COIN v. Conventional Capability Debate

[Granite_State]

To what extent, if any, are people making distinctions between two pairs of issues:

(1) COIN as urban-warfare/kinetic ops rather than peacekeeping and policing

(2) Ability of soldiers and Marines, given proper training, to conduct both missions vs. service doctrine, procurement, training, etc., becoming focused on COIN to the detriment of potential developing situations

That is, for #1, I would certainly agree that troops are more than capable of conducting the kinetic side of COIN ops or engaging in high-intensity maneuver warfare, but you guys wouldn't agree that we've seen some issues in Iraq and Afghanistan with units having serious adjustments from kinetic combat ops to more policing-based stability ops?

Additionally, the example of the IDF and Lebanon in 2006 is a bit of a frightening precedent.

As for #2; the personnel themselves will be able to conduct themselves in either environment, but is there not a danger of gearing the Army's "tail" systems too exclusively for COIN?

And yes, I certainly see the irony in suggesting that after years of ignoring the problem we may now be too exclusively prepared for COIN. . .

Regards,

Matt

Good post. Although from the little I've read on Lebanon in 2006, it looks like the Israelis had a host of leadership and organizational problems that can't simply be explained away as the result of decades of West Bank and Gaza service.

Seems to me that procurement is the big elephant in the room. I saw General Sir Rupert Smith speak last year, and while it was a good talk, he repeatedly said "I'm not here to talk about equipment, it is how that equipment is used that has changed", which struck me as evasive. Ultimately, with a finite amount of money to spend (and maybe less and less, the financial shape we're in) choices need to be made. Not to turn this into another F-22 thread, but we can't invest in more light infantry, and spend a lot more on recruiting, retention, professional military education, etc., if we're buying tons of new fighter planes and destroyers at hundreds of millions of dollars a pop.

[Entropy]

Seems to me that procurement is the big elephant in the room. I saw General Sir Rupert Smith speak last year, and while it was a good talk, he repeatedly said "I'm not here to talk about equipment, it is how that equipment is used that has changed", which struck me as evasive. Ultimately, with a finite amount of money to spend (and maybe less and less, the financial shape we're in) choices need to be made. Not to turn this into another F-22 thread, but we can't invest in more light infantry, and spend a lot more on recruiting, retention, professional military education, etc., if we're buying tons of new fighter planes and destroyers at hundreds of millions of dollars a pop.

Procurement, especially WRT the long lead and development timelines for new equipment, is certainly an issue. But so is the AVF. Even if most procurement money was diverted into manpower, recruiting, etc., how much more manpower could be raised? So far it looks like the Army will have trouble meeting the modest end strength increases it's received. Is it even possible to recruit the manpower we'd like to have for Iraq and Afghanistan - perhaps double the force we have now?

Furthermore, we must consider the scale of conflict. We need a COIN capability obviously, but how much do we need? Enough for another large Iraq-style operation or something smaller? Those kind of questions are what underpin the capability requirements in QDR's which determines where the money goes, etc. Personally, I see "small wars" being more the norm in the future, but I think it will be a generation or more before we do something like Iraq again which is a "small war" in name only.

[Granite_State]

Procurement, especially WRT the long lead and development timelines for new equipment, is certainly an issue. But so is the AVF. Even if most procurement money was diverted into manpower, recruiting, etc., how much more manpower could be raised? So far it looks like the Army will have trouble meeting the modest end strength increases it's received. Is it even possible to recruit the manpower we'd like to have for Iraq and Afghanistan - perhaps double the force we have now?

Furthermore, we must consider the scale of conflict. We need a COIN capability obviously, but how much do we need? Enough for another large Iraq-style operation or something smaller? Those kind of questions are what underpin the capability requirements in QDR's which determines where the money goes, etc. Personally, I see "small wars" being more the norm in the future, but I think it will be a generation or more before we do something like Iraq again which is a "small war" in name only.

Absolutely, I think increasing the armed forces, especially given demographic and economic considerations, will be really hard. And in regard to your second paragraph, I used to believe the standard line, "we don't have enough ground troops, Bush/Rumsfeld should have made the Army much bigger after 9/11, etc.", but recently read an article Steve Metz co-wrote a few months ago, where he talked about how we shouldn't be basing our manpower needs on Iraq and Afghanistan, which are probably anomalous, we need to craft a grand strategy which suits our advantages. Really opened my eyes.

Still, if we're spending hundreds of billions on FCS, F-22, and other platforms, even much more meager funding for small wars specifics is going to be hard to come by. Not to mention, I'd tend to think that a service built around these super expensive, high tech platforms, and needing to justify them to Congress and itself, is going to be a service that plans its warfighting and service cultures around them (Air Force resistance to CAS, Big Army still in Fulda Gap mode).

