There are also other problems...If you believe the cultures of Indonesia and Morocco have much in common, you need to travel more. Afghanistan and Iraq are far more closely located and they're two totally different cultures. Plus, who says the issues will occur in Muslim areas.Fortunately, there's a lot of overlap--as in, Muslim culture has similarities from Indonesia to Morocco.
I spent 45 years training or helping others to train for a land war in Europe. Never been there but I've eaten a whole lot of rice on many occasions in several nations over a good part of those years...During the Viet Nam unpleasantness, we trained people to speak Viet Namese -- then sent a lot of them to work with Montagnards who did not speak Viet Namese. I have visions of Dari speakers playing with Urdu speakers -- or Arabic speakers.Also, because we don't start new conflicts every year, we could target relevant regions for languages. For instance, we're not leaving Afghanistan or Iraq any time soon, so you could start with Arabic and the Persian languages.That doesn't address the personnel turbulence issue -- US Army units typically rotate about 20-30% of strength annually, thus your Dari speaker goes on PCS to Korea. We may improve on the turbulence and we should but it will still affect your proposal.But it would likely have to also include a random mix of languages and customs (like Somali, Korean, Urdu, etc.)That's the point -- do not target soldiers for regions, that will in any implementation fragment units. Units are very important even though the US Army due to a 1917 derived personnel system consistently refuses to recognize that. Individuals are trained to be a part of a unit; Reed and Schmedlap are right, once you get an individual trained to be a competent soldier, he or she goes to a unit and that unit trains to do its job; COIN or MCO, the differences in what that unit does are relatively minor. How well -- or poorly -- it performs is largely a function of its leadership (the collective)....that is, unless the Army went along with Schmedlap and started PCS'ing people every five or six years and sending units back to the same places. In that case, you could really target soldiers for regions.
You have to train Units for their job; the effort should be toward generic training with occasional forays into specialized training for various environments. For deployment to specific areas, Training Packages, tailored to echelon (Plat/Co; Bn/Bde; Div/TF/JTF) with language and cultural stuff and structured for rapid learning are used. Those package have to offer EXTRA information and guidance for NCO leaders, for Co Officers and for senior commanders (and their vastly oversized staffs). The Packages must contain not only cultural and custom information but also should be very current politically and culturally -- that currency would not be present in a School course; I spent seven years in TRADOC and they do not do current...
Well, not very well, anyway.Nothing wrong with ideas, the more the better. However, in the end, the Army has to settle on ideas that are effective (not that it always does...); training individuals for specific locations faces the difficulties of which locations and how much training coupled with when and where those individuals are assigned. The bureaucracy doesn't handle those aspects at all well. The probability is that an excessive amount of training will be given on areas an individual never sees -- or that is dated and no longer relevant.Bottom line, I don't know. It's just an idea.I suggest that it would merely move that debate into the Platoon that had a half dozen 'counterinsurgents.' The Platoon should be focused as a unit on its job -- which can be performed in all spectrums of combat.I just think that having half a dozen trained and qualified counterinsurgents in each platoon would alleviate a lot of this debate on "fighting" versus "COIN."
The key to that transition ability is well trained and competent leaders. For a variety of reasons, some valid, some specious, we do not address that fact as well as we should.
You mentioned Ranger School and the 'philosophy' of having Ranger trained folks scattered through out the Army to sort of stiffen everyone. Good theory; in practice it doesn't work. Nor does Ranger School develop superior combat leaders -- it is too short and too intense; too much important stuff has to be left out. What Ranger School does accomplish is teaching future leaders that they're tougher and can do more than they might think. That's a big plus and is applicable in any spectrum of conflict. I can see no pluses in a Counterinsurgency School that would be short, intense and leave too much out.
OTOH, if 'counterinsurgency' techniques which are universal were simply embedded in ALL training as it was at one time...
It ain't that hard.
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