Gordon's War

Templar Militarus

2011-10-30T17:23:00.000-07:00

I have established another blog dealing with the Templar Knights ancient order and the Crusades.

templarmilitaris.blogspot.com

The concepts of F4F, the Drama Triangle and "hands on tactics" will be discussed in the context of that era

F4F -Dinner or a date

2011-05-16T12:16:00.000-07:00

In a world swamped with BS, one needs a BS Decoder ring, or a Jedi Mind Trick.
The Jedi Mind trick/BS Decoder, I call F4F, under the provisions of the KISS principle, by keeping it Simple. All life forms have a strategy for survival of which there are three components: Prime Directive, F4F, and Drama which can be approached from multiple ways, The Prime Directions is "F”, as in F'ing, the F-word as in survival of the species by having dinner or a date, and avoiding being dinner. Once feeds, breeds, or dies off. The process of protecting and nurturing the multiplication tables in the face of drama is culture, or also called a strategy for survival of the species, or any aggregate thereof.

Drama enters when the choice is being dinner or getting one ... that is an existential threat, Having a date is when the boys fight over the girls, and the girls compete to be fought over. This is true for dandelions as much as mountain lions. One is life or death, the other is getting laid or not. Success in both means survival of the aggregate be it family, tribe, nation, herd, pod, or flight. It is as true for dandelions as for mountain lions.

The protection and nurturing an aggregate in it’s most popular form is playing the role of victim, prosecutor, and rescuer any of which calls for a danger or a villain.

In Whale, Lion, Dolphin or Elk society, the mechanism for protecting the young is vested in the formation of the women and children who move as a unit, while the guys do guy thing until mating season. Sometimes the mating between a male and at least one female is short often with the guys skipping the birthing. The human family is the only one where an extended visit by the male in the family occurs, although the tradition of guys doing guys things remains in its vestigial form.

In the face of an existential threat (being dinner, or having one) triggers the full aggressive potential of the culture. Women in defense of their children are not anyless fierce than a rutting male. Villains exhibit a corruption of the natural force of protecting and nurturing the helpless (victim).

Th

e attributes of villainy are the flip side of the heroic triangle, different in adverb and adjective. There may be no fundamental objective difference between hero and villain, except that being a potential lunch colors the hungry as villainoust.

Mating rights in a species, tribe, nation, or village are related to the social statues of the players as affected or imposed on the physical world. This is F4F:

In the case of the Birther/Truther braggadocio one gains face and fame, and maybe fortune by being able to predict one’s fate. The Truther paints the government as a Villain who lies (manipulative), and is prepared to batter (bastard) and the Truther knows because the Villain is mad (brat). The Birther also paints the government as mean, mad, and manipulative and acts as rescuer cum prosecutor.
Drama is played out in a physical world, the rules or impact of which shape the tactics, techniques, and procedures of the dramatist.

The imminence of the threat, it’s location in time and distance with respect to the ground, and potential threat to the corporal existence is part and parcel of drama. Books have been written on the “territorial imperative” in animals is similar to property tax adjustments to ones taxes which have to be paid on a timely basis. And of course, there must be the T-Shirt and Coffee mug with the strident message on drama or status is boldly proclaimed.

Whether Birther or Truther be, the common link is that of True Believer the likes of whom are described in Eric Hoffer’s book “The True Believer”. True Believers are interchangeable. Josef Goebbels converted the Red Front Communists in Berlin to be Brown Shirt Nazis.

Whither Land Power?

2011-05-04T11:34:00.000-07:00

It wasn’t all that many years ago that one could sail one’s ships of war into the other guy’s harbor, fire a volley or two anywhere near the port, land the marines and dictate terms to the local dictator. That used to work really well in those societies whose political power was concentrated in a few hands heads above the average, particularly in those whose arms were handy,

If, however the possession of arms is spread out, dug in or behinds one’s back, the position of tyrant can lose its footing and fall head first or headless into the dark. What the tyrant fears most is the body politic takes up arms, or fears not for loss, or willing to stand up. The position of tyrant, however, is a matter of perception.

Since most people live on land, who controls what one must stand on to retain a footing in, or standing on the ground which supports the feeding and breeding of the significant population. Significant as in issues of social status: face, fate, fame, and fortune (F4F) and attending factors of the local concepts of time, distance, the ground, and the needs of the body as in eat, drink, and be merry.

If the land upon which the people eat is dependent on somewhere else, the control of the life lines is paramount, Cutting these life lines places the body politic at risk, but only to the extent that those below the top nine percent will stomach a small mouthful. When the breaking point becomes the tipping point, heads on high will roll. What the breaking point and the tipping point is made up of is highly subjective, and historically it comes with the frustration of growing expectation more than the absolute

The embargo/sanctions approach, however, is more counter production than not. The principles of supply and demand operate to increase the power of the few over the many, by the necessity of make sure the body politic is fed. Sanctions strengthen the hand of the dictator by increasing the dependence of the many on the few. Conversely, the existence of sustenance within often defeats control from without.

If, for example, the resources to sustain multiplication of the many are dependent on life lines, the control of those life lines is the life line of the body politic, severance of which by an outside power can produce a change of faces, or a head or more. If the goods and services from outside ceases as other outside sources and markets change to a new heading, the effect produces the same paucity of sustenance as if cut on purpose.

This is as much the case for that which fills the stomach and that which hands on necks, ears, arms, wrists, hands, and fingers as in luxury goods. Many a great civilization has grown by trading trinkets for essentials, like the beads and trinkets that paid for Manhattan.
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The trade in sugars and spices to flavor and preserve the digestible ranks with the trade in diamonds, rubies, amber, gold and silver became as important as grain to feed the Roman mob. The attraction of trinkets, tea, coffee and tobacco became matters of empire although the many had no access to luxury save as the local manual labor to handle, package, stack and rack the precious. Thus was the bitter wars waged by Western European empires over the Caribbean islands, the battle over which made the French fleet and French arms in our Revolutionary War. It was taxation on tea that triggered some protests in Boston.

Changing the sea lines of trade between the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea with India and China collapsed the empires of the Indus River in the years BC (BCE). The incredible wealth of the Sugar Islands was side stepped with cheaper sugar, and refrigeration made spices no longer as pricey and exclusive. Likewise did the low price and availability of cotton from India and Egypt break the power of Confederate cotton over the mills of Europe, Silk worms smuggled out of China broke the high prices of silk. Difficult to woo and wed without the precious to feed and breed is.

The interdiction of life lines by force is to control the time, distance, and place in which the precious and/or the essential must pass. Blockage can be absolute as by physical presence or subject to blockage in time or distance. Such is the importance of the Brenner Pass, Iron Gates, the Straits of Gibraltar, Malacca, Tzushima, and the Chesapeake, or the deltas of Mississippi, Po, Rhine, Weser, or Yellow or Yangtse.

So long as the many will put up with shortages in essentials, interdiction becomes less effective in producing a change in or of the regime, Such was the case of the German submarine blockades of WW 1 and WW 2 that failed to defeat Britain although it was a closely run thing. The defeat of Japan and of Germany differed in one really big difference: Hitler went down with all hands, while Hirohito ruled in favor of his people at the risk of losing face. One decision maker took responsibility and the other blamed his own.

In order to determine national strategy, it profits to determine diehard from negotiator., who knows when to hold, and when to fold. While Hitler was a diehard, not all diehards are Hitler, Certainly George Washington was a diehard, as was Jefferson Davis. Robert E Lee, a diehard soldier knew when to fold. Mao’s China and the Russian Bolshevik knew when to hold, and when to fold, and still reserve the option to double cross. Thus there is no fast and firm formula to predict holding from folding without knowing the tell.

Controlling life lines or the economic base of a nation may produce a lasting victory or not. Rome defeated the Goths for years until they were stiffed by the Emperor, and down came the Western Roman Empire. The Eastern Empire at Byzantium managed to keep its head above water until the Bosporus was crossed and Ottoman cannon broke the walls in 1453. The resulting constriction of the western end of the Silk and spice trade (luxury goods) which made life in the castle mire miserable than before the Crusades, gave vent to demands to go around the Turk, and thus gave incentive to sail around Africa or take the short cut across the Atlantic to China. The Queen’s jewels were an investment, so it was thought, to trade up for more.

From that point forward until the Great War, control of the precious for the precious and by the precious, dominated policy, national and international. That others also benefited from the trade gave rise to reasons to vest in the vested. Cheap goods for the many also backed plays by the few, until it became noticeable that the few gave too little for so much. And so the dominoes fell, as did the headsman axe, on many of the few.

It is ownership of the means of violence, not that of production, that has shaped the long slow disengagement of the many from the few. In ancient civilization, populations exploded in rage and rampage sometimes erasing the civilization altogether. There is a telltale level of ash marking the burning of great cities, sometimes just once, and sometimes repeated marking a violent end.

No one really knows what civilization built the Mexican temples Teotihuacan. Many of the Mayan empires virtually disappeared before Columbus brought small pox to the New World and syphilis to the Old. What these great urban civilizations have in common is great engineered irrigation systems. As the control of water was necessarily centrally controlled, so was political power centrally controlled by the lash, blade, and math, the last kept classified, guarded, and mystified by priest and scribe.

The declassification of math was made possible by Shari’a compliant (Arab) numerals instead of the old Roman system. The advent of the abacus and sun dial had the effect on political power of greater impact than that of Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. Or that is also true of Gutenberg, Newton, or Einstein whose contributions were possible only through math.

It is not a accident that the Arab Spring is built on a digitally competent many, as were the English Civil Wars and the revolutions of the colonies, France, the revolts of 1848, Russia and China were built on print.

Land power is therefore a function of giving the many the advantages of the few through better math as well as superior firepower. The social significance of the machine gun, barbed wire, and indirect artillery as the firepower edge of Western (and Soviet) imperialism has been over shadowed by the firepower of the sub-machinegun, assault rifle, mortar and anti-tack rocket which empowers the small against the large, enabling the many to defeat the few

Thus the days of the big ship shell and marine has been pretty much dead since 1950 when massacre became decentralized and hidden. Thus the expeditionary model that the US Army rushed into place, half-baked, to displace the most successful expression of land power since the Spanish founded St Augustine. In that old model, was the makings of a properly done occupation by the friendly since enemies were invented.

The Shapes of Things to Come

2011-01-21T08:10:00.000-08:00

The Shape of Things to Come Always is an illusion at best. Some get parts of it right, some miss it completely, and forever, and some are in the right spot at the right time. Innovation cannot be institutionalized, and where it is, is a booby hatch, This particularly applies to the profession at arms where the life of the state can be decided on whim, whimsy, and wishful thinking. I refer to our booby hatch, known as the Pentagon as it is walled off from reality by pipe dream and Byzantine intrigue,

It’s not that our Pentagon is particularly venal or stupid, it’s that no ones Pentagon is that smart. The correlation of factors of mission, enemy, terrain, troops available, technology, time and culture between multiple players is far too complex and shifting with technological tides to be all that predictable. Yet, there are constants in the continuum of war by other means that go to the hearts, minds, body and terrain that demand that understand, from the outset, the secrets of Hannibal, Napoleon, Robert E Lee, Abraham Lincoln, Adolf Hitloer, and others whose foot prints sink deep in the shape of things that are.

