This post addresses several comments above but not in chronological order.

ipopescu said:
"At the end of the day, in the US system elected civilian leaders are responsible for the decision to engage in the wars that they judge to be necessary to protect the national interest. If current leaders came to the conclusion that a COIN is something the US needs to be involved in now and in the near future, it is normal for the US military services to adapt accordingly to what's being asked of them."
That's true -- and efforts by the Army to deter them from COIN-like commitments from 1975 until 2001 were successful only because said civilians did not see a need. Once one of those civilians saw a need, we were off to COIN city. Well, sort of...

Ipopescu also posted this quote:

""First, anti-COIN is a convenient way to argue against American military involvement in any fashion because the most urgent near-term threats requiring military operations involve COIN... If the U.S. military cannot or will not do COIN, then the U.S. military cannot and will not be operational.""

I do not agree totally with that statement -- some in the Army have done that on that basis but they're fooling themselves, the real problem is that the US military will be told to go do it, ready or not. If, OTOH, even the partial intent of the statement is to say those are the only types of wars that can be seen in the near future -- I disagree on that score as well. No one can reliably predict that we will not become engaged in a major conventional combat next week, much less three years form now. That inference, COIN will rule, Attempts to make a guess into a statement of fact and it presupposes a choice that could be exceedingly dangerous.

Friend ipopescu homed in on the last part of my statement he quoted -- he should have paid more attention to the far more important first phrase: "The armed forces of any nation have a responsibility to be as prepared for all eventualities as possible."

Gian said:
"I for one, in simplistic terms, would not want to trade-off armor and firepower in the force for more light infantry and soft-power-like systems. Certainly there is a need for the latter, but if it came to a tradeoff (which invariably all of these things must come to that) my vote would be for firepower and protection as a key element in the force."
Since you're an Armor Officer, I'm sure you wouldn't -- I suspect some Light Infantry Officers might disagree...

However, isn't that really an argument looking for a home? I see no move by the Army to build more Tanks at this point nor do I see any inclination to get rid of any that we possess. So why bring this up? Because the added personnel are going to infantry Bdes perhaps. Makes sense -- Armor is expensive and if you're going to add more spaces -- almost certainly temporarily -- and there is no need for added armor at this time, it seems unwise to add any. There are also discussions about moving some heavy Bde sets into the ARNG; an idea with some merit if we get to the point where we can again have a strategic reserve.If the issue is truly the defense of the US instead of branch partisanship, neither of those things should be a problem.

Entropy said -- and this is important:
"As it stands now, my perspective is that current OPTEMPO in the ground forces simply do not allow enough TIME for sufficient training in both HIC and COIN. It would be nice to have a full-spectrum force, but unless the force can be increased (unlikely) or unless commitments in Iraq and Astan decrease (likely, the question is when), I don't see how the ground forces can maintain competency in both areas. And, judging from the debate between you and LG, it seems we might be at (or on our way) to what you correctly describe as the "worst of all possible worlds" which is incomplete competence in both areas.
In reverse order, "the worst of all possible worlds" is about where we are today. That is as a result of bad decisions by the Army in the 1989-2001 period, of mediocre training and of the ever ongoing generational change. Senior Commanders today received no COIN or stability ops training while they were developing and thus they did not practice those skills and embed them in muscle memory (so to speak). They're all smart guys, they can read, they go to schools, they learn new things -- but old habits die hard. Almost all adapt, some in a truly outstanding manner, the majority more than adequately but it is still an adaptation and it is not an experience and training derived skill. That's why the application is spotty and varies from person to person, why some above mention that we are not doing many things as well as one could hope.

Which leads to the fact that the current OPTEMPO does not allow time for adequate training. I'm not sure I agree with that but I will acknowledge that the way we currently train coupled with that OPTEMPO almost guarantee marginal training. We need better initial entry training so that both new Officers and new EM have the basics of soldiering firmly instilled. If the basics are acquired, branching out is simple -- without mastery of the ground floor of the profession, everything new becomes chaos. There are some good efforts taking place all over the Army to address this, Basic and AIT as well as the Officer Basic courses are being fixed and that's great. We are slowly --too slowly -- introducing Outcome Based Training. We simply need to take it a step further and double the time to allow mastery of the basics. It would help if we also had a series of courses on how to delegate and how not to micromanage.

That needed fix does not address the requirement for a full spectrum force and how it is trained. That is not a problem -- except that again the OPTEMPO now intrudes; if everyone has to rotate to a theater on a one on - one off schedule, there is no chance for specialization or multi spectrum training. Everyone has to train for the fight we're in, period. There shouldn't even be any argument about that. To train on unneeded skills is to waste training time and will put the troops at unnecessary risk. Lest I be misunderstood, a 19B or 19K needs to be able to shoot, move and communicate -- but he does not have to be a Master Gunner...

Later, post Iraq and Afghansitan (and they will become history) we simply divide training into a roughly 70:30 (or 80:20 -- the ratio will vary from unit to unti) time and effort routine with the light folks doing Stability ops : MCO and the Heavy guys doing MCO : Stability ops. Note I say stability ops and not COIN. The US should diligently avoid COIN situations. There will be those that say we cannot do that. We can -- however we may still have to do some now and then, thus we must have, as nearly everyone now agrees, the doctrine in hand and everyone trains at least a bit for that eventuality.

Entropy also said:
"This brings us back to the problem of trying to fight a high-optempo COIN war while trying to maintain HIC proficiency. Our force ain't big enough to do both right now. Something's got to give or we'll continue to muddle through."
Yes. Muddle through. That's what we're doing but we have a lot of practice at that, I got to watch us muddle through -- and believe, muddle is kind -- two earlier wars and we really do that well. So, muddle through we will. Hopefully, we'll improve our training and PME and thus get as good as we were in 1945 but do it without three hard years of a really hard war to get there. it can be done.

Ron Humphrey said:
"If you get 6 Brigades trained well in infantry and supporting functions and each of their mechanized counterparts are equally comfortable with their tasks then the adjustment up or down the scale should be equally doable.
. . .
...This is NOT a zero sum game whether we would like it to be or not. So despite the fact that there are limited funds and political intrigues, and touchy feely human interests there are men and women who are doing their best and deserve to be given every bit of knowledge, preparation, and skill you can give them."
Exactly.. The issue is not what we're going to buy -- those decisions are mostly locked in concrete for the next five years. The issue is how we train.

The answer is -- not very well.

As Schmedlap said:
"The only reason that I don't think we've become deficient at the higher end is because we already were. The reality check that occurred on 9/11 (that we might actually have to fight real enemies, rather than OPFOR at NTC), has forced some degree of realism and some relaxation of safety standards in training, both of which could do nothing less than improve the quality of training."
Sadly true on all counts.

All this discussion isn't really about equipment buys, force structure or strategic focus -- it is simply about training. Contrary to our inability to affect major policy and budget decisions, we can affect training decisions. Well, I can't -- but most of you guys can...