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Thread: “’Dishonest Doctrine:’ Or, How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love Coin Doctrine”

  1. #121
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Facile and not particularly helpful list

    Quote Originally Posted by Eden View Post
    It's hard to disagree that we should train for the next war, not the last, but I have very little faith that we (and by that I mean TRADOC) will be able to divine just where and when we will fight the next war...
    That's the point -- we cannot, therefor we have to be prepared to operate in all spectrums. If there is excessive concentrarion on the last, then something will generally be omitted that is applicable to the next one as I'll show below.

    ...Maybe I just traveled in the wrong crowd, but I don't remember anybody in 2000 suggesting it was time to start training for counterinsurgency in Iraq...
    The issue is not what was done in 2000. The issue is that the Army deliberately downplayed and tried to ignore COIN and nationbuilding after Viet Nam because they concentrated on THAT war and did not want to do that again.
    In fact, do a little thought experiment. Starting in 1900, imagine how likely it was that we would properly envision the next war, or set of wars, as we planned out the next two decades of training for the Army.
    Your list in italics

    1900 - Next US War after the recent unpleasentness in the Philippines will be a major conventional war on the continent of Europe.

    Exactly. And the Army which had for years been training at distributed operations and had only one division levle exercise took excessive casualties in France due to that lack of focus on mass.

    1920 - Next US War will be a virtual repeat of the recent major conventional war, with the Pacific thrown in for good measure. Oh, and the Army will need to become expert at amphibious operations.

    Actually, it was the Marine Corps who foresaw the phib problem and the Army's concentration on WW I tactics and techniques caused a lot of excess casualties in Norht Africa and in Sicily. an Army that had trained for the static warfare of WW I found itslef fighting a mobile, fasst paced war and it did not do that well. Armies who don't do things well always suffer excessive casualties.

    1940 - OK, this one is an exception - or is it? Who would have forseen after WWII that our next war would be a limited one on the Asian continent?

    No one and that again is the point...

    1960 - 500,000 men need to be trained on semi-conventional counterinsurgent warfare.

    Yet an Army trained for your previous item as well as the next item went to SE Asia and tried to fight a land war in Europe while stuck in Rice paddies...

    1980 - Our next opponents will be the Sov...oh, several insignificant Latin American countries.

    Yes on the Soviets but being in the Army then, I recall absolutely no concern with Latin America other than for a few SF types.

    1990 - Coming up, we get a chance to employ all those wonderful tanks after all!

    Yes, we did -- and got lulled into thinking the next one would be similar. It was not...

    "Prepare for the next war, not the last" is one of those true but useless aphorisms. Unless our prognostication skills radically improve, preparing for the last war will be just as useful as preparing for what we imagine the next might look like.
    Partly correct -- the real requirement is to prepare to fight a war; that's what Armies get paid for. Preparing for the next war is rarely possible because one rarely knows where and what it will be. Being fully prepared to fight the next war, whatever and where ever it is, is an entirely different thing -- and is always going to be more promising than preparing to fight a repeat of the last.

    By the way, I have "major conventional war in Europe" in the office pool.
    If that's a pool on the next, I expect you'll lose...

  2. #122
    Council Member Sargent's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eden View Post
    Maybe I just traveled in the wrong crowd, but I don't remember anybody in 2000 suggesting it was time to start training for counterinsurgency in Iraq.
    I think the 1990s were all about how to contend with failed states, irregular warfare, insurgencies, and so forth. Van Creveld's On Future War suggested that such conflict as we face in Iraq would be the norm -- ironically, by arguing that the conflict we faced against Iraq in 1990/1 was "the last scream of the American eagle." Certainly Mogadishu was a prelude to Fallujah. Because of everything that was going on, I and a few others tried to put together a course on American experiences in small wars in m final semester at SAIS (1995) -- the bureaucracy couldn't handle it, so we did it as an ad hoc brown bag.

    I seem to recall that the military was not entirely keen to divert their attention from the primary mission of preparing for conventional war to pay much attention to this end of the conflict spectrum.

