British COIN (merged thread)

[CR6]

I read this with much interest, and I found Aylwin-Foster's criticism to be accurate and credible, given his time with coalition. We are still grappling with the problems of centralized control of operations, separating ourselves from the population we seek to aid, and the woes of a shallow bench when it comes to personnel. He is also dead-on with his criticism that the Army's ethos of "can-do" sometimes overshadows critical thinking and judgement regarding situations in theater. Somehow I don't think that is what Powell had in mind when he wrote "optimism is a force multiplier." Great article!

[SSG Rock]

We sit back here and see the changes that should occur in order to acheive any measure of success and I don't know about you guys but I am extremely frustrated at the almost pondering manner in which we seem to move in reaction to the adversary in Iraq. We know what we need to do, the changes that we need to make but we don't. Now, I know that there isn't much we can do to initiate change on the political side of the equation, but on the military/tactical where is the bottleneck? Why do we seem to insist on being predictable? Why are we still using pretty much the same playbook? Or, are we dramtically changing our TTP and I'm just not aware of it? Certainly, the news coming out of Iraq doesn't seem to do anything but get worse. Is it really worse? Rock confused.....

[RTK]

From my turret there is significant resistance to change in war prosecution at the Bn and above level. Obvious examples to the contrary are evident in the past three years, but if you look at Ann Scott Tyson's article in the Washington Post this morning, there are shining examples of BN level leadership that just doesn't get it.

Fighting COIN is a tactial, small unit endeavor. This takes Majors and Lieutenant Colonels out of the common, everyday decision making posture and they don't like it. It certainly isn't the same as a large, Bn sized frontal attack.

Changes are made daily in theater but they're made at the lowest levels. We are very good at tactically adapting to the enemy. We are very poor at capturing tactical keys to success through our professional development periodicals. We're having tough times finding anyone to even submit articles to professional magazines. Why? Because the guys and gals smartest on the subject right now are getting deployed and redeployed every 14 months or so. The last thing most of them want to do is write a bloody article on redeployment.

We're doing a good job of capturing battalion and brigade lessons learned through CALL after deployments. As most of us will acknowledge, however, COIN is a tactical, small unit fight. The lessons learned of battalions and larger, however important to capture, simply won't help the strategic corporal talking to the sheik in the province.

[Tom Odom]

RTK

Thanks for this:

We're doing a good job of capturing battalion and brigade lessons learned through CALL after deployments. As most of us will acknowledge, however, COIN is a tactical, small unit fight. The lessons learned of battalions and larger, however important to capture, simply won't help the strategic corporal talking to the sheik in the province.

I have been singing that song as loudly as possibe for nearly 6 years. Please join me in another chorus.

Seriously, it is hard for brigade and battalion commanders to accept they in essence facilitate the fight. Some get it. Many don't.

Best
Tom

[Steve Blair]

And this will continue to be a problem, I'm afraid. The Army never quite figured it out during 10+ years in Vietnam.

[RTK]

I brought this issue up recently with some higher ups in CALL. The response was essentially "good idea, when are you going to write a tactical lessons learned book."

I'm working on one in my free time, but I think it would be a subject worthy of someone's full time job right now, especially since we haven't put one out as an army after God knows how many tactical units have gone through twice.

[Tom Odom]

RTK

Email me what you have and we can get started. I am looking for a VOL 7 of the Company-level SOSO series that I started here in late 2004.

Best

Tom