French & US COIN and Galula (merged thread)

[Cavguy]

I defer to my work collegue "Hacksaw" here - for all the worry about our junior officers and NCO's only conceptualizing COIN - you can't have it both ways.

They were adaptable enough to shed MCO and learn COIN.

They are adapable enough to do the reverse, or even better, both, if we figured out how to balance our training base.

Their experience is not nested in FM's it's in practical experience. The reason why FM 3-24 gained wide acceptance is because it bore out the experiences and learnings of those who were "boots on the gound" from 2003 onward. Kilcullen's "28 Articles" was influential to me not so much because it taught me much that I didn't know - it was the first time in my career I had seen all my various education and experience to that point combined in a logical document that made sense.

There is a balance. We can't forget how to go toe to toe, and I don't think anyone's stated otherwise. But we also don't need a force that has to do 2003-2005 all over again, re-learning lessons from previous insurgencies as if they are something new.

Additionally, while the operational force may be COIN centric currently, our Leader development and education is almost the reverse. Consider that five years into two insurgencies we:

a) ....have no COIN proponent in the US Army (Well, the CAC commander is, by default), it hasn't been assigned.

b) have no TRADOC or CAC mandated COIN instruction in our centers and schools. There is absolutely ZERO COIN specific training tasks mandated in our current Professional Military education system. It is not required to be taught at all. Many schools have included it on their own, but it has not been directed for inclusion by the TRADOC commander.

c) have no defined plan to do either.

And I would say the momentum to do so is drying up as well as senior leaders grow more concerned about the loss of MCO capability. The Army has not taken action to make COIN knowledge a critical competency for the Army's future leaders in its eductional and training base. Once the war quits, we continue teaching Fulda. The experience rots, and 20 years later my son walks into a COIN scenario and learns the hard way everything the institution forgot.

Most educational and training base sites DO train COIN, but it's not a mandate from TRADOC. Which tells me when the current conflicts subside, that training will disappear unless action is taken.

Note also the insight from this current CGSC student here - it's true. CGSC removed its only mandatory COIN course a few years ago.

[Gian P Gentile]

...But we also don't need a force that has to do 2003-2005 all over again, re-learning lessons from previous insurgencies as if they are something new.(

Just curious as to your periodization and end point at 2005 when the Army finally got it and stopped relearning as you say lessons from previous insurgencies? Why not 2004? Why not 2006? What is your logic for ending in 2005?

Twenty years from now when histories are written about the Iraq war for tactics and operations they will show that by early to mid 2004 up through and to the end of the Surge threre was no substantial difference. Here is an example, Doug Olivant wrote about his experiences in 1st Cav in 04 to early 05 and at least as he states in a posting on this thread when he got back and read Galula it represented to him what he and his commander were thinking, and doing, when they were on the ground in Iraq in 2004/05.

There were some bumps along the way but early in the war and by early to mid 04 we had pretty much figured out how to do coin across the board in the force. Steve Metz says 2005 but i think it happened much earlier.

[Ken White]

have a kid who was there and who is very much convinced -- as is most everyone else I've talked to -- that it varied a great deal from unit to unit (or Commander to Commander, sometimes but not always synonymous with the unit) in the '03 to about '05 period. He was there fall of '03, spring '04.

I think most are using 05 because that appears to be about the time the whole Army got it. I suspect it also has a little to do with the departure of Ricardo
Sanchez in Jun of '04 and about six months for Casey to make an imprint and with the rotation cycles, OIF 3 was the first rotation that had been 'COIN trained' prior to deployment if my memory serves (always a dicey proposition...) and it was the one that took 3d ID back in a different mode than had been their first trip.

[Gian P Gentile]

have a kid who was there and who is very much convinced -- as is most everyone else I've talked to -- that it varied a great deal from unit to unit (or Commander to Commander, sometimes but not always synonymous with the unit) in the '03 to about '05 period. He was there fall of '03, spring '04.

I think most are using 05 because that appears to be about the time the whole Army got it. I suspect it also has a little to do with the departure of Ricardo
Sanchez in Jun of '04 and about six months for Casey to make an imprint and with the rotation cycles, OIF 3 was the first rotation that had been 'COIN trained' prior to deployment if my memory serves (always a dicey proposition...) and it was the one that took 3d ID back in a different mode than had been their first trip.

