"Does the Army Need a Full-Spectrum Force or Specialized Units?

[Jones_RE]

It seems to me that the authors were just assuming that this specialized force would be 1) ready when needed for a future conflict, 2) available at the time and 3) in the right area with its resources.

I sincerely doubt a specialized counterinsurgency unit could meet any of those criteria. Had such a unit existed in 2003, it's personnel, equipment and training resources would probably have been raided to make up for shortages in the line units getting ready for OIF. It also would already have deployed everyone else to Afghanistan. Finally, the process of readying and moving the unit to Iraq would have taken quite a long time.

Even when such a unit is up and running, there's no guarantee that a high intensity force would be needed to deal with a blowup like Fallujah, Ramadi or Najaf. And all three of those happened at about the same time! This hyped up advisory corps would have been storming Fallujah by itself when their Iraqi recruits folded. In Ramadi, they'd have been overrun.

General purpose forces will never be ideal for any mission. But it seems to me (as a civilian) that in war doing something now is more important than doing it perfectly.

[William F. Owen]

"Does the Army Need a Full-Spectrum Force or Specialized Units?"

I assume I am not alone in considering the nature of the question as part of the problem. There maybe no stupid questions but this one indicates a real lack of understanding.

The Manoeuvre Warfare crowd always tout the old focus on "the enemy and not terrain" and yet that has clearly produced a very limited mindset, where enemy and terrain are seen as defining the problems and not opportunities.

One well trained and rationally equipped army can do anything you want it to. What someone needs to ask is why some armies fail to be able to do it.

[Gian P Gentile]

Sullygoarmy uses this quote from "The Centurions" after his posting. Although this is a tengent from the main thrust of this thread the quote he used got me to thinking:

I'd like to have two armies: one for display, with lovely guns, tanks, little soldiers, fanfares, staffs, distinguished and doddering generals and dear little regimental officers...

The other would be the real one, composed entirely of young enthusiasts in camouflaged battle dress, who would not be put on display, but from whom impossible efforts would be demanded and to whom all sorts of tricks would be taught. That's the army in which I should like to fight.

The Centurions

Well it seems to me that we have it the way Larteguy wanted it. We have the American combat soldier and combat marine who fights in Iraq and Afghanistan everyday in their "camouflaged battle dress" and then we have the Army back on display here in the United States. That display force is actually the metaphor of perfectness created of the American fighting soldier by the supporters of both wars; that is to say the notion that the American fighting soldier can do no wrong, that he is perfect in his actions because he supports and carries out a righteous ideological cause. The image at the President's state of the union address of the service members in full regalia sitting behind the president's family are examples of our actual fighting army that is on "display" to the American people. The sad irony during the President's speech is that as we looked at those brave service members on TV just hours before 5 American combat soldiers were killed in Mosul. Such is the two armies that the author of "The Centurions," Jean Larteguy called for.

[selil]

Colonel Gentile,

At first I read this and thought, "smoke on the water and lucy in the sky with diamonds", then I realized, dang he's right. Unfortunately I think you will always need a political Army and a fighting Army. I don't know if you can have both.

[Ken White]

,,, I don't know if you can have both.

Nor do you need both. People are either soldiers or they aren't. Not 'warriors' or 'warfighters' -- soldiers (or Marines). Warriors are amateur soldiers and professionals and it is said a good pro can whip a good amateur any day.

Being able to put on a pretty uniform is part of that job...

The US Army has not been to war since 1945 -- parts of it have been in several wars but the Army as an entity has not. That is a fact of life in a democracy. I'm not sure we really want to change that. In any event we now have a slew of combat experienced junior Officers and not too many Generals who have much. Luck of the draw, it could've been different. It wasn't. It isn't...

I read all of Jean Larteguy's books. They were pretty good. I'm thus familiar with his cited quote. I always put that down to someone who hadn't really thought through what he said.

[Skullbiscuit]

Once again, the Army comes up to a problem representing an external threat which does not play to its preferred COA of force on force attrition,

• goes through a lot of pain in coming to grips with the fact that it does not like to do small wars and working non-kinetic solutions

• says its got to get smart on training for COIN and training will be the solution to all the inadequacies of the current force

• says learning about other cultures is an important part of COIN and we need to do it

And finally forgets that it too has a culture and a system which fosters that culture, and that culture with its underlying system lead it in great part, to the situation it finds itself in when kinetic operations cease and then it is "now what?".

But no worries, we'll train ourselves out of this problem. We'll forget about Force Management, OPMS, Branches, the Senior Rater driven OER with its total subjectivity, career "tracks". In a word we will forget about OPMS politics and through training alone we will overturn (permanently) deeply entrenched institutional biases and their underlying often unspoken cultural prejudices.


I have a bridge....it is in Brooklyn

SB

[Ken White]

No worries, nothing will change...

...
And finally forgets that it too has a culture and a system which fosters that culture, and that culture with its underlying system lead it in great part, to the situation it finds itself in when kinetic operations cease and then it is "now what?".

Exactly. Now what? Isn't that about where we were five years or so ago?

But no worries, we'll train ourselves out of this problem....

Good luck with that. I don't think you can train yourself out of any problem. What you can do is train better so that you have less problems.

... We'll forget about Force Management...

That would be a good start; we survived without it for almost 200 years and through more complex times than today.

...OPMS...

That would really help as DOPMA is a big part of the problem. Only real difficulty there is Congress who forced it on the Army -- and I'll easily acknowledge that's the hardest impediment to better capability to remove from your list.

... Branches...

Great plan -- they and their parochialism are an impediment. The Marines get by without them (and at the rate the USMC is going, they'll be bigger than the Army in fifty years... ). As do other world armed forces (at least to the extent of clout we give them). Look at the bright side, the Navy's Bureaus were even more parochial and powerful than our branches, yet, the Navy finally got rid of them (They now have 'communities' ). Maybe if we did that, the M8 wouldn't disappear as a quid pro quo for Armor support of Infantry's Bradley. Maybe the troops could have a better rifle due to less Building 4 lobbying for the status quo...

...the Senior Rater driven OER with its total subjectivity...

Absolutely no way to get rid of subjectivity in personnel performance rating or evaluation. You can clarify it by adding Peer and Subordinate rating (Horrors!!!). you can also rig the OER so that no raters names show on the front page the board sees (Just joking, the Generals will never buy that).

... career "tracks"...

your quotation marks say it all, don't they? They are a big part of the problem; DOPMA again...

In a word we will forget about OPMS politics and through training alone we will overturn (permanently) deeply entrenched institutional biases and their underlying often unspoken cultural prejudices.

Well, that would be a start -- of course, if you think they're beneficial, by all means hang on to them. You'll have a lot of allies, many in high places.

I have a bridge....it is in Brooklyn SB

Really I thought that was a Tree grows in Brooklyn. The Bridge connects Manhattan and Brooklyn so it's in both. Well actually, it's over the East River, so... Oh, never mind...

Nobody said changing a monolithic organization chock full of its own long standing culture and tons of biases and skewed systems would be easy. Nor did anybody say anything about tearing up all the norms and forms. Branches don't need to disappear; they do need to lose some of their clout. DOPMA will be hard to amend; hard is not impossible. The issue is, simply -- are some changes needed? If so what? What's achievable?

Better training IS achievable and as those better trained Privates become 1SGs and those LTs become COLs over time, they will change the culture...

Of course, not giving new entrants the best possible training can always be justified by citing the cost. Has nothing to do with not wanting smarter folks. surely...

A WW II Intel Officer, David Ogilvy said:

"If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.”

Makes sense to me.

As always for those not so inclined in any study of courses of action doing nothing is always an option.