How we fight Wars?

[William F. Owen]

My pre-occupation here is the need to differentiate between opponents rather than conflicts.

A while ago, good ole Norfolk made an interesting observation, which was that in general fighting a so-called peer-competitor required the mastery of such complex operations, such as “passage of lines,” and I would add “opposed breaching and obstacle crossing.”

He went on to suggest (and jump in here Norfolk if I am paraphrasing too much) that such operations were not present in so-called COIN. – This I believe to be generally accurate.

So we have to do things because the enemy has capabilities that force us to conduct certain types of operation? Is this correct?

This may be a statement of the bl**dy, or "Boydian" obvious, but if anyone has any deeper or more relevant insights, post away or PM me.

[jcustis]

I would argue that even in an OIF context, we still do passage of lines. It just isn't quite as detailed as it may be against a heavy-mech foe as you surge forward into an ATK Position. The coordination is still made, the weapons status can still change, etc.

This is at least in units that I think maintained a degree of "tactical professionalism" so to speak, even if engage in a fight against lesser capability.

You're on point, because most often enough, a lot of folks don't like to do things because of the time and energy involved, and thus it can be true that the only reason why they get away with it is because no one (i.e. the enemy) was able to call them on it.

[Eden]

I think if you raise your sight picture higher you'll see that we do a lot of different things and a lot of things differently depending on the nature of the war that we are fighting.

There are a lot of things that are very similar - translatable skills - regardless of the type of war. In Afghanistan I witnessed Canadians breaching obstacles, conducting river crossings, calling in air strikes, etc., all against a strongly entrenched and relatively well-equipped enemy. Some American outposts employed claymores, final protective fires, and barbed wire against determined infantry assaults. There are artillerymen out there getting excellent training in counterfire techniques, the integration of LCMR, surveillance, and aviation.

What you don't get are the higher-level command and staff functions. Just a few examples: Intelligence officers are doing things they did not routinely do in the past, such as link analysis, pattern-of-life analysis, or uncovering the economics of IEDs. What they are not doing is the deep terrain analysis and templating that used to be their stock in trade. Aviators, air defenders, artillerymen, intelligence officers, and operations officers are not planning deep strike or SEAD missions. Public Affairs officers, lawyers, and information operators are deeply involved in core staff activities in ways they will not be in high-intensity combat. Battalion and Brigade commanders are conducting - when they really know their business - complex, distributed operations but will have little opportunity to employ their units in a single operation.

Soon, if we haven't already reached that point, we will have senior leaders who have rarely commanded and controlled a battalion, let alone a brigade, in a single place for a single objective. Many field grade officers will never have participated in such an operation, even in training. They will have a schoolhouse understanding of how such operations work, but little experience in how to anticipate, overcome, or take advantage of the friction of high-intensity combat. Those skills, and many others, will rot.

It is an inevitable consequence of fighting small wars. Excellent, maybe even better, platoons and companies; a cadre of leaders who have seen the elephant; but staffs and higher level echelons poorly prepared for large-scale operations.

[Maximus]

I stated in an earlier post that "war" is "war" is "war." In my opinion, same thing holds true here. The principles / fundamentals / considerations for a successful relief-in-place operation in Korea in 1951 were the same they were for Chamberlain in 1863 and the same they are today in Iraq or Afghanistan, namely, exchange liaisons, know the battlespace, do a detailed recon, bring key leaders, UNDERSTAND OR IN "BOYDIAN SPEAK" ORIENT ON YOUR ENEMY, execution of the RIP is the most dangerous part of the operation because the enemy has exeprience on the ground and you don't, etc. Not much changes in most operations. Except today, because, as JCustis points out, some have lost their tactical skill or professionalism, we need Kilcullen to write rules such as "prep for your turnover from day 1" so that we remember how important it is to arm our successor with information about the enemy, the terrain, be this "human" or physical, weather, etc. when conducting a RIP.

WRT Small Wars might not involve opposed breaching, etc. Not always the case. Experienced much of this in Najaf in Aug '04. Insurgents rolling 55-gallon drums of fuel down hills at our tanks, booby-trapped entry ways, the entire cemetery being rigged with "IEDs" not mines. This was "war" in every sense of the word, and very similar to what Israel recently experienced against Hezbollah in S Lebanon. This is also why I think we need a balanced force that trains across the entire spectrum of operations. Dealing with this fight was very hard, but then again, trying to figure out the complex nature of the Mahdi Army after the shooting stopped was just as difficult, if not more difficult. And then rebuilding indigenous forces, fixing everything we blew up, etc. was an entirely different challenge.

