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  1. #1
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    Default Training the Operational Staff

    Recent posts on various threads reminded me of the uselessness of much of the training that I received as the member of a three-star staff deploying to Afghanistan. So I thought it would be useful to start a thread on the subject of training the staff for COIN - what, if anything, has worked?

    Like most staffs, we prepared through cultural study, rewriting our SOPs to incorporate 'lessons learned', and a series of exercises culminating in a BCTP-like 'certfiying' exercise. Like many of you who have commented elsewhere, we found the training to be inadequate and fairly irrelevent, and faced a very steep learning curve once we had actually deployed. Here is why I think that was the case:

    1. The BCTP model - a two week intensive simulation involving the entire staff - works great for conventional warfighting. It is about the right time to fight a set-piece battle involving several phases, decision points, branches, and planning sequels. At the end you can judge success or failure by the change in the relative combat power of the two sides or the amount of terrain which changed hands. It doesn't work for COIN. The pace of counterinsurgency operations is so glacial, and the changes so miniscule (not to mention largely invisible) at the operational level that a two-week exercise consists mostly of running in place. As a result, you can't really judge whether you are doing the right things or doing things right. What you can do is see whether your headquarters processes are working, and this becomes the focus of your training.

    2. The exercises - both external and internal - were rich in military detail but very bare bones in anything else. There was no in-depth treatment of the economy, local politics, tribal relationships, drugs, international or non-governmental organizations. There were efforts to involve us in the 'soft' side of counterinsurgency, but the external training organization was ill-structured to do so. Those who were excellent trainers did not have the expertise required, and those who had the expertise were poor trainers.

    3. The pace of the exercises were all wrong. On the one hand you had too many 'major' events to deal with, in an effort to involve the generals and other decision makers; on the other, you didn't have the hundreds of 'minor' incidents that the staff found it had to monitor and respond to once we were actually deployed and in charge.

    4. We paid lip service to cultural, historic, and linguistic training, but its effectiveness was never tested. Some of it turned out to be wrong or oversimplified once we arrived in any case; more importantly, none of the staff was ever examined to see if the training had stuck. In other words, there was no evaluation phase for that particular aspect of training. As a result, the majority of the staff deployed without being able to differentiate between a Pashtun and a Hazara, without being able to speak even rudimentary Dari or Pahto, without being able to expain the structure of the national or provincial governments.

    All of this meant we were very well-trained on our internal processes - we had perfected our meeting agendas, our targeting schemes, our committee structures - but all adrift on what operational approach we should take. In other words, the three-star staff was trained on how to do things, but not on what things to do. As a result, despite a two-year trainup, we floundered on arrival for months. There has to be a better way.

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    Default Excuse what is probably ....

    a question whose answers everyone one else knows.

    When you say a "two-year trainup", was this a part-time effort for everyone - i.e., X hours per week on the trainup; and Y hours per week on "other stuff"; or was it a full-time effort for most everyone ?

    As a reader of this thread (surely not a contributor ), I need that for context. Thanx.

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    Council Member Surferbeetle's Avatar
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    Default Civilian world training needed...

    Eden,

    The need for fighting skills on staff cannot be ignored or marginalized, but then neither can the need for populace based COIN skills.

    Large parts of COIN fights are populace based and thus it logically follows that consistent training experiences/personnel staffing solutions which acknowledge populace based concerns would be beneficial to operational staffs.

    Sometimes it appears that we favor the tried and true square peg/round hole approach for staffs rather than favoring solutions which have a higher probability of success of developing staff members for this type of fight.

    What percent of active duty staff personnel have spent time working at the city managers office, the water treatment plant, the wastewater treatment plant, the municipality office, the sheriff's department or the county judges office? Out of a 2 year train up is a 40 hour course of instruction on these civilian populace based concerns enough?

    Soldiers with professional experience in the concerns of a civilian populace are scattered across the active duty, national guard and reserve side of the force, however one finds a greater concentration in the national guard and reserve side of the house. Identifying and tracking soldiers with these skill sets is possible (ASI's).

    How consistently and closely do we integrate civilian personnel with civilian skills into the military planning process at BCT or BN level or even lower?

    On the solutions continuum should we stick to the extremes and focus on teaching military planning skills to those who have populace based skills or teaching populace based skills to those with military planning skills?

    Perhaps instead we need to consistently examine staff composition with an eye towards increasing the ratios of various population based skills on staff. Two solutions to consider:

    1) Reviewing/increasing the number of soldiers on operational staffs who have relevant ASI's for the COIN fight at the BCT and BN level (and lower).
    2) Reviewing/increasing the number of civilians who are integrated into BCT and BN (and lower) staff's.

    Regards,

    Steve
    Last edited by Surferbeetle; 06-17-2009 at 06:47 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Surferbeetle View Post
    What percent of active duty staff personnel have spent time working at the city managers office, the water treatment plant, the wastewater treatment plant, the municipality office, the sheriff's department or the county judges office? Out of a 2 year train up is a 40 hour course of instruction on these civilian populace based concerns enough?

