Ill Informed Blog Post at AM on Advisors

[Tom Odom]

Like many things, the rhetoric regarding advisor efforts says one things, our actions have conveyed the exact opposite regarding the mission. Kip does have a point - if this is our main effort, it certainly isn't weighted as such, so let's stop pretending it is.

No disagreement there whatsoever. Goes back to question 1: the SecDef says it is a priority but the services are not making it so.

Dr. Kalev "Gunner" Sepp quite rightly point out that a mark of success in his COIN Best Practices article was putting quality folks in the program. I think we do for the most part but we then add the fillers. The fillers are like the proverbial bad apples. They taint the effort.

Again I agree, Hacksaw essentially said the same thing as did John Nagl. My last NCO Tony Hoh tells me the same thing.

This all goes back to the basic questions of what war we care about and what is next. I will say that whatever happens to the Advisory Effort so will happen to the effort to keep COIN capabilities in the kitbag for later use.

See:

The Challenge of Adaptation: The US Army in the Aftermath of Conflict, 1953-2000.

"Within the institutional Army, there were clear trends away from “subtheater” operations in the 1970s. Army Special Forces were reduced from 13,000 men in 1971 to 3,000 men in 1974. Counterinsurgency was also waning as part of the Army’s curriculum in the 1970s. At CGSC there were still forty hours of instruction on counterinsurgency as late as 1977, but this fell to eight hours two years later. The War College had dropped internal defense and development to two weeks instruction by 1972, and further reductions scaled even this limited instruction back to a mere two days by 1975. All this helps explain why little seems to have come of Laird’s suggestion for reorganizing part of the force for “sub-theater” operations."

[Rob Thornton]

Hi Neil,

- The assignment of SFA back into the SOCOM arena (vice JFCOM) and the rejection of TMAAG convey that the Army does not see advisory capacity as a core function, but an ancillary function to be performed by BCT's and generating force augmentees sent to advisor training at Polk when needed.

I don’t think the requirement for a TMAAG like function has gone away -the experiments and exercises still show the need based on the limitations of approaches like "train and equip" to meet our FP objectives.

Our increasingly better (yet admittedly sometimes painful and geologically slow) understanding of SFA recognizes that to assist a partner in achieving sustainable security, both reform and development may be required across the depth and breadth of the security sector. This includes those partner systems which it directly or indirectly interacts with such as its economy or political systems.

The purposes to which SFA may be applied go beyond building the internal defense of a legitimate authority for the purpose of internal stability; they may apply to building exportable capacity in support of some regional objective. Its not just about states either, but organizations invested with authorities. It not just about DoD, but anyone assisting security forces in support of our FP.

This gets to the issue of what the BCT (or like structure) can realistically achieve. Even if we invest a broader range of capabilities and capacities within a BCT structure there will still be limitations on what it can achieve. Every organization has limits and once it exceeds those, its functions are less effective.

If during MA we get a BCT pregnant with the required amount and combination of BTTs, NPTTs, MiTTs, PTTs and an e PRT along with the supporting organizational infrastructure it will probably do pretty well at achieving tactical and operational objectives. This to some degree would be codifying what is working best right now in many cases. I think it would assist in synchronizing resources, rotations and train ups so that everybody has more of a shared vision and gets to better support and focus during the mission. You stand to get Unity of Command and better Unity of Effort. There are still warts on it, but I think it is “less” ad-hoc then what we started off doing, and provides the Army more flexibility in meeting the various demands by the GCCs. It is still a combination of individual augmentees and BCTs, but it is earlier on and builds a relationship between the TTs and BCT in CONUS as opposed to on the ground throughout the deployment.

There is also the issue of how the Army assigns value – if the BCT is the Army’s defining organization and it assigns and supports a BCT for the express purpose of assisting security forces, then has it then placed value on that mission? Another way to approach it might be to say that BCTs are no longer going to be the premier organization, something new is and its functions will be X, Y and Z. What would that mean and what are the potential risks? Still another way would be to institute a parallel organization(s) of sufficient scale to meet the growing demand requirements and man it with people who have the correct attributes, traits and skills to be advisors – but many of whom are also the people we most value as leaders for companies, BNs, BCTs and DIVs, or other positions we’ve identified as being key to our own sustainability. It is also worth considering that not all of our SFA activities may be in the area of advising on counter-insurgency, we need full spectrum advisors for a number of reasons – ex. where will an advisor advising a FSF on employment of his artillery BN learn his technical specialties? Are there other threats out there that our partners believe they will have to confront outside of domestic security issues? Anyway, it is worth thinking about.

What ever we do with regard to tactical level advising, it does not necessarily absolve us from the need of something like a TMAAG function which could coordinate and synchronize activities of “SFA focused” BCTs. Such an organization could also be used as the foundation to address requirements such as ministerial level advising. In that regard I think a TMAAG like organization could look allot like a 2 star CJIATF. This may not need to be a permanent organization, but it could be. By its nature such a CJIATF would probably a significant number of senior guys because experience and credibility usually happen over time. An O4 who tries to advise a cabinet minister is probably out of his depth – he just has not had the experiences of say a GO or senior GS or FS type. To do this more right, such an organization would need to first understand the requirements of the environment and then put together the right combination of talent and regional expertise. It might be a combination of USG core personnel and others – be they MNPs, MNCs, IOs, NGOs, contractors etc. We have stood up a broad range of JTFs based on the mission, recognizing the need for this type of SFA CJIAJTF would in itself be an institutionalizing measure.

Much like the discussion surrounding facilities, this one is centered around organizations. Perfect may not be an option, better might be though. Perfect often means only doing one thing really well – there is balance to be had in there somewhere between doing only one thing really well, and doing too many things not good enough.

With regards to the Joint proponent – I know we’ve gone down that road on other threads, but there would be issues with JFCOM as the proponent as well. That is not a lick against them, they do some great things, but when the decision left the DAWG and went to the tank I’ll bet there was probably an opportunity to contest it and some reasons not to. At this point it may be more useful to help it work better within the left and right limits that have been laid out – and figure out if there are ways to expand those limits some that are suitable, feasible and acceptable given the other things we have to do.

We still have not crossed the ground on service proponents, and what the requirements for the Navy and USAF might be outside of Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor have we really discussed the funding streams that allow us to organize, train, equip, rebuild and advise - that is a big deal because while 1206 and 1207 have provided allot of flexibility in OIF and OEF, they are not code but renewable paragraphs in the Defense Authroization Act designed to support OIF and OEF. In other words you could have a really cool tool set to go out and do SFA, but without the authorities to do those activities you might never get them out of the box - accept in an adhoc fashion.

Best, Rob