MG Flynn (on intell mainly)

[Pete]

There are some great quotations in the article. After describing how intelligence information usually flows from top to bottom during conventional conflicts, the authors state:

In a counterinsurgency, the flow is (or should be) reversed. The soldier or development worker is usually the person best informed about the environment and the enemy. Moving up through levels of hierarchy is normally a journey into greater degrees of cluelessness.

On PowerPoint briefings:

Microsoft Word, rather than PowerPoint, should be the tool of choice for intelligence professionals in a counterinsurgency.

Does this mean that the "PowerPoint Ranger" tab will soon be a thing of the past?

[Steve the Planner]

Pete:

Bottom to top sounds right to me.

I think the best recommendation for Powerpoint is below.

Somebody on SWC considered, in 2005, CERP funding to fit AQI out with Powerpoint.

If only they had done that AQI would have been lost in briefings forever, and miss the whole point of everything.

Maybe, as a last ditch, we could rig-up the Taliban. I know it takes a few years before effective PP paralysis sets in, but might be worth the effort with, say, a target date of 2013.

Strategic patience,

Steve

[Pete]

From the essay "Dumb-dumb Bullets" in the July 2009 issue of Armed Forces Journal. I wouldn't have known about it had I not read about it in an endnote to the Flynn article.

Make no mistake, PowerPoint is not a neutral tool — it is actively hostile to thoughtful decision-making. It has fundamentally changed our culture by altering the expectations of who makes decisions, what decisions they make and how they make them. While this may seem to be a sweeping generalization, I think a brief examination of the impact of PowerPoint will support this statement.

Click on the link below to read the entire article.

http://www.afji.com/2009/07/4061641

[BayonetBrant]

On PowerPoint briefings:

Microsoft Word, rather than PowerPoint, should be the tool of choice for intelligence professionals in a counterinsurgency.

Does this mean that the "PowerPoint Ranger" tab will soon be a thing of the past?

Probably not. After all, how many of the briefings out there are time-wasters generated by someone other than the intel guys?

I can already see what'll happen - the intel guy will write a beautiful 4-page narrative on the local situation, and because it'll take more than his allotted 5 minutes in the evening CUB, some assistant to the assistant deputy night ops officer will bulletize the whole thing into 2 slides to "help him out" and everyone will collectively miss the point.

[Bob's World]

Hmmm. A call for a shift from a threat-centric approach to a populace-centric approach; with intel being the ones who need to change the most.

I have read this somewhere before...

(though I do find amusing all the intel guys who have been pumping threat threat threat up their commander's backside for years now all crying how they were victims, and only giving the boss what he wanted.... Bull. If I had a dollar for every time I've asked the intel guys to stop dronning on about HVIs and to give us some info on the environment and the populace; and gave back 90 cents for everytime those same intel guys smugly replied "that's not our job, we just do threats," I'd still be rich. Sure there are plenty of commanders who only want to know about the bad guys, but that doesn't relieve one of the duty to develop the critical intel he doesn't ask for.)

[IntelTrooper]

(though I do find amusing all the intel guys who have been pumping threat threat threat up their commander's backside for years now all crying how they were victims, and only giving the boss what he wanted.... Bull. If I had a dollar for every time I've asked the intel guys to stop dronning on about HVIs and to give us some info on the environment and the populace; and gave back 90 cents for everytime those same intel guys smugly replied "that's not our job, we just do threats," I'd still be rich. Sure there are plenty of commanders who only want to know about the bad guys, but that doesn't relieve one of the duty to develop the critical intel he doesn't ask for.)

The intel community is certainly not blameless, but some of us lack the standing and resources to effectively challenge the threat-centric system that has been in place since the beginning, in spite of our best efforts. I've recommended population-centric PIRs to battalion and brigade S-2s, only to get blown off.

[Steve the Planner]

Bob:

Right. Counter Terrorism is about threat assessments. No doubt, there is an enemy, real or imagined, under every rock and behind every tree.

COIN, to the extent it involves understanding, control and or changing the land, its people and activities, requires understand them---and it gets pretty broad (and ill-defined).

