COIN v. Conventional Capability Debate

[Ken White]

Which may be why they are called problems.

Hacksaw, not to be simplistic or to ignore the many various complexities of this particular conundrum but many are of our own making and I believe it is important to acknowledge that before embarking on courses that create more problems -- a tendency at which the US Government excels...

With respect to the White Paper, I believe most of us are aware of that and that most agree with the definition of the problem to a greater or lesser extent -- I don't think anyone with any sense is in denial about the problem; the discussion is on the degree of trauma it could invoke. While it is true that FA and Armor have been used (wrongly in my view) as everything from MPs to Infantry to god knows what, most have also been doing their nominal mission. The counterpoint to FA not getting to train to their primary mission is that those that do get to fire are shooting at good targets under combat conditions and that they are shooting Excaliburs and GMLRS which few would get to do in CONUS; the Armor counterpoint is that a whole lot of Tankers haver gained a far better appreciation for what the Infantry contends with than they would have normally had -- that can only enhance combined arms efforts in the near future. there are pluses and minuses to everything and every action has a cost.

You say:

...However, with respect to Title X type responsibilities – war is anything but war, and that is the level at which Gian has been beating his drum.

Arguable at best. My sensing is that the Army has the Title X responsibility to be the nations repository of land war fighting expertise and capability -- to my knowledge, there are no stipulations or caveats on to what sphere of land warfare that capability should be directed; it seems to me that full spectrum is implicit. Whose fault is it that the Army was not and is not prepared to do that within resource constraints -- which do not generally affect doctrine or training methodology?

That has been the case for my lifetime and the Army has varied over those many years in its ability to meet the requirement. Some of those variance have been due to the exigencies of the time, as now. Most, though, have been due to the Army unilaterally deciding to restrict or change its focus. I submit that since at least the early 80s, many of us -- and many in high places -- warned the nation and / or the Army of what was coming and that the senior leadership of the Army diligently ignored those warnings. During the 80s, their desire to focus on major war in Europe was understandable (if short sighted...); post 1989, their continuing, mostly, to do so was borderline criminal IMO. We are where we are with respect to force structure and state of training because they resisted change -- and IMO a lot of that was influenced by (not due to) branch parochialism.

You also say:

"...However, the larger point that Gian raises routinely, but that I have seen no senior leader echo is that we, as a Nation, have lost complete balance between strategic objectives and resources. This is where we have become most discombobulated."

True. We have, as Americans, many advantages and an almost too pleasant life style for most people. We have never really balanced those two things well unless it was in every sense of the word, vital. That discombobulation is the price those who serve pay for the reasonably pleasant life led most of time. I have often railed about it but on balance after many years, came to accept it as that price -- and I think it's worth it (and did think that long before I hung up my war suit). YMMV.

On your three options, I think 1. would be a bad mistake for which we would pay later -- folks in the ME read such actions far differently than do we westerners. I also believe 3, as you seem to think, is not going to happen.

That leaves number 2. I'm quite comfortable with that. I think I have more confidence in the people in the Army and Marines (as opposed to the senior leadership thereof) than some who post here seem to, possibly as a result of having seen the services bounce back from circumstances worse than we see today on several occasions. I'm firmly convinced that both the Army and Marines are capable of doing far more than many seem to credit them with, that the shift and refocus ability is phenomenal and little understood or appreciated and that the biggest problem in the way of that is a lack of confidence, to include self confidence, on the part of some senior people -- and I think a large part of that is engendered by the lack of trust in subordinates that our flawed training regimen provides.

If commanders are not confident that subordinates can do the job, they will micromanage -- and fear failure. Today's commanders are products of a flawed system that has not trained the basics well to newly entering officers or EM so they expect poor performance. What kind of sense does that make?

General Bruce Clarke's "An organization does well only those things the boss checks" became Army watchwords in the 60s. Very bad mentality, that. Those words and that philosophy totally screwed up command relationships and duties.

You said, early in your comment:

"I am sure that today’s crop of Soldiers and leaders could maintain competency in those aspects that are common and train to those tactics that differ… but make no mistake TTPs do differ based on the conditions/context."

True but that emphasizes my point on training -- conditions do vary; they always will. The task may or may not be the same but if it is, the conditions can shotgun all over the place. Our adoption of task, condition and standards training from civilian industry in the 70s was a terribly bad idea as was the ARTEP. Yet if one were to train to achieve a desired outcome under varying conditions...

Fort Jackson is doing some good things with CATC and outcome based training, hopefully it'll catch hold...

Off topic, that; back to the point. No question that major combat is our imperative and COIN is a desirable ability. Unfortunately, the focus now, rightly or wrongly, is COIN. The Army has no choice but to emphasize that. A lot of senior people are correctly pointing out we're losing the imperative conventional capability, just as they did -- and we did -- during Viet Nam. My belief is that we'll have adequate warning and prep time to adjust training and focus. As for equipment, no US Army has ever gone to any war with all the right stuff in place at the onset; that, regrettably, is unlikely to change (See Congress, U.S.).

In summary, I agree that a deterioration of mission capability on the part of some branches is a problem; that it needs to be addressed and that we are not doing that well. I also believe that much of the problem stems from flawed planning in the past and today in high places and that the extant problem is no where near crisis level at this time. I further think that much of the current discussion is at least partly engendered by branch parochialism -- and that is NOT to say anyone is dealing in bad faith, I simply mean we are all products of our experience and that branch loyalty within the Army is not unknown thus those two factors combine to give one a branch centric view of any problem. To me, that is perfectly understandable, natural and not wrong in any sense -- though I'd submit that it should be recognized as a factor.

We can do better.

Very long way of of acknowledging I hear what you're saying but disagree pretty strongly on the potential 'danger' at this time.