Iraq education and training (merged thread)

[Strickland]

4 Nov. Reuters article: Army Adapts to 'War of the Flea' in Iraq. Excerpt follows"

"In small steps and without fanfare, the U.S. Army is adapting its training to 'the war of the flea,' the type of hit-and-run insurgency that is gripping Iraq, where more than 2,000 American military personnel have been killed."

"Counterinsurgency training, military experts say, largely vanished from the curriculum of Army schools after the Vietnam War. It began a slow comeback after the Iraq war, which opened with a massive ground and air assault, turned into a protracted conflict of ambushes, bombings and hit-and-run attacks."

"Now, there is counterinsurgency (instruction) at every level, from the warrior leader course (for front-line sergeants) through to the war college, said Brig. Gen. Volney Warner, deputy commandant of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College."

While this is a good first step, one should ask why the Army has also announced that is going to try to push more non-resident PME vice resident PME, and is looking to cut the length of their CGSC course. How much of this is window dressing? The obvious answer is because of resource shortfalls in manpower and funding. Again I ask, is this all window dressing? How does one conduct effective COIN ops from Stryker vehicles, Bradleys, and tanks? I've read Galula's work, and dont remember a chapter that covers this.

[GorTex6]

? How does one conduct effective COIN ops from Stryker vehicles, Bradleys, and tanks? I've read Galula's work, and dont remember a chapter that covers this.

Galula advocated the widespread use of light infantry instead of heavy forces. Heavy units have a very limited role in COIN ops and should adapt along light infantry characteristics.

As long as the insurgent has failed to build a powerful regular army, the counterinsurgent has little use for heavy, sophisticated forces designed for conventional warfare. For his ground forces he needs infantry and more infantry, highly mobile and lightly armed
-ch 6

The Stryker is a lemon

[Bill Moore]

I don’t think we should take Galula’s comments out of context, nor assume his comments are a gospel that must be followed. We can fall into the same mental trap that big Army was stuck in for years, when they assumed their Fulda Gap doctrine would apply to all conflicts around the world equally. While Galula’s comments reference armor are probably spot on in several case studies, such as fighting a small war where the foe is using Maoist tactics and the terrain limits maneuver of Armor as it did in Vietnam, Cambodia, El Salvador, etc. However, a sound argument can be made that armor facilitates infantry maneuver in Iraq. Can you imagine how long and how costly the battle for Fallujah would have been without armor enablers? It is the right tool at certain times and locations. Note we don't have armor to any great extent at all in Afghanistan.

As for the Army's PME being shortened in length I would caution to avoid associating length with quality. The Army has a long habit of cramming four weeks of solid instruction into three months. I strongly recommend shortening the PME pipeline where we can, so we can get our soldiers back into the fight. You’ll learn more about waging so called small wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, than taking a couple of COIN electives at Ft. Leavenworth. As for professional reading assignments, why can’t we do those via distance learning and save the Army (and tax payers) money, and allow the soldier to spend more time at home with his family?

[Strickland]

I couldnt agree more that Galula's, Thompson's, or Kitson's opinions arent gospel; however, they are all the products of experience, and thus I would rather have my young Marines learn about them from a book in a controlled environment, than "learning by doing" in OIF and OEF as they make mistakes that cost lives. This "learning by doing attitude" has resulted in a lot of needless casualties.

As for your reference to armor in Fallujah as evidence its utility in COIN, I think you are missing the point. Yes, armor facilitates movement during engagements in urban terrain where there is NO concern for collateral damage such as in Fallujah. Yes, during these types of engagements, I would request tanks to destroy houses so that my Marines did not have to enter and take unnecessary risks, but this is the exception, not the rule. Tanks are a symbol of occupation NOT cooperation or security. Tanks send the wrong IO message. Tanks in Iraq appear to Muslims as tanks in Gaza or Ramallah, etc. They require a tremendous amount of infantry support to clear avenues of approach for them in the urban terrain and river valleys of Iraq.

As for you comment that non-resident PME has the same utility as resident PME, you are simply wrong. I have completed the non-resident Command and Staff College Course, and now am attending the resident course. The courses are like night and day, and having spent time in Iraq with another tour in my future, I dont feel as if I am wasting the tax payers dollars.

[Bill Moore]

Like most people who visit this site I read everything I can get my eyes on (time permitting) that provide any insight into insurgency and counterinsurgency operations. However, taking lessons from the past and attempting to template them on current situations without truly analyzing the major and minor scenario differences won’t get us to the right answer for solving the problems we face today. Cause and effect will be different for almost every conflict, thus the potential beauty of true effect based operations if the emerging doctrine is used properly.

