Staff-to-Staff input requested

[TheCurmudgeon]

Going to start BN level Staff-to-Staff partnership work with an Iraqi Engineer BN or two. Concentration on staff assistance. Personnel and Logistics are my primary targets.

Throwing this out to anyone who has any thoughts on how to do it right or at least how not to screw it up?

Also, if anyone has any BN Staff level training materials in Aribic that would be really cool.

[davidbfpo]

Recommended by a UK Army friend, who served in hot places, read Barnaby Rogerson's book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Prophet-Muha.../dp/0349115869 . It is an excellent book and can provide a sign you have bothered to read up on the Prophet - which is useful for establishing rapport.

The US Amazon link is: http://www.amazon.com/Prophet-Muhamm...0333200&sr=1-1

davidbfpo

[John T. Fishel]

If you haven't read Rob Thornton's (with Marct and me) book, Security Force Assistance: The Mosul Case Study, in the Journal, you should, especially for the interviews. The other point I'd make is that getting to know your counterpart is critical, hard work, and extraordinarily labor intensive. It truly requires the quality of empathy - defined correctly as the ability to see the world the way another sees it and not as sympathy - if you want to get him to change his way of doing business. MG Edward Lansdale's claasic, In the Midst of Wars, is a good palce to get a feel for this. Note that Lansdale had empathy for both Magsaysay and Diem, but he only really sympathized with Magsaysay although he had success with both.

Good luck

JohnT

[marct]

Curmudgeon, I'd second John's suggestion about the Mosul Case Study - especially the interviews. You might also want to see if you can sit down with Rob and pick his brains.

Regardless of any OPORDs, the key will be in the personal relationships you establish with your counterparts (hence the bring tea...). If you haven't done so already, check out MikeF's thread on Wicked Problem sets as well. If you have already identified your counterparts, you might consider inviting them over here (the SWC).

Cheers,

Marc

[kingo1rtr]

A book entitled Arabs by Mark Allen is woth a crack. It was well read by the Brits in Basra - some cynics might say that would be enoiugh to put you off! It shouldn't.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Arabs-New-Pe.../dp/0826490557

The USMC Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning (CAOCL)'s site is very very useful and the staff are so helpful - they will hold alot of material on MiTT activity and the lessons identified. http://www.tecom.usmc.mil/caocl

Same for the Combined Arms Center website at Leavenworth which again has tentacles spreading out all over the place. http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/coin/index.asp

Sorry to quote back US sites at you as a Brit and not direct you to one of our own - maybe one of the other Brits who operate on the site can help - I know DavidBFPO has sent you something. Certainly our Engineers did work very closely with Iraqi Army Engineers during the capacity building activity in 2006-07, Op SINBAD et al.

Hope it helps.

[Rob Thornton]

We've been working on something I think will be useful. I've got to go out and do an initial teach on it this week (so I'll be on the road starting tomorrow), but here is the logic. It starts by understanding what their problem is (what do they have to be capable of doing, or the FSF Development Problem). What I mean is you have to understand exactly what it is your partner has to do, e.g what capabilities is he supposed to have, what capabilities does he need respective of the conditions he operates in. This means you have to conduct an assessment that tells you what he looks like organizationally, what are the requirements on that organization given the environment and what are the institutional gaps he is going to have to overcome. This is really a series of questions that help you understand your partner. You also need to consider doing a mission analysis from his perspective (e.g. given what you have learned about him during the assessment how does the MA shake out). This is not so you can tell him how he should do it, but so you can understand his constraints and limitations and be a better partner - which could be considered your SFA problem (or how do you best support the FSF Development).

Ultimately, what you want to do is understand what are the required (or desired) capabilities of the unit you are supporting development of so you can measure that against where they are at based on your assessment. The difference between the two will give you the capability gap that needs to be addressed. At this point you might want to categorize the capabilities into the war fighting functions (WFFs) - which is really just a grouping of tasks but is helpful in understanding how those tasks work together to support a mission. You then want to do a task analysis on those capabilities (a capability being the ability to do a task). This will tell you the tasks that they need to be able to do, and which ones you should focus on as their partner - and by extension which ones you may need to train on, or bring in specialty folks to support. This should also help you organize your own folks and prioritize resources.

MOEs and MOPs

OK - as undoubtedly someone will ask you how are they doing (and how are you doing) - here is one way to look at it that should help you and the partner do the right things right.

Take a given problem (Ex. IA DIV ENG CO must secure routes), and then figure out what are the conditions which you and your partner believe are required for that to occur (ex. 1 (of as many as analysis indicates) - X % of IEDs are identified and reduced). As the partner is able to change those conditions in a positive manner (e.g. work towards the desired conditions) that becomes the measure of effectiveness against which new assessments are made. The measure of performance against which the partner is assessed is how well he does those tasks that change the conditions. Ideally - the tasks required to change the conditions and the tasks required to support the development of a required or desired capability should coincide - as should the tasks you as the partner are doing to support his capability development.

I know that is a mouth full, and by no means is it easy. It requires campaign thinking at multiple echelons, as well as the tactical thinking required to execute those developmental tasks. It requires an understanding of froce development from both an operating force perspective and a generating force perspective (things like how Title 10 functions work, and how we translate those requirements into DOTMLPF and Policy language so we can then build war fighting functions (or other operating schemas). It also requires the capability to conduct detailed and continual assessments at multiple levels (we're not sure this is currently resident in our tactical organizations (e.g. Corps and below).

We've got this fairly mapped out in what we are tentatively calling the SFA Planner's Guide for "Foreign Security Force" Force Development (Operating Forces). We wanted to take a little more time in testing the logic, but I think its pretty solid as we've been beating it up pretty good trying to get it right enough so we don't hand guys a bag of concepts, but instead show the work so others will know how to do it. That does not make it any easier to do, but it does illustrate it so that the user can be the one to decide when to or not to do something. I think we'll have something we can send out in the next couple of weeks, and then we are going to take it on a roadshow to the various educational institutions that make planners and staffs so it does not just sit on the shelf or the web site. Force development is no easy thing, doing it to develop someone else's force is even harder.

Shoot me a PM with an email and I'll send you the first draft that I think is good enough to help you out.

Best, Rob