Consider the “Light Fantastic” concept of battle in which heavily armed wonder weapons cut, slash and run faster than the enemy could bring fires to bear. Thus British “battle cruisers” intended to hunt cruisers were used in the battle line at Jutland in WW1 and the HMS Hood against the Battleship Bismarck in WW2. They blew up.
Consider the US Army Air Force’s justification of the B-17 as the perfect battleship sinker in order to win the budget wars. No battleship was ever sunk by the B-17, but bigger targets like cities were flattened with no particular impact on enemy war production and the cost of a third of the air crews.

The Defense Department specifically forbad the Army to have helicopter gunships until the AH-1 Cobra was fielded behind their backs as a UH-1 modification, which itself was a modification of a Medical Corps requirement for an evacuation helicopter. Another ambulance modification is the M113, now the most ubiquitous armored personnel carrier in the world.

Our Pentagon has latched onto a particularly flawed concept of the continuation of politics aby other means, principally that one ends and the other picks up instead of the other way around, that politics is war continued by other means. The misnomer COIN (Counter Insurgency Operations) used in Afghanistan misses the essential point that iSAF is the insurgent trying to foist a foreign misdeology on an ancient culture that has it’s own ways of doing things. The older concept of “stability operations” focuses not only on the stable not the unstable. Stability operations only work when the locals fall in line without the omniscient presence of greater firepower.

Mrs Clausewitz edited and published her husband’s personal blog, after his death in a pompous tome that lacks the sharp professional snap of General Clausewitz’s other publications. The most illusory item taken out of context is the concept of a “Center of Gravity” which is the center of malevolent attention. World War 1 was fought over entrenched centers of gravity, the collapse of which left the combatants permanently drained of their precious bodily fluids.

Today’s Centers of Gravity are firmly founded in PowerPoint presentations, particularly with interactive links to animated avatars. The Briefing Wars contend with Back Room Bargains by brokers of power often too ugly to prance and preen in front of the screen. Such is the fate of collective debate, be it corporate, Parliament, Palace, or Princely Court. The fate of this nation now is more dependent upon courtly demeanor than the Congressional exercise of Specified Powers as written in Article 1, Section 8 of our Constitution.

Warriors wince at the mere mention of Congressional “oversight” of professional operations, but Congress has the specified (exclusive) powers to shape the force. Yet the constancy of error and arrogance in the Pentagon is of a durability that exceeds to duration of rotation of flag ranks and field. Or, the limited impact of the appointed anointed of political party, It is not in our Constitution that career Civil Servants be the superior civilian in charge of military affairs. There is no reason why our military be administered by corporate wonders and whiz kids with the administration of sharp objects that go boom in the night.

Our Founders did not envision a large long serving professional military force as the minions of defense. In fact, they were quite specific in allocating powers that made a large standing force temporary. The default defense of the US is the National Guard (Air and Army) and a Federal Navy. States are prohibited in keeping standing forces or ships of war in time of peace, save in times of invasion and disorder. The onset of the Cold War demanded a larger standing force that was customary, and a large temporary force including the Army of the Untied States, faced off against the Evil Empires of the Red Flag. In the mid Sixties a plan was hatched to purge the ranks of those pesky long term professionals of uncertain certification (reservists) and restore the Nineteenth Century paradigm of a separation of components on the battlefield.

The Vietnam War stalled the onset of the purge until post war force reduction provided a cover for the purge, which took place in 194-76. Since the purge of professionals in their second decade of service went down, there has been a critical shortage of Captains (O-3) for the last thirty years. The current solution to the Captain shortage has been to reduce the ration between Colonel and Captain by reducing the numbers of battalions per Colonel. Modularization as its basest.
And the future of the national defense is now spoken of by the anointed is focused on the shape of “the officer corps” which means the regular officer corps as if were vested by God the saviors of the American state. This is a very normal occurrence in other nations such as Argentina, Turkey, China, Prussia, and Tsarist Russia. It’s human nature, but a nature which doesn’t always work out, and is not in our Constitutional sytem.

Nor is it in the best interests of our foreign policy. It is a bit sad to see our prancing purveyors of princely advice to foreign powers, such as I have seen in my own tired eyes in Europe and South America of the wonderfulness of power projection by expeditionary expedience. Little do these clowns realize that these words are evocative of Pax Britannica, the Glory of France, and what these misinformed souls see as American Imperialism. Absent the Red Menace, is it any wonder that our former allies are forming different constellations of power that gives them more control over their own fate, without Pentagon and Foggy Bottom meddling.
We need to reverse the imbalance of full time career and the citizen professional to the latter, keeping on full time service those forces specifically required to extant threats from outside CONUS, and restore an integrated structure of follow on and mobilization forces based on the Guard and Reserves. The basic plan is one leading to full mobilization, and the determination of which parts need to be full time, part time, half time, and stomped out of the ground. In this regard the planning is more important that the plan. Any forces allocated in whatever mix, should have plans in hand, plans on the shelf, and plans on the drawing table.
If necessary, a dart board should be used to determine the combinations of threats and forces for a given set of parameters. Battles are won by those who can react to a totally unique set of circumstances with forces able to adapt as quickly. Think of Task Force Taffy Three in the Battles off Samar in 1944. Think of Patton’s Third Army at the Battle of the Bulge. Think of the Berlin Airlift, put together on the fly by Curtis Lemay.

The present task organization of rotational expeditionary forces supported by contractors and civil servants isn’t suitable for any kind of operation. The successes of our troops today is in spite of “transformation”, not because of it.

Gordon S Fowkes

Replace the SES with a New General Staff Corps

2011-01-01T07:32:00.000-08:00

Replacing the Senior Executive Service with a Military General Staff Corps.

Have you heard the one about the war in Afghanistan is cutting into the time needed to train for a big war? That’s a popular refrain from the opponents of actually winning the war in Afghanistan. Not that these worthies are in favor of a defeat, which is something they can define out of existence, but fearful of actually winning. For winning wars is not in the long term vested interests of a long service professional service or profession. Big wars have been dismissed as not in the vision for the future. Congress might get the wrong notion that a long service professional service might not be needed.

If crime could be prevented, then there would be no need for SWAT teams, SCI labs, or undercover narcs. Mental health professionals would go out of business if patients actually got well. Lawyers insist on maintaining a death grip on law and order with the inane blather that one cannot take the law into one’s own hands. Restoration of dueling would cut billions in trial and incarceration costs, with a profit to the public coming from the Entertainment Division of your local law enforcement agency.

9/11 was the signal for a coup d’état in the Pentagon which rushed to rebuild the military establishment while engaged in battle to “transform” the military from a “battle ready” force into a “battle hardened” force as stated in the now infamous QDR 2006. The battle proven field tactical organization of Theater, Field Army, Corps, and Division was disassembled. The end product was a modular maneuver brigade barely half the size of the average divisional brigade consisting of two maneuver elements. The Support and Artillery Commands of Division, Corps, and Field Army were dissolved to allow the addition of command and field grade staff officers from the Combat Arms.

Were it not for the fact that the extant General Officer Corps has some vestige of prestige to salvage many of their commands to be used as a matter of convenience to manage the battle here and there. While General Dempsey is aware of the fact that there is a real need for armies, corps, and divisions, the Pentagon is bound to keep the General Officer Corps at bay.

Since WW 1 experiences were documented in our field manuals, also known as Field Service Regulations, the doctrine was a single body of tactics, procedures, practices, principles, and policy for the care, feeding, and deployment of field forces, and of those forces that support them. The organization and principles of task organization and deployment was a body of skills, knowledge, and attitudes needed for victory in the field. This body of knowledge was under constant revision, and the politics that went into changing it was the stuff of constant competition within and between the services. That body of doctrine for the operational and strategic levels of war has dissolved into remnants here, and memories there.

Absent the well tested and war winning structure, the US Army is not likely to be ready to fight a really big war for less than three years, once a serious effort is launched. Or longer, because the chaos of today’s task organization has to be undone, and mighty organizations rebuilt. Three years is wishful thinking based on the experiences of WW1 and WW2. In both cases massive casualties had to take place to gain sufficient command interest in fighting the way in front rather than the politics in the rear. Few want to recall that the largest US Army organized combat force was in the Philippines in December 1941, or the fact that they were overrun on Bataan and Corregidor by a vastly inferior force of Japanese troops. Nor should we forget the time it took for combat hardened divisions from WW2 to dissolve into ineffectiveness before the North Korean Army in obsolete T-34 tanks nearly smashed their way to Pusan. We had to learn the hard way, again, to begin to cope with the Viet Cong whose courage and utter determination to defeat us kept then VC to continue to attack, attack, and attack regardless of loss or troops, material, and terra firma.

It is difficult to measure the smug factor of the brains in the Pentagon, until one realizes that the Pentagon isn’t run by those in uniform or those appointed by the Commander in Chief. By following the buzz words associated with Evil Transformation one follows them back to the Fifties and the Pentomic Division which had five Battle Groups of five infantry companies to fight the highly mobile and open battle field of the radioactively induced image of atomic warfare.

The Battle Group was commanded by the Colonel with companies commanded by captains; there was one slot for a Lt Col, That was bad news for field grades and had to go, and it was replaced by the ROAD division which was modeled after the Armor Division that had three O-6 “Combat Commands” aka brigades. The reduction of the five Battle Groups into three brigades cost the infantry two O-6 commands per division. Transformation restores the balance by eliminating Divarty and Discom O-5 commands and making them mini-maneuver brigades.

Thus the dissolution of combat task organizations and the doctrine pertaining thereto was and is driven by personnel management concerns. Virtually the entire Combat Service Support (CSS) has been dissolved and replaced by Civil Service and their slave labor force, the contractors. Even the term is banished. I have a little difficulty in visualizing a civilianized beach head like at Normandy, Inchon, Saipan, Tarawa, or Okinawa. But that is what the Senior Executive Service (SeS) is doing. They have co-opted the role of the (German) General Staff in mufti.

Ninety percent of the troops in the Pacific were in the logistic tail, eighty percent in Europe. And that doesn’t include the third of the US Army that was in the US Army Service Forces (ASF) equal to the Army Ground Forces (AGF) and Army Air Forces (USAAF). And we didn’t have to pay the Taliban to have our supplies delivered. The supplies also didn’t include pre-fab bunkers and burger joints.

The good news that there is the human capital to build anew a proper task oriented flexible organization on combat proven organizational principles. The effect of the revolution in information technologies will reduce the size if not the need for the Pentagon which should be mustered out immediately.

