or whether they had to pick up the body or parts or not but units don't count 'em because it generally has little relevance to whether the mission is getting accomplished or not. That's pretty well true at any level of conflict.
Unless, of course, someone in the chain is over enamored of 'metrics'... :rolleyes:
getting it right ever so slowly
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They are not "either/or" or mutually exclusive - they can be mutually supporting and reinforcing if applied correctly.
Max161
I agree with Max on this comment that direct and indirect, DA and CMO, and any other ying/yang combination we can come up with can be mutually supporting, but what we haven't mastered in many cases is the "if applied correctly". There should be one battlespace owner that dictates the supported/supporting relationships between units and their missions to avoid a situation where unit A conducts an operation setting back unit B's operations.
For example, if unit B (any conventional combat arms unit) is focused on providing local security and building rapport with the locals using civil-military operations, etc., then all the sudden Unit A come into their battlespace unannounced to whack to some bad guys they were following creating undesired secondary effects in unit's B's AO that set them back several weeks. This is an example of an unsupported and unsupporting command relationship. Crap happens on occassion, but many times this crap could be avoided if we used our doctrine, and all operations were required to be approved by the battlespace commander. Special Forces and Conventional Combat Arms units (after years of COIN experience and training) are quite capable of doing both the Ying and Yang approach simultaneously, while other units are strictly Ying, no Yang. As a community we need to figure out how to use their Ying more productively, because Ying is good when used right.
As for SOCOM, I think ADM Olsen's comments speak for themselves (see bourbon's post), and I also think SOCOM is now on the right track. SOCOM needs a world class direct action capability, and they have it. They also need a world class indirect capability, and they have that also relative to other nations, but we can get better in this area with more command emphasis and we will.
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and it ain't looking good for the home team barring some reform in Congress...
Ken
As for the interagency process and Congressional reforms, I won't hold my breath. We need to figure out how to win with the real world political environment we live in until enough good people run and get elected to make substantial change in the system.
True. That problem has been one for a long time
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Originally Posted by
Bill Moore
As for the interagency process and Congressional reforms, I won't hold my breath. We need to figure out how to win with the real world political environment we live in until enough good people run and get elected to make substantial change in the system.
and isn't going to get fixed any time soon. We have have been dealing reasonably well with that disconnect for years and will have to today and for a while.
Simple old unity of command is never as easy as it should be but it is important. Right now it's too personality dependent and one fool in the wrong place can mess things up for a bunch of folks. I agree with you that while we're better than we used to be in many respects, we could still get better -- and we all need to realize we have to work it out ourselves.
Er, uh, make that yourselves. I'm retarded... :D
It's not the uniform, it's the man
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I am somewhat embarrassed that it looks like it's going to take a SEAL to lead the way where the Army once held sway. (Dude! That rhymes!!)
It would be interesting to count the number of counterinsurgency and unconventional warfare experts that have emerged from outside the ranks of Special Forces. Just a hand full on the U.S. side include, USAF COL Lansdale in the Philippines who advised Magsaysay against the Huks (although he didn't do so well in Vietnam), numerous combat arms officers from the Army who were cut off behind the lines after the Japanese invaded the Philippines did an outstanding job running guerrilla operations, GEN Abrams in Vietnam, GEN Petraeus in Iraq, Mr Kilcullen in Iraq, and outside the U.S. the list goes on ranging from Mao to Lawrence of Arabia to Templer.
It doesn't take a school or a qualification course for a man to see what is happening and what needs to be done if he is intelligent and capable of seeing and hearing without bias. I'm not surprised or embarassed to see a USN SEAL leading needed change in SOCOM. Nothing like necessity to force adaption.
I think that there are times that those outside a particular area of expertise may be more capable of implementing needed change than those who are currently the so called experts. I'll need to work on this concept, but in short if one assumes he is an expert, he probably assumes he has the answers based on his education and experience (perhaps this is why Lansdale who did so well in the Philippines, but flopped in Vietnam), thus he is less receptive to learn. That can apply to organizations also. Let's say we have two organizations/units, one who has been doing COIN for years and one who didn't do COIN before, but the second unit realized they needed to learn it to accomplish their mission. The second unit was hungry for knowledge and eager to learn. Compare that to a unit that approaches the problem with the attitude that hey we know this stuff already, nothing new here. The first unit might start off better based on their legacy skills and knowledge, but if they fail to continuously learn and adapt, there is a good chance that the second unit could end up surpassing the unit that was originally regarded as the COIN experts in capability.
The key it seems is the will to adapt, and this somewhat ties into Kilcullen's "Red Queen" or co-evolution comment. It also ties into the underlying theory of "Eating Soup with a Knife". The key is to develop adaptive leaders and organizations. We say we do this, and we do, but are we adapting quick enough?
