Flawed Doctrine or Flawed Strategy?

[William F. Owen]

Flawed Doctrine or Flawed Strategy?

Ok, having read this I am not going to suggest that the author has not got a legitimate beef with things that are wrong on the ground, but to say that is the result of various debates going back in the US stretches credibility to the extreme.

Now, I have no dog in this fight. What the US Army does is of little interest to me, except, I see US Army ideas filter out of the US Army and break other good armies, so I figure I might as well get in at the source.

Firstly debate is entirely necessary and healthy. If folks know what they are doing, debate about doctrine, should not impact on practise. Only when the doctrine is taught should the effects be seen. So those questioning COIN doctrine cannot be held responsible for its flawed or otherwise application unless some in the food chain are catastrophically stupid.

Now I can’t speak for Gian, but I can articulate my concerns.

Doctrine and Strategy are vastly different. Strategy is political. Doctrine is what is taught. You cannot confuse the two. What the US Army currently has an approach that sees something they call “COIN” as some distinct form of activity, that is (to quote FM3-24):
“COIN is an extremely complex form of warfare. At its core, COIN is a struggle for the population’s support. The protection, welfare, and support of the people are vital to success.” Now that statement my be incorrect, but it's not the problem.

COIN is a form of Warfare, and not a distinct one either. You cannot have separate armies with separate doctrines to fight different kinds of warfare. The British Army fought against major domestic insurgency for 23 years while maintaining the ability to fight the Soviet Army, the Argentines, the Guatemalans, and the Iraqis.

Clausewitz tells us that every war is different. Because insurgents are different, each insurgency will be different. What lessons of the WW2 were germane to War in Korea? The US Army nearly lost Korea, because of the rapid erosion of the skills needed to fight a Regular Army. Big Wars you can loose in weeks. You don’t have the luxury of taking 3 ½ years to write FM3-24, for example. NO one is arguing that the USA should not be skilled at fighting insurgents, but that should not create an unnecessary degradation of other capabilities. What capabilities are needed is a different debate, but the debate has to happen, and it is entirely healthy.

Creating an Army optimised to fight in Iraq, will not create success in Afghanistan, and vice vera. It will also not guarantee success when you intervene in the next Lebanese, or Jordanian civil war, and it will help none when you are fighting your way into North Korea, (the cease fire is over, is it not), or even Iran – and no one can say “we’ll never do that.” You've done some strange things before.

[Schmedlap]

Counterinsurgency is what you call an operation conducted by a large military presence that lacks so much intelligence collection capability that an enemy force can be constituted and coalesce around the military, without the military even realizing it, and the military then commences to fight against that enemy without any significant ability to discern civilian from combatant.

Hypothetical: Suppose we are fighting against an insurgency in a country where the population is suspicious of us and does not want us around. Suppose we know who every one of the "irreconcilables" are, where they are, and we have sufficient forces in place to promptly kill or capture them with minimal civilian casualties or collateral damage to local infrastructure/property. We also know who the fence-sitters are and how to avoid them. How tough would that counterinsurgency campaign be?

In terms of our professional training as Soldiers and leaders, there is nothing significant that needs to change. Recent operations simply have highlighted the areas in which we have been most negligent in failing to prepare as a nation. Most significantly, as a national security community - the whole 3-letter alphabet soup of military, intelligence, and other agencies - we have done a horrible job of maintaining our capability to collect, process, analyze, and disseminate intelligence in a manner that can drive our operations. The end result resembles a boxer going into the ring blindfolded. Instead of his trainers tearing off the blindfold, they start debating whether he needs to take up kickboxing or whether his determination to win this fight in spite of the blindfold will instill bad habits in him that might impact future bouts where he fights without a blindfold.

People scoff at the notion that, "we win every firefight."
"That doesn't matter," they say. "Just remember, we won every battle in Vietnam."
Exactly. Whether we are fighting insurgents in Iraq, Taliban in Afghanistan, foreign fighters in either country, a mix of regular and irregulars in Vietnam, old-school Soviet-style formations in Iraq, Panamanian whatevers, drugged stick figures in Somalia, etc, etc, we stomp the bejeezus out of the poor saps who choose to fight. What we lack is the ability to figure out who the bad guy is, how to locate him, and how to discern bad guy from civilian. Does that really call for a major change in how we train our combat arms Soldiers? Or is that a dramatic failure of intelligence? I say the latter. But because of the "can do" "make it happen" attitude in the military, the military is too quick to take full responsibility and adjust for the shortcomings of the rest of the government. That may be well and good in the short term, but the military also suffers from a propensity to overprepare and overdo everything, which is exactly what all of the COIN vs conventional nonsense is about.

