TRADOC Losing Its Edge?

[Rob Thornton]

OK - I fianlly got the link to work. I think its a combination and depends upon a point of view. I think it is also indicative of the stresses on the force. Its a good interview with LTG Barno, and he brings up some very important points.

Best, Rob

[Pete]

Today's installment in the Tom Ricks series is not about TRADOC--rather, it's an essay by a captain on what he thinks the future Army should be like. He wants one force for conducting COIN and stability operations and another for conventional fighting. Some guys were saying that before 9/11 and it didn't happen then; due to financial constraints I doubt that it ever will. Click on the link below to view the article.

http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts...m_the_pentagon

[Pete]

It might be worth asking our friends in the British Army how they grew accustomed to training for vastly different operational scenarios from the late 1960s until the mid-1990s. During that period it had battalions conducting counterterrorist operations in Northern Ireland as well as having forces prepared for conventional warfare in Germany. Although counterterrorism isn't the same thing as counterinsurgency, the Bloody Sunday episode taught the COIN lesson of not gratuitously offending a major part of the local population. The British experience appears to have some similarity to what the U.S. is facing today.

[davidbfpo]

It might be worth asking our friends in the British Army how they grew accustomed to training for vastly different operational scenarios from the late 1960s until the mid-1990s....The British experience appears to have some similarity to what the U.S. is facing today.

Pete,

Some of your points are covered in other threads such: http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=3576 and http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...read.php?t=897 Try the RFI thread ans search there.

The British Army presence eventually took a fixed shape, with garrison units serving an accompanied tour (3yrs plus), rotations for short tours (IIRC called roulement invariably from Germany), specialists and a large locally recruited Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). There were training facilities in the UK, Germany and elsewhere. It took time to get this machine "well oiled", not only over tactics, evidence-gathering. surveillance and dealing with the media.

The first thread links to a reflective paper on "lessons learned": http://www.patfinucanecentre.org/misc/opbanner.pdf (ignore the link title it is a British Army paper that is in the public domain). Hopefully that will help.

[William F. Owen]

It might be worth asking our friends in the British Army how they grew accustomed to training for vastly different operational scenarios from the late 1960s until the mid-1990s. During that period it had battalions conducting counterterrorist operations in Northern Ireland as well as having forces prepared for conventional warfare in Germany.

Exactly. - and it shows the lie to the hoary old "COIN is Special" punt that the WOW-COIN generation bye into.

Although counterterrorism isn't the same thing as counterinsurgency, the Bloody Sunday episode taught the COIN lesson of not gratuitously offending a major part of the local population. The British experience appears to have some similarity to what the U.S. is facing today.

a.) Why differentiate between so-called COIN and CT? Why make a problem out of something that does not exist. The Brits never saw a difference, nor did the Rhodesians.

b.) Bloody Sunday taught no lessons at all to the British Army, except that you should follow the training and the ROE = Don't do stupid things. - and that isn't a lesson. The British Army was far better prepared for Operations in Ulster than the US was for Iraq. We had two generations of soldiers who had fought irregular warfare, and serving officers who wrote on the subject - and it still took us 7-8 years to get it right, because warfare is generally pretty context specific.

[Pete]

Thank you for the British points of view. My main line of inquiry is not on the history of the troubles in Ulster, but rather how a military organization adapts to having different types of tactics, techniques, and procedures for different kinds of conflicts. The question has a lot of relevance for the doctrine and force structure of the U.S. Army, and I'm not sure that vague statements about "the full spectrum of operations" really have much practical use. Although I'm all for developing doctrine and tactics and teaching it in our schools, there is a limit to what school solutions can do.

I'm reminded of the observation of Sir Michael Howard in his essay "Military Science in an Age of Peace" in the Royal United Services Institute Journal of March 1974: "I am tempted indeed to declare dogmatically that whatever doctrine the armed forces are working on now, they have got it wrong. I am also tempted to declare that it does not matter that they have got it wrong. What does matter is their capacity to get it right quickly when the moment arrives."

[Ken White]

...and I'm not sure that vague statements about "the full spectrum of operations" really have much practical use...

There's nothing vague about full spectrum operations. That spectrum is well and adequately described and the training requirements for each part of the spectrum are known -- if not employed. Without full spectrum knowledge, the ability to do this:

"What does matter is their capacity to get it right quickly when the moment arrives."

will not be present. As the song says, you can't have one without the other.

On another note, this statement is correct:

Although I'm all for developing doctrine and tactics and teaching it in our schools, there is a limit to what school solutions can do.

and illustrates why 'school solutions; should not exist in any way shape or form. The proper tactical or operational solution is one that works at that place and time -- all others are superfluous.

The Tactics instructors at Leavenworth used to say:

- "What we are going to teach you will work in gently rolling, unforested terrain on a mild and sunny June day against a peer enemy who uses conventional tactics and provided you have all your personnel and TOE equipment in combat ready status. If any of those conditions change, you will have to adapt..."

Just so.

[William F. Owen]

My main line of inquiry is not on the history of the troubles in Ulster, but rather how a military organization adapts to having different types of tactics, techniques, and procedures for different kinds of conflicts. The question has a lot of relevance for the doctrine and force structure of the U.S. Army, and I'm not sure that vague statements about "the full spectrum of operations" really have much practical use.

I don't want to sound "fly", but we really didn't think about it. There was Ulster and there was Germany. It really only became to a problem when lessons from one were miss-applied to another.

