Iraq education and training (merged thread)

[Stratiotes]

It makes sense. Why would we ever want to limit actions to only one form?

Sun Tzu says, "... the skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting..."

And,

"[T]o win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill."

[Merv Benson]

Destroying the enemy and achieving victory still works, but it does not always take a kinetic form. When you read Bill Roggio and and Michael Yon's observations you see that US forces are already interacting with the locals and working with the shieks, building relationships that are helpful to the mission of destroying the enemy. Operations around Ramadi reflect this policy and when al Qaeda sends a human bomb into a line of police recruits, the people know who is responsible. It is al Qaeda that is losing the hearts and minds battle in Iraq.

But the kinetic operations till have their place and the Iraqis in Western Anbar seem glad that US and Iraqi forces removed the enemy from their cities. Some may still be lurking in the weeks and allies, but because of our work with the Iraqis and the Iraqi forces, our intelligence is improving and the enemy is having more trouble hiding his oeprations and resources.

Take a look at Michael Yon's latest post on Operation Iraqi Children. The link is on my blog in a Friday post.

It is a mistake to underestimate the intelligence of our military in Iraq. The enemy has made that mistake, but we should not repeat it. While the enemy in Iraq has been resourceful, his resourcefulness is not necessiarily the result of mistakes made by out forces our our prewar planning. One of the things that makes wars difficult is that unlike other productions, your enemy thinks and responds to your actions. You beat him by doing a better job of thinking and responding to his.

[DDilegge]

It is a mistake to underestimate the intelligence of our military in Iraq. The enemy has made that mistake, but we should not repeat it. While the enemy in Iraq has been resourceful, his resourcefulness is not necessiarily the result of mistakes made by out forces our our prewar planning. One of the things that makes wars difficult is that unlike other productions, your enemy thinks and responds to your actions. You beat him by doing a better job of thinking and responding to his.

Sometimes called the strategy of the fighter pilot thanks to Col. John Boyd. The following is from the LexNotes web site:

It is strange that John Boyd should be unknown. His ideas have been profiled in a plethora of publications, including Forbes, Fortune, Time, The Economist, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News, and The Los Angeles Times. (OODA: Col. Boyd's description of the OODA Loop as derived from his original briefing slides) "Carried into the private sector, [Boyd's theories have] been adopted and adapted by businesses such as Toyota, General Electric and Wal-Mart." (Dale Eisman, Air Force Col. John R. Boyd: The man who shaped the military, The Virginian-Pilot, December 9, 2002.) Just this past summer, Fast Company carried an article saying Boyd, "focused his tenacious intellect on something grander, an expression of agility that, for him and others, became a consuming passion: the OODA loop ... an elegant framework for creating competitive advantage." (Keith H. Hammonds, The Strategy of the Fighter Pilot, Fast Company, Issue 59, page 98, June 2002.) Hammonds says Boyd "enjoyed distinctive unpopularity in official Pentagon circles. But even among critics, his OODA loop was much harder to dismiss. The concept is just as powerful when applied to business." Google "john boyd" "ooda loop" and you'll have a few days of reading ahead of you. Google just "ooda loop" and the reading expands to a week or more.

Boyd was not only a pilot who gave the enemy fits in Korea. Nor was he only the first person ever to codify air-to-air combat techniques. Nor was he only "the original Top Gun" teaching air-to-air combat at the Fighter Weapons School, Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Not was he only the pilot nicknamed "40-Second" Boyd because of his standing challenge to all comers: Starting from a position of disadvantage, he'd have his jet on their tail within 40 seconds, or he'd pay out $40. Legend has it that he never lost. Nor was he only the Georgia Institute of Technology student of thermodynamics who applied his knowledge as a fighter pilot to create his Energy-Maneuverability Theory that gave us the F-16. Small, cheap and simple, the F-16 used only enough technology to make it more efficient -- fly-by-wire control systems to save the weight of hydraulics, one engine to keep it small, cut costs and make it hard to target. He had to design it clandestinely because the military-industrial complex did not want cheap weapons just because they were effective. "It was one of the most audacious plots ever hatched against a military service and it was done under the noses of men who, if they had the slightest idea of what it was about, not only would have stopped it instantly, but would have cut orders reassigning Boyd to the other side of the globe." (Biographer Robert Coram quoted by Dale Eisman, Air Force Col. John R. Boyd: The man who shaped the military, The Virginian-Pilot, December 9, 2002.) Nor was he only the commander of a top-secret intelligence center in Thailand so sensitive that for the first three years of its operation it did not officially exist. Nor was he only a leading voice in the post-Vietnam War military reform movement. After rewriting the air combat rulebook, he began looking at the broader flaws in U.S. military theory.

Boyd's OODA Loop is the product of a singular, half-century-long autodidactic journey through the realms of science, history, and moral philosophy. He devoured the writings of Heisenberg and Newton, and he read thousands of books, journal articles, and newspapers. Boyd studied warfare from the beginning of time, engaging history's strategists such as Hannibal, Belisarius, Genghis Khan and von Clausewitz to find the vulnerabilities of their ideas. The only theoretician Boyd did not attack was Sun Tzu, author of the oldest book on war. Instead he used contemporary ideas from diverse disciplines such as mathematics, physics, anthropology, biology, economics, and philosophy to update and reaffirm Sun Tzu's work.

The acronym OODA represents Observe-Orient-Decide-Act. Boyd's biographer, Robert Coram, says, "Simply rendered, the OODA loop is a blueprint for the manoeuvre tactics that allow one to attack the mind of an opponent, to unravel its commander even before a battle begins." (Robert Coram , Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War, Little Brown & Company: 2002. ISBN 0316881465. Amazon sales rank at time of writing, 102) The target is not the troops or weapons of the enemy. The target certainly is not the civilians of the enemy. "In Boyd's notion of conflict, the target is always your opponent's mind," says Grant Hammond, director of the Center for Strategy and Technology at the Air War College and author of The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001). Victory comes by destroying an opponent's frame of reference, not necessarily by destroying so much of the opponent's materiel or personnel...

[Stratiotes]

Off topic a bit but I have to mention _Boyd the Fighter Pilot who Changed the Art of War_ by Robert Coram, ISBN: 0316796883.

It is a great introduction to Boyd's life and work. I have a good friend who president of a company that teaches law enforcement and military - he is himself a former Navy SEAL. He once said to me, "The OODA cycle is the holy grail of combat." I think he is right on the money.

[GorTex6]

This is not the first time Boyd has been mentioned on this board

He also stated that there were three other levels to war: Physical, Psychological, and moral. Moral being the strongest and physical the weakest. This is key to understanding the moral weaponry of guerrilla warfare(ie david vs goliath) and the inverse relationship of physical and moral actions.