Appropriate intelligence for COIN is, necessarily, about the land and people, and not the enemy.

The kinds of basic CIMS data appropriate for assessing the land and people is different, and needs to be created to get an appropriate operating picture.

We faced this problem in Iraq in 2008, and dealt with it on an ad hoc basis. Now, for Afghanistan, the request is a bit more formal.

But, underneath this immediate report for Afghanistan, and the ad hoc solutions for Iraq, is the fundamental question about the current intel foundation.

If it was the wrong tool for Iraq and Afghanistan, where else is it wrong.

My guess is that, like the miser who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, we have exhaustively evaluated the threat of everything, but missed substantial alternative analyses and opportunities.

Was the real point of MG Flynn's report to decsribe another ad hoc fix, or to advice the outside world of a systemic problem that needed to be resolved?

I believe it was the latter, but, as you suggest, it may not be very well accepted, or adopted.

Not every system is capable of learning. We know the military does (even if it stumbles around sometimes before it gets there). But...

Steve

[BayonetBrant]

The threats aren't always those of direct bodily harm. The "threat" might be that the local populace doesn't have enough water.

The problem is that we've drawn a ring around the S2 and declared him the "Threat Guy" when much of the info that matters is not his - it's the S9's. Unfortunately, the S9 is just seen as a sidekick to the S2 who just dumps occasional useful nuggets to him.

The commanders need to shift who they're asking for info as much as the intel guys need to shift what they collect, and the S9 needs to seriously assert himself as the keeper of the info MG Flynn says is actually important.

And Bob - how often did the S9 already have the info that the commander was banging on the S2 about (or should have been banging on him about)?

[Steve the Planner]

Right.

If the S9 didn't have it, he could easily get it.

As a dumb-ass DoS civilian reconstruction guy stumbling around a Division Command in Iraq in Jan 2008, it took a little while to figure out who, in a mil structure, had the best reconstruction info.

At COB Spiecher, I was introduced at a conference and made some comments about locating things needed for reconstruction planning.

As I walked out, two guys came up and explained that they did targeting: One said: I do kinetic targeting. The other said: I do non-kinetic targeting.

So, I went to visit them at the Div HQ.

Obviously, they had mapped and located a lot of stuff to either blow up or not. It was ahiuge amount of good stuff.

Then, as I walked through the building, the Div Eng folks opened their doors: roads, bridges, electrical systems. There wasn't a whole lot that they didn't have in their sphere, or terrain didn't have access too.

By the time I got to S9/CA, they were tracking agriculture, economics, etc..., etc...

No offense, but, for my purposes, there was only a little that S2 had that I needed. Everybody else was so helpful and contributing that, like them, I could run the risk of having so much information that a Tower of Babel could begin to grow.

Same at MND-C, etc...

What I learned was that 90% of anything I needed to know was there. It just hadn't been asked for for my purposes or format. Getting to 99% was just a moderate effort.

Funny thing is that when you went "upstairs" to the Palace (and even to Al Faw), they had a lot less quality info, and what MNDs knew was not trickling up, mostly because they seemed to be focused on sending out and collecting answers to specific requests rather than wandering around to see what was known.

All the info flow, but without adequate wisdom flow...

And it didn't take long to figure out why. Short-tour rotating collection folks there were fixatedon (and swamped with) creating monthly reports, building information, not knowledge. They got their accountabilities in.

How to fix it?

Steve

[Surferbeetle]

The problem is that we've drawn a ring around the S2 and declared him the "Threat Guy" when much of the info that matters is not his - it's the S9's. Unfortunately, the S9 is just seen as a sidekick to the S2 who just dumps occasional useful nuggets to him.

The commanders need to shift who they're asking for info as much as the intel guys need to shift what they collect, and the S9 needs to seriously assert himself as the keeper of the info MG Flynn says is actually important.

And Bob - how often did the S9 already have the info that the commander was banging on the S2 about (or should have been banging on him about)?