While the fact of a General Staff is in place, it does not include the same carefully educated, trained, and experienced in operations. They just have time in grade, and are permanently assigned in a position to negate any hot shot who thinks he can change the shape of water in a bucket with quick hands. We need to have a General Staff something like the Germans had before that unfortunate affair with that Bohemian corporal. Qualification as a General Staff officer should go with the officer and not tied to the position. Competition for accession to General Staff should be continuous through an officer’s career.

Command of field units in the German Army did not automatically go to General Staff Officers. Command and Staff often call for different personalities. As a branch, the Guard and Reserves will be required to maintain sufficient GS qualified personnel in the event of full mobilization. Full mobilization means a ten to twenty percent increase in the size of any service. WW 2 sets ten percent of total population as an average level of full mobilization with a corresponding war industry base of five times the size of the forces.

There has been an unfortunate aftertaste in Western filmography that associates German military science as robotic of which much fun is made. The prototype was the portrayal of a German officer by Erich von Stroheim, an Austrian of no great lineage in his films. So enamored of the efficiency of the German Army in WW2, that arrogant strutting image has survived in the American military as strut of emulation believing that absolute adherence to detail is worthy in it’s own way. The German military then and now stresses individual initiative, mission type orders, and professionalism. We threw the baby out, but kept the dirty bath water, to revise an old saying.

The Pentagon has repeatedly demonstrated its inability and reluctance to take full mobilization any higher than the next promotion boards for the current crop of O3’s through O-6. When President Carter took office, he found that GSA Region III had the national responsibility for manpower, resources. Transportation, and defense industry. He followed with a series of “Nifty Nugget” mobilization exercises which resulted in the present state of mobilization readiness that includes the local Armory or Reserve Center. The Pentagon should be torn down and the space used to expand the National Cemetery to make room for the next round of dead from our battlefields.

OBTW; There is no Constitutional principle of “civilian control of the military”. The President’s military rank is that of Commander in Chief. He is no civilian. Congress is the source of authority for issues of doctrine, equipping, and staffing, but has pointedly stayed unaware of their primary responsibilities. It is the Congress that these changes can be made.

Gordon S Fowkes

Lt Col, US Army (Ret_

Will Breaking?

2010-11-14T11:07:00.000-08:00

The question at the core of the use of force, be it economic, political, kinetic or social is why such force induce others to accept the will of the guy at other end of the force. The beatings will continue until morale improves. "Bomber" Harris calculated that a few bombing raids of Germany would force Hitler to the bargaining table.

High Altitude Strategic Bombing was gospel in the US Army Air Force during WW 2. The theory, in addition to the "break their will" approach was to destroy key industrial complexes and communications centers with bombs dropped from 30,000 feet into specified "pickle barrels". The Strategic Bombing report done by the US Government after the war stated that barely five percent of the strategic bombs dropped by the USAAF on German or Japanese actually landed anywhere near their target. German production levels continued to rise throughout the war.

All the Anglo-American strategic bombing did of value was to divert Axis fighter aircraft from the front lines, which absence facilitated the forward advance of ground forces in no small war. The bitter aftertaste of the wreckage of German and Japanese homes is fundamental in understanding the popular resistance today in those countries for any further military adventures. In that regard, the bombing helped secure the peace.

The Japanese high command figured that the destruction of the US Fleet at Pearl Harbor and the invasions of the Philippines, Dutch East India, and the British would bring the Allies to the bargaining table. Their estimate was correct, of course, but the bargaining table was on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

This all goes to the heart of the question of what one is trying to do with using force against any political aggregate to get them to bend to our will. Military Theoreticians most revered today include Alfred Thayer Mahan, and Karl von Clausewitz. First for his work on Sea Power, the other on Ground Warfare. Both stress the concept of a massive engagement at a strategic time and place to win wars.

That's what the Japanese tried at Midway. Japanese submarines were not used as commerce raiders like ours and the Germans, and despite having some of finest subs and certainly the best torpedo, their submarine force did little significantly. The love affair with Clausewitz in the US Army has focused US military design, doctrine, and operations seeking to smash the "center of gravity" of the opposition.

The Concept of a Center of Gravity is holy writ in the US Army, mainly because Clausewitz didn't edit his book as it is a compilation of his writings gathered by his wife after he died. The book is long, and most I know don't read the book all the way through which shows there are several "centers of gravity" but leaves the instructions on how to find them in the wind. Centers of gravity are best thought of as a cross between the Emperor's New Clothes, and a snipe hunt.

WW2 shows some very critical differences on how wars are ended. Hitler retained effective control over his military which had tried 42 times to kill him until the Red Army posted it's Red Flag on the Brandenburg Gate.

Hirohito, on the other hand, pulled off a palace coup and took advantage of his status as a god, to end the fighting despite a last ditch attempt by members of his guard to stop him. Hirohito's mind and that of many other senior Japanese political and military leaders knew the jig was up as Soviet forces blitzed Manchuria and landed on Japan's Northern Territories.

Our operations in the Middle East have been driven by Clausewitzean logic, when the successes and failures of Hitler, Stalin, Lincoln, George Washington, Queen Victoria, and the Roman Empire provide a better selection of variables to study. In an effort to reduce the process to it's simplest form so that Sergeants and teach Generals and politicians where the cookies crumble. And it all has to start with how culture affects the structure, dynamics and cohesion and disintegration of groups be they simple aggregates or membership groups.

All too often the inner circle of the leadership core is solely concerned with it's own survival and aggrandizement. The security mechanisms to protect the leader are the link pins of the nation. Baghdad was virtually free of Saddam's Army as he feared the Army and Republican Guard would steal the nation if they could get Baghdad.

The Republican Guard was a counter weight to the Iraqi Army. The SS was the counterweight to the German Army, as was the KGB a counter to the Red Army. Our Constitution splits the military power of the nation between state and federal, and between Congress and the President.

The concepts of F4F and the Drama Triangle as applied to societies, organization and groups is the first place one looks for strengths and weaknesses and their susceptibility to pressure.

The Shaft to Come

2010-07-28T06:39:00.000-07:00

The future of the war in the Muddle East has been decided. We are not only pulling out, we are downsizing the Army by at least a third. The decision has been made, and implementation has commenced, as announced by the Pentagon to cut officer accessions by half through ROTC and OCS. The Pentagon does not want to be caught with it’s pants down by having more junior officers than the attenuated post conflict military establishment can handle.

The groundwork for this drawdown was anticipated a decade ago with the clear and present danger that Army Guard and Army Reserve units would displace the peacetime civilian logistics and personnel empire built by the careful transfer of a wartime logistics structure to the Guard and Reserve after Vietnam

The side effects of “The Warrior Ethic” eroticism used to paint anyone not directly involved with small arms something less erotic than “Warrior”. Since the Field Artillery kills large numbers from a distance greater than direct fire weapons, the erotic status of the Cannon Cocker was downplayed and the ration of gunner to grunt was cut in half. Thus, should the Army have to face another People’s Army, the gunners won’t be there to blow them away. God help us if we face an army with big guns.

The downsizing of the Artillery also reduced the logistic foot print of an Army in the field with corresponding cuts in expenditures for ammunition that now can be spent on comfort contractors and hamburgers. The cost (MPA, O&MA, and PEMA
Secondary) of a Vietnam combat division was about one billion dollars (Nixon-Ford) plus or minus half a billion depending on how much ordnance was expended. I was the XO of the US Army Field Operating Cost Agency, Comptroller of the Army during their study of this.

Planning factors for the kinds of war we fought in both world wars, Korea, and Vietnam called for an average expenditure of ten tons of ammo per artillery piece per day. That works out to one ten ton truck trailer combo on the road per day per gun. The entire field logistics structure was built around the effort to move artillery ammo.

Well, say the petulant pundit, our guns are more accurate than those old messy guns and we don’t have to shoot so many shells anymore. And, since artillery is so inaccurate, they can’t be used in counter insurgency. Huh? If we don’t need so many shells per target, why not increase the targets per guns? Of more often?

Napoleon once said that a soldier marches on it’s stomach. Someone else said that amateurs talk about tactics, professionals talk logistics. Today’s stomach is run by contractors eighty percent of whom are local nationals according to a CRS recent report, most of which support is base operations.

The Soviet Combined Arms Army was 100% truck or track mobile. The counterpart US Corps were about thirty percent wheel/track mobile. Now we don’t have corps support commands where soldiers control their own logistics. Now we don’t teach logistics to soldiers, we teach contract management.

What would the contract Army have looked like in the withdrawal from Chosin, or the breakout from Normandy, or the Normandy across the beach logistics. What would the battles of the South Pacific looked like with Brute and Scoot in charge.

The shape of things to come in the Post Terror War military establishment is before us. The shredding of the Division, Corps and Field Army structures to be replaced by the Senior Executive Service (SES – the old GS 15+) raises the question as to whether we need flag rank officers at all.

Why spend billions grooming field grade officers though schooling and assignment manipulation if they have no real role in war fighting? Or maybe we ought to take a serious look at letting tenured weasels manipulate war for job security.

Gordon S Fowkes

Lt Col, US Army (Ret)

Modular Lies and Distortions

2010-07-07T15:03:00.001-07:00

Unit of Action, the BS BCT

I have just read a tepid and distortive allegation of the wonderfulness of the Brigade Combat Team aka “Unit of Action (UA)” in the latest edition (July-August, 2010) and it confirms many of the misgivings I have had concerning this aberration. Read here no further, as I have attached the article or you can get it at:

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20100831_art007.pdf

This article spends a lot of space trying to refute the allegations of the Field Artillery in their quest to put Humpty Dumpty back on the battlements. The article dismisses the loss of FA command positions with the assertion that there isn’t enough brass around to supply the cannons, and that the BCT can handle what little fire support needs they have. The needs of combat arms career development in promotion timing and opportunity is exposed perhaps unwittingly … or not.

The article cites the organic artillery battalion found in the Armored Cavalry Regiment since the late Thirties was justification that organic tubes were viable. The original reason that cannons were made organic was that the reconnaissance, security and economy of force missions for an Army Corps (XXX) was at a greater distance that the divisional or corps artillery medium guns could cover. The actual experience in Vietnam of these battalions was that they the lost fire direction sophistication found in divisional artillery units. The Blackhorse Regiment’s cannons were used in direct fire or short log over the trees mode.

The article misrepresents that task organization of the combat divisions since the triangular division was adopted on the eve of WW2. It’s predecessor was a “square” division of two brigades of two regiments each. The article uses slight of word in saying that the brigade is the constant. The Square Divisional Brigade had six maneuver battalions plus support instead of the two or three that the BDT has. It’s the new math, I guess.

The article goes on the misrepresent the prevailing doctrine and practice of Army divisions in combat, the field, or in the school solutions of the day:

On a mission-by-mission basis, the division headquarters would briefly attach small, specialized units such as military police, air defense, and military intelligence to subordinate brigades. This transient organizational arrangement reduced the unity of command and complicated operational synchronizatio

In fact, the Division commander (as per doctrine in the entire Army school system from Benning to Carlisle and back, would task organize the division’s assets however he wanted it to meet conditions of METT. This was not limited to “small units” but normally to two to five maneuver battalions of any type of combat units (infantry, mech infantry, armor, armored cavalry, engineers plus the number and type of companies and detachments for combat service support plus the allocation of artillery in Direct Support, General Support Reinforcing and General Support (all terms now forbidden). A division usually had three DS battalions, one General Support battalion of mixed calibers, and a rocket, missile or really big gun battalion.

