The Best Trained, Most Professional Military...Just Lost Two Wars?

[ganulv]

we are far too technology, mass and firepower reliant. That's mostly due simply to the fact that we can provide those things (currently, anyway...) and accordingly have been unwilling to properly invest in, train and educate our forces.

I don’t know if this question can be addressed in short answer form, and I realize that the answer entails also addressing the question, “What are they expected to be able to do?”, but here it is just in case: what would forces adequately invested in, trained, and educated look like as compared to those currently in existence?

[Michael C]

One of the more popular posts on the Small War Council asks, "What can we do to keep the SWJ relevant?" Maybe the answer for the SWJ council is, "Quit insulting each other."

I stopped posting on here because people like Bill Moore and "Of the Troops" immediately descend to calling me an idiot or the author of "highly naive articles and this is just another one to add to the compost pile." As a result, I only check the council side when someone links to my article. As usual, most of the "discussion" chooses to personally attack me and avoid the argument.

You gentlemen stay classy.

[Dayuhan]

As usual, most of the "discussion" chooses to personally attack me and avoid the argument.

I don't think the argument has much substance, and I've never been in the military or involved with it in any way.

To use your own athletic metaphor, sending an army to "do state-building" is like sending an ice hockey team into a basketball game... and then of course blaming them for committing fouls.

This is not just a question of failure to prepare for irregular war or post cold war conflict. The military is perfectly correct to point out that it should not be used for "state building". That's simply not a military function from the start. If you order an engineer to perform surgery, don't blame the engineer if the patient dies.

"Pop-centric COIN" is an abortion of an idea that's based on unsustainable assumptions and programmed to fail from the start. Blaming failure to achieve the goals on inability to execute the strategy is like ordering someone to ride a unicycle up K2 and blaming the rider for the consequent failure.

I wouldn't say the military is completely devoid of responsibility (the world "blame" is really to infantile to be in the discussion at all), and I don't think anyone here would make that claim: certainly there's been an enormous amount of discussion of military shortcomings here. I don't see any point, though, in focusing on that degree of responsibility to an extent that ignores the massive shortcomings on the policy level.

Winning is achieving your objectives. The first step toward winning is selecting a clear, practical, achievable set of objectives and defending them against mission creep. This is not a military function, and if this step gets botched the job of everyone down the line, from the strategic level down to the tactical, gets infinitely more complex.

All the talk we hear of increased complexity stems to me less from any inherent complexity of the situations than from the complexity we impose by adopting vague, ephemeral, impractical goals and pursuing those goals using inappropriate tools and methods.

[Ken White]

I don’t know if this question can be addressed in short answer form, and I realize that the answer entails also addressing the question, “What are they expected to be able to do?”, but here it is just in case: what would forces adequately invested in, trained, and educated look like as compared to those currently in existence?

""""They'd have less money. The American solution of throwing money at a problem instead of fixing it has not worked with Education, Medical care -- or the Armed Forces.

For the active forces, there would be fewer people, they'd be a bit older (and thus, hopefully, a bit more mature) and would spend a bout one and half to twice as much time in institutional training staffed by selected Trainers with demonstrated expertise in subject matter and instructing. They would stay in the same units for years and their equipment fit would be a little different -- much of it to allow sea and land basing but rapid reaction to crisis area movement (we pay lip service to that but do not really want to do it -- too much uncertainty and careers might be damaged...). All would have spent some time in Reserve Units before being ALLOWED to enter the active force.

The Reserve Forces OTOH would very much resemble those of today but would be about 50% larger -- they would provide the mass and base for expansion if needed for a major war.

Movement between the two forces, active and reserve would be simplified. Personnel policies that over emphasize 'fairness' and 'objectivity' in selection criteria; 'everyone a generalist * ,' and the very mistaken idea that all persons of like education and experience are equally capable and can perform any job for that rank -- a structure, process and system that needs a MAJOR overhaul so we stop promoting based on 'potential' and being forced to reward decent performance with a promotion until the Peter Principle takes hold -- would disappear...""""

Then the Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-hah from the Capitol and Five Sided Funny Farm in DC woke me up and I fell on my Lance. Sancho laughed and laughed..