EG: When I did my Close Reconnaissance Commanders Course in 1990, the course was intended to prepare close reconnaissance platoons for general war against the Russians. We spent most of the course learning skills only relevant to working in Ulster. Yes, we had a high degree of skills, but some were irrelevant in Germany, and skills essential for working in Germany (long range comms) got missed. What was all the more confusing is the Army ran a special Close Observation Course, just for operations in Ulster!!

Basically, what I teach/write today is that you need regular warfare skills and irregular warfare skills. Some skills will be relevant to both and some will be specific to one or the other. If you have them all, this will not matter, and it can be done. You just have to do a couple of days in the classroom laying the ground work.

[davidbfpo]

Pete,

The only book I can recall that addressed this issue was by a journalist, called Hamill, which appeared in the early 1980's; alas I'm not at home so cannot grab it and add the details - IIRC it is on one of the Ulster threads (found it): http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...read.php?t=897, when I listed most of my Ulster bookshelf.

[Pete]

When I did my Close Reconnaissance Commanders Course in 1990, the course was intended to prepare close reconnaissance platoons for general war against the Russians. We spent most of the course learning skills only relevant to working in Ulster.

William, you've described exactly the point I'm trying to make--rather than muddling through, at some point the Army and TRADOC have to decide what the proper mix should be for school instruction when it comes to high-intensity conventional warfare as opposed to unconventional fighting. I hesitate to say whether unconventional warfare should be called counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, irregular operations, or asymetrical warfare; what I mean are all the other graduations of the full spectrum that are less than the traditional Fulda Gap scenario. We've got to be able to be able to do all these types of warfare, and getting it right in the schoolhouse as opposed to letting things slide is our first step towards getting there.

Without doubt unconventional warfare definitely needs to be taught, but Colonel Gian Gentile's statement in the Autumn 2009 issue of Parameters about my old branch of field artillery is a case in point: "In 2008, three U.S. Army colonels, all former brigade commanders in Iraq, told Army Chief of Staff General George Casey that after seven years of population-centric counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army's field artillery branch had lost the ability to fight and had become a "dead branch walking."

[Ken White]

...at some point the Army and TRADOC have to decide what the proper mix should be for school instruction when it comes to high-intensity conventional warfare as opposed to unconventional fighting...

You cannot 'mix' instruction for combat, all that does is confuse people and leave important things off the POI. We simply have to train people for combat in their MOS during institutional training -- that means a much more thorough grounding (and yes, more expensive and longer) in the basics of soldiering -- and units then have to provide the tailored approach for the specific mission set. This is not rocket science; we used to do it and did it fairly well until we lost our way during Viet Nam.

[Pete]

The British Army was far better prepared for Operations in Ulster than the US was for Iraq. We had two generations of soldiers who had fought irregular warfare, and serving officers who wrote on the subject - and it still took us 7-8 years to get it right, because warfare is generally pretty context specific.

To concede one of Willf's points, the British soldier of the 19th century indeed had a special knack for winning over the hearts and minds of local indigenous populations, as is shown by the following diary entry by the Englishman R. D. Blumenfeld for June 27th 1887:

There was present at luncheon a tall, extremely well-dressed young man, with whom I returned to town in a hansom cab. I noticed that part of his forehead was very much sunburned, but one part, from the hair to the nose above the right eye, was of a different colour. This is ‘the swagger mark’ indicating a soldier. It comes from the pill-box, which protects only a small portion of the head and forehead from the sun; a much-coveted distinction. On the way he told me that he is a private in the 2nd Life Guards, and that ‘the gentlemen of the Guards’ are permitted to go off duty in mufti if they so desire. A large number of these Guardsmen, however, prefer to go out in uniform, shell jacket, very tight overalls, and pill-box askew on head, ready to be hired for an afternoon or evening by nursemaids to ‘walk out’. There is a regular, fixed tariff. Household Cavalry for afternoon out in Park, half-a-crown and beer. Brigade of Foot Guards, eighteen pence and beer. Royal Horse Artillery, two shillings. Other services, a shilling. The fact that there is a big demand is shown by the large number of females at barrack gates early in the afternoon and evening waiting to engage escorts.

[davidbfpo]

Pete,

To concede one of Wilf's points, the British soldier of the 19th century indeed had a special knack for winning over the hears and minds of local indigenous populations.

A funny example cited - "walking out" ladies in London. Might have worked there, I doubt it worked anywhere else like that - with the "locals". Consider the reaction in South Wales to military intervention to support the police pre-1914, let alone in the Empire, say in India after the 'Mutiny'.

[Pete]

You've got a point. Discussion on the Great War Forum over whether Haig and the other generals were butchers often takes on an aspect of class warfare, with Labour-leaning people on one side, the Tories on the other, and the Social Democrats somewhere in between. I've got a book that alleges that the Muslim participation in the Indian Mutiny was led by the Deobandi sect, the Indian version of the Wahabis in Saudi Arabia.

[William F. Owen]

A large number of these Guardsmen, however, prefer to go out in uniform, shell jacket, very tight overalls, and pill-box askew on head, ready to be hired for an afternoon or evening by nursemaids to ‘walk out’.

Dam!! Woman hiring soldiers? In my day it was the other way around!

What the Guards and Household Division don't tell is this persisted well into to the 1980's with the cliental being London's Gay community