TRADOC Losing Its Edge?

[82redleg]

I don't doubt that some thinking lead to some improvements. It would be odd if it didn't.
Beyond that I remain sceptical about almost every aspect of Stryker Brigades.

Care to expound on this?

[GI Zhou]

In defence of TRADOC, TRISA after editing it to fit in with the accepted style, published my book, 'How the PLA Fights: Weapons and Tactics of the People's Liberation Army', which is primarily from Russian and Chinese language sources. They saw fit to publish the Second edition, warts and all so they are definitely not hidebound nor discard material when 'not inevented here' ( I am an Australian), when going about their duties. TRADOC would be the least hidebound military organisation I know.

[William F. Owen]

Originally Posted by William F. Owen: I don't doubt that some thinking lead to some improvements. It would be odd if it didn't.
Beyond that I remain sceptical about almost every aspect of Stryker Brigades.

Care to expound on this?

Sure, and sorry not to do this sooner.
The Stryker Brigade concept could have been fitted into almost any common vehicle chassis system. The C2 system, the weapons, almost all of the bells and whistles could have been fitted in another more capable vehicle.

It does not gain from being based on Stryker/Piranha box. The whole idea of having a C-130 transportable Brigade was profoundly stupid.

Almost all the limitations the Stryker has (and there are lots) flow from he Chassis/Vehicle choice, which came from someone viewing the problem in a way that made Stryker the solution, and not working out the best way to solve it.

[82redleg]

Sure, and sorry not to do this sooner.
The Stryker Brigade concept could have been fitted into almost any common vehicle chassis system.

Agreed

The C2 system, the weapons, almost all of the bells and whistles could have been fitted in another more capable vehicle.

Out of curiosity, what vehicle(s) would this be?

It does not gain from being based on Stryker/Piranha box. The whole idea of having a C-130 transportable Brigade was profoundly stupid.

I agree that limiting it to C130s was a poor choice, but it did give a pretty good benchmark to keep the size/weight under control (the C130 limit has been lifted, anyway)

Almost all the limitations the Stryker has (and there are lots) flow from he Chassis/Vehicle choice, which came from someone viewing the problem in a way that made Stryker the solution, and not working out the best way to solve it.

While I agree that the SBCT is not perfect, I think that the basic organization is sound, and (given the caveats that I haven't worked with it and all my information is hearsay) the equipment is pretty good, especially given the speed with which it was procured in the current screwed up acquisition system. For 15+ years, the US Army Infantry had a gap in the middle, identified in the mid-80s by BG Was De Czege. The SBCTs correct that gap. The increase in SBCTs creates a better balanced US Army.

I think I've said it before, but my ideal world would have 8 IBCTs, 8 HBCTs and ~30 SBCTs in the US Army, with the ARNG about 50-50 SBCTs-HBCTs. I truly believe that the 3-1-1 IN-AR-Recce balance in the SBCT is better than the 4-4-3 in the HBCT for most purposes. Yes, the chassis could be improved, or we could get many of the same benefits by simply subbing M1/M2 1:1 for ICV/MGS. Overall, I think the net contribution of the adaption of SBCTs in positive.

[Fuchs]

I've always wondered about this "middle"?

What terrain is supposed to be its preferred ground where "medium weight" units are superior to both heavy and light forces?


Open areas with soft ground would qualify if the "medium" force had a very low MMP (mean max ground pressure). That's not the case with 18 ton 8wd.

[Ken White]

less expensive vehicles that will do most things in limited wars and operations other than wars. I further suspect they will disappear rapidly in major conflict for several reasons. Thus, all things considered they make military sense (in the fullest meaning of the word) and are cost efficient while providing marginal effectiveness for some purposes and making almost no combat sense.

[William F. Owen]

Out of curiosity, what vehicle(s) would this be?[/COLOR]

OK, but what do you want it to do?
Why does it have to be one type?

I agree that limiting it to C130s was a poor choice, but it did give a pretty good benchmark to keep the size/weight under control (the C130 limit has been lifted, anyway)

I'll confess that I used to think that as well, but the limitation of weight (and size) was never expressed in a useful way. It was all about HOW and not about WHY.

[Hacksaw]

I'll confess that I used to think that as well, but the limitation of weight (and size) was never expressed in a useful way. It was all about HOW and not about WHY."

It is my recollection that the C130 criteria was based on the why that is usually expressed as 'operational maneuver from strategic distance

Of course the C130 criteria became the proverbial self-licking ice cream cone... in essence it replaced the why because it was far easier for the unwashed to grasp...

then again, I wasn't involved in any tangible sense whilst this was debated... I do think that it was a Huba idea recycled from the writing of Svechin... again my memory may be faulty though

Go Orangemen!!!