Lets agree and say that we would like our taxpayer funded commanders to have a holistic understanding of the AO which our Democracy has sent them to. Presumably this holistic understanding would, at minimum, include actionable knowledge about the security, economic, and governance systems. Presumably we are structured, with the resources we have (total number of mil & civ USA, USMC, USN, and USAF), to support this desire. Lets consider how we are currently allocating DoD capital to provide our commanders with the holistic knowledge that they need for the AO.

Resources or Capital can be defined as "assets available for use in the production of further assets" and classified as land, labor, capital goods, and in some cases knowledge.

How much DoD capital is allocated to analyzing and interacting with each of the security, economic, and governance systems of an AO? Is a 94%, 3%, 3% split a fair estimate?

How much capital is allocated to the Army Band? Is it larger or smaller than the amount of DoD capital allocated to to analyzing and interacting with economic, and governance systems of an AO?

What existing structures can provide knowledge concerning the economic, and governance systems of an AO? I would say that includes all US troops who work outside the wire, (infantry, SF, MTT's, the S9/CA-bubbas, the S2 bubba's, etc.) contractors who work outside the wire (HTT's etc.), reachback folks in the US, and most importantly the locals who live in the AO.

So, how are we allocating existing DoD capital to collect, process, and deliver this knowledge about about the security, economic, and governance systems to those whose job it is to complete the mission in the AO?

The larger picture which needs to be considered is how the USG as a whole is allocating it's capital (DoD, DoS, DoJ, USAID, etc.) in order to develop the knowledge to shape the security, economic, and governance systems of the AO of concern. Understanding what structures receive capital help us to understand what type of solutions are provided/desired....

[Entropy]

Hmmm. A call for a shift from a threat-centric approach to a populace-centric approach; with intel being the ones who need to change the most.

I have read this somewhere before...

(though I do find amusing all the intel guys who have been pumping threat threat threat up their commander's backside for years now all crying how they were victims, and only giving the boss what he wanted.... Bull. If I had a dollar for every time I've asked the intel guys to stop dronning on about HVIs and to give us some info on the environment and the populace; and gave back 90 cents for everytime those same intel guys smugly replied "that's not our job, we just do threats," I'd still be rich. Sure there are plenty of commanders who only want to know about the bad guys, but that doesn't relieve one of the duty to develop the critical intel he doesn't ask for.)

Leadership comes from the top and Afghanistan, until very recently, has not been a COIN effort, population-centric or otherwise. Until this past year, resources for Afghanistan, especially intelligence, were under-resourced for anything but the explicit missions we were given which was not COIN. Those were decisions made at the highest levels. What you seem to be suggesting is that the intel people should have diverted some of those intel resources (collection and analysis) away from the Commander's explicit intent to something else. That's simply not going to happen.

Some of us who have been invested in Afghanistan for many years - long before the current COINdinista crowd became interested - took it upon ourselves to explore many of the issues you've raised in this forum in an attempt to gain a deeper understand of the environment and context in which we conduct operations. For me personally, this was done almost entirely on my own time and at my own expense (as my private library of Afghanistan publications attests) and consisted almost entirely of unclassified, open-source material. Why? Because I had no authority to formally task collection assets or to submit RFI's to relevant agencies to collect such information. Why? Because the Commander's intent, as clearly spelled out in his intelligence requirements, did not focus on these areas and our authority to task assets and spend analytical resources derives directly from those requirements. Outside of a good-old-boys network and informal RFI's (ie. emailing my buddies in other agencies) the system is explicitly designed to prevent intelligence assets from being used (or misused, depending on one's perspective) contrary to a Commander's published intel requirements. Even if I got my immediate Commander's approval to ask some of these questions, they were shot down at the theater level because of, guess what? The theater PIR's!

So your suggestion that intel people have a responsibility to "develop critical intel he doesn't ask for" is not possible for two reasons: First, we can't get information to develop such intel because collection is not driven by analysts but Commander PIR's. No information, no authority to collect information means no analysis and no answers to the relevant questions. Secondly, which intel is "critical" and which intel isn't is defined by the Commander and not the intel professional. Obviously if an intel person thinks something might be critical he/she needs to inform the Commander immediately, but it's still the Commander who decides. Additionally, because intel assets (both collection and analysis) are always limited, the system is purposely designed to prevent the very thing you are asking for - which is diverting assets away from a Commander's stated desire.

