I don't claim that COIN is harder or easier than conventional warfighting, or that a battalion commander has a simpler or more complex job. Running stability ops in a non-permissive environment is in many ways more demanding and more challenging than defending the Whale or the Fulda Gap. All that I am saying is that they are different and they demand a different set of skills, many of which are perishable.

For one thing, the level at which one operates is entirely different. Division commanders in conventional war are tactical leaders; they are operational leaders in COIN. Even within levels of war the same missions require different skill sets even if they share common principles. Maximus used the example of the RIP. Well, a company relief-in-place in conventional war is far different than a company relief-in-place in Anbar province. That's why we had to (re)train company commanders to do it properly and relearn a host of lessons. That's why it takes a companies several weeks to properly do a RIP in Anbar as opposed to several hours or a day in Korea. And I doubt if any company commander today could do it properly in 1863 without significant (re)training and a long checklist. Common skills also carry more or less weight, and consequently get more or less attention. Being able to put a sabot round through a pie plate at two miles while on the move was the raison d'etre of tankers at one time - that's why we had four gunnery cycles per year. I've met armor captains in the last few years who have never done a full-scale gunnery exercise. For tankers, this is the third sign of the apocalypse, and I'm sure there are air defenders and artillerymen who have similar hair-raising stories.

I make no value judgments; small wars is what we have been directed to do and that is what we need to prepare for, but conventional warfighting skills are, in the words of the Boss, "goin' fast, and they ain't comin' back." They are fragile - easily subject to skill fade - and hard to recover once lost. I think this is inevitable, and all I ask is that we recognize it as a problem - maybe one to deal with in the future, but still a problem.