The "COIN skills" that people talk about - language training, cultural awareness, etc - are nothing more than means to mitigate for the woeful shortcoming in our intelligence systems. That is the equivalent to training the boxer to occasionally push up on his blindfold with his oversized boxing gloves, rather than just removing the damn thing before he goes into the ring. Our training objectives do not need to change based upon whether we expect to fight COIN or conventional. The direct combat capabilties needed for each are the same.

What we need is to figure out how to develop the necessary situational awareness for our military. Otherwise, we're sending a blindfolded Gold Glove boxer into the ring against Glass Joe and we're going to lose. The only excuse for fundamentally changing how we train and shifting focus toward "COIN skills," or whatever term one wants to use, is if we assume that we will not be able to develop the intelligence systems in the next several years necessary to support our military in operations similar to those that we are having so much difficulty with today.

Flawed doctrine? Flawed strategy? No and no. Inadequate intelligence systems.

[Tom Odom]

The "COIN skills" that people talk about - language training, cultural awareness, etc - are nothing more than means to mitigate for the woeful shortcoming in our intelligence systems. That is the equivalent to training the boxer to occasionally push up on his blindfold with his oversized boxing gloves, rather than just removing the damn thing before he goes into the ring. Our training objectives do not need to change based upon whether we expect to fight COIN or conventional. The direct combat capabilties needed for each are the same.

What we need is to figure out how to develop the necessary situational awareness for our military. Otherwise, we're sending a blindfolded Gold Glove boxer into the ring against Glass Joe and we're going to lose. The only excuse for fundamentally changing how we train and shifting focus toward "COIN skills," or whatever term one wants to use, is if we assume that we will not be able to develop the intelligence systems in the next several years necessary to support our military in operations similar to those that we are having so much difficulty with today.

That is largely circular. Intelligence systems are a red herring when postulated as the be all end all answer to developing situational awareness, cultural understanding, or whatever gap you feel that you face. Insurgency and counter-insurgency involves more that plopping a conventional force in the middle of an insurgency and letting it learn by mistakes.

Again I have heard the mantra that perfect intelligence is a perfect solution for 30 years. You never have perfect intelligence and you never will. You have to train to adapt and in 2001 the conventional force was not the most willing student when it came to adaptability. Some absolutely refursed to accept the idea that one might have to fight an unconvetional foe; that reluctance ran from the top to the bottom.

Tom

[Bob's World]

Being a good counterinsurgent will not defeat an insurgency. Not understanding this one point leads to long frustrating operations. The problem is that the military by its nature is designed and trained to do the counterinsurgent mission as opposed to the much larger and more holistic counterinsurgency mission.

This is at the crux of much current debate. I don't have, nor does it exist, the perfect answer to the question, but if you can just get people to recognize the truth of the quesiton itself, you are heading in the right direction and they will sort it out.

Insurgency is a condition of political dissent and dissatisfaction between a populace and the governance over them (be it one they selected, inherited, or was forced upon them), that is willing to conduct acts of violence as part of their ways of resolving the problem as they see it. If one is a counterinsurgent one is simply attacking one Means and perhaps suppressing one Ways of achieving this change, but in no way removes the problem or addressess the insurgency itself.

So where does the Army fit into a holisitc counterinsurgency problem? Reasonable minds can differ. But recognize that it is a holistic counterinsurgency problem first, and not just a simple case of finding, fixing and finishing on a handful of insurgents, and you are on the path to a solid concept of operations.

So, to argue about strategy or doctrine of one's solution set as being at fault misses the larger issue of if ones understanding of what they are trying to do being the true problem.

[William F. Owen]

Insurgency is a condition of political dissent and dissatisfaction between a populace and the governance over them (be it one they selected, inherited, or was forced upon them), that is willing to conduct acts of violence as part of their ways of resolving the problem as they see it.

