The David Kilcullen Collection (merged thread)

[Steve the Planner]

Starbuck:

Good citation.

I am always fascinated by the dichotomy between localized, low level discussions of COIN, by the folks struggling under great personal threat to apply it, and the incompetence at the higher levels to understand what it is or how the local efforts can succeed and connect to anything bigger or sustainable.

Bing West joins Entropy and I in beating the dead horse of Lord Kelvin---If you can count it, you can know something about it. Almost ten years in, and no Americans know whether there are 20 or 34 million Afghans---but we know, or pretend to know that 12 million of them are in US-supported schools.

Bet some NGO can cite a bogus enrollment figure down to the last kindergartener, but it obviously doesn't mean much.

To me, as long as the big US gaps remain basics like functional Combat Demographics, and Governmental Process Mapping, this stuff is just a bunch of theorists making noise while soldiers struggle in the field without adequate planning, resourcing and strategy that could do anything other than, year after year, asking for another year.

Getting serious and honest at the upper levels would be a good start to finding meaningful solutions, but, right now, as West notes, COIN is a theory in search of a War to prove it.

My guess is that if General Petreaus creates meaningful solutions (whatever that means), they will later be disclosed to have been driven by SF, CT, and just plain killing bad guys. The population will, afterwards, be no better or worse off than it was before. The rest is smoke....the kind that regularly blows around the Beltway.

[MikeF]

Okay, so I let my personal and professional life take me away from my study of warfare for a couple of weeks. I know, I know, no excuses. Back on track.

One area where Dr. K and I find common ground is his definition of the composition and nature of an insurgency. IMO, he is an expert in this arena. As he's finishing up the introduction, he offers a picture to illustrate the components. Figure 1.1 Surface and Subsurface Elements of an Insurgency (p. 8). I can't find one previously published so I'll describe it and offer my thoughts.

He starts with a pyramid of insurgency design. From top to bottom, it's

1. Insurgents/Terrorists
2. Supporting Infrastructure
3. Sympathetic networks
4. Population base

He then immerses this pyramid into water with with a broad deliniation of the detection threshold.

This is a marvelous viewpoint. As Dr. Gordon McCormick tells us (paraphrased), "an insurgency is really not an assymetrical fight, at least not in the beginning. The host nation retains a comparative advantage in Mass through it's military arm, but the insurgent maintains a comparative advantage in information. He can see us, but we cannot see him."

It is exactly like standing on the shore and looking at the ocean. One can see the tide roll in and out. For most, they are comfortable in describing the ocean in that manner. However, when one takes the time to dive deep into the water, another world appears. Insurgencies are no different, and a true counterinsurgent must determine how best to dive deep into the water and see what's going on.

So, I applaud this figure.

[Backwards Observer]

"...but the insurgent maintains a comparative advantage in information. He can see us, but we cannot see him."

Oddly enough, this was the first concept they taught us in a feminist literature class in the Eighties (the 1980s, not 1880s). They even used a venn diagram for the "dumb guys" in the class; being slower than most, I didn't even understand the venn diagram.

Apparently, the idea was that male culture is a lot more "present" than female culture. Some further argued (loudly) that "female culture", as commonly understood, was also largely a product of male culture. Therefore, "true" female culture is to a great extent, unknown. There was also an implication that the visibility of male culture made it easier for the savvy feminist or femme fatale to manipulate those who unquestioningly accepted its symbolic heft.

Out of the five guys in the class, one dropped in the first week and three more by mid-term. I made it through but had to take a semester off to recover. It was an interesting class, however.

[MikeF]

Oddly enough, this was the first concept they taught us in a feminist literature class in the Eighties (the 1980s, not 1880s). They even used a venn diagram for the "dumb guys" in the class; being slower than most, I didn't even understand the venn diagram.

So, that's what I've been missing all these years .

[jmm99]

I don't have Kilcullen's latest, but your description of his Figure 1.1 Surface and Subsurface Elements of an Insurgency (p. 8) clicked a residuary brain cell.

Back in the 1960s - the era of muscle car Oldsmobiles (your grandfather's big block rubber stripping 442), SORO (American University, Special Operations Research Office, a non-governmental agency operating under contract with the Department of the Army) published two studies:

1963 Undergrounds in Insurgent, Revolutionary, and Resistance Warfare - SORO.pdf

1966 Human Factors Considerations of Undergrounds in Insurgencies - SORO.pdf

Both are on the "Suggested readings on insurgency and counterinsurgency" from That Place on the Hudson.

The 1966 study had a pyramid (Fig 6) which looked like so:

SORO Pyramid.jpg

So no one will have to squint, I'm attaching a pdf file with Fig 6 and SORO's explanation for its pyramid.

The question is whether the 2010 muscle car is an improvement over the 1966 model. It also may involve the ultimate Wilfian concept that nothing under the sun is new.

Your analysis of these two 45-years-of-separation vehicles is sought.

Regards (from your grandfather Ransom, who is happy to see you screw off every now and then)

Mike

[Bob's World]

I don't have Kilcullen's latest, but your description of his Figure 1.1 Surface and Subsurface Elements of an Insurgency (p. 8) clicked a residuary brain cell.

Back in the 1960s - the era of muscle car Oldsmobiles (your grandfather's big block rubber stripping 442), SORO (American University, Special Operations Research Office, a non-governmental agency operating under contract with the Department of the Army) published two studies:

1963 Undergrounds in Insurgent, Revolutionary, and Resistance Warfare - SORO.pdf

1966 Human Factors Considerations of Undergrounds in Insurgencies - SORO.pdf

Both are on the "Suggested readings on insurgency and counterinsurgency" from That Place on the Hudson.

The 1966 study had a pyramid (Fig 6) which looked like so:

SORO Pyramid.jpg

So no one will have to squint, I'm attaching a pdf file with Fig 6 and SORO's explanation for its pyramid.

The question is whether the 2010 muscle car is an improvement over the 1966 model. It also may involve the ultimate Wilfian concept that nothing under the sun is new.

Your analysis of these two 45-years-of-separation vehicles is sought.

Regards (from your grandfather Ransom, who is happy to see you screw off every now and then)

Mike

...and you could superimpose it over the Jones Insurgency Model.

[Ken White]

...and you could superimpose it over the Jones Insurgency Model.

As the latter came after the former one could also say the Jones Insurgency Model is the announced codification of "The building of a revolutionary movement" with a few current era tweaks and some personal beliefs added.

Nothing wrong with that -- and as I've long said the model is good.

Though I have also long said and still do suggest not getting too enamored of the pyramid or the model because there have been, are and will be some variations on the themes therein contained that can make target fixation a potential -- and problematic...

[slapout9]

by LTC Mark Grdovic

http://www.soc.mil/swcs/swmag/Assets...de%20Final.pdf

[Backwards Observer]

So, that's what I've been missing all these years .

As dem rasta say, "who feels it, it knows it, Jah." My slack-jawed impression was that thousands of years of wife-beating had created virtually unbeatable (so to speak) mistresses of fem-insurgency. Respect.