We Still Need the Big Guns

[Gian P Gentile]

...Thus it may appear that we're over emphasizing it but that perception is heightened by the fact that our determination from 1975 until 2005 to concentrate solely on MCO and thus to deny that the COIN function existed, much less was an Army mission, led to a capability gap that was -- or should have been -- an embarrassment to the Army and many who 'grew up' in that era prefer the relative clarity and ease of focus a single mission type provides and though they prove daily they can adapt to the COIN arena, they don't like it (who would? Totally understandable) and want to move away from it.

The world today is chaotic, is not itself simple enough to allow that and it has been repeatedly proven that politics and not Army desires are the determinant on where, when and to do what the US Army will be deployed in future -- and no one can predict that where, when or what...

I'm less afraid of excessive emphasis on COIN than I am of an overcompensation led by both the heavy and FCS communities over the next few years to again relegate COIN to oblivion because of the threat to equipment purchases or for other reasons. That would be a mistake, one we've made before and do not need to repeat.

We can do all the missions; MCO and COIN and things that lay between the two. We may have to do them all....

Ken:

I agree with most of what you say especially the first couple of sentences where you point out that the army, wrongly, turned its head away from any kind of irregular training and emphasis when history and a careful prediction of future operations should have demanded at least some attention to it.

I also accept the practical reasons for the army's complete (operational and not necessarily institutional training) focus now on counterinsurgency operations. Because of the size of the Army we have no slack and really have no choice but to focus almost completely on Coin. RTK disagrees from his persepective as a trainer of junior officers from the institutional training base; of course i acknowledge the weight that his training places on mco. But when those combat lts go out to the field army they do only coin; either actual coin in iraq and afghanistan or in trainups for the next deployment. That is the reality of the operational army today.

I am less sanguine, however, than Ken White is with the future. He worries about the Army regressing into an 80s mindset where we again disregard coin and irregular war for mco and hic. I have an opposite worry; that since we are so focussed on coin today it causes us to see a future of a security environment described by people like TX Hammes that is predominated by irregular warfare. That conception of the future then drives ideas like lightening the American army and basically turning it into a nation-building, light infantry force (there was an article in another thread a few months ago titled something like "rage against the machines" that made this argument). Nagl's recommendation for a permanent advisory corps is a step in this direction.

gian