* That 'generalist' stuff and excessive rotation of personnel exist not to better train the force but to make assignments and finding square pegs to put in round holes easy for the Personnel bureaucracy. The unnecessary costs of that approach adversely impact the expansion of needed training; that lack of comprehensive training leads to mistrust of subordinates and reluctance to undertake any complex operations. The training process needs to ditch the Tasks, Conditions and Standards approach that limit abilities to aggregate and combine tasks to accomplish a mission; we need Outcome Based Training and Eduction.

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Fuchs

personally don't agree with his idea to about the direction to go (pop-centric COIN) and would if at all rather treat this as a political fight (=deal with those who have influence, don't try to influence millions of people directly).

Agreed

I do believe he's more right about the "losing" thing, and consider your and dayuhan's position as rather reflexive partisan - especially in the case of Iraq, where the troubles were started more by occupation mistakes than in Afghanistan.

I differ with you here, because the author attempted without providing any supporting evidence to conflate military competence with losing strategies/policies. Sen McCain is absolutely correct when he said we have the world's best military, but that doesn't mean it will achieve national objectives if the objectives and policies are based on fantasy, or conditions exist that are well beyond a military solution. From a strictly military capability stand point we currently have the best the military in the world. There may smaller militaries that are more tactically proficient, but they are too small to overcome our mass and technological advantages in a battle (a war is different if they can survive long enough to counter our strategy). Ken is absolutely right that we could be much better if we revamped our training programs, but despite our numerous shortfalls we are still quite capable. On the other hand, our ability to develop a winning strategy is another matter altogether.

As for losing, the only one we lost is Vietnam and even calling that one a loss is debatable. We debated that enough in other forums, so we may just have to agree to disagree, but more importantly if we listened to our military experts who were familiar with the situation we wouldn't have gotten involved in the first place.

I take issue with the assertion that great armies can't be defeated. Other great armies have been defeated, the British were the best Army in the world when our colonalists defeated them, and after they were defeated they were still the best military in the world. If the British felt it was worth it and if they were willing to employ their full might against our citizens they would have won (opinion obviously), but fortunately they weren't, much like we weren't prepared to do what was necessary to win militarily in Vietnam. The Germans probably had the world's best army when WWII started, but they over extended themselves and made a few other strategic errors, but that doesn't take away from their military competence. I'm not trying to be defensive, but I think it is important to point out there is a difference between having a great military and having a great strategy. Great armies/militaries can be defeated by lesser foes if they have a better strategy, or in some cases if the better military is following such a flawed strategy it ends up defeating itself.

Furthermore I wouldn't place so much trust in the core competence of winning battles. The American way of warfare works well against near-defenceless opposition (at least superficially) and it works well with overwhelming resources.

Actually quite the opposite, we're very good at defeating miliaries that have capable defenses. They provide us targets that we well suited to destroy. I agree with the second part of your sentence, we do rely on overwhelming resources, and that may be one reason we're so bad at strategy? We don't think we need to out think our adversary if we can out muscle him. Unfortunately we do rely on industrial age strategy to mass firepower on alleged centers of gravity with large forces that are enabled with information technology. I agree we have a lot of room to increase our sophistication when it comes to strategy, yet it seems the desire for ever larger forces instead of new ways of fighting still dominates our discussion despite guidance to do otherwise. It is important to note that the Pop Centric approach requires excessively large ground forces to implement.

[Fuchs]

Why do you think we did so well during Desert Storm and in Panama? Clearly defined and feasible military objectives.

"No competent and motivated opposition" did certainly kind of help.


I've got a standard example which I use to disrupt others' confidence in their nation's military - including my countries':

The Italians wiped the floor with the Abbessinians in 1936.
The British and ANZACs wiped the floor with said Italians in 1940.
The Germans wiped the floor with said British in 1941.


The invasion of Panama says about as much about the U.S. military's competence as the invasion of Denmark, and if you look very much at logistics, of Norway in 1940. The real test of competence for the German army was France, though. The U.S. military had no such test. Its major victories came to being with vastly superior, not about equal, resources.

For this reason I withhold final judgement of the U.S.ground forces' actual (relative) competence even for what's called conventional warfare. Their way of war and especially their love for gold plating and radio comms is dubious.


Bill; show me American ground troops fighting against well-armed opposition and we'll see whether this ability to destroy isn't overcompensated by an inability to survive in face of such an opposition.
I understand American army troops pride themselves in their supposedly unique quality at shattering formations, but this self-image appears to found almost entirely on fighting demoralised and 1970's monkey-model-equipped Iraqis.