Artillery is never put in reserve, and when a brigade, regimental combat team (RCT WW2 – Korea), Combat Command (WW2-Korea-JFK armor division) or divisional ROAD brigade was put in a reserve position as was the rule in Armor to retain a big chunk for counter attack, the DS FA battalions were placed is a reinforcing role either under division control or more likely seconded to a DS artillery battalion.

The task organization of the Army division since before there were Army divisions is to assign what ever is available to whomever needs it. I served in the JFK-LBJ era in the 3rd Armored Division (Spearhead) at the Fulda Gap area and witnessed companies, even platoons being switched between battalions and other companies on the fly. As a mech aka Armored Rifle platoon leader, I could expect to change the company I supported at least once a day, sometimes more often as the war game shifted.

My experiences in the 1st Infantry Division in an intelligence capacity with the 2/2 Mech on QL 13 (Thunder Road), the same applied to the battalion task force. I have seen the battalion task force go from two companies of different battalions in the morning to five or another mix by sunset, and back again even at night. This was done effortlessly and was a standard I observed for that level of command even as I returned to the 1st Air Cavalry in I Corps and later in III Corps Tactical Zone (CTZ).

I was a G2 Operations officer in the DTOC of the 1st Air Cavalry Division in which I posted the battle maps, coordinated with the G3, Fire Support, Air Support,, and briefed the Commanding General (MG George I Forsyth) and staff each morning in a duet with the G3 briefer. The G3 briefer and I would coordinate the sequence of events to brief which either began with an enemy event resulting in a combat response (my brief) or the other way around (G3).

During the seven months I served in the DTOC added to the four in the field, the task organization of the division changed in a matter of a few hours. The division had twenty seven organic rife companies which on the map looked like some very serious fleas, hopping from LZ to LZ. Not only did we have 1st Air Cav units, but units from the 25th Infantry Division, 101st Airborne, 1st Infantry, the 14th ACR, plus ARVN and Vietnamese Marines deployed widely to meet divisional needs.

The trick was using the 1/9th Cavalry (three troops of air cavalry and a troop of wheeled cavalry) screening across the division front and in areas between firebases, The 1/9th used “Pink Teams”, an OH6 paired with an AH-1 Cobra. The OH6 zipped around at grass top level, in between trees and around them looking for trail sign of the VC, or hope that the VC fired. One fired upon the OH6 went up, the Cobra pounced.

As the battle developed the Cavalry Troop Commander would send in more aircraft, call in air strikes, or “insert the Blues”, the organic infantry platoon. If this didn’t resolve the issue, the battle was passed up and more assets just “piled on”.

During my tour in Vietnam I saw divisional brigades detached for extended service elsewhere in the country either working for the division or for higher headquarters. The 101st Airborne had a brigade in the III CTZ which we replaced and they returned to 101st control. The 1st Cav routinely detached brigades to cover the Parrots Beak area in III CTZ to work with the 9th Infantry Division and/or the US Navy on the branches of the Saigon River delta in “NavCav” operations.

In the twenty years of service in the Army and Army Reserve after Vietnam, the doctrine of task organizing on the fly was default. In fact, during another one of the computer simulation driven doctrines, the division commander started with a clean slate and allocated battalions to brigades depending on the number and width of avenues of approach in the division’s battle space. The problem with this simulation driven approach had was assuming that the infantry fought in the green, and the tanks in the white. Having served in Germany including Grafenwohr, Hehenfels, and Widlflecken and in large scale winter exercises from Kassel to Nurnberg, I found the woods in Germany were actually farms and that access roads big enough for the M113 and often the M60 tanks traversed the extent of the woods.

The author of this article acknowledges that the design of the UA or BCT was done in computer simulations. The problem with egg head simulation is the lack of fog and happenstance of field or combat operations. And I have a lot of experience in conducting command post exercises from rifle platoon to headquarters of every level of command up to an including Corps, Army, Theater and national level assets (Congress, DA headquarters, and NSA>

There is no solid evidence to prove that the UA/BCT is the basic building block of anything other then personnel. It is a fake, it is a fraud. One cannot become more flexible if one cuts up the whole into bigger parts than before. One cannot meet the changes of METT-TC with the smallest unit is brigade.

And, no one does. Nor have they ever. No one in command or in authority in combat is that stupid. Wars are fought with ad hoc formations, rarely organic clusters, There has always been cross attachments based on METT, even back in the Roman Legions.

Why Do We Need Two Marine Corps?

2010-06-25T13:45:00.000-07:00

The Army turns green with jealousy over the existence of the Marine Corps, particularly their elan, panache, esprit de corps, and sang froid (French for cheeky upstart). The Marine Corps stole a march on the Army with the Banana Republic Two Step (Expeditionary Warfare) which folks forget is their traditional role going back to their 1776 raid in the Bahamas to disrupt British operations.

As long as there are American interests that span the Seven Seas, both the Navy and the Marine Corps are front and center in the ranks of the long serving professional force, particularly in those years in between Big Wars which tend to be Bananas and Nuts.

The Army and Air Force understand at a visceral level that the absence of a serious clear and present danger, there is no pressing need for a long standing professional Army or Air Force. What reinforcements needed by the Navy/USMC can be provided by Reserve and/or Guard forces. The fact that no serious big war threat faces the US is impressively documented by the return of Air Force and Army units to Festung Kansas where their forces are closer to the Middle East than either Europe or Asia (Globe please).

What is also damning is the Pentagon effort to Navalize the Army by creating Brigade Combat Teams be deployed like LGBs (Large Gray Boats). Rotating brigades is a copy cat of rotation of ships, except that some ships swap crews and go back to sea.

Wanted: Military Industrial Complex

2010-06-25T13:40:00.001-07:00

A military-industrial complex is necessary for a well arned and equipped miilitary force. Some one makes horseshoes, arrows, saddles, gunpowder, and fighter planes. Without industry, one has bo foraee for one's own rocks. Industry, left to it's own technological niche will produce something better than a Pentagib staff curcke, What has happened in the last four administrations is the civlianization and privatization of military combat, combat support, combat service support, and service support agenicies and operations.

The latest manual FM 5-0 abolishes there terms so as to render a century's worth of combat experience in logistics null, void, and unintelligible. This is the same gimmick used by Chariman Mao who had Chinese characters used in writing simpified with fewer srrokes and other abbreviations which renders the ancient texts of China unintelligible to modern Chinesse,

The Army Reserve was the repository of units trained in logistics and support at levels from Army and Corps. As OIF and OEF started, the Army Reserves were stripped down, combined, and reorganized into a logistic structure alien to American military history, but now afrer a decade of war, has gelled around a heirarchy of civil servants, contractors and a token military presence. While this may work at present, it will have no shelf life once shut down.

It takes about a decade for the rot to spread to catastrophic potential. The old fashioned notion that every Guard and Rsserve unit had to have a connecion to a real war plan or two left a basis for training in a focused manner. The civlian base that ususrrp Discom, Coscom, and TAACom units will leave those in battle without gas, ammo, food, and spare parts.

Funeral of Combat Service Support

2010-06-25T13:36:00.000-07:00

Unplugging from the Muddle in the East may leave the Army unable to fight without heavy contractor support. Contractors, by and large, cost three times the cost of soldiers, The knowledge base of operational and strategic level logistics, formerly known as combat service support (CSS), is becoming lost to the uniformed, and will atrophy with the end of contracting for CSS in a post war cost cutting environment.

The Army Reserve was the home of combat service support units trained to support the contingencies of the Active, Guard, and Reserve fighting forces. The doctrine has virtually disappeared. The Army Reserve was home to CSS as there is little to do on full time active service to justify the expense. The Pentagon's visceral fear of Weekend Warriors has gutted the Army before, and it appears that national survival or defeat in battle in the future is a more acceptable outcome that restoring combat service support to those in uniform, and subject to military orders.

A solid nail in the coffin is the recent deletion of the term "combat service support"" from the lexicon of official Army terminology.

Full Time Amateurs vs Part Time Professionals

2010-06-25T13:30:00.000-07:00

I believe there is a saying that amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals talk about logistics. The Army's decisions on force balance between components prior to Transformation put all the logistics in the Army Reserve with some rear area assets such as MP brigades in the Guard. If one accepts that, we had full time amateurs, and part time professionals.

I worked as the Intelligence Officer of a Combat Service Support Exercise Group of the 75th MAC (now 75th Division) which gave command post exercises to Corps support logistic units prior to Transformation. We gave exercises to such units as Petroleum Groups, Ammunition Groups, Support Commands, Area Support Commands, and Rear Area Operations Centers. We became the Army's expertise on logistics and rear area operations.

We wrote a manual to fill in the gap of doctrine on the subject of rear area operations, which manual was later published by CAC including the misspellings.

During the three years I was in the unit, I went on over fifty exercises (leave Friday afternoon, set up Friday night, start the war on Saturday morning, end on Sunday at noon, and fly home).

AS it was, the Materials Management Center (MMC) would determine who needed what supplies then the Movement Control Center (MCC) set up the convoys, and notified the MP's and the RAOC who was going where and when. In addition, the Engineers in the rear area, were largely responsible for maintenance of the lines of communication.

The RAOC (mostly National Guard) plugged into the Corps command network to assess the enemy threats in the area and recommend or actually control assets needed to preclude, prevent or protect the corps logistic structure.

The number and scope of major exercises I am personally familiar with included a Theatre medical exercise, a Theater MP exercise, several Coscom exercises, and a whole number of RAOC exercises, I wrote and managed the bad guy scenarios.

In the short time we had to test the decision making skills of the exercised command, it was necessary to either increase the demand for supplies, or cut the amount available. I used Soviet style airborne operations in blocking positions west of the Rhine to provide the work load necessary for staff coordination. I later found out from the Consul General of Germany in Houston that the drop zones I selected were the same the Soviets had selected but that my estimate of two divisions was low, as the Soviets intended to use ten airborne divisions to cross the Rhine.

What I read about the fact that convoys were sent willy nilly into Indian country fits with other sources which leave me aghast at the really stupid things done by Transformation. The damage is permanent, with a civilian control structure being crafted by the Pentagon including contractors and Civil Servants in the place of what we had trained to do since the end of WW 2.

Given a few years of no war, or low war, the necessary expertise to launch major operations will wither and die, along with God knows how many grunts.

Changing PSYOP to MISO

2010-06-25T13:26:00.000-07:00

It's a name change which will fool no one. The most important PSYOP/MISO function is a staff function to shape combat operations with the optimum impact on the other sides' culture and politics to change behavior in a direction favorable to us. This has to be taught to combat types all along the career stumble upwards.