My background is Special Forces, but unlike many of my peers, I have a great respect for conventional Army and Marine capabilities. Of course for these capabilities to be productive vice counterproductive you must have outstanding officer and NCO leadership that are astute enough to adapt their TTP to the situation (first do no harm). Some of our units, like the 4th ID in 03 failed at this for a number of reasons, and maybe it was due to a "Mech mentality", along with some other problems, but I bet when they come in this time with a different mentality they will do very well.

I do have a strong difference of opinion with your previous statement where you wrote,

“How does one conduct effective COIN operations from Stryker vehicles, Bradleys, and tanks? I read Galula’s work, and don’t remember a chapter that covers this”.

I hope someone from the Stryker Brigade that just left Mosul writes a book or article from the operational perspective on how they conducted COIN. By all accounts (from Special Forces soldiers and reporters embedded with them) they did an outstanding job. No doubt they made mistakes, but overall they did a great job, and more importantly they were effective. The Stryker vehicle did not prevent them from executing effective HUMINT, Civil Military Operations, Presence Patrols, dismounted infantry operations, etc., but it did enable them to conduct effective sophisticated surgical strikes that maximized the C4I and combat power of their Strykers in a very dangerous situation. I don't think an 82nd ABN BDE with light skinned vehicles could have done as well in this environment.

Galula wrote primarily about counter colonial wars, and while many of the lessons are relevant to some degree; the scenarios were different. I'll make two points, both probably worthy of a separate discussion.

1. I don't think we want to castrate our Army's combat power to become more like Brit like. While the Brit's were very effective at conducting COIN prior to WWII, they couldn't fight a conventional war effectively and therefore were unable to counter the Nazi Germany offensive effectively. While we may not face another conventional threat from a near peer in the immediate future, I think it is premature to throw the baby out with bath water at this point. Insteand of going to a lighter force, I think we simply need to train our heavy forces in COIN. This isn't near as efficient or effective as forming a SASO or COIN force, but we still retain our ability to dominate any ground conflict. Maybe this is a dinasour's answer, but I still see conventional threats in the world.

2. We constantly talk about conducting COIN in Iraq, but are we really conducting COIN? I think it can be argued that we’re not conducting a counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq yet, because we haven’t completed the regime change. Once the regime change is in place, then we can shift to a truer COIN model. Maybe attempting to use COIN doctrine at this point is counter productive? Did we conduct COIN in post war Germany? In Iraq we are an occupying force until we get a viable government in place. We didn't come in to protect a threatened government, we removed a government. I know this will open a can of worms, but I think it is worthy of discussion.

As for PME, I hope your comment about window dressing is off the mark, but I fear you might be right. I still think there are many subjects that can be addressed via distance learning if we develop a learning culture in our ranks. In turn this will better prepare the student to maximize his return for time at the resident PME facilities, but this must be done correctly, not just to facilitate saving dollars and time (boots on the ground time). If you’re right and our PME is being degraded, then the impact will be strategic over time.

[Jedburgh]

I hope someone from the Stryker Brigade that just left Mosul writes a book or article from the operational perspective on how they conducted COIN.

Well, right now you can access the SBCT Initial Impressions Report - Operations in Mosul, Iraq dated 21 Dec 04. It is available on the CALL website and in the CALL Web Products folder in the AKO KC files.

[Bill Moore]

Jedburgh, thanks for the pointer. Going by the date, these would be their lessons learned and impressions after only a couple of months on the ground. I would really like to contrast these with their lessons and perceptions towards the end of their tour. Based on my readings and discussions with some of the officers there, they adapted very effectively.

That brings me to my question for you, how do you feel about how we manage lessons learned? Do you feel the websites are used to the extent they should be? Do they effectively change POI's in our schools? Seems to me that too much pull is involved, and not enough push. Although I have absolutely no suggestions to make it better, so maybe we're doing the best we can.

I had a very sharp boss that suggested we don't have lessons learned, we simply have lessons, meaning they're the same lessons again and again because we fail to learn them. I sometimes think that assessment is correct more often than not.

Bill

[GorTex6]

I don’t think we should take Galula’s comments out of context, nor assume his comments are a gospel that must be followed. We can fall into the same mental trap that big Army was stuck in for years, when they assumed their Fulda Gap doctrine would apply to all conflicts around the world equally.

I never said Galula was gospel. His book attempts to sway the reader away from the conventional warfare Jominian dogma. You should fight for the popular support instead of physical destruction- and win at the moral level, eroding the insurgents ability to move and interact so freely.

I hope someone from the Stryker Brigade that just left Mosul writes a book or article from the operational perspective on how they conducted COIN.

