regardless of the tool
Slap observed:
.. my concern is a good tool will get all bent up and stuff if it is not applied inside a proper Strategic setting. The US often gets absorbed with a new tool and wants to use it all the time and everywhere and ignores the initial hard questions that need to be asked and answered. Why are they fighting us? and why should we be fighting them?
I agree 100%. No policy tool should be a panacea for what ails ya! I think design, if done with the overarching policy OBJ in mind will shake that out. SFA as a force employment concept to support an end must be done in the strategic and operational context. What I've tried to convey here (and Slap I'll ask Bill and Dave to see if we can iether post the slides here on the thread, or a hyper link to somewhere they can post them - even the PDF is too big) is that if your overall operational design to achieve the policy objective requires you to support the development of sustainable capability and capacity in a FSF, then using design to help lay out your SFA LOE is a good way to go because it generally occurs over a broader period of time, its has consequences beyond the immediate, it probably requires a whole of government approach (authorities, support, contingent development, etc.) and it allows the operational commander to forecast requirements over a broad period of time which support force development and generation - thus keeping us flexible, adaptive and more in balance.

I'd go back to Celeste Ward's piece that was put up on the SWJ Blog about COIN - the means and ways must be feasible, appropriate and suitable to the objective. As conditions and objectives change then so may the requirments, the approach required and the capabilities to enable it. Unfortunately our nature is to look for templates and organizational solutions that are programable (and I'd argue risk aversive) vs. doing the leader development and education that would make us adaptive as institutions. Human nature would seem to be prone to ossification of position (the inevitable Kung-Fu stance in the rice bowl).

One of the reasons I've made it clear I believe SFA is fundamentally a developmental activity (develop sustainable capacity and capability) is to highlight its not to be taken as lightly. Developmental work is hard, and requires a significant commitment of means and will that is subject to the conditions.

In some cases such as Afghanistan, SFA has been identified (by CENTCOM) as one LOE which supports the overarching policy OBJ. Now in light of that comment, and the other commitments we are currently either undertaking or considering undertaking, this equates to some significant capability and capacity to organize, train, equip, rebuild/build and advise to develop the Afghan secuirty forces ability to generate, employ and sustain itself to a point that it supports denial of safehavens to transnational extremists. This is not just about their ability to physically deny terrain to those extremists, but about the things that the denial of terrain (in all its forms) facillitates.

I'd submit that this is operational theory - with some factual precedence - that must be proven or disproven in the current set of conditions (which is something design supports). It is also the regional CDR's approach, and as such the supporting instituions should fully support it as much as possible - this does not preclude them from identifying institutional risk (I don't think they should get a vote on operational risk - not their job) which jeapordizes their Title 10 responsibilties (note - I did not say their authorities)

Wrt AfPak (and Iraq) - it would seem this is going to be around for awhile (unless we abandon the objective, or decide to accept the risk of a different approach - all approaches have risks). In all cases I don't think its the job of the services (or the functional COCOMs) to tell the operational commanders what their requirements are - although it would seem that there are those who disagree, or that it sometimes winds up being the case because the requirements are poorly articualted, because of politics or fears (both legitimate and not), or because a desired capability was simply not on the menu - "cheeburger, cheeburger, cheeburger - no Pepsi - Coke!"

We've got to get better at fully meeting the operational commander's requirements withthe desired capabilities. The right road to efficiency is through becoming more effective in our policies, programs and planning - not through adhoc processes and waiting for Godot.

Slap - I'll also send via email the slides - keep in mind they are a "functional design" only. The full up would be built around much greater context wrt the broader operational design and the knowledge which supports it.

Best, Rob