Red Teaming Iraq

[SWJED]

Military Planners in Iraq May Soon be Seeing 'Red' - 19 January LA Times by Julian Barnes.

While the Bush administration is reworking its overall strategy in Iraq, military leaders in Baghdad are searching for new ways to improve the decisions and choices they make closer to the ground.

The U.S. military has sent to Iraq a five-person team of dedicated skeptics, known in military jargon as a "red team." In a war known for its missteps and unanticipated results, the team will be assigned to review, and question, military operations.

It will attempt to predict how enemies will react to various missions and what the unintended consequences might be. Such teams have been used on an ad-hoc basis to critique specific battle plans. But this team is the first to work full time as devil's advocates, and is the first headed by officers trained as designated skeptics by Ft. Leavenworth's University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies...

[jonSlack]

The success of this program will depend on the quality of the officers who complete the course and become members of the red-teams.

I would hope that CGSC and above are picking their most promising students and assigning them to receive the training and serve on a red-team after they complete their current level of military education.

However, I worry what will happen if the selection of personnel is left to discretion of the units instead and the mission is not given the priority it deserves by the leadership and results in the selection of less than ideal candidates.

You cannot train someone to be intelligent, they are or they aren't; you need to identify and train the intelligent.

[Steve Blair]

I really hope this isn't another rubber stamp like the AF's 'emphasis' on foreign language in ROTC.

The Army in particular and the US military in general has a long history of ignoring the environment they are fighting in, at least in terms of human terrain and the nuances found on the ground that are not directly related to physical climate and terrain. If we're going to succeed in Iraq and the next small war, this is a trend that we have to break. I must be a natural Red Cell guy, though, because I'm skeptical of the military's ability (at least with the current generation of leaders) to break this cycle. For every Mattis and Patraeus we have there are 10-20 other star-wearers who don't have a clue.

[SWJED]

There are a couple keys to success here - one (as mentioned) is the quality / expertise of the Red Team - the other is whether or not the powers to be accept the outcomes of Red Teaming if it tears apart their A++ oplan.

[selil]

They don't need specific military officers. They need members from this group like marct and Tom Odom playing the Iraqi side of the equation. Non-linear, outside of the box thinking, that doesn't put some junior officer telling a BTN commander "you suck".

[slapout9]

Gang leaders,drug dealers, organized crime leaders, captured insurgent leaders would be better, then it would not be a game so much as a simulation of what would really happen based on real world TTP's as opposed to just fault finding with the plan.