We should worry more about how we think rather than how to do.

Tanks are a symbol of occupation NOT cooperation or security. Tanks send the wrong IO message. Tanks in Iraq appear to Muslims as tanks in Gaza or Ramallah, etc.

That was a breath of fresh air!

[Bill Moore]

His book attempts to sway the reader away from the conventional warfare Jominian dogma. You should fight for the popular support instead of physical destruction- and win at the moral level, eroding the insurgents ability to move and interact so freely.

Winning at the moral level is hard to define and harder to do. Obviously we failed to that during the Vietnam War with our massive bombings and relentless pursuit of higher body counts. I’ll still argue it wasn’t the tools (bombers, artillery, etc.), but the application of the tools, or strategy. West Pointers have traditionally been terrible at formulating strategies, beginning with our Civil War where we somehow hold certain Generals in high esteem for leading their Armies to slaughter. Let’s not forget our military strategy is a by product of our industrial superiority, which makes us particularly unsuited to wage wars where we’re not able to destroy another Nation State’s fielded forces.

Getting back on to Iraq, your arguments don’t ring true to me because the conflict in Iraq isn't a true COIN, since we're still in the midst of regime change, nor is Iraq some simple banana republic host to a Marxist insurgency where the insurgency springs up from the soil based on economic disparities creating a base susceptible to Marxist ideology. This is the type of insurgency we have all studied, and now (after the fact) have great strategic and operational ideas for addressing this type of challenge.

However, we’re on the verge of making the same mistakes we made in Vietnam by failing to understand the true nature of the war. If we simply think we’re going to apply counter-Marxist/Maoist strategy to tackle this threat, then we’ll probably be reading about ourselves in the history books a few years from now on how we miss read the situation once again. The conflict in Iraq is a confluence of religion, ideological, economical, outside agitators, and ethnic tensions. Saddam was left in place by President Bush senior because he saw Saddam as the lesser of two evils, one who was actually a stabilizing influence who managed to keep Pandora’s Box closed. Sometimes the high moral ground is a chose between the lesser of two evils.

Now that Pandora’s Box is open we need to start thinking pragmatically instead of continuing to promote idealistically based strategies that have little application in the real world. As you stated, we need to learn how to think, not what to think.

In Iraq the winning at the moral level needs to be defined, and not by Sun Tsu, but by someone familiar with the world we live in today. Once it is defined, we have to determine how to translate it into action at the strategic and operational level. These are far from simple tasks. We can quote authors from Sun Tzu to Kaplan, but it won’t get us there.

Do you really believe that if we loaded our tanks up on ships in Kuwait and sent them back to Texas that Iraq would be better off? Do you think lightly armed infantry in cities with a dedicated foe supported by a number of nations and non-state entities will simply loose their will to carry on the conflict? That the Iraqi people will suddenly raise to the occasion and poison the pond making it untenable to the insurgents? Perhaps if we build a few more schools and medical clinics in various Iraqi cities in the Sunni dominated areas, then the Iraqis will suddenly see the light and embrace our form of democracy? Of course we can't provide adequate security for people to actually go to school in these areas yet, so I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to get rid of our forces.

As for winning the war, does the military win the war, or do we establish conditions to enable another organization to win the war? What are the conditions? What organization actually wins it? If it is the Iraqi government, then what do we need to do to actually stand up an effective government? We’re far from figuring this one out, but I trust we will this time, because we have to.

[GorTex6]

In Iraq the winning at the moral level needs to be defined, and not by Sun Tsu, but by someone familiar with the world we live in today.

While the classical three levels of war carry over into the Fourth Generation, they are joined there by three new levels which may be more important. Colonel Boyd identified these three new levels as the physical, the mental and the moral. Further, he argued that the physical level -- killing people and breaking things is the least powerful, the moral level is the most powerful and the mental level lies between the other two. Colonel Boyd argued that this is especially true in guerilla warfare, which is more closely related to Fourth Generation war than is formal warfare between state militaries. The history of guerilla warfare, from the Spanish guerilla war against Napoleon through Israel's experience in southern Lebanon, supports Colonel Boyd's observation. This leads to the central dilemma of Fourth Generation war: what works for you on the physical (and sometimes mental) level often works against you at the moral level. It is therefore very easy in a Fourth Generation conflict to win all the tactical engagements yet lose the war. To the degree you win at the physical level by pouring on firepower that causes casualties and property damage to the local population, every physical victory may move you closer to moral defeat. And the moral level is decisive.
-FMFM-1A, 4GW

[zenpundit]

Check slides 105 -111 with emphasis on 108

Patterns of Conflict: