Since this forum is small wars/LIC/COIN centric it seems that Gian Gentile’s pontifications take a greater share of potshots from this audience for his position.

However, in many ways I feel he is right in his concerns. Why? (Allow me to take few moments to position and climb atop my soapbox).

Soldiers and Marines are trained to obey orders. (no disrespect to the Navy and Air Force but this diatribe is aimed at the footslogger). At the very basic level Soldiers and Marines are trained to mete out death and destruction with a variety of small arms. However, they typically only do so in response to orders from higher authority. Soldiers and Marines are also trained to shoot, move, and communicate at the lowest levels of tactical warfare.

In “conventional” battle there are times when Soldiers and Marines must seek assistance in the meting out death and destruction, thus they call for even more destructive weapons to assist them. These weapons are typically operated by others and are employed at the request of the Soldier or Marine. If several of these weapons are called upon (tanks/arty/CAS) to act in unison there must be discipline, synergy, and orchestration to ensure these disparate weapons systems are brought to bear upon the enemy and not on the Soldier or Marine. “Conventional” battles are usually fought in areas free of innocent bystanders, thus allowing full application of weapons with little chance of “collateral damage.” This is not an easy task to accomplish and takes precise training and exacting practice on the part of the Soldier or Marine to achieve the proper coordination and orchestration to both destroy the target and not harm our own troops.

COIN is not “conventional” war; it is small war, typically absent large enemy military formations armed with “heavy” weapons (tanks, aircraft, heavy artillery). COIN is predominantly social, political, ideological warfare where the battlefields are ambiguous at best, and typically cluttered with a variety of non-combatants. In COIN the basic skill set of the Soldier and Marine isstill applicable: shoot, move, and communicate with a greater emphasis on communicate and move rather than shoot. In COIN the Soldier and Marine act more in the role of very heavily armed police officers. Police officers try to maintain the peace without resorting to firepower. In COIN the Soldier and Marine must do the same, although unlike the police officer they typically have a much greater arsenal at their disposal should they need it. The key is that, while they need the same skills to employ these weapons of greater destruction, they must be much more judicious in their employment. Collateral damage is highly counter-productive in COIN.

So where is this all leading?

After Vietnam the Army seemed to toss aside over a decade’s worth of COIN/LIC/IW lessons in favor of concentrating totally on conventional warfare with a peer competitor (the “Fulda Gap” syndrome). Despite the fact that from 1975 to 1991 all our military engagements were of the COIN/LIC/IW variety the Army was well skilled for Desert Storm. Again in 2003, despite the lessons of Somalia and Bosnia, the Army and Marine Corps conducted a conventional blitz into Iraq and defeated Saddam Hussein (again). But the Iraq campaign then changed into something very different, it became a COIN/LIC/IW campaign. The Army and Marines adopted ever so slowly but soon enough had rediscovered those lessons ignored from Vietnam and before.

I believe Gian sees this new emphasis on COIN doctrine as rapidly becoming dogma and the Army is now seemingly forsaking conventional warfare training and skills for those of COIN.

COIN is warfare as the small unit level using small arms. Every infantry Soldier and Marine knows how to use these weapons. But COIN is not a weapons system; it is a capability, one which requires a variety of often disparate tactics, dissimilar methods, and many systems to employ.

A tank is always a tank, whether an American, Russian, Chinese, Iranian, or Sudanese operates it. We know what tanks are typically used for, what they are capable of, and how to defeat them. Yet an insurgent, while always a man (or woman), is not always the same. Insurgents come in different shapes, sizes, capabilities, ideologies, religious beliefs, and moral standards. Insurgencies are at once the same and different.

I feel that Gian sees the ever-increasing emphasis on a COIN centric Army as being very detrimental to the Army’s capability to wage conventional warfare with a peer competitor. He feels the pendulum is in danger of being allowed to swing too far away from center (although it certainly wasn't there pre-Iraq). A prime example is NTC. NTC was the place where Soldiers learned the various skills required of the subtle ballet that is synchronizing and orchestrating the vast array of weaponry possessed by the Army and bringing it to bear on a like enemy. Currently, however, NTC is becoming more of a COIN-training center. This is a bad precedent for the army. It will gradually lead to the deterioration of Soldiers with the requisite skills to conduct effective conventional warfare.

In many respects I agree with Gentile’s concerns and do not believe he is anti-COIN. The Army needs to have a robust capability to fight in both types of warfare. IMHO it is much easier for a Soldier who is highly trained in the complexities of employing the variety of weapons systems in conventional warfare to quickly adapt to a COIN/LIC/IW situation than it is for a Soldier who is trained predominantly in COIN to function at his optimum when thrust into the chaos of conventional war.

Soldiers, after all, are trained to obey orders, but to follow orders they need the skills. Conventional warfare requires solid skill sets, many of which that are also useful in COIN. COIN is more of an intellectual exercise requiring a common sense approach, an understanding of human behavior, and empathy with the local population, skills not necessarily taught or quantified in an FM.