The name change is also associated with a power grab between the official press, public relations, and psyop. There are legal restrictions in using PSYOP units on Americans, it's prohibited by law. Deception operations in the Pentagon are first, directed against the Pentagon, then against the Congress and the People. Renaming Renaming PSYOP to MISO may be intended to boost deception operations against Americans.

The term, "against" may be translated into other bullshit words like "information operations", "public affairs", and "educating the public". Renaming PSYOP is also a perception that PSYOPS is essentially deceit, and that propaganda is a lie. It can be, but not necessarily nor inherently.

Deception is a staff function of the S3/G3, but the lack of experience in PSYOPS in combat staffs renders our combat operations transparent. Sun Tsu famously characterized all war as based on deception. He was an optimist. Basic combat doctrine on operations orders stresses the everyone should know the commanders intent which is included in the mission statement.

Stonewall Jackson quoted Frederick the Great when he said that if a hair on his head know what he was up to, he would cut it off. The very notion of the commanders intent is destructive to the mission. This may also account for the fact that combat operations in area warfare (Vietnam, Afghanistan, and much of OIF) often go astray as the enemy knows our intent.

The combat advantage that we have leveraged successfully has been due to the fact that we can make a combat decision and implement it faster than most of our enemies. We can get inside the ODA Loop, the Observe-Decide-Act, developed by Colonel Boyd, USAF dogfight guru.

There is no principle of civilian leadership of the Military

2010-06-25T13:22:00.000-07:00

There is no principle of civilian rule over the military in the Constitution. It may be a political tradition, but nowhere is it stated so in the Constitution. What it does say is that the President is Commander in Chief, the Congress has the authority to raise, equip, staff, and provide for the regulation of the military, and the Senate has the authority to approve the appointment of officers.

The states have the right to maintain a well regulated militia but no standing troops or ships of war in peace time, which forces may be called to Federal service. That the President is Commander in Chief seems to me that the President has a military rank, and is not a civilian insofar as the military is concerned........

There is no provision anywhere else, save by law passed by Congress, that requires or places a civilian anywhere in the chain of command. Given the disastrous terms of such Secretaries of Defense as Louis Johnson, McNamara, and Rumsfeld, one could build a real good argument to place qualified military personnel in those positions.”

F4F: Culture is People Doctrine

2010-03-10T10:55:00.000-08:00

METT-TC is doctrine outlining the basic factors in planning military (Army) operations. It includes Mission, Enemy, Terrain, Troops Available, Time and (most recently) Civilian considerations. Of the six of the factors of METT-TC, half (three) deal with people: that of the enemy, troops available and the civilians. Of the remaining three, Time and Terrain are affected by how people use them leaving only the Mission. Mission is couched in terms that normally include the people on all sides, as in surrender, withdraw, or die.

The rebirth of Stability Operations standing alone or with Offense and Defense Operations have added five Logical Lines of Operation including: Security, host nation security force training, effective basic service, governance, and a viable economy. All five of these are culture centric, especially the last three.

Culture is (People) Doctrine

The rules by which people operate is culture, and, for the warrior, culture is doctrine for people. It includes their military doctrine as well. Even if the weapons, military doctrine, and terrain are the same, two sides of a conflict will have their cultural differences. The is current doctrine, published doctrine (Torah, Bible, Koran, Building Code, Traffic and Tax Law. FM 3-24), operating doctrine, revolutionary doctrine, and old fashioned doctrine that conflicts, conjoins, empowers or emasculates other doctrines.

Cultural awareness isn’t always about being touchy-feely. It may be that the touch and feel includes shell fragments, napalm, and interlocking bands of grazing fire. A fire fight is a cultural exchange in which the outcome isn’t always the results of interacting kinetics. Some people don’t know when to quit, and some use death to kill.

A warrior’s cultural awareness has to cut to the chase in short order. The cultural experts, like any other important asset, won’t be there, or if so is for the wrong culture, or creates a weed patch of irrelevant trivia when one needs to clear a field of fire to push the right buttons.

Apologies to the handful who are in the right place with the right pitch and have proven the concept. And it is to those who have walked in both worlds that have the answers. What the warrior needs now are the questions, and that is what F4F is for.

It has become painfully obvious of late that some folks like the way they do things their way, and as long as they plant IED’s in our public places, It is way past time for the United States to consider culture as a prime factor in the determination of courses of action.

The Erroneous End State:

It is often an underlying assumption that the desired end state of our wars or major operation is the conversion of the enemy to some variation of the American Way as defined by what happens to be politically correct at the time without regard to what is politically or culturally correct in the Area of Operations. It has been an unstated assumption that what works in America is the latest and greatest, and nonconformance is backwardness. It has not been necessary to adapt our objectives to the conditions and standards of different cultures because at the bottom line, we had greater firepower than the others. We are not alone in miscalculating.

The Germans assumed that Britain would come to the negotiating table if the RAF was destroyed. That didn’t happen. The Japanese assumed that destroying the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor would bring the US to the bargaining table. That happened, but the table wasn’t about bargaining and it was in Tokyo Bay. Likewise, Stalin and Kim Il Sung assumed that the US would not defend South Korea. What wasn’t considered was the cultural importance of Face, Fate, Fame and Fortune to the receiving party of various and sundry slaps thereto.

We are engaged in Afghanistan trying to install a unitary form of governance in a culture that survives because of its fierce dedication to decentralization. What become ironic folly is that the United States has a decentralized federation in which each of the fifty states has it’s own army and air force. And our governors aren’t appointed by Federal authority.

Assumptions are the Mother of all Screw Ups. When Assumptions are tied to Murphy’s Law, Screw Ups are an improvement. Likewise, bravery is not a condition of mission success in combat except when somebody, somewhere screws up. If you think it won’t, you obviously missed something, usually an Assumption. Making water going upstream gets one wet.

Family, the People’s Template:

Human nature, like the rest of the natural world, is predicated on the means and measures supporting the survival of the species, the core of which is the family. All human organizations derive key elements from the basic model of Father, Mother and Child, the Child being the membership and future of the family unit. There are fraternal orders, brotherhoods, paternal leadership, baby sitters and surrogate company.

The Father role is akin to that of protector and is engaged with the external world, The Mother is more internally focused on nurturing the family. The distinction of protective and nurturing roles equate roughly to that of the commander’s duty: Mission and the Troops. The First Sergeant is more concerned with the welfare of the troops, while the Company Commander is more concerned about the Mission. There is lot of overlap, and that is one of the key variables one looks for in studying culture.

Fundamentals:

In the military, the Mission outranks the Troops, but not always. Civil society ranks survival higher. Culture is doctrine and is composed, like doctrine, of Values, Beliefs, Behaviors, and Modes aka VBBN (pronounced V’BBN). Of these, those that prescribe and describe the relations between people and their environment with intent to enhance survival of the individual and society are the most likely to have a strong emotional content.

To make it simple, easy to remember and actionable for troops from fire team to field force to White House, there are four principle sets of survival related Family V’BBN:: Face, Fate, Fame, and Fortune, and four which are related to the physical world: Time, Distance, Ground and Body. In short, the aggregate is called F4F.

Joined at the head of F4F is a related analysis, that of the Drama triangle of Victim, Rescuer, and Prosecutor. The Drama Triangle prescribes the trigger and reaction of transgressions and obligations of the V’BBN in F4F,

F4F: Social (Face, Fate, Fame & Fortune):

FACE: Face issues are those of the mask that the individual or group must wear to preserve place, pride, status, dignity, honor as well as the negatives of shame, and humiliation.. The importance of Face varies between cultures. Cultures that have suffered in the past often are touchy about Face issues.

Face in well trained military units is found when the individual trooper’s principle value is not the let his or her buddies down, even to the point of death. Likewise, it is an important issue that buddies in danger will take risks, even that of death. Face can be both an individual trait and collective one.

A unit that lacks such confidence in others is more likely to place individual survival ahead to the unit. The irony of this is that a unit that breaks under fire usually takes more casualties that the unit with higher cohesion..

FATE: Fate is what happens and why. It is code and consequence.

Fate also describes consequence in terms of rewards and punishments. American troops are loath to leave the body of a comrade on the battlefield, even to the point of losing more to enemy fire in order to retrieve the remains of a fallen comrade.

The customs and traditions of the Marine Corps, or of the 1st Cavalry, or the King’s Guard, provide the basis for collective action that provides the mutual confidence between the individual and the unit. In WW2, the plans for a military action against the German troops depended a lot about whether the Germans were Waffen SS, Volks Grenadier, or regular Wehrmacht units. The SS had considerable tight cohesion in which individual death was as much a sacred sacrifice as it was a loss.

Likewise, the fate of a martyr is describes in teachings, training, and recruitment in the creed of the terrorist. Young men generally see death as am abstraction and give up life to obligate God into admission into the choicer regions of heaven. Qualified love by Allah was a major incentive used to control the killers of Mumbai constantly coaching these killers to kill here and there and to take their own life in order to ensure Allah’s approval.

Face and Fate are closely entwined. Insulting the head of a Afghan family by placing boot to neck is generally balanced only with the bloods of one or more Americans. Kicking down doors is a loss of face to the head of a family, and insulting of the family and even in Texas requires a vigorous response.

FAME: Fame is the opprobrium (or blame) in the context of the group, even outside groups. Fame is not always welcome. The collective value culture in Japan has a tendency to hammer down the nail that sticks up. Like public recognition of a snitch.

The Fame accrued to the victor in a struggle has the purpose of attracting members of the opposite sex, as such victory is usually transcribed (right or wrongly) into a mating value of a successful protector or nurturer of a budding family.

FORTUNE: Fortune in F4F has more to do with the human factor in economics as in what do these folks do for a living, Different strokes for different trades. It matters whether they are doctors, lawyers, candlestick makers, hookers, or truck drivers. Each profession or trade has its own system of ethics, rewards, and punishments.

Having a fortune has mating values which makes the fortunate more useful in providing for a future family. The knowledge of one sex of the cultures significant symbols of success for the other sex includes the right car, the right apartment, a quantity of cattle or goats, in addition to being strong and/or comely.

F4F: Physical (Time, Distance, Ground & Body):

TIME: The very concept of time may be consecutive, repetitive, circular, mutually exclusive or overlapping. The relative importance of past, present and future varies. Some cultures are stuck in a long lost past, some want to forget it.

If a meeting is called for eight PM, in Japan the attendees will be there early. In parts of Africa, it is the time one leaves for the meeting. In certain parts of Latin America, the hosts aren’t dressed yet. In other parts, it is of no significance.

The timeliness of military forces is a mark of high discipline, but some cultures have considered other values as of greater importance. Should an attack be launched when it is time to do so, or should it wait for the arrival of someone of high status? The time of an attack may be adjusted until the attacker is ready, or that the defender isn’t.

DISTANCE: Distance issues attests to how close and distant individuals and their works should be. Americans like arms length, while Arabs prefer elbow distance. Elbow distance to an American is “in your face” and subject to fisticuff. Urban crowding and rural separation set different values as comfortable or not.