    Fast forward to 2003, and I would submit that Euro experience in the various missions of the 90s was a basis for their reticence re taking action in Iraq -- they knew the problems of trying to simply take care of a broken Humpty, let alone trying to put him back together again.

    Best,
    Jill

  3. #123
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    Default Violent agreement...almost

    Ken,

    I think we both agree that the institutional army, for the past one hundred years at least, has been pretty abysmal at predicting the nature, demands, and location of our next war. While there have always been voices in the wilderness, with few exceptions our forces have rarely matched the mission when the balloon went up. Even the Gulf War, where we had the right type of Army, was more serendipity than strategic foresight.

    Where we disagree is on what to do about it. You say - I think - that we have to be fully prepared to fight across the spectrum of conflict, so that whatever contingency arises, we will be ready. I say that is impossible.

    My own thinking on the subject is that:

    1. The reason why we have the luxury of fighting small wars is that no one can challenge us in a big one. The foundation stone of our security is not success in Small Wars but unrivaled capacity for Big Wars.
    2. The stakes in the present crop of and future potential Small Wars are low. I'm sorry, I know a lot of the avid readers of this blog don't want to hear it, but defeat in, say, Iraq, while discomfiting and humiliating, would not have a huge effect on our national security.
    3. Preparing an army to fight both major conventional battles and to fight wars requiring distributed, small unit operations, is not possible, no matter how much money you throw at it. There simply isn't enough time. This stuff is hard, on both ends of the spectrum.
    4. Since losing Big Wars is much more dangerous, and since a larger percentage of skills learned in preparing for conventional wars are transferrable to Small Wars than vice versa, focusing on conventional warfare seems to have the biggest payoff.

    So, the objective should be to maintain your conventional warfighting skills and keep your powder dry. Human nature and bureaucracies being what they are, this usually means your training program looks like the last war. But this is usually a closer match with the future than our prognostications have ever been.

  4. #124
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eden View Post
    Ken,

    I think we both agree that the institutional army, for the past one hundred years at least, has been pretty abysmal at predicting the nature, demands, and location of our next war. While there have always been voices in the wilderness, with few exceptions our forces have rarely matched the mission when the balloon went up. Even the Gulf War, where we had the right type of Army, was more serendipity than strategic foresight.
    I'd expand that to say most all Armies. There are a couple of exceptions but they're rare indeed.

    Where we disagree is on what to do about it. You say - I think - that we have to be fully prepared to fight across the spectrum of conflict, so that whatever contingency arises, we will be ready. I say that is impossible.
    Difficult but far from impossible. We were very near that state in the late 50s-early 60s; then came McNamara and the Brothers Kennedy...

    My own thinking on the subject is that:

    1. The reason why we have the luxury of fighting small wars is that no one can challenge us in a big one. The foundation stone of our security is not success in Small Wars but unrivaled capacity for Big Wars.
    Absolutely.

    2. The stakes in the present crop of and future potential Small Wars are low. I'm sorry, I know a lot of the avid readers of this blog don't want to hear it, but defeat in, say, Iraq, while discomfiting and humiliating, would not have a huge effect on our national security.
    Agreed on the last item, on the first, possibly but thats an unknown unknown...

    With a serving son, I've got a vested interest in no repetition of the Army screwups in Iraq and Afghanistan; those he had to deal with in both theaters were broadly unnecessary. While the errors made were understandable, they stemmed from an attitude that essentially mirrors yours; "we do big wars." That attitude did not do the Army, the Nation or anyone involved any favors. Aside from which with a bunch of years in or near the green machine it was an embarassment to me, a microscopic concern. It embarassed the Army (or should have). It was flat unnecessary.

    It took us seven years to stop fighting a big war in Viet Nam before we got smart. We're getting better, this time it only took 18 months -- I contend that had the theater been more volatile, we would not have had that ime.

    We're on the way to fixing that, the fear that we will go overboard is real and that needs to be resisted. We do not need to go down the COIN only route, that would be far worse than going down the big war only route and I suspect we'd agree on that.

    My contention is that we are more than capable of doing the full spectrum and that it is not nearly as difficult as you seem to think. It is also that if we fail to do that, we are not taking care of the Troops -- nor are we providing the nation the capabilities that may be required.