[William F. Owen]

@ Although from the little I've read on Lebanon in 2006, it looks like the Israelis had a host of leadership and organizational problems that can't simply be explained away as the result of decades of West Bank and Gaza service.

@ Seems to me that procurement is the big elephant in the room. I saw General Sir Rupert Smith speak last year, and while it was a good talk, he repeatedly said "I'm not here to talk about equipment, it is how that equipment is used that has changed", which struck me as evasive.

The more I study the operation in the Second Lebanon War, the more I become convinced that,

a.) a lack of funding was the critical problem. The cheap options on training, deployments and equipment, all had disastrous effects. The same lack of funding stuffed the British Army in 1940.

b.) there was a leadership failure, at the highest levels, to understand what would have been useful and how it should have been gained.

I don't like Rupert Smiths book, because it is short on solutions and advice, but he makes some good points. He and I had a fairly sharp exchange of views when he spoke at the House of Commons, two years ago, as to where the blame for the current situation lies. However, he is right about equipment. Fighting insurgents does not generally require specialised equipment, that does not have some application fighting other threats. MRAPS could be worth their weight in gold, as concerns some of what they bring to the party.

[Ratzel]

What exactly is the major concern regarding the transition from COIN to HIC? If we look at the battle of Fallujah, it seems as if the Marines and Army were very capable in conducting HIC within the larger COIN environment?

Besides Fallujah, our ground forces have conducted large scale operations in Iraq and Afghanistan which were HIC in nature?

I've been out of the Army for about 4 years now so can someone please give an idea of what the major concern is? I would think that the military would be more "battle hardened" than it has been since Vietnam? Are units doing no HIC field exercises at home station?

Give me a scenario in which our "worst fears" would occur.

[SteveMetz]

What exactly is the major concern regarding the transition from COIN to HIC? If we look at the battle of Fallujah, it seems as if the Marines and Army were very capable in conducting HIC within the larger COIN environment?

Besides Fallujah, our ground forces have conducted large scale operations in Iraq and Afghanistan which were HIC in nature?

I've been out of the Army for about 4 years now so can someone please give an idea of what the major concern is? I would think that the military would be more "battle hardened" than it has been since Vietnam? Are units doing no HIC field exercises at home station?

Give me a scenario in which our "worst fears" would occur.

The major concern is that winning battles is not the key to success in counterinsurgency.

[William F. Owen]

The major concern is that winning battles is not the key to success in counterinsurgency.

I concur. I don't see "winning battles" as accurately describing the capabilities required to defeat both insurgents and combined arms formations.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the only reason you restrict the application of force against Insurgents is to prevent civilian casualties, because you must protect the civilians. That gives you the freedom of action to do other things - elections, build schools etc.

If the insurgents are out in the jungle, away from civilians, you kill or capture them, like any other enemy, and making best use of resources - so capture is preferable because of exploiting intelligence.

If the enemy has a Motor Rifle Regiment parked in a town in Texas or the Ukraine, you are still going to have to destroy all his vehicles, without killing too many civilians. If the Motor Rifle Regiment is thundering across a desert somewhere, then "nuke it from orbit" -

[William F. Owen]

What exactly is the major concern regarding the transition from COIN to HIC? If we look at the battle of Fallujah, it seems as if the Marines and Army were very capable in conducting HIC within the larger COIN environment?

Besides Fallujah, our ground forces have conducted large scale operations in Iraq and Afghanistan which were HIC in nature?

Exactly. That's why I do not like the LIC/HIC description. You may need the same operational skills to fight insurgents, as you would any other enemy. In terms of capability, Insurgents are variations on light infantry.

The debacle in Mogadishu, in 1993, was a failure to understand the threat, and the capabilities they possessed. The type of conflict was utterly irrelevant, except that it confused people as to the capabilities required.

[SteveMetz]

'At least for the foreseeable future, only the military that plants its flag on the enemy’s hilltop is the victor.' - Ron Tira The Limitations of Standoff Firepower-Based Operations

So we've won in Iraq?

[William F. Owen]

'At least for the foreseeable future, only the military that plants its flag on the enemy’s hilltop is the victor.' - Ron Tira The Limitations of Standoff Firepower-Based Operations

So we've won in Iraq?

As Ron said t me over lunch the other day, "he does not completely agree with his previous position!" ...and to be fair, this is taking his quote out of context.

Actually, in terms of "victory" is believe this to be correct. In terms of "peace" it fails to be useful. Few, if any Insurgents have ever been defeated by a "military victory,". What seems to defeat them is "peace" - as in security and the denial of their ability to threaten it, so I think we may be in agreement.

