The Ratio of Forces to Insurgents

[ptamas]

I vote for the exercise being dangerous cause it produces media/politician friendly numbers.

e.g.
what kind of environment are you positing?
In Afghanistan COIN personnel walk around with translators in their 12 man force protection teams.
At the other end of the spectrum, you can be demand feeding supplies and intel to self-directed home-groin COIN efforts like they had with the Shining Path in Peru.

-peter

[marct]

I vote for the exercise being dangerous cause it produces media/politician friendly numbers.

LOL - I'll second that motion, Peter !

Outside of producing media bite friendly numbers that have no inherent meaning, there are other serious problems with trying to use it in any way to look at Canada's mission in Afghanistan. First off, we aren't the government, so it isn't a COIN situation per se. This impacts on any potential use of a force ratio by reducing the effectiveness of boots on the ground since they have no direct relationship with the (supposedly) legitimate government.

Second, establishing any such ratio in the popular mind of, say, Canadian citizens serves only as some sort of theological benchmark against which to manage expectations of effectiveness. Given that we (Canadians) aren't the Afghan government, that we are only a smallish part of a coalition operation and a whole host of other factors, such a ratio has so much "slop" in it as to be useless.

Cheers,

Marc

[Jedburgh]

Parameters, Winter 09/10: A Historical Basis for Force Requirements in Counterinsurgency

Over the last eight years, one question has repeatedly come up in regard to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: How many soldiers are enough? The question was first raised before the Iraq war started, with highly publicized disagreements between senior military leaders regarding the number of forces needed to secure Iraq after the invasion. The debate reached another peak when the “surge” strategy was announced. It has once again become the subject of national discussion, this time with respect to Afghanistan. Despite years of debate, our understanding of force requirements for counterinsurgency has advanced little since 1995, when James Quinlivan of RAND published a seminal article on the subject. The current article describes work done by the Center for Army Analysis (CAA) to better inform the discussion by examining historical data related to counterinsurgencies. The intent is not to make any policy recommendations. Nor should this analysis be interpreted to suggest that force levels alone are the key to victory in counterinsurgency. Having enough military forces is a necessary, but by no means sufficient, condition for success.....