Happy Birthday, Marines!
Semper Fi.
On topic, agree with PhilR and Tom -- balance /common sense are key.
My personal belief is that the small outposts are very counterproductive. Too much effort goes into securing and resupplying them to really reap the benefit of being 'local.' Larger FOBs (Bde / Regt size, IMO; only rarely Bn (+) and almost never Co -- or ODA, that oughta rattle some cages... ).
PhilR is correct, that does cause commuting to the war -- and there's nothing wrong with that. There's no reason Platoons and Companies cannot go out and prowl the area for days, even weeks, at a time. Unless, of course, one is excessively risk averse...
I haven't been to Afghanistan in the current fight but I have been to a fight or two with opponents at least as good and probably more numerous and I have been in the neighborhood and in similar terrain. Everyone I've talked to who has been there recently or is there now essentially seems to agree that we are far more risk averse than necessary (one told me he's convinced the MRAP is the Devil's invention... ).
I suspect rather than "stretched too thin" number-wise that risk aversion is the real reason for the small outpost approach. It's a way to obtain 'presence' while minimizing risks (in the eyes of some). It is essentially the theory of 'limited war' which holds that one should use minimum force applied to a COIN fight where presence is important. The flaw in the approach is that there are not enough troops (there almost never will be) to really flood the zone.
Plus, minimum force is a good dictum for law enforcement but an extremely bad one for military forces. Trying to limit war only prolongs it and increases casualties and damage, better to slam in hard and fast and get it over with. More short term damage but far less long term pain.
And yes, that applies in FID / COIN as well.
And all of you "shoulda been in the Old Corps... "
We do tend to end up with too many bases, posts, OPS, etc, but this is partly a result of the type of thing I observed in the Korengal, Kunar, and Nuristan over the course of about a year.
Subordinate commanders, as they become more familiar with the terrain and enemy, identify more and more places that it would be beneficial to establish some presence on. You know the deal - OPs to watch areas from which the enemy habitually fires on our bases, an extra post to keep an IED-plagued stretch of road under observation, etc. All of these individually are justifiable, but they soak up more and more manpower and reduce the number of boots that can actually patrol out the front gate. Senior commanders need to do a better job of controlling this tendency of subordinates to circumvallate themselves, but that means accepting.
Because what we really need in these cases are not just extra posts, but more people, and that is the one resource that is extremely difficult to come by.
The more guys you have running around in strange looking uniforms and strange looking vehicles the easier you are for the enemy to spot! That is a tremendous advantage for a small mobile Guerrilla force. LE has to deal with that everyday we just call them criminals.
I would disagree with this one on the LE front - the NYPD employs the "flood-the-zone" tactic regularly and adjusts its deployments on a precinct level with Compstat. Despite some obvious gaming that has to light, overall as a longtime resident of NYC I would argue that the NYPD's tactics are overall quite effective as a deterrent to street violence and open-air drug markets.
Flooding the zone puts so many unigrams out there that the bad guys knowing where they are is immaterial. Yes, it relies on good intel -- but it can and does also rely very much on patterns -- and low level initiative. It also can (and should) involve folks the bad guys will not see until it's too late.
The military equivalent of patterns also relies on terrain analysis and determination of natural lines of drift -- and alternatives to those lines. Channeling works...
LE is forced by the numbers (Cops vs. bad guys) game to play 'reaction.' Military forces are also strength constrained as Eden says but they have more flexibility and are less constrained by public attitudes. All that's required is to apply mass locally, aim for surprise and possess a strong desire to initiate contacts instead of responding to them.
On balance, Armed Forces can initiate more contacts provided acceptance of risk is the norm, not the exception. That can put the emphasis on prevention where it should be. However, the word I get from the 'Stan is a tremendous amount of ennui and 'we're leaving soon' angst, an unintended consequence of the domestic US politically induced announcement of a 2011 drawdown.
Add that we don't do patterns all that well because of the change of analytical teams (and Cdrs with differing idea...) annually or more often, that we go out of our way to discourage initiative at low levels and that force protection ranks well above initiating contacts and you have a recipe for risk avoidance. Thus we react instead of prevent.
Last edited by Rifleman; 11-11-2010 at 04:12 AM.
"Pick up a rifle and you change instantly from a subject to a citizen." - Jeff Cooper
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