Training the Operational Staff

[William F. Owen]

Sorry I am tardy in reply. Lost the thread....

Hmmmm...I wish you were right. In the perfect world maybe, but in the real world, here is what staffs have become:

I accept that. This is not to say that someone should not try and sort it out. Staffs now essentially resemble soldiers carrying traffic cones, instead of rifles, because they are cheaper and are less dangerous in training.

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.

OK, but there why is it such a stretch to provide the commander with the information he needs to make effective decisions?

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?

I suggest the bubble has been lost. There are some excellent articles in the British Army review based on a year long study of command and staffs, that essentially shows that modern staff are substantially self feeding processes, that "do stuff cos they do stuff."

[jcustis]

There are some excellent articles in the British Army review based on a year long study of command and staffs, that essentially shows that modern staff are substantially self feeding processes, that "do stuff cos they do stuff."

We call those self-licking ice cream cones in the Marines, and they somehow seem to excel at the self-licking part, but not before dripping all over everyone else and making a major mess.

[Red Rat]

Interesting thread. My perspective is as a senior staff (big fish) in a one star HQ (small pond) starting the long run up to deployment.

As a HQ we constantly fight the friction of just being - and there is a lot of friction. Resources are very tight and we spend a lot of time trying to get resources and plan training in a very turbulent arena. When not doing this we are trying to:

Understand what to do with all our new staff. The HQ has grown considerably in the last 2 - 4 years, but processes and procedures have not necessarily changed. Configuration in-theatre is very different to that out, we are now trying to mirror in theatre set-ups and TTPs as much as we can.

Intellectually equip ourselves for the challenges ahead - lots of reading and study.

Try and organise training for ourselves and our units that is appropriate to our next deployment, understanding that:

We cannot create Afghanistan in NW Europe
Our exercises are short
The kit we have now is different from the kit we deploy with
We will be considerably augmented when we deploy

I think that our three biggest challenges as an HQ are:

To understand COIN and the environment we will be operating in.
To identify and develop best staff practice; working smart with the extra staff we have, not just adding extra staff process...
To incorporate external agencies into our training as much as possible.

We do this knowing that the staff we have now will not be the staff we deploy with and the situation will undoubtedly have changed again by the time we get there.

It is however a big step forward for us. We are now trying to do the same stuff (produce military effect), the same way (same terminology, same TTPs, same staff processes) in a different context (training not ops). Previously we prepped for ops, deployed, came back, learnt (but did not necessarily apply) lessons and then went back to fighting 3rd Shock Army for another 24 months until we had to start again

[Red Rat]

And I do think that in most HQs there are now too many staff, badly organised and poorly focused with the net result that HQs 'staff' but do not :
effectively support units
or
enable commanders to command.

Rant over!

[William F. Owen]

I

To understand COIN and the environment we will be operating in.
To identify and develop best staff practice; working smart with the extra staff we have, not just adding extra staff process...
To incorporate external agencies into our training as much as possible.

Rat mate. Don't want to chuck a thundie in the mess, but could I sum up the above as, "trying to work out how a staff supports the commander in counter-insurgency operations?"

Am I over simplifying the problem?

[Kiwigrunt]

Here's an interesting little read on organisations and staffs. Also touches on 'self licking ice-cream cone' syndrome.

[Ron Humphrey]

Here's an interesting little read on organisations and staffs. Also touches on 'self licking ice-cream cone' syndrome.

I found myself thinking all cat in the hatish

-----------
There once was a man from nantucket
Who kept him some water in a bucket
For his garden you see
was a pretty as could be
As long as it had a little water

In that area the rain
Never dropped quite the same
Sometimes little here
Sometimes little there
Ofttimes naught but suns rays were droppin

So he kept the bucket filled
Which he'd take up on the hill
To water those plants he had planted

Then along came some storms
Some like hed never seen
and them plants they was watered
Yeah watered to well

And then all heck broke loose when they
started to swell
so he got him a shovel
and dug him a well

then he dug a few trenches to run off the
water
It was raining so fast he got help from his
daughter

oh she had to miss school
but that girl was no fool
and she told him that he'd have to pay

Well the storms disappeared and the rains
went away
But he still had the ditches and a daughter to
pay

But hey at least there'd still be food for the
market

--------------
Sorry couldn't resist

Seriously the topic of organizations and what they bring seems way too often to lead us to inquisitions which fail to remember what got us where we were in the first place

Is there overkill sometimes yes,
But in all truth quite often we have institutions which have become and are exceptionally capable of doing what they do but when something different comes around although they adjust as well as they can it is probably faster (a political bonus no doubt) to simply find a new group which can hit the ground running rather than work to get the old org in good enough shape to keep up.