[Gian P Gentile]

Ratzel asked:

I've been out of the Army for about 4 years now so can someone please give an idea of what the major concern is? I would think that the military would be more "battle hardened" than it has been since Vietnam? Are units doing no HIC field exercises at home station?

The American Army (and Marines) are battle hardened after 6 years of Astan and 5 years of Iraq. No question about it; lots of hard-nosed combat experience. But it is a combat experience of a certain discrete type using certain types of discrete combat skills. We should not delude ourselves to think that just because we are good at coin and the types of combat ops that go along with it in Iraq that we are automatically prepared for other forms of higher intensity combat. I have used this example before but consider the fact that operational logistics in Iraq are node-based and carried largely by civilian contractors. What would happen if a couple of combat brigades in Iraq had to pick up, move in a certain direction and conduct a sustained land operation in the field without fixed bases for support for 3 months? You see the concern here? When was the last time in Iraq that a Division moved off of its fixed base and conducted a movement to contact? Not since I was a BCT XO in the march up in 2003. Clearly there is supreme tactical expertise at the small unit level with the combat outfits fighting in Sadr city now; but we should not confuse that expertise with the kind of expertise that it took the lead American armor divisions in the break out of St Lo. And again the Israeli experience in Lebanon is instructive here. Read Andy Exum's superb battle analysis of Hiz in that fight where they fought tenaciously as small squads of infantry and AT teams. The Israeli Army was woefully unprepared for this higher level of fighting after many years of conducting counter-terrorism ops in the Palestinian territories. These are the concerns that many of us in the American Army have today; and they are not made up and hyperbolic but real. Lastly, the British 7th Armored Division by 43 had themselves become battle-hardened after years of fighting the Germans in north Africa. But when that 7th Armored Division hit the beaches in Normandy and over the next few weeks tried to take Caen they ran into many problems due to unfamiliarity with the new terrain and a different German force. The point here is that battle experience of one type is not automatically transferable to another.

Wilf said:

That's why I do not like the LIC/HIC description. You may need the same operational skills to fight insurgents, as you would any other enemy. In terms of capability, Insurgents are variations on light infantry.

Agree, sort of. At the very small unit level of say infantry squads the skill set for hic/lic is similar. i mean in coin in Iraq do we really think that a private rifleman or cav scout is meeting with the nac chairman or imam? Of course not, he is doing basic stuff like providing security, shooting, kicking in a door, zip cuffing, observing and reporting, etc. But take things a number of levels up from there and that is the point where you start to run into problems and where it is important to distinguish between hic/lic so as to see where certain skills have atrophied.

[SteveMetz]

As Ron said t me over lunch the other day, "he does not completely agree with his previous position!" ...and to be fair, this is taking his quote out of context.

Actually, in terms of "victory" is believe this to be correct. In terms of "peace" it fails to be useful. Few, if any Insurgents have ever been defeated by a "military victory,". What seems to defeat them is "peace" - as in security and the denial of their ability to threaten it, so I think we may be in agreement.

Fair enough!

I need to come up with some more pithy epithets that people use in their signature line. But that's not easy for me: I'm often described as pith poor.

[Jack]

We addressed this subject with Col. Robert Abrams on a Bloggers Roundtable back in November. Here is the transcript:
http://www.defenselink.mil/dodcmssha...transcript.pdf

According to him and others I've spoken with the gist of it is we must train for the fight we're in with an eye toward the future so there are no plans to quit combined arms training, but our deficiency today is in COIN. We'll be doing both now, but as soon as we get better at COIN we'll see more balance.

A friend of mine currently downrange had this to say in our discussion on this very subject yesterday:

"I just finished nearly 18 months of TRADOC schools at Fort Benning last year and the cadre were adamant about not teaching or facilitating COIN in the curriculum. They went out of their way to avoid delving in COIN discussions it seemed to focus basic skills and knowledge development in the core functional areas of conventional war fighting and military decision making. The reasons my instructors would give were of two sorts. First, they would indicate that the Tradoc command intent was to prepare for the battles and wars in the future, not the current ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. The second explanation was that as soon as we left our safe structured environ in Tradoc and joined a unit, we would mobilize and attend a COIN train-up giving us the latest TTPs and CALL experiences, delving into the COE in Iraq. They were right, much of my training to deploy this round was COIN centric. Although, much to my dismay, I am using NONE of it!"

Frontier 6 also has had much to say on this. I'm sure we can search around and find his comments, which I believe will probably bring us back to Col. Abrams take on it.

My point - we must first take out the 25 meter target.