How long does it take to train an Army?
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Originally Posted by
Fuchs
...I've observed discussions about this where people refrained about an oh-so-good U.S.-trained Georgian brigade.
One brigade does not an Army make -- and it probably has no control over the Politicians...
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Well, maybe we should create a thread to identify the armies that were trained by the U.S. military and didn't afterward suck asap?
I've got difficulties to remember any.
Try South Korea in particular but also El Salvador and the Philippines. For that matter, the Viet Namese weren't great, cultural thing -- but they weren't that bad, they were able to beat the North but that's hard to do with no ammo or fuel. Politicians again...:wry:
Yet again you let your desire to snipe cause you to display either a lack of knowledge or outright bias. ;)
P.S.
Refrained in the way you used it means to avoid, not to sing.
My, my, hit a nerve did we...
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Originally Posted by
Fuchs
Iraq (5 years and still not capable enough for troop withdrawals)
No surprise there; I've been saying ten years all along. Why would you think it would be less?
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Afghanistan (6 years and deteriorating civil war situation)
Same answer -- I make that about 2012 or 2013.
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South Vietnam (clearly lost after about a decade of training by the U.S.)
Lost yes -- but why; the Army and the AF performed well; they just ran out of ammo and fuel. You need to do more homework.
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exile Cubans (Bay of Pigs)
Trained by the CIA, not the Armed forces -- they also performed well on a really stupid mission and the promised air support (by the US) was not provided (proving yet again tha politicians are quitters whne the cost goes up). Again, you need to do more research.
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South Korea (which got OVERRUN in 1950 after being equipped & trained by the U.S. for several years)
So did the US army get overrun then and there initially. Again, your history's weak. Training pre-1950 was minimal to non-existent. It improved later and if you check out how the South Korean Army did in Viet Nam (quite well) or what it is today, it's as good as any in Asia.
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Even a infantry-heavy, but competently executed assault of well-trained battalions should have gained 20-30 km ground in SO before the Russian advance guard arrived. There were many flanking opportunities through the forests.
Don't know, wasn't there -- and I'm rather leery of putting any stock in war second guessers who also haven't been there particularly if they're only fairly well read and ground combat inexpereinced.
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"Lack of knowledge", "bias"? How about not closing the eyes when I see unfavorable facts?
Yes to both those things. I have no problem with unfavorable facts; I do have an objection to perceptions based on lack of information and statements made that evade reality or are generally out of context.
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The U.S. forces have failed to train foreign armies properly in time spans that were longer than the American Civil War or the First World War. That's outright failure. Such training missions should be expected to train foreign troops in a year up to junior NCO and in two years up to medium-rank officers. That's the speed of training demonstrated by national armies after mobilization.
That is so ludicrous I'm not sure where to start. For openers, you're applying western standards of the late 20th Century to date to several nations who were not and are not today anywhere near that state of development. You're smarter than that.
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There's no such excuse like cultural problems. The South Vietnamese had the same culture as the North Vietnamese. It was not on part of the Vietnamese if a cultural problem was prohibiting a successful training.
Not an excuse -- and the South Viet Namese did not and do not have the same culture as the North. Take a look at your internal Ossi situation for an example of cultural drift.
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It's a joke that the occupiers still cannot be satisfied with the training standard of most Iraqi and Afghanistan units after 5-6 years.
Imagine the U.S.Army had been ready to deploy to Europe in 1923 and 1948 for its participation in the European theatre of both world wars!
Uh, matter of fact we actually deployed in 1917 and 1942 -- how'd that work out for you? Again, you cannot conflate contemporary western nations with any of those others mentioned.
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And yes, I sniped at these training programs because reality and the expectations that some people expressed somewhere else were so far apart. Some equaled U.S. training with excellent competence. as if the Green Berets somehow handed out silver bullets. The experiences look differently.
The 'experiences' aren't over yet.
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The problem is btw quite relevant for the small war topic in general. There's no way how to build nations during an armed conflict if your military needs a decade or more to properly train that nation's ground forces.
Depends on where one starts and at what level the raw material happens to be...
How you guys coming with your Police training in Afghanistan? Aren't you the lead on that? Voluntarily picked up the mission in 2003 IIRC. As good as you are, I'm sure that's miles ahead of the training of the Afghan National Army.
Oh wait, I forgot. LINK-- a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Guess who had to pick up the pieces LINK.