This works well because the new guys probably will catch up to the new adversary the question is what to do with them when they get them.

The biggest personal problem I think I see with the question of why so many new things; is that they are so often replicas of something you had in the past and failed to keep around. Seems like that might at some point indicate that perhaps they need to be kept around in at least good enough shape to be brought back out when needed.

Probably goes doubly for govt. How many new groups will have to be put together to even get close to the type of capabilities the nation had in years long gone.

[Red Rat]

Rat mate. Don't want to chuck a thundie in the mess, but could I sum up the above as, "trying to work out how a staff supports the commander in counter-insurgency operations?"

Am I over simplifying the problem?

I think that sums me up!

Our Boss is quite clear on what he wants, however there is a lot of clutter. Just because we can communicate from the front line to No 10 Downing St it appears to be a growing trend to say that we should; in particular the ability of decision makers to make decisions at a lower level is increasingly erroded. We do not necessarily fight against this as hard as we should because we (the military) are a conservative organisation, like conformity and seem to have an increasing intolerance to risk. Therefore more staffing process shares the burden of military decision making, lessens risk and increases the number of staff required. More staff = more jobs = more prestige... Oh what a glorious war!
Additionally because we (UK military) have a strong anti-intellectual bias and are not yet comfortable with COIN our officers tend to be more comfortable with process, so we end up with lots of process, this instead of going to first principles and developing a process that is fit for purpose - "supporting the commander in counter-insurgency operations".

[Eden]

Rat mate. Don't want to chuck a thundie in the mess, but could I sum up the above as, "trying to work out how a staff supports the commander in counter-insurgency operations?"

Now that raises the question: What is the role of the commander in COIN? My observation of an American two-star and a British three-star in Afghanistan was that they had very different conceptions of their roles.

Both did battlefield circulation, and both considered themselves the 'decision makers' for the command. The differences were:

1. The American felt very comfortable making decisions for his subordinate commanders, routinely requiring that company-level operations be approved by him. The Brit did not.
2. The Brit described himself as a 'precision guided munition' and routinely made himself available for interaction with locals, international actors, NGOs, etc., if it contributed to mission accomplishment. He did however, require meticulous preparation for such engagements, which proved to be a heavy staff burden. The American hated doing such things and routinely left those types of engagements to his subordinates.
3. The American wanted routine, twice-daily, detailed briefings on - well, everything. The Brit only wanted to be briefed by exception - when things changed, when things were going off the rail, when certain milestones were reached.
4. The Brit's Chief of Staff was a decision maker, more important than the various deputy commanders. The American's Chief was an office manager whose role was to assist the deputy commanders in making decisions.

This is related to the thread because the different command styles inevitably impacted the size, shape, and focus of the staff - both staffs were, by the way, simultaneously bloated, undermanned, and undermined by the need to continuously rotate in augmentees.

[Ken White]

The role of a Commander in COIN or COIN-like operations is not identical to his role in MCO; he effectively has less to do and thus more time to devote to minutia if he's inclined to do that. This can have ramifications down to the lowest level, not just to the Staff. Due to the operational tempo, the Staff also has more time...

Then there's the trickle down question; the effect on the working troops. In the first cited unit below, Platoons and Companies just worried about the job at hand -- Brigade was 'the rear.' In the second, they did the job but always with an eye toward appearances at the neglect of performance as Brigade was always in their thoughts -- thus teaching a lot of Lieutenants and NCOs some really bad habits...

I served under two US Brigadier Generals that mirrored your examples. One operated as did your British commander, to the proverbial 'T.' His standing order at night was "Wake me only if all three Battalions are in heavy contact." People were expected to inform him if changes occurred between the Tuesday and Friday A.M. scheduled briefings.

