Force Structure for Small Wars

[Norfolk]

Andy Pavord wrote:

I do not adovocate transferring the COIN mission to the Guard. I suggested that the infantry brigades in the Guard should be transformed to specialize in COIN. I would also like to see a few COIN BCTs on the active force complemented by some Guard COIN BCTs. I am not sure how many. the exact number could be determined by a strategic analysis of the potential need.

My main argument is that COIN and its variants are a specialized form of warfare. The tactics and techniques required to excel in COIN can be best developed in units that specialize in COIN. I therefore believe that the Army should develop a force of COIN BCTs in both the active and the reserve components. However, because of the uncertain nature of the threats that we face I would keep this COIN force structure relatively small. It should be big enough to ensure that tactics and techniques can be developed and tested and yet not so big that it detracts from the regular BCTs. Many politicans are supporting the idea of expanding the army. I would propse that some of this expansion could be devoted to COIN BCTs.

COIN BCTs could serve as the spearhead of the initial phase of either a stabilization campaign (after the high intensity fighting has defeated enemy regular forces) or of a ounterinsurgency campaign. They could be allocated to the most critical part of the theater while regular BCTs take on the less critical areas. As the campaign continues, Guard BCTs could be deployed to replace active units.

What are termed COIN BCTS in your proposals are what are termed Gendarme units in many other countries; either paramilitary police forces (such as the MVD and the old KGB, various European Gendarmeries and Border Guard forces, et al.) who specialize in OOTW, or specialized military police forces (ie. the Carabinieri) who do likewise. In the context of the US Army, this would mean raising a force of several specialist Constabulary/MP Brigades. While there may be an operational niche for a few such formations (perhaps even on a scale of one per Army Corps), a separate and substantial force structure of several or many such BCTs would result in the corresponding loss of GPF forces for medium and HIC missions. As is, even those European powers with the longest and most comprehensive experience of OOTW (including COIN), particularly in the days of Empire, never maintained substantial specialized COIN-type formations within their military force structures. Even the separate paramilitary police forces tasked with the bulk of the day-to-day COIN-type tasks were dwarfed in size by the military establishments they cooperated with.

There seems to be a lingering myth that somehow OOTW in general and COIN in particular not only require quite different skills than MCO, but indeed are somehow more sophisticated and advanced forms of war or conflict than MCO. They are not; they are policing writ large, with a greater or lesser amount and degree of "war" intertwined. They require professional-level (not conscript-level) individual and small-unit leadership, discipline, presence of mind, and fighting skills, along with a mindset of heavily-armed policing instead of War - the majority of the time. The six-month infantry syllabus that Commonwealth Armies have adopted over the past generation is a reflection of the demands of both OOTW (including COIN, and in places as diverse as Sub-Saharan Africa, South-East Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East) and the demands of MCO, and again in places as divsere as Norway and Central Europe during the Cold War, to the hot wars in the Falklands and the Middle East.

I do not think that we can transfer the HIC mission to the Guard. HIC requires the ability to synchronize very complex systems under very demanding conditions. This takes an incredible amount of practice through high level collective training. Much more practice than Guard units can achieve in the time alloted during a normal drill year. Guard units can get there after mobilization, but it takes time. The nation needs HIC forces that can respond rapidly. Desert Shield is the case in point. I think that the case can be made that Guard units were ready by Feb 1991, but does anybody believe that Guard heavy units could have been deployed by Spt/Oct 1990? Guard heavy units are really part of the nation's strategic reserve. And given the unpredictable state of the world I think that we need them.

Rather agreed, although I would have to concede to Ken, Ski, and some other that MCOs performed by RC formations mobilized in 3-6 months would probably get the job done against most opponents; but not against those few opponents who might know what they're doing. As such, the minimum HIC force requirement should include a full-strength AC Heavy Corps, in addition to whatever RC Heavy Corps there may be. I don't see any realistic alternative to maintaining a large RC HIC-force; a Field Army -level force may well be necessary someday (as it was in 1991, and few expected that), and the AC is just not going to be large enough to accomodate much more than a quarter of that. MCO is the master-level of warfare; not to gall those who have to practice it, but COIN is the apprentice-level of war. By this logic, I suppose, minor conventional wars would make for the journeyman-level of war. Personally, I would be inclined to place ODS and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 into that category.

English-speaking Armies have done decently enough against opponents the likes of Argentina and Iraq in minor conventional wars, but we've had our heads handed to us on a number of occasions by those who had mastered MCO in major conventional wars, Germany in Europe and North Africa especially, though the Japanese handed us some pretty bitter defeats in Asia. To a more limited extent, China gave us a good whuppin' early on in Korea. Happily, we never actually had to take on the Russians in Europe.

As such, it could be argued that English-speaking Armies, the U.S. amongst them, are most comfortable at minor conventional wars against mediocre opponents whom we can out-manoeuvre, out-gun, out-supply, and out-tech. We run into serious trouble either when we're faced with a foe that we can't dispose of quickly - such as in COIN, where the nature of the conflict defies military resolution per se, or when we have to face opponents who have taken the pains to master major conventional warfare. The simple truth is, we're not the best, or even necessarily very good, at either. In time we become just good enough, and then forget soon after the emergency is over...

Raising specialized COIN forces would be unnecessary and counter-productive. Most COIN-related training is part and parcel of thorough initial-entry training, which in turn provides the basis upon which excellence in MCO is based upon (see Ken who's bin' der, dun dat). The remaining, more specialized training that COIN requires is largely something that must be an integral part of officer training and staff college education. Start with the basics, individual and small-unit skills, OOTW (including COIN), and work up through major-unit/formation-level OOTW and minor-unit MCO, and then finish off with major-unit and formation-level MCO training. That's how its done, and been done for over a generation in other English-speaking Armies (check with Wilf on this if you have doubts), and that's what the US has to do since the other English-speaking Armies can't do it the same anymore because of political weakness and indifference at home. No need to consider COIN to be an arcane art-form, with similarly arcane needs.