Some things aren't nearly as easy out on the ground as they are sitting at a keyboard -- and that includes advancing 20-30km against even spotty resistance from locals.
You'd think the if there is a
god, he or she would spare the world the pain of theorists with no experience. :D
Apparently not. Well, Fuchs, it seems to me you aren't used to anyones speed or slowness in the training of non-western Armies. You need to do much more research on Viet Nam if you're going to write about it -- minimalist and logistics with respect to North Viet Nam is an oxymoron. The Cuban fiasco CIA guys were a mixed bag, some had experience and some did not -- the real issue there was the promised Carrier Air support from the USS Essex which was not launched. Embarrassing ones self never helps, yet people just continue to do that... ;)
Here is a display of ignorance:
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Don't ignore the "asap". It clearly indicates that my interest was on the close time period, not decades later.
An army formed from virtually nothing (Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq) is not going to be effective for at least a decade. Your time frame for the training of riflemen and junior leaders is correct for western nations -- those times need to be doubled for non-westerners for a variety of reasons; to train the all important logisticians and senior leaders takes at least a decade and usually longer. That, BTW, is with a war -- in peacetime it typically takes 20 to 30 years.
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See - your point isn't existing. You''re evading historical reality here. You failed to tell a single army that did really well after U.S.training. Your examples were wrong, the Korean one being especially terrible. I listed several armies/countries that failed miserably after U.S.training.
No my examples are not wrong and you apparently missed the fact that I used the same nations you did; they just don't coincide with your 'reality.' You are the one subverting history. You're entitled to your beliefs but your examples all ignore history for the Fuchs summation. Sorry, don't agree at all.
Thank you for acknowledging the cultural difference between Bayern and Niedersachsen. The N-S viet Namese cultural difference was far more significantthat the Buddhist and Catholic South would not throw lives at the issue; the nominally atheist North had no such compunctions, to them, to win at any cost was acceptable and they made no real effort to constrain casualties. THAT is a cultural difference of some import.
Your tap dancing on the Police mission in Afghanistan doesn't change the facts -- Germany got nailed for failing to produce. What you're missing is why that happened; it happened because a bunch of theoreticians with no experience predicted they could do something that, in the event, proved to be much more difficult than they expected. I submit this entire sub thread has consisted of you making precisely the same mistake. You don't know what you don't know. I spent many years training people from western armies; your assumptions are marginally applicable to them; I also spent two years advising a Middle Eastern Army. They have some strengths; they also have some weaknesses -- those weaknesses at least double if not triple the training time. That's reality.
Your last two paragraphs aptly sum up your position -- This is the word according to Fuchs; ten years is "unacceptable." You even presume to state what politicians will accept and you cannot possibly predict that, every war, every situation is different. You can say that you don't accept it and that's fine, you cannot say what others may do (You also used the word sane with repect to Politicians but that's another thread...). As I've mentioned to you before, reality does not conform to your desires and thought processes. Your summation that ten years is not okay in wartime overlooks common sense and the reality on the ground.
But hang on to your keyboard... :wry:
No, you're the one missing several points
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Originally Posted by
Fuchs
Ken; you don't see the point.
I don't care whether Germans can train quickly, Americans can train quickly or anybody could. Let's assume that to raise an Army as a foreigner up to regional standard (and no more is necessary) takes ten years in wartime (actually, I wonder why the other side is much quicker, but who cares as Western trainers are obviously not).
That depends on many factors, not least the standard to which is aspired.
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The implication is that every conflict that cannot be ended before such an indigenous army has been raised would last for at least a decade.
Totally wrong on several levels. Depends on the individual situation. An indigenous army may be in existence or one may not be necessary. Tweaking the basically good Army that the British left behind in all their former colonies would be a very short term effort; those of the French would take slightly longer; those with no such background (again, Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq) would take considerably longer. Yes, I know Iraq was British trained and had an Army -- but some US idiot disbanded it so it had to start from scratch... :mad:
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That's pretty much a guarantee for - a high rate of failure due to a lack of time for political, strategic and economic reasons...
Again, very much situation dependent
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and- a high rate of conflicts with excessive costs that turn a victory into a Pyrrhic victory
Far from a given. Costs are relative (and we throw money away, it's an American thing...).
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That is important for
- the governments that trust such support and - the governments that think about ordering such support and - the citizens of both states.
I suspect it's far less important than you seem to think it is.