[Pete]

TRADOC doesn't deserve to be given all the blame for what happens during the development of new Army systems; the TRADOC role is to serve as the "combat developer" responsible for defining system requirements and conducting user/operational testing. "Materiel development," or the actual engineering and prototyping work, is the province of Army Materiel Command, AMC, or "A Million Civilians" as it is sometimes known.

If I recall correctly the transportability by C-130 criterion for the Stryker vehicle and other systems was a requirement more or less dictated by the pressure of Donald Rumsfeld's "Transformation" initiative dating from prior to the 9/11 attacks. (It was the same pressure to be seen to be "transforming" that brought about the silly change to the black beret.) Have people already forgotten the gee-whiz futuristic buzzwords and acronyms of circa 2001--network-centric warfare, precision fires, medium-weight brigades, Objective Force, Land Warrior, Future Combat systems, et al?

[TT]

If I recall correctly the transportability by C-130 criterion for the Stryker vehicle and other systems was a requirement more or less dictated by the pressure of Donald Rumsfeld's "Transformation" initiative dating from prior to the 9/11 attacks. (It was the same pressure to be seen to be "transforming" that brought about the silly change to the black beret.) Have people already forgotten the gee-whiz futuristic buzzwords and acronyms of circa 2001--network-centric warfare, precision fires, medium-weight brigades, Objective Force, Land Warrior, Future Combat systems, et al?

For the record, and to answer some of the above questions, the concepts for the Stryker Force (aka Shinseki’s Interim Force) emerged in late 1999, in part due to the Task Force Hawk debacle during the Kosovo conflict earlier that year. But the general idea has a much longer lineage than this, to at least the mid-1980s (or thereabouts) as Redleg has noted.

What really kick started the move towards the middle was one of the lessons the US Army derived from the 1991 Gulf War, which was that the Army was, in my only somewhat facetiously way characterize, too light to fight, too fat to fly. Simply put, the only quick reaction force the Army could deploy quickly was the 82nd Airborne (there were, of course, other choices), a light infantry unit placed in front of three heavy Iraqi units. On the other hand, it took some 6 plus months to deploy the heavy units which were deemed necessary for Op Desert Storm Add to this was that by the end of 1991, early 1992, it was evident the US was going be pulling ever more of its forward deployed units back to the US (most notably from Europe). The upshot was that the increasing prospect was that the Army would deploy in future from the US, and was, to repeat, too fat to fly, too light to fight, particularly when time was, as it frequently is, a important factor.

General Sullivan, then the CoS Army, recognized this issue and started a process, which runs from the New Louisiana Maneuvers through the Army After Next to the FCS/Stryker Force (with the NLM and AAN both largely concept studies, based on wargaming). Very early decisions to start moving towards what becomes known as the FCS emerge in late 1998. The Task Force Hawk deployment just underlined the ‘too fat to fly’ problem, while I understand that the idea was floated of inserting the 82nd Airborne (or one of its light brethren units) into Kosovo but it was set aside very quickly due to concern that it would very exposed (underlining the too light to fight problem). Kosovo was an embarassment for the Army, and Shinseki moved to accelerate the development of the FCS to address the problems. (in part of service interest - if you cannot get to the fight, funding becomes a potentially problematic issue).

The Stryker force was, as termed under Shinseki’s plan, to be only an interim force to fill the gap until the FCS force came on line in the 2012-15 period. The essential idea was the FCS would be light enough to fly (hence the fit into and be carried by the C-130) and with the application of information and other new tech (some of those buzzwords mentioned by Pete) would be hefty enough to fight.

In sum, the aim of the Stryker Force (and FCS) was to the provide the Army with a sufficient degree of expeditionary capability, that is, with a rapidly deployable capability able to fight against even heavy opponents, to suit what was seen likely to be (and largely has become) an expeditionary era in which the Army would deploy from the homeland, not forward bases.

That is the general idea behind Stryker/FCS, without any reference to the problems encountered, etc and so on. Wilf is right that in one sense the Stryker force does not make sense, if it is seen as an end force aim of the Army. But the Stryker force was designed to provide the Army with an interim expeditionary capability, albeit one without the full combat capability the Army hoped to achieve with the FCS.

Worth noting is the C-130 was chosen as the standard, as being able to move the force via the C-130 would provide tactical lift to move the lighter force around the operational battlefield. This idea originally emerged from the Army After Next programme, which worked with the concept of a 15 ton vehicle and some form of heavy helo lift capability able to pick and move the vehicle - the helo lift was seen as not possible to achieve, with the proposed vehicle was deemed a bit too light.