Yet again, I profoundly disagree. An insurgency is an attempt by Irregular forces/guerillas to gain a political objective, using violance. It is war using warfare. That is it. Nothing to do with popular support. Popular support helps.
Do bad governments sometimes suffer from Insurgencies? Yes, but it is not a defining condition.
Insurgencies can occur where the Government is popular, or at least not un-popular to the degree that the insurgency has popular support. That is historical fact. Sierra Leone being one example and the Arab insurgency against Israel in the 1950's and 60's.
The Khmer Rouge were not widely supported by the Cambodian people. More over so called popular support can be very patchy, yet enough to sustain an insurgency, such as was seen in Rhodesia, because of the tribal and ethnic problems.
Insurgencies are not always dependant on high degrees of popular support. Insurgencies can and do use violence to gain support.

Being a good counterinsurgent will not defeat an insurgency. Not understanding this one point leads to long frustrating operations. The problem is that the military by its nature is designed and trained to do the counterinsurgent mission as opposed to the much larger and more holistic counterinsurgency mission.

True, which is why the UK never used to talk about COIN. They used to say "aid to the civil power." The military have a role in COIN, albeit the primary one, until the insurgency is defeated.

[Bob's World]

I don't believe I have ever established some % of the populace that must either actively or passively support the insurgency, only that it is a significant segment of the populace. Many will want the status quo, many will want change, but change that is far different than what the group that has opted to add a violence LOO to their Ways and Means.

Even in a Democracy, a Bill Clinton can become President on 43% of the popular vote. Doesn't matter that 57% of the populace voted against him.

If the segment of insurgent populace is too small, too insignificant, like the Tim McVeigh crowd in Montana, it really doesn't rise to an insurgency as they are just too fringe of an element and the masses agree with neither their platform nor their tactics.

But when a significant portion of the populace agrees with the platform, even if they disagree with the tactics and don't actively join the insurgent organization you have an active populace based insurgency on your hands that must be addressed at the causal roots.

But to simply view an insurgecy as a military target to be engaged and defeated is very, very dangerous indeed; and typically merely provides some temporary sense of satisfaction for the counterinsurgent ("there, that will show them!"), while actually expanding the grievance and popularity of the cause, thereby making the insurgency stronger.

Firing rockets at Taliban camps in Pakistan makes Americans feel good. Motivating previously separate bands of the Taliban into a unified force against us and the government of Pakistan while increasing the percentage of the local populace's support for them is a very bad, (and very foreseeable) resultant consequence...

Sending the Worlds best Army to Boston, or the largest fleet in the world to New York may make the British feel good, but again, it was the wrong tool applied to the wrong problem to actually resolve the insurgency in a manner likely to be favorable to the counterinsurgent.

[Schmedlap]

You never have perfect intelligence and you never will.

Agree. While perfect or near perfect are unattainable, I think that we can do better than woefully inadequate, which is what our overall intelligence capability has been. My least favorite example occurred in the summer of 2003. Everyday, we had Baghdad residents telling us that "bad men are gathering in Fallujah." We would pass this along to the S-2 everyday (including our parent unit and various units that we were attached to as boundary lines were constantly shifted). The response was always, "well, that's not in our AO" and it was promptly disregarded. A few months later, 3ID was ordered to send a brigade to Fallujah after things flared up.

You have to train to adapt and in 2001 the conventional force was not the most willing student when it came to adaptability. Some absolutely refursed to accept the idea that one might have to fight an unconvetional foe; that reluctance ran from the top to the bottom.

I can't think of many examples where we were unable or unwilling to adapt our direct combat training - prior to OIF it was difficult to get a unit to put any significant amount of time for urban fighting on the training schedule. Now it's the bread and butter for most. Really, though, I can't think of many cases where it was even necessary to significantly adapt combat training - just make Soldiers aware of theater-specific threats and nuances and incorporate it into existing training. Our fighting ability has been the one saving grace in this conflict. Were it not for the ability of small units to win every engagement (aside from less than 10 total engagements over the 6-year span of the Iraq conflict), casualties would be significantly higher. Most of the changes that needed to occur were issues of procurement (armored vehicles, C-IED devices, EOD equipment, etc), strategy (pull into the FOBs and prepare for withdrawal versus disperse more deeply into the population), or intelligence. In my opinion, procurement caught up as quickly as could be expected. A change in strategy appears to have paid off thus far.

Intelligence systems (not just devices, but the full system of collection, processing, storing, and dissemination, to include instructions to Soldiers on what to gather) have not adapted well. How we gather intelligence did not change significantly. We just did a heck of a lot more of it, substituting quantity for quality by pushing an extra 50,000 troops deeper into the population. That's not a very efficient or sustainable method of intelligence collection when the country is clamoring for a reduction in troop levels.