GROUND: Ground issues are neglected in most of our maps for it is only the shape (maybe the image) of the roof tops that one sees. It matters to a rifleman how thick the walls of the buildings and fences are. A stone wall at the base of Marye’s Heights in Fredericksburg, VA and a wooden fence at the foot of Seminary Ridge in Gettysburg, PA made the Blue, then the Grey die in numbers.
Mountainous regions restrict access and the amount of arable land making the control of passes and valleys a high social value. Mountain people tend to be touchy and contentious, something that folks living in the Alleghenies, Alps and mountains of Afghanistan in common. The schism between the Highlanders and the Lowlanders of Scotland are in the same vein.

BODY: Body issues include body language, but also include the whole manual of arms, legs, stomach, chest, mouth, eyes and other parts south. How one sits, stands, walks, and looks about is important. One does not stare at a woman in a number of cultures without consequence, sometime lethal. In South East Asia, squatting, not sitting is a very common posture when meeting.

Taken together, F4F is not a check-list, it is not a matrix, or a mesh. F4F is designed for specific focus on a specific mission without wading into the weeds of the myriad details of an entire culture. F4F is designed for on the spot use as a part of the Military Decision Making Process from tactical to operational to the national.

F4F as Narrative:

F4F is used by asking or observing one of the F’s and extrapolating into mission relevant conclusions. Most often it winds up as a narrative, or story showing how the parts work. Americans can be described as placing a high value on individual responsibility, which shows up in timeliness, in individual space, and credit for individual progress. In this Americans are at one end of a spectrum with the rest of the world valuing groups higher than the individual, particularly family, village, tribe, or sect. Once under pressure, however, Americans can reverse polarity for an emergency, and can do so without much risk as once the emergency is resolved, a critical mass of Americans revert to looking out after Number One.

Many a Villain has made the mistake of assuming that American individualism was a weakness that could be exploited with threats of fear.

The other half of F4F (aka Cultural Weed Whacker) is what happens when one or more of the other “Fs” are pushed or pulled. What happens is drama. Or, when needed, the lack of it. A cup of tea is sometimes, just a cup of tea. At others, as in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, three cups of tea are a contract.

Karpmann’s Drama Triangle:

The Drama Triangle aka Karpmann’s Drama Triangle is drawn from the field of Psychology called “Transactional Analysis (TA)”. Developed for individual therapy, the triangle consists of three roles “Victim, Rescuer, and Prosecutor”. In TA, transactions are grouped into Games which involve switching between these three roles sequentially and repetitively. For collective application, however, these role switches can be done simultaneously.

The Real Drama Triangle:

Of equal importance is to bring the drama trilogy into synch with that of the Family and its survival. The role of victim is that of helplessness, as in helpless infant. An infant requires the protection and nurturing of parents. In order to have a victim, one must have Villains, and Villains are best dealt with by Heroes. Mothers and Fathers are heroes to children. Or, al least they should be.

There is a fuzzy line between real threats and threats blown out of proportion for the purposes of making a trip around the Drama Triangle. Being a Hero can be intoxicating and desirous of emulations. That is why we have baseball, video games, jihads, crusades, and global thermonuclear warfare. That’s why we have rooting sections, political parties, and cheerleaders to cheer the heroes on, and villains to boo at.

Dysfunctional Drama Triangle:

This leads to the Dysfunctional Drama Triangle of which there are two types: the Heroic and the Villainous. As portrayed in legend, and lore, there are the Heroic: Knight, Nurse, and Infant. And likewise, the Villainous Vicious, Vindictive, and Voracious take the place of father, mother, and child.

Unlike drama that goes with survival, the purpose of the Dysfunctional Drama is the collection of emotional “payoffs” or “justifications” Most of us know people who go through life as victims, putting themselves in one predicament after another, in order to sucker in a rescuer whose efforts seem never to work. One way to gain victim status, under law, is the frequent jail house flyer who victimizes others in order to become a victim needing the services of a rescuing attorney. Thus, the daily grind in the court house has all the players of both sides of the Dysfunctional Drama Triangle.

The Law of Inverse Relevance:

The Dysfunctional Drama Triangle has some very sharp edges as the two triangles don’t move in concert, and take some analysis to separate the Survival (True) Drama Triangle in which there are real victims, real villains which require ordinary heroes. The Drama Decoder works on the Law of Inverse Relevance in which states:

1. Brag with weakest virtue.
2. Blame with strongest vice..

Common day examples are found in popular advertising. Ads for paper towels brag about their strength when cost is their strongest virtue, and comparison testing clearly shows the best buy is the one being blamed. Used car dealers brag about the price, which covers a number of defects expensive to fix.

The Vast Conspiracy:

Another key to decoding is the simple fact that the parental roles of protection and nurturing present the presence of a vast foreboding villainous presence aka vast conspiracy. Historical examples include the Yellow Peril, Fascism, Communism, Fundamentalism (of all sorts), Capitalism and the Special Interests. To a child, things adult seem vast, uncontrollable and untrustworthy and/or trust worthy. He/She who cries that the big bad wolf is loose, is a child looking for parental attention, more than reporting a threat

Politics is the grand theater of the Dysfunctional Drama Triangle. It is in this arena, that warriors need a wary tread, wary of the Passionate State of Mind as Eric Hoffer stated in his book of the same name, for True Believers (another of his books) play the Dysfunctional Drama Triangle for keeps.

Don’t Believe Your Own Cluster

F4F and the Drama Triangle are bread and butter stuff for Psychological Operations and Civil Affairs, but it is essential in the application of force and violence.. Before we fire a time on target on a suspected villainous position, one must ask what sort of reaction those targeted will make once shot at.

In Vietnam we used to calculate the number of casualties the VC must have taken given the number of rounds fired. Even if remotely accurate, it did not take into account that casualties were a price the VC would take, even if they chose to leave. Our current operations against “terrorists” have been based on how much terror we can unleash before the suicidal terrorists give up.

Drama, The Jihadi Jackpot

The Drama Triangle is exemplified by the rationale the suicide bomber uses to justify and glorify killing others by self destruction. The requisite Villain status against infidels, unbelievers, crusaders, and apostates is assigned, and the bomber become a heroic knight, and nurturer of the purity of Islam as well as a passport to heaven. The bomber hits the six pot, all six roles both heroic and villainous at the push of a button.

Training for Cultural De-Obfuscation

F4F is designed to fit into existing military doctrine, particularly the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP). It only requires a pair of hands as training aids, as it can be illustrated by point at head, upwards, wave hand(s) and thumb rub (as in counting money) to represent Face, Fate, Fame and Fortune. The physical environment takes two hands to point at watch for Time, spread hands apart for distance, and point at the ground and one’s body.

The Drama Triangle can be illustrated on the back on an envelope, business card, or some creative artwork.

Cultural task analysis should be done for all parties to a fire fight, good guys, bad guys, and those in between, including all major variants. As in task analysis of Condition, Action, Standard cultural V’BBN impact on action, conditions, and standard. The initial analysis is to determine which societal Fs (face, fate, fame, fortune) and physical (time, distance, ground and body) are relevant to your operations.

Setting up a road block involves issues of whose road the locals think this is. It includes the arm and hand signals that both sides must understand. Many an Iraqi has been shot for mistaking the MP hand sign of palm up and towards the target that means “stop”, “whoa”, and/or “hold up” as the Iraqi sign for “hi” or “hello”. The Iraqi smiles, waves back and drives into a hail of bullets.

Searching a village would be made easier if the design of walls, halls, corridors, and roads were known, as well as the proper etiquette for entrance. Door kicking is often counter production.

The cultural objective to train for in these cases would require a demonstration of adverse or positive feedback in accordance to the likely outcomes in a given culture. Of signal importance is the accurate drama that occurs in accordance with F’ing the Fs or not.

It is vital to not that Cultural Awareness is not necessarily about being nice. It might be the best course of action to enrage the other guy to do something stupid. Doolittle’s raid was a slap in the face that invited Yamamoto to bring his carriers in range of ours.

Ask the Right Questions

F4F is about asking the right questions to avoid making assumptions that get the wrong people killed. In the absence of the right people to give the answers you need, start checking out the Fs and the Drama in the AO.

Acknowledgements:

1. The primary source of motivation and inspiration in this endeavor is the field of psychology, Transactional Analysis. For details, Google the phrases and terms used in the above text. Of special interest are the works of Stephen Karpman MD, and Dr Eric Berne who started it all with “Games People Play?
2. The TRADOC (Army Training and Doctrine Command), Culture Center’s superb “Subject Matter Experts” including David Tannenbaum whose fine works become limited by inadequate doctrine to plug their knowledge into effective military action.
3. Full Spectrum Drama as spelled out by the publications from Ft Leavenworth’s Combined Arms Center aka C&GSC which calls for an effective doctrinal link between the Logical Lines of Operation and the Cultures of the folks in the Area of Operations.
4. The F4F typology is directly inspired by Michel LeBaron’s work on Cross-Cultural Communications and the associated work found on Beyond Intractability website: http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/cross-cultural_communication/
5. Eric Hoffer (July 25, 1902 – May 21, 1983) Longshoreman and Lecturer at the University of California. Author of: 1951 The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements ISBN 0-06-050591-5 1955 The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms ISBN 1-933435-09-7 1963 The Ordeal Of Change ISBN 1-933435-10-0 1967 The Temper Of Our Time …..
6. C. Northecote Parkinson: Parkinson’s Law and other books that proclaim the work expands to fill the time available, expenditures will rise to meet income, and organizations grow regardless of work load
7. William James Haga: Haga’s Law, why nothing works and nothing anybody can do will fix it. Basic premise is that Anxiety begets organizing, and organizing begets anxiety.\.
8. Charles H Titus, Professor of Political Science, UCLA whose unorthodox views on political processes made his course on Politics a favorite for students (including myself in 1961) with a view of life after graduation.
9. Dilbert by Scott Adams. The Dilbert Principle The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams, HarperBusiness 1996 ISBN 0-88730-858-9 . Incompetent employees are promoted to prevent harm or pass it on to others who need it.

The Rage Addict

2010-01-20T11:33:00.001-08:00

Rage Addiction

Family (group) ethics, etiquette, values, norms, behaviors, and beliefs that are tied to the protection, nurture, and growth of the group often excite the passionate mind to fight, flight or freeze. The highs and lows of these emotions have a legitimate use, for heroics may be required for survival. Pity the clown who gets between a bear cub and the mother bear. Rage has a purpose, and a price.

Rage is addictive as are many of the emotions tied to group survival. So much so that the rage addict seeks out or invents an incentive for rage. The cycle of rage addiction can be described in Karpmann’s Drama Triangle in which the player rotates between victim, rescuer, and prosecutor. Victims require villains, of which there are three types: the vicious, vindictive, and voracious (formerly bastard, bitch, and brat) each the dark side of the protection, nurturing, and innocence. Villains require heroes of which there are three types: hero, heroine and helpless.