And enough of clarifying from me.......

Cheers

[Pete]

TT, I don't disagree with what you've said--the impetus for the medium-weight brigade was mainly strategic transportability. "Power Projection" was one of the Army buzzwords of the mid-1990s, an effort to shorten the several-month hiatus it took from the onset of Desert Shield to the beginning of Desert Storm caused by the time needed to transport heavy tank and mech infantry assets from Germany and the U.S. into the theater of operations. The forward positioning of equipment in Kuwait, Qatar and afloat could only partly address the problem. The several months required to transport equipment was one of the factors that delayed the onset of the current war in Iraq from the time of the decision to go to war in the autumn of 2002 until the invasion in March 2003.

[Pete]

Recently in his "Best Defense" blog Tom Ricks has returned to the subject of COIN. This time the thrust of his posts hasn't been aimed at TRADOC, but with whether the institutional Army fully supports COIN as an operational technique in its schools and field training centers. In a post on April 22 entitled "Is the Army too focused on COIN," he quotes a battalion executive officer as saying " ... call us knuckle-draggers or whatever, we weren't trained to do COIN." The post drew a comment from "Hunter," a National Guard battalion commander, who said his brigade received almost no COIN training before it went to Iraq. That day's blog entry can be read by clicking here.

Hunter's comment was featured in Ricks' installment titled "The lack of COIN in the institutional Army" the following day:

Our BDE was designated as a SECFOR BDE so we didn't rate a trip to a CTC. Indeed when I asked the two star why we weren't going to a CTC I was told, "You're just a LTC, you need to see the big picture." To which I say, #### you very much sir.

Also we got virtually no COIN training at the MOBSITE ... only the training I forced on the unit. Indeed I am entirely self-educated on COIN since 2001 when I realized that I was gonna need it eventually. Actually, I had the help of Tom and a lot of really smart guys on an another internet forum I frequent.

My task force was extremely successful in no small part because they treated the local populace with respect and a COIN mentality -- and I'll take what small credit for that which I deserve. Care to see one (of 4) of my key tasks in my commander's intent, oh, here it is:

"Improve the Iraqi people's outlook of US and Coalition forces in order to gain their support and keep them from supporting anti coalition forces: "First do no harm."

Col. Gian Gentile was one of the persons who responded to the posting, asking, "What are you trying to prove with this constant blog-posting drum-beating that the Army doesn't get COIN?" Starbuck of the "Wings Over Iraq" blog also responded by saying that at his Aviation Career Course in 2007 students were taught mechanized warfare against enemies equipped with Warsaw Pact vehicles. He said he thought the training base was simply recycling its old PowerPoint slides. The entire blog entry can be read by clicking here.

Finally, this past Thursday, April 29, Ricks quotes Adam Silverman, a Ph.D. who served as a social-cultural advisor to the First Armored Division in Iraq in 2007-08 as saying that the best COIN officers he met were self-educated on the subject. He speculated that the institutional Army might regard COIN as a passing thing, "the flavor of the month" to use his words. That blog entry is available here.

[GI Zhou]

Alternatively, many in the the British Army after the First World War, were more than happy to go back to 'real soldiering' - colonial policing the North West Frontier and other parts of the Empire. Far more exotic, and cheaper to live in, than in Aldershot or some other cold dank place in Britain.

[William F. Owen]

Alternatively, many in the the British Army after the First World War, were more than happy to go back to 'real soldiering' - colonial policing the North West Frontier and other parts of the Empire. Far more exotic, and cheaper to live in, than in Aldershot or some other cold dank place in Britain.

If you can ever find who actually ever said "get back to real soldiering" I'd love to know. I simply do not believe it was ever said, and if so it is taken out of context.
WW1 was an anomaly. We have never seen anything like it before or since, and warfare has never developed as fast as it did in those 4 years. It is unique. The British Army of 1918 was unsustainable for any other conflict in the form it existed.

[GI Zhou]

WW2 only followed 19 years later. The Germans went from the Me-109D to rpo the Me-262, the US from a handful of B-17Ds in 1939 to B-29s and nukes in 1945.

What I want to know is where 'it is better to wound than to kill' was originally written down in doctrine.

[William F. Owen]

The Germans went from the Me-109D to rpo the Me-262, the US from a handful of B-17Ds in 1939 to B-29s and nukes in 1945.

The Germans flew the He-178 in 1939, so not such a big leap. Yes Nukes was huge, but I still submit that the scale and application of innovations seen in WW1 has never really been matched.

What I want to know is where 'it is better to wound than to kill' was originally written down in doctrine.