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To tell everyone that it takes a lot of time and be satisfied with that is not satisfactory imho. That's like working for a Pyrrhic victory.
I didn't do that -- I did say the two current examples would take that much time due to several factors; I also pointed out that training the support folks (and getting the system operating) and the senior leaders can take up to 20 years in peacetime and that would be true more places than not.
It's not a question of being satisfied, it is simply a question of what's achievable and realistic. As I pointed out, unrealistic expectations can be far more detrimental than more time than some impatient people would prefer. Politicians always want a quick and relatively painless fix; those are rare. As the old saw says, "You can have it quick, good and / or cheap; pick any two, you can never have all three."
Rush the training and standup and the end result will be failure. Some countries are okay with that; we generally are not.
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Your whole response activity was quite obviously so fierce because I dared to criticize the U.S. armed services. In this forum. Sacrilege!
Not at all. Totally incorrect. First, trust me; that wasn't fierce or even very pointed. I was chuckling the whole time I was typing (still am) because you're funny. My response was slightly pointed because as I told jmm above, your gratuitous and totally unnecessary comment:
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""I've observed discussions about this where people refrained about an oh-so-good U.S.-trained Georgian brigade. Well, maybe we should create a thread to identify the armies that were trained by the U.S. military and didn't afterward suck asap?I've got difficulties to remember any.""
was pointless except to make a supercilious and apparently uninformed comment based on your opinions designed to invite controversy. That may seem sensible to you, it does not to me. It is off thread, not germane and adds nothing to the topic being discussed; it is a casual tossed insult which calls your motives into question. You do that frequently. You may have noticed that many here do not respond to your digs; that's because they have work to do and don't give those things -- the digs, you're capable of excellent comment when you avoid the stupidity -- much credence. I OTOH respond to many of your little jibes; I do that because I'm retired and have time to waste and tilt at windmills :D I have, I'm sure, heard and seen far more serious slams against the US over the years than your little digs, so no sacrilege; just unnecessary, to little avail and of quite minor import.
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It's quite funny; the harshest criticism of U.S.Armed forces is usually audible when no Americans who could jump into their 'sacrilege!' mode are close. British, Canadians, Australians, French, Germans, Scandinavians - it's really easy to find experienced people who have very U.S.-incompatible views. They're just not frank enough to tell about it in an English-language forum. Because it's quite pointless.
Yes, it is pointless (which, pun intended, was my point) -- and most of those you cite don't have a clue why it's pointless. I've heard and seen a lot of it for a great many years. I'd also suggest some, a few, don't do that in an English language forum because they're polite.
Let me tell you, though, why it's pointless. Generally, the understanding of what they're criticizing is superficial or ill-informed (as was your comment I quoted here and a few others over the past weeks) and -- this is important -- we don't really care what you think but are willing to mention some things you might not have thought of. We can be polite also. ;)
Let me remind you that I said and meant that you are capable of very intelligent comment and you are a valuable contributor; yet, when you slide into egregious anti-American jibes just so you can say you did, you effectively lower the worth of your sensible efforts. Pity, that. :confused:
Which way are you going???
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Originally Posted by
Fuchs
Maybe in some cases you don't really need to train an army because a militia is all that you need?
Of course -- however, real and perceived need can differ. Most Nations tend to want an Army. In every nation discussed in this thread, the real and perceived need coincided.
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The Afghan government can be considered as one of several powers/civil war parties in the country. Why does it need a real army if terrain has been controlled effectively by more militia-like forces in AFG in the past?
You'd have to ask the Afghans themselves, not me. I rather suspect their answer would have something to do with British incursions (they have long memories) where the tribes were effective, the invasion by the USSR where they were also effective but took to long and too much damage was incurred and their concern for both Russian and Pakistani intentions added to the capability of modern weapons...
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Why does nation-building need to build a Western-like nation, why not just build a region-typical nation that works?
I suspect the answer to that question is that everyone is not a Fuchs and they may have ideas that differ from yours. Fair rhetorical question but there is no answer.
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A perfect solution can prevent a timely good solution sometimes.
Frequently. Yet another human foible.
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I'm actually surprised that you think that a military culture can be changed in 15 years...
I don't. You did but now apparently don't. Here's what I said up thread:
""An army formed from virtually nothing (Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq) is not going to be effective for at least a decade. Your time frame for the training of riflemen and junior leaders is correct for western nations -- those times need to be doubled for non-westerners for a variety of reasons; to train the all important logisticians and senior leaders takes at least a decade and usually longer. That, BTW, is with a war -- in peacetime it typically takes 20 to 30 years.""
