The danger of forming speciality units for stability operations
While I agree a number of interesting ideas have been surfaced regarding the formation of peace enforcement type units, I'll argue they're not good ideas for the following reasons:
1. Our military is already time stressed as it is to simply meet our combat training needs which always must be a first priority. Not only is it a moral imperative, can you can imagine the political fall out if any of our units come up on the short end of an engagement with the enemy?
2. We're struggling to meet our manning requirements for the combat forces, so exactly where is this Army of SOSO/Peace Enforcement experts going to come from? While we may be able to form one BDE of these specialists, whatever the speciality is exactly, we won't be able to deploy them indefinitely, so who backfills them?
While the death before dismount mentality is alive and well in a few Army units, I would argue that many Army units have adapted (learned) to the current situation quite well, so I don't see a requirement for speciality SOSO units that we can't sustain. I do see a need for the new ideas to spread and for the dinasours to step aside, but that doesn't mean throwing the baby out with the bath water.
What we do need is better leader and soldier education/training preparing them to handle the current and anticipated operating environments. We definitely need better joint and interagency doctrine that is "enforced". There is a bigger onus on the Dept of State (and other agencies/departments/bureaus, etc.) to transform, than the military. The Dept of State is a non-functional bureacracy that is undermanned and underfunded, yet they have perhaps the most critical role in GWOT. And we need to figure out exactly where the contractor fits in on the battlefield/operating space. We have several Young Turks coming up through the ranks with some great ideas, so I hope they don't get disillusioned by the bureaucracy and traditionalists residing at the mid level Army management.
2 cents on the "Death Before Dismount" issue?
As I grew more aware of the T/O of the Army, I became increasingly surprised at just how few infantry there are in the Army infantry. Current situation is almost the "most dangerous" COA for the folks that came up with that org. USMC is prepared to flood the streets w/ 900+ riflemen (every Marine is one) per infantry Bn (BLT / BCT, almost all hands go out), while Army doesn't approach those numbers per unit.
Don' want to turn this in to inter-service bashing. Strong belief that the Army is playing the hand they were dealt like the warriors they are. Also concur with the "feasibility" concerns for the SASO-specialist units. But really, what is the Army doing to do about their "infantry?" Current course and speed assuming that the next war won't be the same, or is there a fundamental questioning of assumptions that goes along with the refreshing revelations / admissions that we may enter the occasional urban area rather than bypass?
I asked this question to CSA 18 months ago in a public forum. Got a slick deflect. "Aware of" and "looking at it" and "doing the best with the T/O that we LD'd with." Agree with the latter. What's really going on with the former two?
IED's are not the real issue
I thought the CPT had several excellent points; especially his comments on setting up STX lanes that focused on transitioning from hostile to uncertain environments and back to hostile again right on the money. I'm not sure what those would like, so I hope he'll share some examples later.
Since we have digressed from the original topic (historical parallels), I’ll try to transition back in that direction by focusing on the IED problem discussed above.
Is there really an IED problem? In other words, is the IED any more than a tactical nuisance? I will argue that we can achieve all of our tactical and operational maneuver objectives even if the IED threat doubled.
However, the IED threat was never intended to defeat our military forces, it was intended to have its effect/affect on the home front, thus the strategic value of a tactically/ operationally insignificant weapon system. Our enemy knows they can’t defeat our military, just like they knew it in the Balkans, Somalia, Vietnam, Algeria, Lebanon (both the U.S. and Israel), and assorted other small wars, so they correctly identified our center of gravity as our national will.
Our leadership having recognized this has engaged in a progression of smarter counter measures countered by smarter IEDs and firing systems (tougher to jam). It’s a classic catch 22, we’re obligated to counter the IEDs and force the enemy to counter our counters, which in effect is creating (I don’t like this term, but if will suffice for now) a super terrorist armed with better technology and tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) for export. Much like Mao’s revolutionary tactics spread around the world (obviously adapted to local conditions), we now not only see the Islamist ideology exported at the speed of the internet, but also their associated TTP. We’re now seeing advanced IEDs in SE Asia and it won’t be long until we see them in South and Central America.
IED’s are the tactics of the flea, but unlike the War of the Flea in Vietnam, this is the War of the Flea empowered by the internet along at least two lines of operation. First, the flea bite wounds us soldiers, but the severity of the wounds are magnified a thousand fold on our national psyche by the media and the rapid development of grass root organizations like mothers against the war, etc. While Collin Powell rightfully got us away from the enemy body count as a metric of success, our nation has somehow managed to turn our own body count into a metric of failure, and several peace organizations are just waiting until we cross the 2,000 KIA mark to attempt to aggressively spread their anti-war message, which will probably result in more emphasis from our political leaders to minimize casualties, which in turn will give our enemy freer range of movement; and force us to Iraqize the war faster than prudent. The second line I already discussed and that is the spread of effective flea technology and TTP to like minded groups’ world wide.
I realize this is no great insight to any of the readers here, but it is imperative we find ways to counter this trend. I personally think the American people are much more resilient to casualties when they believe we have the high moral ground and the war in is our national interest, thus the burden of winning the war on the home front is on our political leadership. They must clarify our purpose for being there in a way that resounds with our population, and with all due respect, our President has been unable to effectively convey that message. We can’t afford to confuse support for the military as support for the war. I know the poster above me (I believe MAJ Stricklin) thinks we should put more U.S. soldiers on the ground (I agree), but that won’t be possible when our national leaders feel cornered by the flea. I think we have strong national leadership at the moment, but their weakness has been their inability to build a consensus with our countrymen. What can we do to help?
IED's was only part of my point
Hans, I understand what you're saying, and must admit I remain amazed to this day at the number of large (very large) ammo supply points throughout Iraq. Our unit tasked guys to tackle that problem full time, and they barely put a dent in it. Where else may we find this situation in the future? How about Syria, Iran, N. Korea, former members of the USSR, and other nations that we may at some time in the future consider potential adversaries? I wouldn't write off as a problem unique to Iraq, but agree that Iraq was/is exceptional in the volume of munitions readily available.
The underlying point, is that our center of gravity is generally our national will, and for illogical reasons, the number of our KIAs appears to be the decisive point. You can't measure military success by body counts (in most cases), so the decisive point in this case doesn't impact the military directly in a decisive manner, but it does indirectly through the political system. Isn't this truly what we mean when we use the phrase asymmetrical warfare?
You're right that in future conflicts there will be other tactics to put pressue on this decisive point beyond IEDs, but the challenge remains the same, how do we win the battle of minds on the home front? While not a military role, it still needs to be addressed if the military is going to achieve success. Can you name a small war where a western nation lost when this wasn't the center of gravity? I can't recall an instance of Western forces being soundly defeated on the battlefield (with the exception of a battle lost here and there). We're once again in danger of pulling defeat out of the jaws of victory. This will be our recurring achille's heel, and we (the Unitied States and other Western Nations) have better find a find of mitigating it.