British COIN (merged thread)

[Woland]

Well.

The slides for one are more or less incomprehensible, but as for the overall content I really think this 'if only we could do what we did in Northern Ireland' implication is very unhelpful. Between Northern Ireland and Helmand Province there are scant significant parallels which ought to be guiding our practices.

No-one reads the doctrine. If my official capacity I have never even seen the doctrine, and would make a tentative estimate that no-one on the ground has either, or if they have, they've dismissed it as overly complicated, completely unreadable and largely irrelevant at the ground level in a Helmand village. It is hardly revelatory that a fundamental part of a COIN campaign is good J2, but perhaps another complicated Powerpoint presentation could set about explaining the UK's J2 shortfalls.

The whole implication of the slides is that the doctrine is sound but the carrying out of it is not. But there is nothing to say why not - bugger the doctrine, why are we not as good at it as we used to be? Resources? Complicated command structures? Bureaucracy? Poor use of J2? Inadequate funding or CIVMIL relations? Inadequate traning in the first place? Too kinetically minded? Mission creep? Poor quality commanders? All of the above and more, most likely. Yet identifying these things is not at the crux of this presentation. It more looks at what mistakes have been made, rather than a proper introspective look at why. I very much doubt that the answer is in the official doctrine.

[Bob's World]

I assure you, "the answer" is indeed not in official doctrine.

That said, there is a great deal of tremendous concepts, TTPs, thoughts, etc in official doctrine. The problem is one of context. Military doctrine on COIN is written in the context of how military forces conduct COIN warfare.

Change the context, and re-read the same doctrine, and you find that 70% of it is definitely worth hanging onto, it just needs to be rearranged into a new context regarding how military forces properly engage to shape and support foreign policy abroad in lands consumed in insurgency.

[William F. Owen]

It is hardly revelatory that a fundamental part of a COIN campaign is good J2, but perhaps another complicated Powerpoint presentation could set about explaining the UK's J2 shortfalls.

Concur.