Quote Originally Posted by Gian P Gentile View Post
And I imagine if you put a Coin proponent in a room with me as a "Con" proponent and said take this list of defense resources and start cutting, then produce a scheme for how to organize and train the military and specifically the army for the future, well at that point agreement would most likely go away. I for one, in simplistic terms, would not want to trade-off armor and firepower in the force for more light infantry and soft-power-like systems. Certainly there is a need for the latter, but if it came to a tradeoff (which invariably all of these things must come to that) my vote would be for firepower and protection as a key element in the force.

Schmedlap: Well the exchange between me and LG has been interesting. I have made my points about his well articulated but in my mind still discrete views. But stepping forward a bit, if he is correct along with you about a bunch of rhetoric out there as to how Coinized the army has become but in reality it is not even close to that ideal, then I think we are in actually more trouble than less. That is to say we have the worst of both possible worlds here; an army that still can’t do Coin and an Army that in so trying to do Coin has become deficient in its capabilities at the higher end of the fighting spectrum.
Col. Gentile,

After some thought, I think you and LG were talking past each other a bit. Specifically it appears you each are looking at slightly different timeframes. Your writings strike me as more focused on the future while LG is focused on the present.

And time is a problem in this debate. There's a distinction, I think, between what we should be doing now and what we should be doing down the road over the long term (once Iraq and Astan wind down). As it stands now, my perspective is that current OPTEMPO in the ground forces simply do not allow enough TIME for sufficient training in both HIC and COIN. It would be nice to have a full-spectrum force, but unless the force can be increased (unlikely) or unless commitments in Iraq and Astan decrease (likely, the question is when), I don't see how the ground forces can maintain competency in both areas. And, judging from the debate between you and LG, it seems we might be at (or on our way) to what you correctly describe as the "worst of all possible worlds" which is incomplete competence in both areas.

So, what should we do over the short term? How will those short-term decisions affect what we do over the long term? It seems to me your concern (which I share) is that going full-bore COIN now will make the creation of a balanced force in the future more difficult - a problem that only complicates the "tradeoffs" you describe above. If we go "all in" for COIN now, how long will it take to recover those HIC skills once OPTEMPO allows more training time? Will the Army's future leadership, raised on COIN, develop a COIN "mindset" and eschew HIC as LG believes the current leadership is eschewing COIN? What are the alternatives? This brings us back to the problem of trying to fight a high-optempo COIN war while trying to maintain HIC proficiency. Our force ain't big enough to do both right now. Something's got to give or we'll continue to muddle through.