New Interagency COIN Manual

[Reid Bessenger]

...if we had focused our training around Coin at the expense of conventional warfighting would the march to Baghdad in March 2003 have looked the same?

Of course counterfactual speculation is just that, speculation.

Much room for different perspectives here. Might it be that the training you refer to in TTP is essential regardless of application, and that COIN begs education foremost? This is no argument that major combat operations require little education, nor that COIN doesn't tax TTP execution or innovation. Rather, I'm trying to paraphrase what you have here to see if I'm tracking. I think that the manual refered to at the beginning of the thread speaks to a factor of integrating sources of national power at a lower level to advantage in COIN as opposed to what can be reasonably expected to work in major combat operations.

[LawVol]

I'll probably have to run for my life once the Air Force gets my grid coordinates. I guess I'll just have to live in a cave and release the occasional video to al Jazeera. Or Fox.

We have them.

[Jimbo]

A couple of points:

The interagency "manual" isn't a manual, it is a guide. the guide serves as an educational tool. It's focus is to educate senior policy makers on the civilian side of government as to what COIN is, what tools are available, and some very generic best practices. The success of this document should be viewed in the light that you got action officers from every agency in one room on a regular basis, and they put this thing together, and the higher ups in the different departments are going to potentially agree on it (it ain't published yet).


3-24 vs 3-0. At Leavenworth they are teaching both. The long pole in the tent appears to be how to operationalize 3-24 concepts with 3-0 tools.

[RTK]

3-24 vs 3-0. At Leavenworth they are teaching both. The long pole in the tent appears to be how to operationalize 3-24 concepts with 3-0 tools.

I rest my case

At the small unit and tactical level, I'd argue (hurry up jcustis, I need you) that MCIP 3-33.01, Small-Unit Leader's Guide to Counterinsurgency, is much more appropriate when coupled with the appropriate troop or platoon level FM and ARTEP.

[Stan]

Hey Rex !

I hope they're shouting "TALLINN!" or they kinda missed that whole unification of Germany/NATO expansion thing

(Really, Stan ought to be posting this one *lol*)

Jeez, a guy can't take his better half out to dinner anymore
It's Friday...already !

There's a very good reason why those prop jobs are no longer near Estonia's borders, we've had NATO fighter patrols since 2004. What's more, October plans include USA F-16 rotations

I wouldn't worry myself over another Fulda Gap, the boys in Moscow are content with sending cockroaches into space

GROUND CONTROL, September 14 (RIA Novosti) - The first experiments are due to begin on board the Foton-M bio-satellite, launched Friday on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur space center, the head of the project told journalists.

The cockroach-carrying bio-satellite, whose passengers also includes snails, lizards, butterflies and gerbils, took off at 3 p.m. Moscow time (11 a.m. GMT).

The satellite, and its on-board equipment, is functioning normally, and artificial day and night cycles have already been put into motion for the gerbils, the spokesman told journalists.

This BTW, has little to do with this thread !

[LS]

I would disagree. I absolutely love the SF community and have worked extensively with them over the year but, in my opinion, most of them retain kind of an A team perspective. That is perfect in an El Salvador type sitaution where the U.S. footprint is very small and is primarily focused on small unit advice and support, but less so in an Iraq type situation where we bascially have to rebuild security forces from the ground up at the same time that we ourselves undertake large scale stability operations.

Phrased differently, SF is the most exquisite tool on earth for certain situations, but they are not the right tool for everything irregular.

I don't completely disagree with your statement above. I have over 15 years in Army SF, and over 25 associated with SOF in general, and have to say that some of the flag-level officers who "get it" the best don't have direct time in SOF. While some from the SOF community are focussed almost exclusively on the kinetic door-kicking aspects of Special Operations.

But where I think your observation falls short is two-fold. Your statement implies a static situation (and therefore a static solution). As the situation changes on the ground, the mental agility and predilictions required of the commander might change as well. Second, I think that this "post conflict" phase of the engagement there is the ~perfect~ match for a commander with SOF experience. And I don't just mean exposure to SOF, but actual experience in and with the units.

SOF doesn't obviate a capacity for and competence in good old-fashioned ass-kicking warfare; Army SOF are required to have at least one tour under their belt as a "regular solider or officer" before coming aboard. But it does extend the skill-set and (I would suggest) exponentially expand the conceptual approaches to conflict management in ways that traditional military training doesn't (or hasn't yet).

In my civilian life I pull-together teams of military, prior-service, civilian and others to do nation-building around the world. What I like about the SOF mentality is that their going-in position is to think out of the box. They recognize that if an off-the-shelf solution would adequately address a particular problem it'd have already been solved by other competent and respectable elements of our national power.

Thanks for the interesting debate.

LS