The Fallacy of HIC vs COIN

[reed11b]

Unfortunately I have chosen the topic hardest for me to describe subjectively as my starting point. While the topic has been discussed in some detail in the community at large and our community in particular; I have no real knowledge as to why U.S. military culture seems to lead to micromanagement. All I can see is the obvious results. I have seen Brigade commanders tell individual soldiers were to move too, Colonel’s direct fire teams, a mother may I attitude to initiative, and a focus on operational coordination instead of cooperation. While I am not in a position to know why, I do speculate that it has a lot to do with how the Army does not allow for units to have any long term cohesiveness thru constant manpower turnover and PCS, as I will address in the next post, and from the aggressive up our out policy. Regardless of the reason’s why, this environment that encourages micromanagement hurts our abilities to fight in many spectrums. While we have done ok in HIC with it recently, we have hardly faced world class opponents. I recall reading an AAR on the march to Baghdad that stated that the incompetence of the IA was legendary, and that many opportunities to create maneuver bottle necks, such as blowing bridges across the Tigris, were never even attempted. Many of the more successful tactical practitioners of modern HIC warfare used initiative from the there small unit leaders coupled with strategic directions from higher to direct there operations. This same technique is often sited as a necessary tactic for LIC and COIN operations as well. I would further argue that this trend towards micromanagement has had a significant impact on how our forces are structured and what weapons systems we acquire. Yes, an F-16 with 1,000lb bombs puts awesome firepower available for a squad in trouble, but what if that F-16 is directed to another priority? Why do we not focus more on firepower organic to the maneuver units themselves? Guided Mortars provides precision firepower at the Squad to fire team level, but we chose Brigade assets because they are more “economical”. They are also directed at a higher level, and I feel this is not anecdotal to there priority. Pure speculation of course, but one that has some support. To address this trend would benefit the nations’ combat operations capabilities, both HIC and LIC and even OOTW, but we would have to understand why it exists before we could fix it.
Reed
P.S. I am going to have to re-visit this topic at some point, and try to be more clear.