You then disagreed saying:
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... A quarter century after the training started. Not impressive
Yet today you say:
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At least in the case of present old officer/NCO corps I'd expect a generation (30 years).
You are priceless. As Schmedlap pointed out, you have a tendency to make an argument; have it countered and then you return and try to turn that counter argument back on the person who made the point in the first place. You really ought to look at that. Anyhow, on this topic, you need to make up your mind; is 25 years bad or is it possible, even necessary to do it in less time; you also earlier said:
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The U.S. forces have failed to train foreign armies properly in time spans that were longer than the American Civil War or the First World War. That's outright failure. Such training missions should be expected to train foreign troops in a year up to junior NCO and in two years up to medium-rank officers. That's the speed of training demonstrated by national armies after mobilization.
And this:
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Ten years might be OK in peacetime, but it's not OK in wartime.
If you can show me how wartime will significantly change a culture, we can agree -- until then, it looks like you're trying to have it both ways and are just arguing for the sake of arguing...
You go on today to say:
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But breaking old patterns and re-building to a new products isn't necessarily what I understand as advisable form of army buildup in times of war. There's probably no time for that, as the war might be lost before the training is done.
That is true, no question -- so one does what one has to as one understands the need at the time (and the real need may nor be clear until the benefit of hindsight is attained). You also said earlier:
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A track record of inability to train a new foreign army to region-typical combat effectiveness in less than four years needs to have an impact on nation-building related foreign policy planning.
I disagree that it's a track record thing; it is -- as you now seem to acknowledge -- a systemic and cultural problem.
However, I do agree that, knowing that, different policy options should be explored. That, however, is a quite different topic and thread.
Lastly:
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Who cares whether a unit discusses something irrelevant for three hours if its opponents aren't better?
Probably no one; then again, if they are even a little better, that's a different thing, isn't it...
Reminder: How long does it take to train an Army?
I cannot comment as an expert, being a non-military observer; that aside my reading of a history article recently on the WW1 US Army illustrated the pain it underwent in France / Belgium. In WW1 it took a long time, at horrendous cost, for the British & Commenwealth armies in France to reach combat superiority - in which training was one factor.
In my reading on WW2 the training pre-1939 and into the war of the German Army NCO and junior officers is highly rated (see Peter White's 'With The Jocks').
Post-1945 history has plenty of examples IMHO where expatriate officered armies, or ex-colonial armies have failed or regressed to a mob, e.g. Nigerian Army when the Biafra War started.
I don't know what the mixture is for success, although I'd hazard a list: fit commanders, able staff officers, excellent battalion level officers and NCOs. Resting on a base of willing and disciplined soldiers - who mindful of Ken & Tom - who are paid, supplied and cared for.
Now back to my armchair or "bunker".
davidbfpo
Requirements subsumed by desires...
A story older than recorded history.
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Originally Posted by
Fuchs
Uhmm, you realize that changing a military culture and building a new army are two different activities?
No, I realize that sometimes that is true but, far more often, the two actions have to go hand in hand. As I said at the start of the thread, you cannot use western norms in dealing with non-western nations. That was true in all of the examples you or I elected to use. West is west, east is east and never the twain shall meet and all that. :D
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I was writing about changing how an army works/fights. That has always taken a long time because old superiors persist and retain old methods. To build a new army is a completely different affair, obviously.
True but every example you cited was just that, building a new Army. As I said, you can't have it both ways...
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You arranged statements to create a contradiction although there was no connection.
Not so, I repeated them in sequence and in context.
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The thing that changes is the available time. If "culture" prevents the quick (few years) creation of effective armed forces, then this needs to be included as argument in the original decision-making whether to start/articipate in the conflict as a foreign power. I wrote that before.
Yes you did -- and I agreed but pointed out that the policy argument is a different issue.
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...I have an impression that option (2) was too often assumed to be true, that this assumption is the default assumption and that this has led to several failures in the past.
We can agree on that.
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Ken; the basic dispute here is between your "the job needs to be done" attitude and my "looks like some decisions were wrong" attitude. You pretty much insist that the time for mission accomplishment has to be granted. That ignores the often excessive price that needs to be paid to buy that time, and that some missions are simply not worth that price.
