JFQ - Point - Counterpoint - SWJ Early Exclusive

[Cavguy]

General Casey in the upcoming JFQ issue: (sorry no link yet)

We also asked ourselves if we really
think we’re going to build another country’s
army and police forces and ministries from
the ground up any time soon. And the answer
was, probably not. We’ve got several chal-
lenges: we’ve got to set ourselves up to do Iraq
and Afghanistan for the long haul, and then
figure out how we augment Special Forces
to do the other engagement that we need.
That’s kind of the direction we’re going. In
the interim, we have a training center for
transition teams that we’re going to continue
to run, it’s going to move down to Fort Polk,
out of Fort Riley, and we’re going to have a
brigade dedicated to doing nothing but train-
ing transition teams. So we’ll continue to do
that for a while.

I just came back from Afghanistan, and
more and more I’m hearing Soldiers on the
ground say that the partnerships—matching
an Afghani battalion up with a coalition
battalion or a coalition company—is having
a greater impact on the indigenous forces
than the transition teams. We may not need
as many transition teams; just aligning them
with the coalition forces may be a better way
to go. In Iraq we had both; we had transition
teams and partnership, and that seemed to
work. So I think you may see how transi-
tion teams are evolving a little bit in Iraq
and Afghanistan, and we’re working with
the theater to see what the best way to go is.
But at least in Iraq, and to some extent in
Afghanistan, the proficiency of indigenous
forces is getting to where they don’t need to
have somebody with them every day; they
can operate side by side. So I think it’s going
to evolve a little bit, but I’m not exactly sure
how it’s going to go

Interesting excerpt of a larger section highlighting his views (elsewhere he states SF is his advisor corps and that they might can be augmented by GPF in certain situations).

I actually agree that embedding US units inside of host nation BN's is probably more effective than just TT's - it certainly helped in my AO, where my company lived with an IA battalion. You still need the TT's for the staff mentorship, but the combat part is better done by a combat unit.

[Ken White]

Interesting excerpt of a larger section highlighting his views (elsewhere he states SF is his advisor corps and that they might can be augmented by GPF in certain situations).

Entirely too sensible. Disapproved.

I actually agree that embedding US units inside of host nation BN's is probably more effective than just TT's - it certainly helped in my AO, where my company lived with an IA battalion. You still need the TT's for the staff mentorship, but the combat part is better done by a combat unit.

Yes!!!

Kudos to the CofS and thank you for the post.