    3. Preparing an army to fight both major conventional battles and to fight wars requiring distributed, small unit operations, is not possible, no matter how much money you throw at it. There simply isn't enough time. This stuff is hard, on both ends of the spectrum.
    Quite strongly disagree. I've done both and so have literally millions of others. It ain't that hard...

    Do you mean preparing an Army -- or preparing a unit?

    Money is not the main issue, innovative thinking (anathema to today's bureaucracy), trust (ditto) and freedom to fail in training (ditto again) are the keys to it. Time is always an issue and training distractors are rampant but with a little will, they can be ameliorated.

    4. Since losing Big Wars is much more dangerous, and since a larger percentage of skills learned in preparing for conventional wars are transferrable to Small Wars than vice versa, focusing on conventional warfare seems to have the biggest payoff.
    Good bureaucratic and metric based answer...

    Who in the Army focuses on what is the issue...

    So, the objective should be to maintain your conventional warfighting skills and keep your powder dry. Human nature and bureaucracies being what they are, this usually means your training program looks like the last war. But this is usually a closer match with the future than our prognostications have ever been.
    Agree on the prognosticators, agree on human nature and bureaucracies -- strongly disagree on the prescription.

    That's safe and easy but looking at the world scene, likely to cause undue casualties (of all types to all side and to civilians) early on before the force adapts (see: Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq). Full spectrum is only in the too hard box if you assume every unit would be so qualified. That is difficult enough to approach impossibility and would be inordinately resource consumptive.

    Having the Army trained and capable of being a full spectrum force by providing appropriately trained and equipped units and full spectrum doctrine and training capability is a very different thing...

  5. #125
    Moderator Steve Blair's Avatar
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    4. Since losing Big Wars is much more dangerous, and since a larger percentage of skills learned in preparing for conventional wars are transferrable to Small Wars than vice versa, focusing on conventional warfare seems to have the biggest payoff.
    This sounds suspiciously like the Army's position right before major units were committed to Vietnam.

    Gotta agree with Ken in that it's perfectly possible to have a force with properly trained and equipped units that is capable of full-spectrum operations. The problem is that such a force goes against the Army's entire institutional history. That and the simple fact is that low- to mid-level intensity operations are much more likely than the major war that the Army has traditionally trained to fight. What is (IMO) causing the culture shock is that prior to the end of the Cold War the Army was often able to avoid the smaller commitments...which were taken on by the Marines. This forced them to look seriously at full-spectrum operations (and they've been doing them in one shape or form since before World War I).

    This isn't to say that the Army as an institution isn't capable of them: they've demonstrated this capability many times throughout our history. It's that as an institution they don't LIKE to do them. Large force-on-force combat has been preferred since the Revolution (if not before)...no matter what the actual conflict potential happened to be.

    We tried centering our national defense on only major conflict at least once: Eisenhower's doctrine of massive retaliation. It didn't work too well. Limiting your options to only a handful of preferred cases almost never does.
    "On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
    T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War

  6. #126
    Council Member Ron Humphrey's Avatar
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    Post Just an aside

    I may have missed something because these threads get really long, and really deep , really quick ,but

    Isn't the AF supposed to be that major multiplier which turns general boots on the ground, and mech infantry into major conflict fighting assets quickly by diminishing the opponents overt capabilities.

    Then you throw in the navy with everything from coms, to marines, to missiles
    add a BIG sprinkling of big tanks and there you go full spectrum.

    I realize this is a vast oversimplification but I am sometimes confused by how often I hear the term Full Spectrum Ops yet see or hear little reference to those other forces in that picture.

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    Council Member Tom Odom's Avatar
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    Default Full Spectrum Ops

    Ron

    Full Spectrum Ops is an Army term designed to meld all levels and all means of combat into a understandable framework. Differences with past efforts is the idea that various levels/types of warfare are occurring at the same time.

    Combined arms is again ground forces centric but includes fires and that means fires by all means includiing aerial fires.

    Joint warfare keys on the combination of multi-service capabilities in war. Combined warfare extends that idea to multi-national. I still here lots of guys talking combined when they really mean joint and vice versa.