As late as last month the theater requirements had not substantially changed from what they've been for the past several years, which is largely threat-focused. Until they do change, pop-centric COIN information is inevitably going to play second fiddle. Maybe things are different today with the publication of this report and the orders that were reportedly promulgated through official channels. I don't yet know.

This passage in the MG Flynn's report struck me particularly:

The problem is that these analysts – the core of them bright, enthusiastic, and hungry – are starved for information from the feld, so starved, in fact, that many say their jobs feel more like fortune telling than serious detective work.

Yes, that's been an enduring problem and it's a big reason why the vast majority of my personal research over the years has been confined academic and open-source work. That problem is not an intelligence problem, but a Command and leadership problem. The intelligence function cannot force units to provide us information - that can only be directed by Commanders. So, again, the issue comes back to Commanders and command responsibility.

Finally, if your intel guys are smugly giving you information and intelligence that you don't want - indeed, information that you are hostile to, then why are they still your intel guys? Where is the accountability? Intel people should be held accountable like anyone else and if they are not performing or if they are feeding you a line of BS then they need to be put in their place and held accountable. If my immediate Commander wants info that falls outside the scope of the HHQ and theater PIR's, then I'll try like hell to provide that while explaining the LIMFACs on collecting new information and answering that request. In essence, all I can usually do is search existing information which is often insufficient. So, as MG Flynn said in his report:

This memorandum is aimed at commanders as well as intelligence professionals. If intelligence is to help us succeed in the conduct of the war, the commanders of companies, battalions, brigades, and regions must clearly prioritize the questions they need answered in support of our counterinsurgency strategy, direct intelligence officials to answer them, and hold accountable those who fail.

That about says it all, IMO.

And, just to be clear, I do think there are valid criticisms against intel people and the intel profession and system, particularly military intel people. Yes, we, as a group, are more comfortable with threats, but realize that's how we are trained. It would be interesting if any Army people here could tell us what the current MI curriculum is at the school house and how much of it, if any, deals with intelligence support to COIN. I know in the Air Force and Navy the school-houses have not changed much and support to large-scale conventional warfare requirements dominates. For imagery analysts, full-motion video analysis is still an afterthought in the imagery course. Our new IA's at my predator unit get almost no training in FMV exploitation despite the fact this is 95% of their job. That is one place we can start cleaning house.

[davidbfpo]

From Abu M:

Some folks in the public affairs shop at the Pentagon were predictably upset that they were not in the loop regarding the report's release, but this is Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell speaking today on behalf of his civilian boss, the Secretary of Defense:

[The report] is exactly the type of candid, critical self-assessment that the secretary believes is a sign of a strong and healthy organization. This kind of honest appraisal enriches what has been a very real and hearty and vigorous debate that, frankly, has been taking place within this building, within this department and within this government for years now.

Link:http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawam...at-crisis.html

Well that's my earlier puzzlement answered why in the public domain.

[Steve the Planner]

Entropy has laid it out correctly.

In January 2008, MND-North held a conference on Reconstruction for Military and PRT actors.

MG Hertling's big point: If my orders now include reconstruction, and support or reconstruction, I need a plan to do that, or to know what the plan is to align my plan to it.

The week before, a big VTC was held at which TF Brinkley produced its "Plan" for recconstruction of Iraq. Disappointingly, it was like a generic textbook 101 edition of economic development, and had little use or purpose for ground direction. The consultant's answer was, we figured you would be responsible for ground-truthing our recommendations.

For the conference, the entire Embassy staff---Phyllis Powers (OPA Director) on down made presentations---each agency and department describing what they did.

After a few very disappointing Q&A's from the audience, MG Hertling took the mkie and clearly explained the problem. He ran a division of capable people with resources whose mission was now to deliver and/or support reconstruction and stability operations. They function on plans, and need to know what the civilian plan is to coordinate to and support it. What is the plan?

Stunning silence for a few minutes.

He asked again, looking directly at the OPA director. More silence.

Then he said. I need a plan to accomplish my mission. If you don't have a plan to reconstruct Northern Iraq, I need to create one. More silence.