The rage addict wears hero’s masks and paints all others in villainous colors. Dressed as such, a single addict can rotate through all the roles. The suicide bomber hits the jackpot: plays rescuer, prosecutor and victim all in one blast. He strikes a blow a blow against the villains and is lauded as a hero. Or that may be the last thing that goes through his mind. Literally.

Rage addiction is contagious which normally excites counter-rage which differ only in detail from the donor, except the stakes get higher on each round of rages. Countering rage with more rage is like putting out a fire with gasoline. Not a good idea.

Nagasaki and Hiroshima plus the fire bombing raids over Japan in 1945 brought about a palace revolution by Emperor Hirohito who knew when enough was enough. Hitler stuck to his rage and raged at the German people for failing him, then taking his own life. It is fortunate for the world that Americans have as much compassion as passion, and enough reason to counter rationale.

The first step is to put the make public the cycle of rage addiction to show the sentient amongst us to reveal the real intent and purpose of rage addiction as peculiar to the addict, and not to the faithful at large.

The Insurgent's Choice: Build, Hold, Clear

2009-12-04T10:30:00.000-08:00

The Insurgent’s Choice: Build, Hold, Clear.

Rummy’s incantation was the other way around: Clear, Hold, Build. Unfortunately the implied sequence of clearing first is appropriate to your ranch in Crawford, or to Omaha Beach, but not when the terrain objective is people (hearts and minds).

The Five Logical Lines of Operation: Combat operations, security, economy, basic services and governance as presented in FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency, and related publications regarding Full Spectrum Operations suggest a parallel progression from left to right. Certain actions are presumed to precede others in each line. Perhaps it is time to look at Full Spectrum Operations from the other side.

The Insurgent’s game plan starts with building an infrastructure that provide a modicum of basic services (clinics, schools, etc) with a form of governance which gives the people offers they cannot refuse. The comprehensive use of assassination and torture dissuades collaboration with the opposition. Once ensconced, there exists a network of spies, counter-spies (theirs), and a critical mass of activists.

The more comprehensive the process of building the revolutionary base, the less safe it is for the counterinsurgent to move with impunity about town. This equates to holding a piece of terrain by increasing the pucker factor. Eventually, the counterinsurgent is cleared from an area leaving the insurgent in de facto control and unhindered in consolidating power into the hands of those who held the strings.

The sequence of build, hold, and clear is the same sequence as found in “protracted, peoples, revolutionary war (論持久戰), as described by Mao Zedong and Vo Nguyen Giap and continually adapted to insurgencies up to today by such as Shining Path in Peru, Maoists in Nepal, as in the Dirty War in Argentina and the IRA off and on since Cromwell.

The essential difference between the two approaches is building a system that provides basic services and governance, plus maybe economics sub rosa, or hidden in plain sight. At the end of the process, the counterinsurgent is building something without a base of support of the locals, unless an effort was made to build a foundation in step one.

Sound familiar?

The type of force needed to build clandestine institutions within the people (the local inhabitants) doesn’t exist in the expeditionary, modular, transformational force structure. The components needed to set up a counterinsurgency insurgency force. Civil Affairs, PSYOP, Special Forces, Intelligence, Special Ops, Human Terrain Teams, and Counter-intelligence assets backed by precision munitions on call, and a supply network operating at a distance from the target area. This would include a clandestine capability comparable to the PRT’s (Provincial Reconstruction Teams).

The tactics, techniques, and procedures for such a force are likely already written down, and well understood by the Special Operations community. The SF concept of building clandestine combat forces indigenously goes to the beginning of SF for use in the Soviet rear areas.

No counter insurgency war in the past succeeded without a substantial indigenous combat force. The usual gig was to hire the best fighters an enemy had, and add a few qualified officers and noncoms. Such was the Indian Army of the British Raj, the French led Spahis of Africa, and the Askaris led by German Lt Col, Lettow-Vorbeck in German East Africa.

The principal obstacle to some really sneaky war is from the un-sneaky narcissistic rotational modular expeditionary establishment. The burning question would be how to credit command and staff time in such a force. Should it hold a higher status than commanding Regular units, or training units, or Reserve units?

The odds of build, hold, and clear succeeding has been more successful than naught.

OBTW: The difference between and Insurgency and a Counterinsurgency is the latter has air superiority.

Face, Fate, Fame. Fortune and the Japanese

2009-10-21T16:24:00.000-07:00

Cultural misunderstandings between the Japanese and us led to a war in which Japan was flattened and eventually nuked. They clearly misunderstood us. Yet, within ten years, Japan was on it’s way to the short list of major economic powers of the world, sans sword. Working with the Japanese is a challenge one in which the aversion of the Japanese to confrontation is often mistaken for acquiescence. Japan is much more of an enigma wrapped in a riddle wrapped in another enigma than is Russia.

Warrior’s Guide to the Other Guys Culture aka “F4F+4” is a warrior’s tool consisting of nine variables in two groups: one related to human relations, and the other of temporal relations:

F4F (Face, Fate,Fame,Fortune). 表面、運命、名声および幸運. Basic cultural competence for Warrior and Statesman is focused on the values, behavior, beliefs and norms (VBBN) related to decision making. It goes hand in hand with the factors of METT-TC of which three relate to people: enemy, forces available and civilians. It does not supplant anthropology, but rather depends on it such as terrain and weather analysis bound in COCOA (Critical Terrain, Observation, Cover and Concealment, Obstacles and Avenues of Approach) does not replace density altitude or vehicle cone indices.

It means the ability to determine what ticks them off, and what turns them on (Face issues). To what or whom they consider the consequences or underlying authority (Fate issues) and what gives them recognition and power within their community (Fame), and to what or to who controls the purse strings (Fortune).

In addition, how does geography affect them and what is their impact of geography? And what is their sense of time, and sense of distance, and how do they use their body in addition to body language. That is Time, Distance, Ground and Body.( 時間、間隔、地面, 体)

Geography and History. The key to understanding the Japanese is the impact of a land which is more vertical than horizontal. Not only is Japan an island nation, the islands are full of mountains comprising three quarters of the land, leaving very little in the way of arable land in between.

The Mountain Folk, the Bushi. The fight for and the control of the bits and pieces of flat land is a central facet of Japanese culture. While Japan was, in theory, an empire with an emperor at the top, the real power was held by competing factions of warlords, called Daimyo (big name) whose elite Samurai soldiers did the fighting.

While Samurai were considered nobles, a common person could work his way up through the ranks to the very top. That coupled with strategic marriage and adoption could create or maintain high social and political standing. The last of this kind was Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who started out as a sandal carrier for a samurai lord who prohibited private ownership of arms in 1588. .

The introduction of guns into Japan in 1542 had the same military and political effects experienced in Europe at the same time. . The castle and mounted charge faded in importance resulting in tipping the balance of power to the national authority. Like in Russia and France of the time, the nobles were required to spend all or part of their time in the national capitol under the eyes of the national authority. Edo had the same significance as did St Petersburg and Versailles.

“Tokugawa Ieyasu (徳川家康?, January 31, 1543 – June 1, 1616) was the founder and first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan which ruled from the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Ieyasu seized power in 1600, received appointment as shogun in 1603, abdicated from office in 1605, but remained in power until his death in 1616.” Wikipedia

Tokugawa ended vertical mobility and froze the ranks in place with detailed instructions with penalties for violations. He issued an edict expelling Christians and the sealing of Japan from outside influence tightened the controls the Samurai had.

But since the peasantry had been disarmed and foreign adventures prohibited, the Samurai did have much to do except eat and train for duels, or beat up on the peasantry. It was customary for a village to suffer the consequences of the actions of an individual. Collective responsibility, therefore, is at the core of the Japanese social culture. This included punishment for missteps by the Samurai in the presence of superiors in which a Samurai would be ordered to commit suicide, also called Hara Kiri (belly cut) or Seppuku.

(和) Harmony through Regulations, Conformity, Ways, and Kata: Mountain people are renowned for being contentious and Japanese history is full of contention, rivalry and duplicity between those who controlled the valleys. The antidote for contention is regulation, and Japanese culture is famous for regulation. There is a “way” to do things just right. Battle drill is regulation, and Japanese martial arts have specific ways to move, strike, and evade which in English are called “forms” or the Japanese word “kata”. The ultimate result and the highest virtue in Japan is harmony between mind, body, and one’s opponent.

The Prime Directive – Harmony (和)

The Sino-Japanese Character for harmony is和 and is pronounced “wa” when used with other characters, and when alone is pronounced “Yamato” which is also the older name for Japan, and of the second of two super battleships in WW 2. Harmony doesn’t mean peace, except as the quiet mind necessary to fight efficiently.

The tea ceremony is a coffee break that takes hours of precise movements. A tea master illustrates precision and timing in the same way a Black Belt in Karate does in the specified kata for his or her style.

As a matter of necessary regulation of the peasantry upon whose rice planting was the principal source of wealth for the aristocracy, collective responsibility for the misdeeds or deeds of the village and family was the order of the day. If one family member offended a samurai of standing, the whole family or village could be punished as in put to death. This collective responsibility had an effect still very much in evidence today.

No one does anything until everyone has agreed to it. In business this is called “nemawashi” in which proposals are passed through all affected departments until unanimity is reached. This takes a long time, and multiple iterations are necessary. This was frustrating to the US State, Navy and War Departments in 1941. This round of question asking and repeated deliberations were taken by us as stalling.

Once reached, the Japanese move like lightning and in concert. There are no foot draggers in the group. The Pentagon likely picked this up from Japan during the Occupation as “Staff Coordination” is defined as running the decision papers around until everyone has put his or her “chop” on it. A chop in Japan and China is a personal seal used to stamp official and binding documents in civil life.

Unlike other countries, the concept of collective decision making and collective responsibility of family and village was effectively transferred to the public and economic sectors. During industrialization, the youth of an entire rural area would be brought to the industrial centers and put in company housing and cared for by the company staff. This effectively transferred much of what is normally considered family values to the companies.

In terms of the Warrior’s Guide to the Other Guy’s Culture, Face and Fate issues are tied to the collective, to the primary group based on the company. If an employee goofs up, he has let his company down and is required to apologize. Harakiri (Seppuku) suicide has become symbolic. For the pride of the Nation, the apology is considered the ultimate sacrifice, is intended to end further humiliation or harassment of the group.

Fame. Given collective values and the restrictions that “the way” of doing things, heroes are admired, but it is a tragic affair as the Japanese say “That nail that stands out, must be hammered flat”. The happy ending isn’t always at the end of Japanese movies, sometimes it’s an unhappy or tragic ending”. The movie “Ran” by Akira Kurusawa ends with everyone dead or nuts. Fame is considered double edged.

Fortune: Making a fortune is an acceptable course of action. Flaunting it, however, has it limits. Given the lack of flat land to build on, the land one builds on is expensive. This has restricted modern residential construction to the very small, so small that is not for show and tell. That’s what restaurants are for. Japanese have to be told that inviting them to an American’s home is not because they can’t afford a restaurant.