    Soldiers with professional experience in the concerns of a civilian populace are scattered across the active duty, national guard and reserve side of the force, however one finds a greater concentration in the national guard and reserve side of the house. Identifying and tracking soldiers with these skill sets is possible (ASI's).
    Excellent suggestion. I know that we did have a robust and very competent engineer staff, and a less robust and less competent civil affairs staff. I can't vouch for their previous experience in the areas you mentioned, but I do know there were no '40 hour courses of instruction' offered on any of those subjects.

    I am talking about division and corps staffs, the operational level (at least in COIN) staffs that form the kernel of Combined/Joint staffs during deployments. These are structured for conventional warfighting, and must be augmented to obtain the kind of skill sets useful in (I'm holding my nose here) poulace-centered operations. This is a problem for several reasons:

    1. They are not, in fact, very common in the military, especially at the field grade level.
    2. It takes a long time to grow a competent field grade staff officer. You can't just pluck someone from a city manager's office and expect him to be able to add value in the rarefied air of a three- or four-star headquarters. Thus it is rare to find someone with a specialist skill set who is also able to influence planning or decision making at the operational level.
    3. Most of these specialists, while excellent engineers, city planners, or policemen, know squat about warfighting or counterinsurgency.
    4. Augmentees, by definition, show up too late in the process of preparing for deployment.

    So, while it is better to have these guys than not to have them. I don't see them as a silver bullet. The bottom line is we have a system of preparing large headquarters for operations that is basically a carbon copy of the one we used in the 80's and 90's to prepare for conventional war, only with a different scenario and some cultural sensitivity training thrown in. It doesn't work very well. Moreover, our division/corps headquarters are structured for the wars we would prefer to fight, not the one's we are currently fighting, as SecDef might say. Thus we send them off to the combat zone as ad hoc organizations.

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    Council Member William F. Owen's Avatar
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    Default

    Couple of points occur to me reading this thread.

    a.) Staffs exist to enable Command. That's it. That is all they do. No Commander, no Staff. You don't need staff to support any activity you do not directly command.

    b.) Yes staffs are too big. They have been since about the 1950's. Most of what staffs do is utterly irrelevant, to the exercise of command.

    c.) Why should a staff for a so-called COIN operation be any different from one concerned with Combat Operations? Command is Command. All the military functions are the same.

    ...yes I know there are lots of human, social and plain ego stuff that gets in the way, but progress comes from realising it.
    Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"

    - The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
    - If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
    Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition

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    I wonder whether the basic mistake was to send a staff for a three-star instead of sending a staff for an undersecretary of state who happened to have a three-star at his disposal.
    The latter would have looked like six uniforms and about two dozen white collars, of course.

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    Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post

    a.) Staffs exist to enable Command. That's it. That is all they do. No Commander, no Staff. You don't need staff to support any activity you do not directly command.

    b.) Yes staffs are too big. They have been since about the 1950's. Most of what staffs do is utterly irrelevant, to the exercise of command.

    c.) Why should a staff for a so-called COIN operation be any different from one concerned with Combat Operations? Command is Command. All the military functions are the same.
    Hmmmm...I wish you were right. In the perfect world maybe, but in the real world, here is what staffs have become:

    a. Staffs used to enable command by gathering information; now they enable command by filtering it. This means that staffs increasingly do things that used to be strictly in the realm of the commander - a trend partly set off by the multiplication of assistand and deputy commanders you find in many headquarters. Moreover, in Afghanistan, anyway, you have staffs routinely supporting activities they do not directly command. We don't own the territory like we would in a conventional slugfest. Instead, we have to coordinate lots of different players, military and civilian, international and host country, who don't have the personnel or expertise to do their own staffwork. This is the cost of unity of effort vice unity of command.

    b. Right on.

    c. All I can say is that every staff I have seen overseeing unconventional operations looks considerably different from its normal conventional template. Is that because we have lost the bubble? Maybe, but my sense is that the staff functions vary considerably, if only in emphasis. The air defense staff is zeroed out, as are most of the field artillery staff. Long range planning cells wither away, while PA, CA, MP, and others balloon. Info ops cells, however they are structured, gain in influence and size. Liaison cells metastasize and include a whole new range of skill sets, and odd creatures appear like political advisers, red teams, and the like. And don't even get me started on lawyers. This is because, no matter how much we chant 'war is war', the tasks that staffs have to perform in the clash of modern armies are different than the tasks they have to perform in trying to secure an area from insurgents. So, the staff will inevitably mutate, because not only are the military tasks different, but there are a slew of non-military tasks added to the workload.

    And, as I have said, after a decade, we still do not prepare our staffs well to enter that environment.

  8. #8
    Council Member Surferbeetle's Avatar
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    Default A shared sense of purpose...

    ...and enjoyment of the rapid pace of change are some of the constants I have noted across the RA, ARNG, USAR, and DAC/DON/DOS continuum. As you note however, many of our military structures are still Cold War based and warfighting excellence does vary by individual, fire-team, and unit.