Then he explained that, absent any plan form them, he would create one.

That's where and when the authorization, commitment and resources came to develop the research, analysis and strategies for Northern Iraq stability and reconstruction.

MND-North's entire operation yeilded and contributed to it. NGA got task orders. Systemic and synchronized strategies began. "Helicopter diplomacy" began---using MND-North helos to bring ministers to the problems. And conferences were held: Energy, Development, Water, etc... and things started moving.

Entropy's point: If they don't ask, they don't get. If they do, they do.

But, unlike Iraq, where there was one Crocker and one Petreaus working hand in glove, Afghanistan has many actors, and, many plans, and, I assume, no centralized responsibility chain equivalent to that of an MND CG in Iraq. "If everybody is in charge, nobody is!"

So, is MG Flynn really having the same "conversation," but at the higher level?

If so, does it create the watershed for resources that Hertling set off in Northern Iraq, or is it less than that?

How can the top intel officer indicate that his intel folks are reading tea leaves, and his field commanders reading the news accounts for current info, without a major signal to the White House and its civilian agencies that there is a huge gap between meaningful strategies and ground truth?

Entropy is right, but the question should not have ended with the intel folks.

Steve

[Steve the Planner]

If, as Entropy indicated, so many of us are trying to build this picture on the side, from bits and pieces of open and not-so-open sources, isn;t that just so much amateur hour?

Where is the fruit of our multi-billion dollar intel investment?

It really burned me up last month at a national planning conference when it came up that Afghanistan was one of the countries asking for pro bono planning help from the Global Planners Network. The same listening to Mssrs. Hadley and Ghani talking about the need for immediate and substantive changes to the civilian effort.

Where are the resources for reconstruction analysis and planning....or is it just like Iraq---throwing projects at the wall to see if they will stick.

I think it's time somebody way above all of our pay grades sorts it out.

Steve

[Bob's World]

My point is that the commander doesn't know what he doesn't know. The job of the staff is not to merely validate and inform what the commander cares about, particularly when those types of operations aren't being particularly effective.

And one can try to make an intellectual separation (many do) between "COIN" and "CT"; but that is kind of like the difference between rifles and bullets; or farts and bad smells. Most men who we slap the "terrorist" brand on are waging an insurgency in their home country. When they take those acts of terrorism to attack the populace or government of a totally separate country, one has to do the causal analysis to ask the question "why."

I realize the answer to the question "why" has been packaged up and handed to us up front by a bunch of politicians; but (to link this to other threads on Operational Design) when you are given a mission you have a duty to analyze the problem handed to you as well as the specific solution set you are asked to employ. And sometimes the answer is you go back to the boss and tell him he has it wrong, he's asked you to do the wrong thing, and here is why. Maybe he tells you "interesting, but just do what I told you in the first place," but at least you will have done your duty.

Why are most of the 9/11 "terrorists" Saudis? Why are most "foreign fighters / terrorists" Saudis? Is there an ideological component? Sure. Is there a leadership/influence component? Sure. But to my way of thinking there is some extreme arrogance when one's unassailable assumption is that those who attack you do it for a hate of your country that is greater than their love for their own country.

CT is a cop out. It places the entire blame on those who dare to attack the establishment and simply seeks to eradicate them. COIN (as currently practiced by the US) is a little bit better in that it recognizes that the countries many of these men come from have problems that need to be addressed. I just hope it’s not another 8 years before we make the next causal link as to how the nature of Western foreign policy over the past 2-300 years (colonialism followed by coldwarism) have combined to rob people of their culture, their dignity, and their right to self-determination; and united and empowered by the modern tools of this information age they are rising up and pushing back. Pushing back against governments at home that draws their legitimacy from others rather than themselves. Pushing back against the external powers has in fact provided the legitimacy for those same governments. Western foreign policy is dangerously obsolete and out of touch with the times we live in; and sending the military out to suppress those who dare to complain is a losing game that virtually every fallen empire has chosen to play. The British Empire is just one of many that were disassembled one military "victory" at a time. They too likely had Intel guys who could tell them all about "the threat," but very little about what really threatened them...