[Bill Moore]

Fuchs wrote,

The real test of competence for the German army was France, though. The U.S. military had no such test. Its major victories came to being with vastly superior, not about equal, resources.

For this reason I withhold final judgement of the U.S.ground forces' actual (relative) competence even for what's called conventional warfare. Their way of war and especially their love for gold plating and radio comms is dubious.

Bill; show me American ground troops fighting against well-armed opposition and we'll see whether this ability to destroy isn't overcompensated by an inability to survive in face of such an opposition.
I understand American army troops pride themselves in their supposedly unique quality at shattering formations, but this self-image appears to found almost entirely on fighting demoralised and 1970's monkey-model-equipped Iraqis.

If you're talking post Korea it is difficult, but I think an argument can be made that the US Army proved its ability to endure against a potentially superior force during the Battle of Ia Drang in 1965. Some may have some valid arguments to counter argue this.

It seems the fact of the matter is we simply haven't had a hard test in the past few decades, but I'm not sure what nation could test us in a conventional battle based on our current technological dominance? Obviously irregular warfare is a different animal altogether.

[Dayuhan]

"Best in the world" isn't a measure of absolute capability or competence, it's a measure of relative capability and competence. What military would anyone say is better, and on what basis?

Certainly there's room for improvement, as there always is, but I'm not sure we should be pursuing improvement in pop-centric COIN or state-building, tasks that are likely to degrade competence at core military functions. If we really want to run about building states - and I can't see why we should - it's time to develop a specific non-military state building capacity, in which the military's only functions would be providing security and training corresponding military forces.

[Entropy]

show me American ground troops fighting against well-armed opposition and we'll see whether this ability to destroy isn't overcompensated by an inability to survive in face of such an opposition.
I understand American army troops pride themselves in their supposedly unique quality at shattering formations, but this self-image appears to found almost entirely on fighting demoralised and 1970's monkey-model-equipped Iraqis.

Yes, the American force in Desert Storm outclassed the Iraqi's. Still, I think the American forces did a lot better than most expected. The fact that more American troops were killed in accidents than in combat losses (115 total US combat KIA compared to ~25,000 Iraqis) tells me that one can't simply write off the success of that campaign as merely the product of superior resources and an incompetent enemy.

You're right, though, that the US hasn't fought a peer force for a long time. I, for one, hope that is a"test" we never have to take. Also, I suspect that any "peer force" we'd fight would love their radio comms as much as we do.

[JMA]

Yes, the American force in Desert Storm outclassed the Iraqi's. Still, I think the American forces did a lot better than most expected. The fact that more American troops were killed in accidents than in combat losses (115 total US combat KIA compared to ~25,000 Iraqis) tells me that one can't simply write off the success of that campaign as merely the product of superior resources and an incompetent enemy.

Been there done that... and yes I agree.

Not sure who expected a lesser result? The smart people knew it was going to be a walk over (especially because of US control if the seas allowing safe and secure LoC).

That is the way the US knows how to fight... by applying overwhelming force to a lesser (in all respects) force. The key here is that at division and maybe brigade level is where the US operates best. Below that all bets are off - as seen by outsiders. US special forces are obviously world class and that offers a ray of hope. But the competence gap between small teams of SF and a convention bde or div is just too great in any form of insurgency war.

[ganulv]

The fact that more American troops were killed in accidents than in combat losses (115 total US combat KIA compared to ~25,000 Iraqis) tells me that one can't simply write off the success of that campaign as merely the product of superior resources and an incompetent enemy.

How might things have looked had the U.S. been allowed five weeks rather than five months for the buildup?

[carl]

If you're talking post Korea it is difficult, but I think an argument can be made that the US Army proved its ability to endure against a potentially superior force during the Battle of Ia Drang in 1965. Some may have some valid arguments to counter argue this.

American air and artillery support available may militate against that being a good example.

[carl]

The main point of the article is that military boosterism (We're number 1! We're number 1!) blinds one to the obvious military deficiencies exhibited by the American military establishment. And if those flaws are not seen they cannot be corrected. This statement of Sen. McCain "We have the highest trained, most professional, best military in history.” is a fine example of unthinking boosterism. It is the kind of thing that gets in the way of fixing the things, many things, that are broke. The C brothers expand upon this general theme in this post

http://www.onviolence.com/?e=641

about how generals aren't held responsible. And in this post

http://www.onviolence.com/?e=634

about politically correct views of the military.