WRT to differences for higher level commands and staffs... not sure that I agree. A battalion commander today generally has a much larger AO and units dispersed all over the place. I'd argue in many ways this is harder to command than a battalion consolidated in vehicles pushing North along a highway. Depending on training, maybe the battalion's lost some of the art of Desert Storm Combined Arms warfare, but even here, how realistic is it that an enemy in the future will sit in the open desert against a western military. This was one of Israeli's biggest problems; Hezbollah "hugged" the IDF ground forces, fighting from well-concealed and fortified bunkers that often didn't engage until the IDF was within danger close of most supporting arms or CAS. As to differences in intel functions, I definitely think we short-changed intel in the past and are now only catching up. For example, in OIF I, in the "conventional" phase of the war, when pushing North along Rte 7 to Al Kut and later up Rte 6 to Baghdad, I would have never thought to nor was I ever asked to take a picture of the enemy that we encountered, have a runner pass this to S-2 or e-mailing it up... yet, doing this would have armed the S-2 and potentially the entire battalion if not MEF with more info on who we were fighting based on uniform, weapons, fighting positions, etc. This would have subsequently allowed us all to better "orient" on the battlefield.

Changing subjects a bit, I find those who argue Boyd and his OODA loop are too obvious or useless, interesting. Most junior officers and SNCOs that I know, after reading Coram's book on Boyd or being introduced to the more complex version of the OODA loop, the one that emphasizes the orient phase, find this model extremely valuable in understanding the decision-making process, particularly when tryiing to understand enemy motivations, strategy, intent. These same Marines often wonder why they were never introduced to this model in formal schools...

[Norfolk]

Now this is an interesting thread. While I would qualify Wilf's paraphrasing of some of my earlier statements by saying that I was thinking of Formation-level (Brigade- and especially Division-level in particular) ops, and that I certainly do not rule out the same operations for Major and Minor Units Sub-Units, I am nevertheless in agreement with Wilf's statement about the "Opponents" rather than the "Conflict", making for a defining characteristic of the sort of War that one is fighting.

Certainly, as at both Battles of Fallujah, Ramadi, and a few other places in Iraq, and at Second Panjwai in Afghanistan, more "Conventional"-type combiend-arms operations at Major-Unit and even Minor Formation-level were required because of the capabilities of the enemy at the time and place. That said, those same opponent capabilities have largely defined both wars as Insurgencies that certainly do not require the ability of entire divisions to conduct such operations as passage of lines as needed, and found wanting, in 1991.

But as Eden has noted, this has led to a situation in which much of a generation of commanders has little or no experience in Formation- or even Major-Unit operations. Gian has been trying to get this point across for some time now, and this "Canadianization" of even the US Army may lead to well-trained Minor-Units, but also to an almost complete absense of proficiency in anything above that level.

[Cavguy]

But as Eden has noted, this has led to a situation in which much of a generation of commanders has little or no experience in Formation- or even Major-Unit operations. Gian has been trying to get this point across for some time now, and this "Canadianization" of even the US Army may lead to well-trained Minor-Units, but also to an almost complete absense of proficiency in anything above that level.

And as I said before, yes and no. By necessity, our operational force is COIN focused. Our institution is almost fully MCO focused in its education. Grab a POI for any PME course and you'll see what I mean. With 15 Brigades indefinitely in Iraq and two in A-Stan, the U.S. Army simply doesn't have the manpower to train for anything but the current fight.

The larger question remains -- not whether being COIN-only focused is bad, or whether MCO focus only is bad (ample evidence for both). The really important question is how we balance the two as these conflicts begin to wind down, and how we balance both the institutional base and the operational force to do both - and what that mix should be.

The handwringing over MCO skill loss and condemnation of COIN isn't moving the ball. Being unprepared in mindset and doctrine for COIN in 2003 has been disasterous for the U.S. Army and the national strategic posture and the future health of the force. We have to find the balance.

And I agree, there is a lot of task commonality - the same training is needed to operate an M-16 regardless of the environment. The disucssion doesn't necessairly have to change the TASKS or STANDARDS, only the CONDITIONS the task is performed under. The considerations of moving to contact is different in urban versus rural. Breaching a mehidi army obstacle in Najaf requires similar processes as a heavy breach. The condition of performing many tasks changes, and the associated considerations. There are very few new "tasks" needed for a MCO AND COIN capable force. Training them under a diversity of conditions is one partial solution.

[William F. Owen]

Changing subjects a bit, I find those who argue Boyd and his OODA loop are too obvious or useless, interesting.

If you want to start a thread on the OODA loop, I'll be in like a shot. I'm not going to get into it here.

[William F. Owen]

Good effort guys. Many, many thanks.

I did actually want to aim this at everyone from Sub-unit to Battle Group or formation level, so it would appear that tactical and operational dispersion, is a major factor.

Most comments here confirm a certain amount of gut feel, but I still think we may be missing something very obvious. How we do things now is not necessarily indicative of how things should be done.