MG Flynn (on intell mainly)

[Ron Humphrey]

Well once the enemy is defeated/neutralised, you've won! What's the problem?

COIN is not a bizarre world. Irregular warfare is very simple. We just choose to ignore the facts.
1. Then they are not the enemy! The enemy oppose you using violence. - so they CANNOT be supposed to support you! You cannot be half pregnant.
2. Then you haven't got point 1.
3. Then what are you trying to do?

In A'Stan the only thing military forces can do is ensure that the Taliban do not take power via force of arms! That is all! What's so hard about understanding that?

As long as the military are also having to fill in the blanks on non-mil stuff required as well then they will also tend to try doing what any good team does. Get actions and what not at all levels to work towards common cause.

Supporting action's/narrative's/endstates/etc
You want to pull a British East India Company, or US Organizations that used to exist at levels capable of supporting this sort of thing out of your back pocket ready to go great.

Till then those there have to do the best they can with what they have.

So although I understand your concern with the "lack" of military doing military only we're all there now, and those Orgs aren't at least in any where near large enough scale to be able to fulfill their roles at levels needed.

So What is the answer you propose besides- We shouldn't be doin that stuff?

[William F. Owen]

So What is the answer you propose besides- We shouldn't be doin that stuff?

I would propose seeking to fix the problem, by understanding the limits of the solution - not my place to create policy. That's for the elected official. - but using an Army to do something other than what it was created and designed for is not symptomatic of sound thinking.
I absolutely understand that we are where we are, but that does not forgive the stupidity of how we got there.

[Steve the Planner]

Ron:

Right. The agencies/organizations needed to effectively engage the non-military issues simply don't exist.

For all the talk of reform/change at USAID, there is no actual proof of that being in the works, let alone accomplished.

There is a CFR interview with Ambassador Herbst (DoS), who heads the SRCS. It is rather sad actually. No adequate resources over a five year period to actually create or deploy much, and most of the early days appear to have ben spent on turf wars (still unresolved). Instead, they have minimal planning and coordinative staffing and resources---enough to field, on average, short-term deployments for 20 or so people to Afghanistan for planning/coordinative activities, mostly in and around the "whole of government" activities.

As Ambassador Herbst pointed out, they just don't have the staff or resources to effectively engage in Iraq or Afghanistan.

I keep looking at the reality versus concept of civ-mil, whole of government, etc... and keep coming back to the same realization as many folks here have. This entire spectrum of activities (civ, mil, stabilization, nation-building, reconstruction), for better or worse, is in the military's hands. Doing it as an accidental or of-necessity quick fix is chaotic and ineffective.

I was reading the recent intel lament on Kandahar (we just don't know enough about the place, who's in charge, what's going on). At some point, the military is going to have to grasp the basic and critical civilian information needed to discharge its default full-spectrum obligations, or it will just continue to mow the grass in a new place every few months.

Frankly, I find the current civilian governance outcomes over the last few years to be the almost inevitable result of the efforts applied. There is just no mystery to this stuff. If you want to create what is there, do what we have done/are doing, add several billion dollars, and wait a few years. (Bad government in a box)

My concern, especially as more soldiers move to a real complex urban challenge environment where intel and effort (at the higher levels) is ineffective, is for them.

God bless the soldiers in the field.

[davidbfpo]

The progress of MG Flynn is noted in an April 2012 SWJ article: http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art...ligence-reform

The report on Afghanistan, the subject of this thread, was his first public appearance - well certainly for over here.

A man to watch IMO.

[davidbfpo]

Well that is my take-away thought, from a short interview of MG Flynn, DIA and just one Q&A to whet the appetite:

Defense One: Given what we know of the National Security Agency’s massive signals intelligence gathering as a result of the leaks of former contractor Edward Snowden, is there a danger that the human intelligence side of the equation has gotten shortchanged?

Flynn: Well, I will just tell you that the best signals intelligence I have ever seen -- and I have seen an awful lot -- was enabled by human intelligence. The very best signals intelligence is usually the result of someone capable and brave enough to develop access that we otherwise would not have had. And that has led to a lot of successes.

Link:http://www.defenseone.com/management...ation%20Report

[davidbfpo]

A very short report on a speech @ Brookings, made this week by LG Flynn:

It's important that we leverage the technology in a smart way to understand what it is that's happening at the [tactical] edge and make, to a degree, the edge the center....Cyber is a new domain, and over a third of the world is connected somehow. Five hundred million people on Twitter, a billion people on Facebook, all this volume of activity -- [there is] a lot of noise. Inside the military, there's still a tendency to think of intelligence and cyber as the same. It's not like that at all.

Link:http://fcw.com/articles/2013/11/21/c...operation.aspx

[davidbfpo]

I am sure "over the water" there is more reporting than this, but this FP article appears to be a reasonable explanation:http://complex.foreignpolicy.com/pos...r_rocky_tenure