ring a bell? Perhaps, because we do this over and over again. At the end of the Vietnam war the CGSC curriculum was COIN heavy. By the late 70s all of small wars (not just COIN) had been compressed into a mere 8 hours according to John Waghelstein who was teaching there at the time. It wasn't much better in 1986 when Southcom convinced then BG Fred Franks to devote 2 full days (16 hours) to COIN based on the Southcom experience in Central America, Peru, and Colombia effectively doubling the COIN hours. Gordon Sullivan who succeeded Franks and Deputy Commandant kept up the program. When I was teaching there in the 90s, we had about 40 hours devoted to small wars issues. But TRADOC did not direct and was not very interested in a new Stability Operations and Support Ops (SASO) manual as its author retired LTC John Hunt couldn't interest anybody in getting the thing on the street.

As we see in this thread, not only the senior leadership of the Army is concerned that there is too much COIN but others, here represented articulately by Gian, express the same concerns. if i were a betting man, I would bet that when we finally leave Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army will reassert its focus on big wars relegating FM 3-24 to the shelves of CARL. I hope not but...

Cheers

JohnT