Instead of improving our intelligence systems as a nation, as a military, or even at the MNC-I level, we've got SOF doing one thing, CF doing another, and individual CO/BTY/TRP level units experimenting with databases, spreadsheets, intel cells, or just relying on an understaffed S-2 shop. There is duplication of effort for many things and diametrically opposed efforts elsewhere. Some of it is due to mistrust between units for fear that a CF unit will "steal" a SOF target. Some of it is due to lack of coordination - more than one unit dedicating resources to the same thing and other things being ignored. Much of it is due to a patchwork system of random collection assets, incompatible methods of processing or sharing intelligence (such as databases and other programs that cannot share data), poor procedures for updating or correcting intel, inconsistency in analysis (different analysts who disagree simply write different reports, rather than putting multiple possible analyses into one report), and a poor job of interfacing with the rank and file whom the intelligence supports and who gather much of the intel (1. debriefs are input and we get no feedback; 2. if a fire team coming off of a 72-hour patrol does not have someone from the S-2 shop debrief them the the debrief that the team leader writes is going to be short on details).

Intelligence systems are a red herring when postulated as the be all end all answer to developing situational awareness, cultural understanding, or whatever gap you feel that you face.

I agree. But that does not mean that they are unimportant or not needing significant improvement. Our shortcomings in intelligence are far more significant than any imperfections in how our units operate. Rather than so many smart people debating whether we should train for COIN or conventional fights, we should be focusing more brain power on how to improve our intelligence systems (the full system, not just individual gadgets or some written "SOP" that nobody reads).

[Tom Odom]

Schmedlap,

Overall I would say you keep pointing to the need to reform intelligence above as as means to counter intelligence needs in a bottom up fight. There is no system to reform that will do the things you want done other than the reforms that are already taking place, notably company intelligence cells.

As for no need to alter combat training, the historical record at the CTCs speaks differently. Killing the enemy has not been an issue when we found him. Finding him has been and at times killing civilians around him has created more enemies. Even at JRTC, we found change to be quite necessary and that change has been both evolutionary and revolutionary.

Tom

[Schmedlap]

Tom,

Two things are obvious from this thread: (1) I am not an intel guy (therefore, much of what I have written above is probably not the proper terminology and it is generalized). (2) Brevity is not my strong point.

With those two things in mind, I won't keep this thread going forever on a topic in which I have no particular specialty. But, my last two cents (I promise)...

Overall I would say you keep pointing to the need to reform intelligence above as as means to counter intelligence needs in a bottom up fight. There is no system to reform that will do the things you want done other than the reforms that are already taking place, notably company intelligence cells.

That is certainly "A" way to do it - and probably the only way that is going to be pursued, unfortunately. I disagree regarding whether there is a system to reform that can do better. Our intelligence processing and storage still functions in a pyramid hierarchy from what I have seen and endured. While our enemies and even most private sector organizations are shifting to a leaner, flatter organizational structure due to the advances in IT/IS, our intelligence still flows up and down a pyramid structure and much of it remains stovepiped due to concerns about adjacent units "stealing" the intel or just due to poor systems in place for sharing it. Of all things to be networked, flatter, and knowledge based, intelligence seems like the most obvious candidate. Furthermore, in light of the SWJ post regarding Gen Mattis's comments on more autonomous small units - what he is describing is a flatter hierarchy where more knowledge-based, specialized, autonomous units function with less top-down instruction and more adjacent unit coordination - I see no way to accomplish this unless we also flatten our intelligence systems.

As for no need to alter combat training, the historical record at the CTCs speaks differently. Killing the enemy has not been an issue when we found him. Finding him has been and at times killing civilians around him has created more enemies. Even at JRTC, we found change to be quite necessary and that change has been both evolutionary and revolutionary.

I'm not challenging your observation that changes occurred, but I would characterize the nature of that change as being about proficiency rather than a new set of knowledge or skills. In other words, not "what" we train (as the COIN v conventional argument would focus on), but rather "how well" we train (as the Ken Whites of the world would focus on). I would even take that one step further and propose that it is mostly a discipline problem. Unless you are caught in a near ambush, it doesn't take a whole lot of training, imo, to not shoot into a crowd, a mosque, a school, or a hospital. It's not a split-second shoot-don't-shoot decision like that made when you enter a room.