There is nothing at all objectionable or controversial about the main point of the article. It is simple common sense that if you continually hear that you are the best of best ever that you won't be very inclined to change.

The second big point in the article is that the military establishment (the author uses the word culture) can't adapt. This also seems obvious given the events of recent history. The guys lower down can and have, quite a lot in some cases. But the establishment, all of it, political and military can't. They just go blindly along doing what hasn't worked for the past 10 or 20 years whether it be knowing the F-35 is going to make it or knowing with even more certainty that this is the year the Pak Aarmy/ISI is going to come around.

We have been getting away with this but the lower ranks may not have time to make up for the incompetence of the suits and multi-stars the next time. Which it why it is important that we remove the stars from our eyes. (Get it? Stars in our eyes, a dual reference to removing the baleful influence of the generals and the blindness that We're number 1! afflicts us with. I just now thought of it.)

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Surferbeetle,

Some of your comments had no context, so I didn't understand what you were implying, but comments on a couple.

Iraq - Saddam, his sons, and many of his gang no longer walk the earth....blood has been spilled to atone for what was taken from us. Oil production is back up to what it was before Saddam took power ~ 3 million bbl/day. Internet penetration has gone from something close to zero to what appeared to be more than 50% in urban areas by my observation.

Saddam and his sons are dead, and good on us, but killing them did not require a major occupation, an excessive de-bathification program, and a largely failed nation building effort. Once Saddam was dead and the sanctions lifted I believe the Iraqis would have gotten their oil production back up to pre-Saddam years on their own (Western corporations would be allowed to provide technical expertise). The 50% internet penetration in itself is not a positive if 50% of them are using it to inform their views from disinformation on radical websites promoting ethnic hatred. That probably isn't happening, but still referring to internet penetration as a positive without understanding its impact seems a bit of reach. However, despite our win and we did win, we pushed Iraq into, or much closer to, Iran's sphere of influence, and ethnic violence is still very active, and the risk of civil war has not been erased. We won, but what the results of that win is too early to assess.

Iran - The economy is in shambles. The Syrian connection/pass thru supply route is fractured. Velayat-e faqih has a viable competitor in Najaf. Saudi Arabia & GCC, Turkey and Israel circle, scheme, and smell weakness...

Is an Iranian economy in shambles really in our long term interest? We did the same to Iraq, and when we removed Saddam we had to deal with that economic shamble in addition to an insurgency, a civil war, and transnational terrorism. It was assessed by some experts that weaker economy actually made Saddam more powerful. It seems feasible that a country with a strong and diversified economy would be more difficult for the government to control, because government handouts would be less valuable as a tool to control the masses.

Arab Spring - The world's largest youth bulge has a better chance to find employment and apply it's energy to productive efforts than previously.

This will be true only if they liberalize and allow their human capital to increase. If the result of Arab Spring is Sharia law and more oppression then I think we and they will all be greatly disappointed.

US Army - Many of the weak remaining from the '92 purge have been run off. The SOF model is validated and has earned resourcing...GPF will be cut; unless the 2 trillion mentioned in the campaign is needed to bring a proud and headstrong country to heel (the 12th Iman will not get his chance to come home for a while yet)...and if so GPF will gain a reprieve for a time.

In your opinion what is the SOF model? I think the GPF still has many weak senior leaders who are failing to adapt, and can't think beyond the bounds of outdated doctrine (to include our COIN doctrine). As for the SOF model, we have "a" CT model, but is it the best model possible? We also have a Cold War UW/FID model that we try to apply to every security problem. My point is I hope we don't have a SOF model, but rather an adaptive SOF that constantly evolves and unlike GPF isn't constrained by doctrine.

[JMA]

"No competent and motivated opposition" did certainly kind of help.

I've got a standard example which I use to disrupt others' confidence in their nation's military - including my countries':

The Italians wiped the floor with the Abbessinians in 1936.
The British and ANZACs wiped the floor with said Italians in 1940.
The Germans wiped the floor with said British in 1941.

The invasion of Panama says about as much about the U.S. military's competence as the invasion of Denmark, and if you look very much at logistics, of Norway in 1940. The real test of competence for the German army was France, though. The U.S. military had no such test. Its major victories came to being with vastly superior, not about equal, resources.

For this reason I withhold final judgement of the U.S.ground forces' actual (relative) competence even for what's called conventional warfare. Their way of war and especially their love for gold plating and radio comms is dubious.