It never was and it's rubbish. The idea dates from the 1930's but it really came out of a book called "Overkill" written in the 1970's and taken from the US use of 5.56mm in Vietnam, as in the round "was not meant to kill."

[Pete]

Perhaps the place of COIN within our doctrine would be more clearly understood if there were a better definition of what it is and what it is not. Some months ago Gian Gentile famously called it "a strategy of tactics"; to my way of thinking it is neither strategy nor tactics, but rather an operational technique for fighting insurgencies and other low-intensity conflicts.

Fighting conventional wars will always be the primary mission of our armed forces for those existential conflicts which threaten the survival of our nation, as well as that of our closest allies. Therefore combined arms doctrine and the need to train in core warfighting competencies will never go away--in any event the use of combined arms, small unit tactics, and proficiency with weapons are every bit as much part of COIN as they are for full-blown conventional warfare.

In one of Tom Ricks' recent blog pieces "Hunter," a National Guard battalion commander and USMA graduate, stated that "First, do no harm" was one of the goals he put into his Commander's Intent when his battalion was in Iraq. Possibly that principle could be integrated into the Law of Land Warfare instruction troops are given during Basic Training, AIT, and precommissioning courses. Conduct that does gratuitous harm to local populations is not merely a violation of COIN principles, in most cases it violates the Geneva Conventions and the UCMJ as well. Last but not least, truly reprehensible behavior drags the colors of our services through the mud, as My Lai did many years ago for the U.S. Army.

To my way of thinking the need for instruction on COIN begins at the officer and NCO level. At officers' basic and career courses, as well as at NCO leadership courses, COIN doctrine should be part of the instruction at our schools, maybe ten percent or so. Instruction in COIN as an operational technique should be reserved for the CGSC level, and even there it should not replace teaching on fighting conventional wars.

When all is said and done. COIN or no COIN, infantrymen have to be taught infantry skills, artillerymen how to fire their howitzers, aviators how to fly and maintain their helicopters, and so on. In closing, the old expression "the best is enemy of the good" should guide our changes to training to make room for COIN. A good solution now that can be modified as required in the future would be better than staffing the subject to death for five years to find the best solution.

[Pete]

To read the latest chapter of my work in progress, Internet Insurgency: Jerking Ken White's Chain, please click here . However, be forewarned, this link includes scenes of gratuitous sex and violence and is not for the faint of heart.

[Ken White]

However, on to the Sex and Violence...

I briefed De Puy once and talked to him twice. He was not a jerk, he was better than most but he was a product of a system -- and, as could be expected, he perpetuated that system while doing a few good things and paying lip service to "Preparing the Army for modern war."

You should speak to your Therapist re: the Hot Babes...

[Pete]

All joking aside, the following is from a U.S. Army War College journal Parameters review of the DePuy biography in the Winter 2008-09 issue.

Following graduation from the Armed Forces Staff College in 1952, DePuy served as V Corps’ Assistant G-3 for Training in Germany. In this job he tested and evaluated 20 battalions a year. This service brought him back to the fundamentals of Army combat training. After two years in this billet, DePuy took command of an infantry battalion in the 4th Infantry Division. For the next year, DePuy practiced the lessons of training that he had learned with the 90th Infantry Division and in his time as a training officer. He found that his new battalion “was as good as any of the battalions over there . . . . At the squad level it was a shambles, just like my battalion had been in World War II. At the platoon level, it was a little better. The company commanders were better. They had good potential. So I decided to spend my time at the bottom.”

Gole correctly observes that “DePuy’s decision to spend his time ‘at the bottom’ specifically addressed what he found in 1954, but he made the same decision in his battle group in 1961, in his division in 1966, and as the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) commander in 1973. His lifelong conviction was that if you get it right at the squad and platoon levels, the rest would fall into place.” As a battalion commander, DePuy personally tested his infantry squads and platoons until “they got very, very good.” As a division commander in Vietnam, he continued this hands-on approach to leadership and training.

The complete review is available by clicking here. You'll have to scrool down a bit to find it.

These general officers -- when I was at Fort Benning OCS in '77-'78 the two officers who were the Field Artillery representatives to the Infantry School were the sons of Gens Starry and Kerwin respectively. (Don't try to tell me that happened by complete coincidence!) When I arrived at 7th DIVARTY in '82 who should be there but Major Bruce Kerwin, the same guy; my battalion commander there Lt Col Morrie Boyd detested him, so Kerwin later retired with one star whereas Boyd left with two.

You should speak to your Therapist re: the Hot Babes...

I'll have to check those old "Active Defense" Tasks, Conditions and Standards we once were taught in the late '70s for hasty and deliberate advances upon hot babe citadels.