    Staff work, although fun, can also be very challenging and unforgiving Nonetheless my guess is that there are city managers who would be able to fit in and contribute at the Corps or any other level. Dallas, for example, has a city manager who oversaw a FY 2007-2008 budget totaling $2.65 billion and oversees 13,000 employees.

    Quote Originally Posted by Eden View Post
    I know that we did have a robust and very competent engineer staff, and a less robust and less competent civil affairs staff.
    Being a member of both of these communities (civil engineer & CA-bubba) I am pleased by our successes and troubled by our failures. I continue to fight the good fight to prepare my charges within my spheres of influence and hope to have a couple of years left in me to continue the task. In the meantime I appreciate the teamwork in fixing our shared issues and know that when my time comes to move on things will be in good hands.

    Quote Originally Posted by Eden View Post
    I can't vouch for their previous experience in the areas you mentioned, but I do know there were no '40 hour courses of instruction' offered on any of those subjects.
    My G3 helped me to arrange for a slot at the 40 hour Civil Affairs Planners Course. The setting was superb, the USAF understands infrastructure even in Florida, and more importantly the team of instructors were superb as well (mostly Phd's with extensive DOD and overseas experience). I highly recommend the course as being beneficial to both CA and non CA troops.

    Quote Originally Posted by Eden View Post
    I am talking about division and corps staffs, the operational level (at least in COIN) staffs that form the kernel of Combined/Joint staffs during deployments. These are structured for conventional warfighting, and must be augmented to obtain the kind of skill sets useful in (I'm holding my nose here) populace-centered operations. This is a problem for several reasons:

    1. They are not, in fact, very common in the military, especially at the field grade level.
    2. It takes a long time to grow a competent field grade staff officer. You can't just pluck someone from a city manager's office and expect him to be able to add value in the rarefied air of a three- or four-star headquarters. Thus it is rare to find someone with a specialist skill set who is also able to influence planning or decision making at the operational level.
    3. Most of these specialists, while excellent engineers, city planners, or policemen, know squat about warfighting or counterinsurgency.
    4. Augmentees, by definition, show up too late in the process of preparing for deployment.

    So, while it is better to have these guys than not to have them. I don't see them as a silver bullet. The bottom line is we have a system of preparing large headquarters for operations that is basically a carbon copy of the one we used in the 80's and 90's to prepare for conventional war, only with a different scenario and some cultural sensitivity training thrown in. It doesn't work very well. Moreover, our division/corps headquarters are structured for the wars we would prefer to fight, not the one's we are currently fighting, as SecDef might say. Thus we send them off to the combat zone as ad hoc organizations.
    Field grades do not grow on trees, but we have been making them for some time now (current promotion rates to the contrary) and people (military or civilian) are still trainable To echo your sentiment however, there are indeed no silver bullets and if this was an easy fix they would not hire us to solve the problem.

    Balancing the risks associated with the COIN fight is key and it's my belief that by closely examining staff composition from Corps to Company it is possible to identify where we can change the current ratios of kinetic to non-kinetic personnel without enlarging current staff sizes. At these key points we should seriously consider taking the time and making the added effort needed to integrate more COIN experts.

    This means actively tailoring units for the COIN fight just as we tailor Light and Heavy units for the conventional fight: specifically it means accepting an added level of risk and integrating more civilians and soldiers with needed COIN skills into the planning and execution of our COIN fights.

    Full spectrum to me means the Army can break and build, not just break.
    Last edited by Surferbeetle; 06-18-2009 at 07:11 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by jmm99 View Post
    a question whose answers everyone one else knows.

    When you say a "two-year trainup", was this a part-time effort for everyone - i.e., X hours per week on the trainup; and Y hours per week on "other stuff"; or was it a full-time effort for most everyone ?

    As a reader of this thread (surely not a contributor ), I need that for context. Thanx.
    I would chart it as a rapidly ascending curve, with the x-axis representing percentage of time spent specifically preparing for deployment. My planning cell was mostly fully engaged almost from the start, with the rest of the headquarters gradually being drawn in.

    But, as with every large headquarters, there is always a large slice of your time that must be spent on housekeeping details, taskers to support other units, and things like equipment checks and individual training that don't directly support training in staff skills. You actually never spend more than fifty percent of your time training as a staff until the very end of the train-up.

    One decision that was probably a mistake in retrospect involved our big annual CPX with subordinate units. We had one scheduled at about the nine-month mark (i.e., fifteen months shy of deployment). Traditionally it was a conventional scenario, and it was decided to keep that conventional focus rather than try to make it an Afghan-based scenario. Why?

    1. Our subordinate units, with only one or two exceptions, were not deploying with us.

    2. Deployment schedules were in flux, and we might not have gone, or might have gone later, so no sense in leaning too far forward in the foxhole.

    3. It would have been very hard to put together a completely new scenario in time for the exercise.

    4. The staff skills honed in a conventional exercise would be just as valuable to us in Afghanistan.

    As I said, it was a mistake. It contributed to our concentration on process rather than on product, but never underestimate the inertia of a large organization.

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