Bill; show me American ground troops fighting against well-armed opposition and we'll see whether this ability to destroy isn't overcompensated by an inability to survive in face of such an opposition.
I understand American army troops pride themselves in their supposedly unique quality at shattering formations, but this self-image appears to found almost entirely on fighting demoralised and 1970's monkey-model-equipped Iraqis.

Fuchs, historically the German military machine was indeed quite outstanding. Better you leave it there than to cherry pick examples to try to make your point. The end result of arrogant national politics and military strategy led to a crushing military defeat in the field of an increasingly outnumbered and logistically deprived army. German humiliation did not stop at the destruction of their once fine military but extended to the national humiliation of the rape of their women on an industrial scale (reminiscent of the middle ages).

This constant harping on about the lack or peer level opponents - meaning Germans - no longer has any meaning. The German military record is merely historical and will never be repeated. There are many valuable lessons that can be (and should be) learned from the German military history but this continuing innuendo about German military prowess - which is now long gone - serves no purpose today especially with the reported poor performance of German troops in Afghanistan.

The US remains vulnerable in terms of 'mass' coming from potentially China and to a lesser extent Russia. Other than that who could threaten a US force in conventional terms?

The US and all western armies remain vulnerable to insurgencies where the self imposed restrictions provide a level playing field for semi-trained insurgents armed with AK-47s and a few RPGs.

How to win against an insurgency? Read Edward Luttwak.

[Fuchs]

There's always the possibility that one country comes close to a perfect storm and gets very much right in the art of war for some time.

Look at the early 18th century and the French will impress, 2nd half of the same century and the Prussians will impress, early 19th century French, late 19th century Prussians, early 20 century Germans, late 20th century supposedly Americans.
Now the question is about who's going to be next and why should we pay attention to who got it right in a paradigm long gone?


It's a professional obligation of military leaders to strive for being "the next". I doubt that the NATO powers got what it takes to excel beyond what you'd expect of them due to their budgets.
People are way too content, and disappointments in small wars merely push them to the edge where they reaffirm their belief that they'd get it right if it was only about a great war.

Too bad, history tells me that many people have been wrong in such a belief already. Take Prussia after Valmy, for example.

[reed11b]

""""They'd have less money. The American solution of throwing money at a problem instead of fixing it has not worked with Education, Medical care -- or the Armed Forces.

For the active forces, there would be fewer people, they'd be a bit older (and thus, hopefully, a bit more mature) and would spend a bout one and half to twice as much time in institutional training staffed by selected Trainers with demonstrated expertise in subject matter and instructing. They would stay in the same units for years and their equipment fit would be a little different -- much of it to allow sea and land basing but rapid reaction to crisis area movement (we pay lip service to that but do not really want to do it -- too much uncertainty and careers might be damaged...). All would have spent some time in Reserve Units before being ALLOWED to enter the active force.

The Reserve Forces OTOH would very much resemble those of today but would be about 50% larger -- they would provide the mass and base for expansion if needed for a major war.

Movement between the two forces, active and reserve would be simplified. Personnel policies that over emphasize 'fairness' and 'objectivity' in selection criteria; 'everyone a generalist * ,' and the very mistaken idea that all persons of like education and experience are equally capable and can perform any job for that rank -- a structure, process and system that needs a MAJOR overhaul so we stop promoting based on 'potential' and being forced to reward decent performance with a promotion until the Peter Principle takes hold -- would disappear...""""

Then the Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-hah from the Capitol and Five Sided Funny Farm in DC woke me up and I fell on my Lance. Sancho laughed and laughed..

* That 'generalist' stuff and excessive rotation of personnel exist not to better train the force but to make assignments and finding square pegs to put in round holes easy for the Personnel bureaucracy. The unnecessary costs of that approach adversely impact the expansion of needed training; that lack of comprehensive training leads to mistrust of subordinates and reluctance to undertake any complex operations. The training process needs to ditch the Tasks, Conditions and Standards approach that limit abilities to aggregate and combine tasks to accomplish a mission; we need Outcome Based Training and Eduction.

Our vision is near identical. I disagree with Reserves first, but I think recruiting college kids for enlisted jobs and flatning the pay scale between O's and E's would help reach the same end goal (a more mature force) as would eleminating up-or-out policies and needless PCS moves.
Reed