Ken:

this analysis makes sense to me. Your point about the arrival of Casey and the coin academy is spot-on. I was a part of one of the first classes taught at the coin academy back when it was still being done by SF A Teams. As an aside i was fortunate to have an especially strong teacher there who is now i think at Leavenworth working coin issues, Major Mark Ulrich. I learned a lot at the coin academy, so too did my troop commanders.

However I do not think the differences are still that great even between 05 and 04. I was a BCT XO in Tikrit in 03 and the Brigade I was in "got it" pretty much as soon as we hit the ground. Concur especially early on in 03 that there were some units who were outside of the bubble. But I think the transition to effective coin ops across the board in the American Army happens by mid 04; it was by then that some of the early re-thinking on how to do coin ops from people like Con Crane and Steve Metz were starting to have an effect at least on senior leaders in the Army and the disaster at Abu Grahb had a catalyzing effect on us. 1st Cav's run in Baghdad (and their combat actions in Najaf) in 04 along with their first cut at turning Sadr city were impressive efforts. I had a good talk with a combat company commander yesterday who was in 1st Cav, fought his company in Najaf then pulled them back to Baghdad where they continued coin ops. Listening to him, he certainly got it that far back which is why i think the notion of "not getting it" well into the war is simply misplaced.

But to beat this drum again, higlighting the (mistaken) notion that we didnt "get it" until much later fits the narrative that the Surge and its methods (aside from the increased number of troops) really are different, which they are not.

gian

[John T. Fishel]

ring a bell? Perhaps, because we do this over and over again. At the end of the Vietnam war the CGSC curriculum was COIN heavy. By the late 70s all of small wars (not just COIN) had been compressed into a mere 8 hours according to John Waghelstein who was teaching there at the time. It wasn't much better in 1986 when Southcom convinced then BG Fred Franks to devote 2 full days (16 hours) to COIN based on the Southcom experience in Central America, Peru, and Colombia effectively doubling the COIN hours. Gordon Sullivan who succeeded Franks and Deputy Commandant kept up the program. When I was teaching there in the 90s, we had about 40 hours devoted to small wars issues. But TRADOC did not direct and was not very interested in a new Stability Operations and Support Ops (SASO) manual as its author retired LTC John Hunt couldn't interest anybody in getting the thing on the street.

As we see in this thread, not only the senior leadership of the Army is concerned that there is too much COIN but others, here represented articulately by Gian, express the same concerns. if i were a betting man, I would bet that when we finally leave Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army will reassert its focus on big wars relegating FM 3-24 to the shelves of CARL. I hope not but...

Cheers

JohnT

[Gian P Gentile]

As we see in this thread, not only the senior leadership of the Army is concerned that there is too much COIN but others, here represented articulately by Gian, express the same concerns. if i were a betting man, I would bet that when we finally leave Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army will reassert its focus on big wars relegating FM 3-24 to the shelves of CARL. I hope not but... JohnT

John:

I hope not either. And that is not at all what i have been advocating. There is a place for counterinsurgency thinking and training throughout the army and not just in a small and isolated cluster of small wars folks. But there needs to be a balance and an assessment of our strategic interests and how as an army we meet the nation's strategic needs. I do not think that "conventional" wars are things of the past and as others have posted on this blog if we do have to fight one and we do poorly the consequences in blood and treasure can be quite servere.

As for your concern about shelving coin after Iraq and Afghanistan like what happened after Vietnam well as you and I both know, at least in theory, history can not repeat itself. That said i think things are much different now, for one I imagine that the United States Army in some form or fashion will be in Iraq and Afghanistan for a long time and will not see and abrubt halt like we saw in Vietnam. In that sense simply because we are there will keep the imperative to not put coin on the backburner. The problem as i see it now is that we are out of balance and the only burner cooking is the coin one. In this sense we should be worried.

v/r
gian

[John T. Fishel]

your posts more than you intended. I certainly agree that we need to have balanced education, training and doctrine. I am not so concerned with a temporary imbalance if, when it rights itself, it does so without throwing out the baby with the bath water (to mix metaphors all over the place). My concern is that the Army has a historical tendency to overcorrect and has done so not once but many times. Still, I hope you are right but as General Sullivan put it, "Hope is Not a Method."

Cheers

JohnT