We recently went throuh a COA development excercise (UNCLASS) for a COCOM (not as part of COCOM JPG, but as a class assignment) based on some future events. The COA we adopted based on how it came out in the comparrison was heavy on UW.
Frankly it was a bridge to far as we fleshed it out and realized the ammount of time and the types of resources required were possibly beyond our ability to generate or sustain, and that the guarentee of mission success was too low by comparrison.
However, that has never stopped a COA from being adopted, particualrly if at the moment it appears to be the most most politically palatable given recent memories or what have you, and you can wish away some of the hard stuff because its hard to qualify or quantify in a .ppt deep COA.
It did get me thinking though since there is much discussion about how the Operational Environment is changing, and what it requires to succeed in it. Are we (in general) starting to acknowledge the need for greater capacity in UW to address irregular and assymetric threats in an evolving OE? Do we need them to provide policy more flexible strategic alternatives? If we do, then how much of it do we need, to supplant large scale capabilities, traditional capabilities? How does our strategic culture "the American Way of War" play into our ability to adapt/change? How much of this should be limited to improving SOF capacity, and how much should become the purview of GP forces? How can we get "economies" in certain areas - ex. If a GP soldier has extensive knowledge of COIN and FID, can he pull some degree of double duty in UW tasks such as training an insurgency?
What does this say about how we spend our $$$?
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