    Best

    Tom

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    In order to achieve and maintain a Full-Spectrum Operations capability, how does the US Army subsequently structure and apportion its forces (once - and if - Iraq is more or less reduced to a much more modest deployment)? Does it task, for example, XVIII Airborne Corps with most of the LIC and COIN missions, along with the requisite equipment and training for those roles? Would III Corps eschew LIC and COIN missions entirely and focus training and equipment on MIC and HIC? How would I Corps fit into this; after (presumably) focussing mainly on MIC, where would its swing capability go to - LIC and COIN, or HIC? Given this example, if the Army did go such a route in the future, how capable of fighting a major or even a general war might it really be?

  9. #129
    Council Member Tom Odom's Avatar
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    Default FM 3-0 Operations

    Norfolk,

    Look at FM 3-0 for the discussion of Full Spectrum Operations

    Once you read that section, you will see that performing full spectrum operations is very much METT dependent. Big surprise, I know.

    Best

    Tom

  10. #130
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Your suggestion is essentially what was done back in

    Quote Originally Posted by Norfolk View Post
    ... Given this example, if the Army did go such a route in the future, how capable of fighting a major or even a general war might it really be?
    the late 50s. The XVII Abn Corps was training on about an 80 / 20 ratio of LIC / HIC. The III Corps was purely heavy (and reinforcing for V and VII) a couple of loose Infantry Divs were not assigned to either stateside corps and had a swing role.

    The training regimen for XVIII Corps included cultural and language training (101st f/Asia, backup to Korea) and the 82d for South America and Africa (backup to Europe).

    Fast forward to 2000. There was little real difference other than fewer Divisions (and the ones that were gone were from Europe) and the 101st was Airmobile and not parachute. It trained pretty much full spectrum with an emphasis on HIC. The 10th Mtn guys did the same as did the 82d who also did airfield seizure as a backup to the Ranger Regt who then had that mission as primary. The LIC mission for XVIII Corps was, shortsightedly, gone.

    Without going into an overlong dissertation, the answer to your question IMO is it would not adversely impact the HIC capability at all; that's nowadays a heavy div chore (unless we get into a war in urban Europe which is an interesting if unlikely scenario for many reasons).

    As I've said before, I spent 45 years training for or helping train for a land war in Europe. Never been to Europe but I sure have eaten a lot rice...

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    Guys,

    When you say that it is possible for units to be trained for full-spectrum operations, you are saying that you can produce units trained to do all things and do all things well. In my experience that is not possible. Units can only become proficient at a certain number of tasks in the real world and those skills are highly perishable. I took over as the S3 of a maneuver battalion just as it returned from six-months guarding Haitians at Guantanamo Bay. The unit was incapable of operating above the platoon level, and didn't recover fully for 18 months. Fighting in Small Wars saps your skills at fighting in Big Wars - just ask any artillery battalion commander or air defender coming back from Iraq or Afghanistan.
    The higher you go the worse the problems. Brigades and above need to train together to be proficient; they don't do that when preparing for Small Wars. Oh, they may all go to the JRTC at the same time, but they are not practicing operating together, just operating in the same general area.
    Now, you can have an army where half of the units are trained and equipped for the low end of the spectrum, and half are trained and equipped for the high end. This has its own problem set, but I will admit it is possible and may even be desirable - I remain an agnostic on that issue.

  12. #132
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Uh, not what's being said, I don't think...

    Quote Originally Posted by Eden View Post
    Guys,
    When you say that it is possible for units to be trained for full-spectrum operations, you are saying that you can produce units trained to do all things and do all things well. In my experience that is not possible.
    I generally agree with that but suggest that these kids today are capable of doing a lot more than they're asked to do by an anachronistic training regimen (which is admittedly improving). I'd also suggest they are, generally, several orders of magnitude ahead of my day and a couple ahead of the early to mid 90s. A lot of the post Viet Nam deadwood departed in the 1999-2002 period.

    However, I've been very careful to emphasize we need a full spectrum Army, not full spectrum units (though there will be very few units that have to do that -- and can; they've done it before).

