A Battle Over 'the Next War'

[Bill Moore]

Fuchs, point taken, I'll write it off as a communication failure on my part, so now back on topic.

Not too long ago I would have agreed with you on the relative importance of major wars versus smaller wars, but now I tend to believe the smaller wars fought during the Cold War were important to our national survival and our international status; furthermore, and more germane to today, I think the series of small wars we are waging against an enemy who is intent on destroying our way of life is equally important, or perhaps more than some some major wars. If we revisit history and assume we were unable to oust Saddam from Kuwait that would be a terrible upset in the global order with profound consequences, but in the end Saddam would still sell the oil and the West would still exist. Other major wars could have much more serious consequences. The point is I don’t think we can determine the relative importance of war by its scale anymore, and I think that will increasingly become the case as irregulars and individuals become increasingly empowered with greater technology. The level of importance of small wars is approaching, or has approached parity with major wars. While I agree we must be able to win major wars, we also must be able to defeat emerging irregular threats that threaten our way of life. Defeating irregulars requires a different strategy than defeating regulars, and it also requires different formations and equipment in addition to our current conventional capabilities.

Most of our potential enemies know that if they plan to challenge us in a conventional fight, they will have to move quickly to secure their objectives before we can project ample combat power. That means we must be prepared to fight this type of war coming out of the gate, and assume that we probably won’t have time for a train up prior to deploying to fight, it is a come as you are war, ready or not. Assuming this is true; then one could make an argument that MG Dunlap is correct and most of our equipment and training should be focused on this type of war, but do we do so at the expense of losing so called small wars? Of course not, so the challenge remains finding the correct balance. MG Dunlap expresses an extreme view and those who think the Armed Forces should complete revamp themselves to fight irregular wars represent another extreme view and the extremes inform the middle, so both views are useful.

I think our Soldiers are quite capable of rapidly transitioning between the regular and irregular warfare at the tactical level if they have capable leadership and the correct strategy. On the other hand, I don’t think our staffs are capable of shifting gears that quickly. I still support developing a cadre of expert irregular warfare (interagency) planners to form irregular warfare task forces (IWTF), complete with regional experts, that will can quickly provide a Hqs element for providing strategic/operational level planning and command and control for irregular warfare. I think this was missing in both Afghanistan and Iraq after the initial fight, so we had capable Soldiers on the ground who were rudderless are given poor guidance because their command didn't understand the nature of the new fight. V Corps was a good war fighting headquarters, but they were slow on the uptake to adapt to the irregular fight. We can’t afford to have two armies, one for conventional warfare and one for irregular warfare, but we may be able to afford forming IWTFs to command and control our warriors after the conventional fight is over with.

I'm not sure what this would like, or how you would transition from major offensive operations to stability like operations, but I know we don't do it that well. Our doctrine hasn't evolved significantly enough to address that transition so we can quickly take advantage of any windows of opportunity that offensive operations may have created.

[davidbfpo]

I've not read this thread in detail, but noticed the comments on the lack of capability amongst NATO's European members (excluding the UK - thanks Bill) and the question why.

During the Cold War and the confrontation with the USSR Western Europe (as distinct from current NATO) spent a huge amount on defence; Federal Germany hosted a huge garrison - not that the US Army will have forgotten. When the USSR collapsed a host of reasons led to a reduction in budgets, manpower and will etc.

Here in the UK we now know the British Army, dispite all the money, was flawed; the First Gulf War showed that to deploy a single armoured division (approx. 40K troops) the rest of the Army was stripped bare. There are signs today we are spending our money on the wrong things (see other threads).

Yes, there is a conspicuos lack of political and public will to think, let alone spend money on defence in European NATO.

I've yet to read the latest commenary by IISS: http://www.iiss.org/publications/str...-capabilities/

Do we care about the threats? Yes we do, just differently from the USA, as we always have and will in an alliance. An alliance few challenge now.

Now to work.

davidbfpo

[William F. Owen]

Here in the UK we now know the British Army, dispite all the money, was flawed; the First Gulf War showed that to deploy a single armoured division (approx. 40K troops) the rest of the Army was stripped bare. There are signs today we are spending our money on the wrong things (see other threads).

Wallah! - as we say here. Actually only parts of BAOR was "stripped" and bear in mind we deployed an armoured Division that was never meant to be deployed. It relied on Corps level support based in Germany. - Now there were huge things wrong with BAOR, but it was never designed to deploy an Armoured Div to the Gulf - nor should it have been.

Yes, we are spending money on the the wrong things, because the Service Chiefs want to spend it on the wrong things and don't allow/want debate for forward thinking. The forward thinking is all in silly ideas like "EBO", "Complex Adaptive Warfighting" and other nonsensical gobbledygook.

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