Yes and no. I agree with that premise as you just stated it except I do not insist the time has to be granted -- I insist that is the time required; the decision to grant that time is a policy decision. In all cases cited, that decision was made by or for the policymakers to do so.
My point with past (and present, including Georgia) examples you cited is that the policy argument is totally immaterial; those things are history. Whether they should have been done that way or not is another issue and one that IMO is irrelevant; they happened the way they did and we cannot undo them. We have agreed, in a fashion, that the time required to train a force to include necessary culture changes should unquestionably be a consideration. Whether it will be or not remains to be seen.
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Imagine this scenario:
year 2002...
. . .
case closed, invasion won't happen, nobody is willing to fight a 10 year war for the expected benefits
True, no doubt about that. That's why the issue was not discussed by the politicians and the media, most of whom did not know that -- and those who did didn't want to mention it. That's why Bill Clinton said we'd be in Bosnia (and Kosovo) for a year. Again, that's not a training time argument, that's a policy argument -- and on that we agree; it should be considered.
However, I think that means we expect rational thought from Politicians -- an unlikely event... :wry:
One mustn't ignore the historical roots of an army
The South Korean "Army" of 1950 had been trained and equipped as a para-military force to deal with the Communist guerillas that were operating in central South Korea. It was purposely not equipped with tanks in order to keep Rhee from attempting to invade the North. Also, in our political naiveté we failed to realize that the Soviets were training and arming the NKPA with heavy tanks. The South Koreans were not "routed" to the degree as some would like to think. They actually did a fairly admirable job, given the absence of tanks and anti-tank weapons, of slowing the NKPA advance, which allowed the US to build combat power on the Peninsula. Of course we took some body blows between Task Force Smith and the stabilization of the lines along the Naktong.
On top of all that the South Koreans had no significant military traditions, having been under Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945. Their only military experience during that time was in guerilla actions against the occupation. The North actually had cadres who had been trained by both the Soviets and the ChiComs. As has been mentioned the ROKs performance in Vietnam was excellent.
The South Vietnamese Army actually had to overcome their French training between partition in 1954 and 1960, when the US advisory effort began to increase. They performed very well thwarting the NVA Easter Offensive in 1972. But by 1975 we were no longer supplying the ARVN with adequate levels of supplies to stop the final invasion. Sort of the same situation the Wehrmacht was in 1945: plenty of fight but not enough fuel and ammo to keep fighting.
We trained the Thai Army and they perform rather well in COIN. Not to be left out are the Japanese. :D
We face political problems more than training problems.
Gentlemen,
Fuchs, is the problem really training at all, in some of the historical episodes you enumerated? Meaning, in the narrow sense of competently drilling troops on a parade ground, marching them to a rifle range, equipping them, etc.
Take Iraq and Afghanistan, and our problems training national armies there. Is the problem we Americans have some kind of genetic predisposition to not knowing how to train foreign troops, or that there is no loyalty to a central government above the clan, region, tribe, or sect in the places we have tried to do it?
To use a German example, consider the troubles with the Weimar Republic, the people who are really willing to fight--Freikorps or Spartacist League--they've got something else in mind if they are going to risk their necks. The Weimar government failed not because of inadequate training of the police and security forces, but something deeper.
Our problem has more often than not been wading into places where we have tried to prop up governments that have serious political problems inside their own country.
The issue isn't training armies at all
It's about developing the security environment, which includes developing all of the necessary security forces and the institutional/enterprise infrastructure. Without appropriate reforms throughout the security structure, training and equipping mean nothing.
I would also note that leaving behind a bunch of trained and armed militias in places like Afghanistan isn't the best idea I've heard. Flash back to 1992, and that's about what we did. The results were less than desireable.
On a positive note, South Korea was/is a success story in my book. 15 yr after the ceasefire, the ROK was able to secure its entire border with the exception of a narrow corridor in the 7ID/2ID sector, AND send two divisions to Vietnam! Now -- the rule of law/anti-corruption evolution took longer, but appears to be holding.
Not all that common, only about 20%,
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Originally Posted by
reed11b
was that it was probably accurate. I have just learned to always ask "what else is true?" and CYA is a common theme w/i the military.
Reed
ranging from PVT and SPC to COL and GEN. The other 80% of all grades are pretty honest. My observation has been that the 20% figure is somewhat lower than the about 33% civilian figure -- and my civilian experience includes working for a major hotel, an airline and Hughes Aircraft among others. ;)
That's not to say that any is more than there should be.