    The higher you go the worse the problems. Brigades and above need to train together to be proficient; they don't do that when preparing for Small Wars. Oh, they may all go to the JRTC at the same time, but they are not practicing operating together, just operating in the same general area.
    Agreed.

    Now, you can have an army where half of the units are trained and equipped for the low end of the spectrum, and half are trained and equipped for the high end. This has its own problem set, but I will admit it is possible and may even be desirable - I remain an agnostic on that issue.
    Cool. However, I think you'll find that we're headed for a low end, a high end and a swing center. I also think you'll find that it works...

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    Hmmph...METT-C (I'm like Ken, I still haven't adapted to the last "T" yet - besides, my old Ranger Handbook was the '84 version, and only this year did I dispose of it in favour of the '01 and '06 versions). But I am concerned about Units and Formations having the time and resources for training for whatever roles they are tasked with. I suspect that the best, practical way to ensure that is to dedicate entire formations to primarily one level of warfare, with a modest leavening of the other two included to round things out. I can understand about determining Formations roles by the anticipated METT-C of the areas that their superior Regional Commands have responsibility for, but you shouldn't have to pick your Formations apart in order to assemble something to deal with a situation that ignores the anticipated METT-C of each Regional command. Like V Corps pulling COIN Ops with Heavy Divs (and SBCTs' and Abn/AirAslt/Light Divs/Bgds) in Iraq. You do what you gotta do, with what ya got, but...

    In the 90's, the Canadian Army went for over a decade with no Formation-level training at all (they've tried to restore it in the past few years), and no Unit-level training either for nearly a decade. Company/Squadron/Battery-level was it, because we were bogged down in Stability Ops in the Balkans, Africa, and Haiti. And I don't need to go any further into those because a lot of the people on this board 'bin there and did that. It was incredibly destructive to morale, discipline, and training. I'm definitely with Eden on this.
    Last edited by Norfolk; 12-15-2007 at 12:22 AM.

  14. #134
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default True. But...

    Quote Originally Posted by Norfolk View Post
    . . .
    In the 90's, the Canadian Army went for over a decade with no Formation-level training at all (they've tried to restore it in the past few years), and no Unit-level training either for nearly a decade. Company/Squadron/Battery-level was it, because we were bogged down in Stability Ops in the Balkans, Africa, and Haiti. And I don't need to go any further into those because a lot of the people on this board 'bin there and did that. It was incredibly destructive to morale, discipline, and training. I'm definitely with Eden on this.
    You didn't have the gross strength to have people train for three specific portions of the spectrum and present a credible force in any one the three at a given time. We are fortunate enough to do so.

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    Council Member Ron Humphrey's Avatar
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    Default As long

    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    You didn't have the gross strength to have people train for three specific portions of the spectrum and present a credible force in any one the three at a given time. We are fortunate enough to do so.
    as we don't lose the battle to internal territorial forces which always seem to contribute to the success or failure of anything attempted

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    A thought: While many of the military skills are perhaps focused on one end of the spectrum of warfare, there's a lot of the LIC/COIN skillset that would only be helpful in MIC/HIC situations.

    Example: Language training. Cultural awareness training. Somehow, I think it'd only help combined operations (at any level of conflict) if we could get to the point where most of the officer corps can at least speak one language besides English fluently.

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    Canadian Army Journal, Spring 08: Manoeuvre Warfare Theory and Counterinsurgency Doctrine
    ....The key to manoeuvre warfare, as expressed by proponents like William Lind and Robert Leonhard, was the defeat of the enemy by attacking his criticalvulnerability rather than going toe-to-toe with his strength. By the mid 1990s, most Western armies had converted to this school of thought, at least in their doctrine manuals, and were teaching their young officers the principles and techniques of this ‘new’ form of warfare. However, since only recently adopting this new theory, Western armies are faced with insurgencies rather than mid to high-intensity wars. Does this mean that manoeuvre warfare theory is no longer valid or applicable? This essay will attempt to answer this question by first defining manoeuvre warfare theory and COIN theory as they exist today, and then determining if the former is in any way applicable to the latter. The intent is to examine whether the campaigns of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) do necessitate starting from scratch with regards to doctrine.....

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