The other was much more into your American model, to the extent that he was insistent that not only did he want company efforts run by him before execution, he wanted reports to the Platoon level and constantly asked the Staff to pursue issues of no real value to be answered in the next briefing (two per day most days, 0800 and 1800; probably averaged only 1-1.5/day or so over the year, sometimes given to the Deputy Commander, the XO or, even the S3 whether necessary or not...).

So your comment:

This is related to the thread because the different command styles inevitably impacted the size, shape, and focus of the staff - both staffs were, by the way, simultaneously bloated, undermanned, and undermined by the need to continuously rotate in augmentees.

is quite accurate and, i'd add, affects units down the chain.

The only difference to that in my examples was the Staff for the first rather austere and distant but truly excellent Commander was fairly small but not undermanned while over the months that for the second cited which started as a small but fairly good crew working for a really nice but overly busy guy grew to be just what you describe due to a lot of make-work. Said 'augmentees' of course ripped off from the Battalions...

No doubt in my mind which of those Brigades functioned best and did the better job. Both were good, the first was far more combat effective with far less hassle; benefiting from a good example -- and, as you wisely illustrate, at least partly the impact of a Commander on the Staff.

[Red Rat]

UK and US mil probably (on paper) see the role of the commander in the same way. I have attached a diagram of how the UK sees the command/staff relationship and divide.

I am not aware how much thought has been given to the role of a commander in COIN. Command and Command style is such a parochial subject with each commander jealously guarding the right to be 'his own man' in matters of style and substance that no guidance per se appears to have been laid down - certainly not on a broadly disseminated basis. My last commander saw his role (in a COIN campaign) clearly as threefold: supervise the supervisors, add substance to main effort, decide where to carry risk.

What Eden descibes matches up very well what I have seen of UK commanders in various theatres. We (as staff) see his job as that of making the key decisions and, in a COIN campaign, a key influence tool where he can go in and engage with select individuals and groups, make promises and keep them. That does impose a heavy staff burden Staff also get out far too rarely. On my last tour I would see the brigade commander at my outpost every 10 days or so. I saw bde staff once in 6 months... I fail to see (and thought then) how staff could plan effectively in such a nuanced environment without getting out on a regular basis. As a staff weenie in AFG I was out probably more often then required!!

More of the staff burden (certainly in UK HQs) appears to be self-imposed with staff getting wrapped in process and generating output in order to increase their importance and career profile, or merely to justify their existance (I have yet to hear of a staff branch downsizing themselves voluntarily). An increase in output does not necessarily link to an increase in effect...

My personal feeling is that while the role of the HQ is to support the commander and enable subordinate units (right people, right kit, right place, right time and having shaped the battlespace) in fact HQs have lost sight of this and HQs do staff process for the sake of it, but also (and as pertinent) to feed the insatiable demand of the next higher HQ for product.

That aside I like the UK command approach overall, but have a gut feeling that US commanders tend to get out more then their UK counterparts on a rank by rank basis.

[davidbfpo]

I searched for staffwork and amongst the very few threads shown, this appeared the most fitting.

A KoW article by a Canadian officer on the 33rd Canadian Brigade Group (33 CBG) Headquarters exercise with the USMC in cool Camp Pendleton:http://kingsofwar.org.uk/2012/07/sta...ons/#more-7235

Which IMHO is doubly interesting as the unit is:

a reserve formation, part-time soldiers, composed of university professors and high school teachers, policemen, software engineers, supply management specialists, occupational therapists and a variety of other occupations. The unit is also a conglomeration of officers and soldiers from militia units across eastern and central Ontario who work as a group only occasionally.......virtually all participating had made at least one tour to Afghanistan.

Some of the points made have appeared in Jim Storr's book The Human Face of War.

There is an interesting different point of view, an Australian one too, on the use of reservists:

The case for committing complex and professional war fighting skills to the Reserve may be tempting for Australian defence planners, but it makes little sense. War fighting is a profession and modern weaponry and tactics are highly technical and complex. Like Olympic athletes, when professional soldiers train less they achieve less. Any decision to warehouse war fighting capabilities in the Reserve is really a decision to let the capability atrophy and fail.

Link:http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/...y-Reserve.aspx

I know SWC has recently discussed in the US context the differences between regular and reservist components.