Quote Originally Posted by Cavguy View Post
I don't think anyone disagrees with this - but - how do we educationally prepare soldiers for full-spectrum ops?

I, like many others, did not feel that the army provided sufficent grounding in COIN basics prior to 2003 as part of our professional military education, and as a result we committed major avoidable errors in tactical COIN 2003-2004.

I think the answer lies more in professional education versus training, as I look back at my OBC and CCC I realize nearly all of it was training. In line units, only three commanders (two BN and one CO) of mine had any regular sort of formal OPD program.

It may be easy to criticize Galula, but I would submit if more officers had read that book as part of a general military education (alongside all other works), we may have created less problems than we ultimately did in OIF.

Niel
I hate to sound cliche but when GEN Schoomaker was CDR USSOCOM (or CINCSOC back in the day!!) he always admonished that we "train for certainty and educate for uncertainty." The certainty is you have to be able to shoot, move, and communicate in any situation. We need to train and maintain proficiency in all our combat skills (both for US operations in MCO and to be able to impart those skills to friends, partners, and allies when necessary). But operations in an Irregular Warfare environment will always be uncertain and require creative problem solving. So we do not need to focus on training for IW. We need to educate for the possibilities we may face but also realize that we cannot identify every possible threat or complex situation. The "irony" is that I think if we really look critically at our military, particulalry our ground forces (Army and Marines) I think we will find many Officers and NCOs who have had sufficient education and were very adept at problem solving in complex operational environments and have done so since we began operaitons in 2001. They were able to do this because they were tactically and technically proficient, they possessed initiative and sufficient lattitude from their chain of command, and they were mentally agile and creative to solve or assist in solving complex problems. I think we find many of these Officers and NCOs at the Brigade and Regimental level and below. What is always the difficult part is developing and orchestrating an integrated and synchroniched operational campaign that supports strategic aims. Training occurs best in our units. Our PME for officers and NCOs needs to focus more on education and less on training.