Given collective responsibility for the actions of one on all, the Japanese divide their actions into two worlds, one they show to the outer world which is regulated by the proper “form” or “way” of doing things and that which will not detract from the prmary group. The other is what is allowed within the primary group, and is unstructured and free. The first is called “tatamae” and the inside view is “honne”. In the first years of Japanese commercial expansion after WW2, Japanese men behaved like GI’s on leave, horny and foul mouthed. This got some bad press, and the behavior was modified.

“The Devil’s Language” St Francis Xavier.:

More than any other custom, the Japanese language was designed not to offend the Samurai with an itchy sword hand and the right to use it. The language was developed to avoid offending the offensive. The art of avoiding conflict within is the central value of the Japanese, and to a large extent other Far Eastern nations. As noted before, the character for Harmony pronounced “Wa” and permeates all manner of social interaction. Personal Fame is admired from afar, but is something the Japanese find uncomfortable in themselves. The have learned the hard way that Fame is followed by a Fate involving daggers in amongst the kudos.

The Japanese martial arts of Aikido and Judo are based on using the opponents energy against them, and the martial art of Iaido (居合道?) is based on defeating an attack at the dinner table. A form of quick draw with razor sharp swords.

The Japanese language uses indirect ways of saying things, instead of the Western way of short sharp declarative statements. Brevity is abusive, and when the Japanese use brevity, they are on the edge of battle. What can be said in one page is better said in three or four.

Likewise the vocabulary of the most common verbs changes according to the social status of who is being spoken to. There are six different vocabularies, three most popular, for the most common verbs such as to be, to go, to come, and to do. The three most popular levels of politeness include abrupt, polite, and honorific. All design to avoid disturbing harmony and to avoid offending.

Likewise, the language favors a complex way to say simple things leaving the verb at the end of the sentence to allow for wiggle room And is more passive than active. American business to taught to make it brief, no more than a page and a half. For Japanese to sent such a short letter is insulting.

Japanese belief systems are not hide bound to follow the dictates of any one religion or philosophy. In part, this is an Oriental concept of yin and yang each of which cannot exist without a bit of the other. Japanese families follow Shinto customs when young, Christian weddings and Christmas, and Buddhist funerals.

Cartesian logic is fine for chemistry or mathematics, but not for life. Arguing is disharmony. In a business meeting, they will no more about your enterprise than you do.

Temporal Relations

Distance間隔: Interpersonal distance depends on whether one is on a train or bus or is in open terrain. In open terrain, interpersonal distances are like Americans. On a train, one is a standing sardine. The Japanese queue up at bus and train stops like in England, sometimes in the US, and never in Holland.

Time. .( 時間) As it might be expected, Japanese reverence for time as a resource and a standard that prescribes correct behavior. Being late is a serious offense, while timeliness is a virtue. 0900 is the most common starting time for work in Tokyo. Ten minutes before nine is a mad rush, ten minutes after is virtually empty.

The Ground (地面)The effect of limited land not only underlies the Japanese character, it has in modern times altered the use of floor space, from spacious to cramped. It is not unusual for an entire family to live in one room, in which the bed is folded away, and the all purpose table takes the space. Japanese are astounded at the huge houses we have, that we consider average.

The Body: (体) Japanese body language and the use of the body in social circumstances are prescribed in precise manner such as in how deep one bows to another depending on status. Removing the shoes is required in a Japanese home and many traditional restaurants. Hiding the emotions is a universal defense mechanism.

The concept of Harmony extends to the Japanese sense of beauty in the arts, and in ordinary crafts. The Japanese spend a lot of effort and creativity in the wrapping of a gift, and the wrapping says as much or more than the gift itself. Their sense of living space, before population explosions made space a premium that impressed Frank Lloyd Wright, and the GI’s who were stationed with the Occupation Forces in Japan. They brought back a sense of more open interior space and more opened to the outside. This style, for some odd reason, became known as a “ranch” style.

Japanese views on sex are not matters of shame and guilt as they are in the US. Prostitution in Japan is in accordance with specific forms, also very much like the moves in a martial art. Posted prominently in public places are advertisements which delineate the hourly rate and the particular set and sequence of sex acts. Most Americans see this as perversity personified.

Some Comparisons between Americans and the Japanese

The Japanese consider American insistence on individual achievement at the expense of family or corporate welfare as barbaric, as to most other cultures that place family values over individual success. We see family values and individual responsibility as co-existing, while most of the world sees them as a range of choices.

Most Americans see the Japanese as up tight and polite, which invites a corresponding assessment of us a loud and abrasive. Their excuse is that we are powerful and dangerous barbarians. Barbarians that can’t speak Japanese or use pork chops (hashi).

The prime determinant in a culture is often Fate, that which we are answerable to and that which represents consequence. In the United States, it is individual responsibility and freedom. If Fate pulls the rug out from under, it is an individual’s problem. In Japan it is collective responsibility and consequence. If Fate pulls the rug out from under, it is a collective responsibility to inspect, repair, or replace as necessary.

Both the Japanese and Americans compartmentalize friendships, but the Japanese have one they can fall back on, while in American that can fall on them.

One thing for sure, the Japanese never let the rain on their parade slow them down:

"America's Ways" and the Other Guy's Culture

2009-10-03T08:28:00.001-07:00

“American Ways” and the Other Guy’s Culture

“American Ways, A Guide for Foreigners in the United States”, 2nd Edition, by Gary Althen is a serious book for serious Americans seeking Cultural Competence in cross cultural relations, including combat. Gary Althen served for thirty years as a foreign student advisor at the University of Iowa. It is a “must read” for Warriors.

Althen’s insights are written for foreign students to understand why we do many things that make no sense or bad sense. Of greater importance, his book helps Americans to understand their own ways that we take for granted, that others don’t. We are too close to the trees to see the forest.

Americans are proud to point out their own sense of individual independence, self reliance, and individual freedoms. This central individualistic theme goes much deeper that we ourselves realize. We tend to judge not only ourselves but foreigners whose culture stresses family or kin groups over the individual.

What we call nepotism is an obligation in many other cultures. We expect that the person with the job title got there as a result of some modicum of achievement, when it is more likely it was because of family ties.

We stress time and accomplishment more than harmony, while in the Far East, harmony outranks just about everything else and time matters only every once in a while.

We have established standards, and bench marks for out progress in the Muddle East which makes sense to Americans. We expect the Middle Easterner to learn how to take responsibility for their own development and achievement, when these concepts are incomprehensible to many in that torn up part of the world.

The character “Otto” played by Kevin Klein in the 1988 movie, “A Fish Called Wanda” was portrayed as obsessed with sniffing his own armpit, much to the amusement of Brits, but incomprehensible to Americans. The Arm Pit Sniff is the Body Oder check that American males use to shower or spray, as indicated. The Brits think we are getting off on BO.

http://themoviezombie.blogspot.com/2009/05/zombies-101-favorite-screenplays-90.html

Exporting the “Melting Pot” to Afghanistan winds up giving basic combat training to the Taliban. We hear more and more of hostiles in NATO style camouflage uniforms and carrying their AK47’s slung across the chest. Trying to build a multi-ethnic Afghan National Army trains the ethnics more than the Army.

Americans value privacy more than most to the point where friendships are compartmentalized based on context. We have neighbors, fellow employees, people we work out with, and people we go to church with, none of whom knows each other outside the compartment. Americans have fewer friends that can be depended on regardless of circumstance compared to other cultures. Foreigners mistake our outward friendly manner as indicative of a friend who will lend money or help get into the US.

The biggest disconnects are individual responsibility and the concept that time is valuable and not to be wasted. More foreigners place family over individual, and time may or may not be relevant. We judge those reactions as nepotism, corruption, irresponsibility, and laziness.

We bomb many whose intentions were misread. Mullah Omar was willing to work out a deal with us and the Iranians before the boot hit the ground. Rumsfeld blew that off, and after the Iranians had worked with us, they were put on the Axis of Evil. We promised the Iraqi Army jobs after the war, and Bremer fired them, and all the school teachers in “de-Ba’athification” When young alert and alive field grade officers suggested arming and paying certain tribes, Bremer’s retorted that tribes are the past, not the new Iraq. The officers making the suggestion got involuntary early retirement.

Cultural Taxonomy and the Warrior

2009-09-11T13:42:00.000-07:00

Cultural Taxonomy, and the Warrior’s View

Assessing the willpower of all the players to adopt courses of action is the first an most important assessment going into the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP). It is axiomatic that the will to resist is the keystone of resistance, yet the step is routinely ignored by the military, diplomatic, and political establishments of many a nation which has resulted too often in defeat, dishonor, or serious embarrassment.

The Japanese believed that wiping out the US Pacific Fleet would bring us to the bargaining table. It worked, except that the bargaining table was on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Allied strategic bombing of the homes of German “war workers” was predicated on the assumption that the German people would boot Hitler. What the bombing did was to divert German fighter aircraft from strafing and bombing Allied troops and logistics, to defending the skies over the Fatherland.

The addition of Stability Operations on the same plane as Offense and Defense in Army doctrine, places a much better understanding of how culture affects military courses of action, and of the will of the peoples involved to fight us, fight our enemies, or wait and see who wins. Pre-existing doctrine in Psychological Operations and Civil Affairs works to dig up the necessary information on which the assessment of indigenous courses of action.

Civil Affairs provides the acronym ASCOPE to represent Areas, Structures, Capabilities, People and Events. It’s a list that works with CA people as they have to study it. And it is to Civil Affairs people we should turn to for this information. The problem with ASCOPE is that it has six letters, all different, which exceeds the ram space required to remember it.

Psychological Operations has a doctrine and a very good annex for determine who to talk to and what to say. PSYOPS, is rarely consulted as there are too many budding advertising people in it, and thinkers are not appreciated in those whose forte is muscle bound. If any one had read the PSYOP Estimate of the Situations prepared for the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the current unpleasantness would be already a memory.

Current doctrine recently released on cultural awareness includes an excellent source of definitions, and guidance to gather what is needed to apply F4F to winnow out and focus on likely courses of action. F4F recognizes that all human collective activity is based all or in part on dynamics of family. Family includes traditional families connected by blood line (DNA), it include the Brotherhood, the Benevolent and Protective Brotherhood of Plumbers, or Longshoremen, Truck drivers, or Al Qaeda.

F4F is a more easily remembered acronym with only two letters to remember, and five labels all starting with F. Family: Face, Fate, Fame, Fortune. In addition to F4F which is focused on dynamics of the family, the addition of a set of factors expressed in physical terms such as Time, Distance, Geography and Body language. These work together and are entwined more than separated.

Current Warrior doctrine on Stability Operations, even when combined with traditional offense and defense, is expressed in Five Logical Lines of Operation (LLO, or LLOO):
These “lines” are a series of steps or strategy to address a problem that adversely affects the stability of a region or populations. These include:

1. Security Operations: Population secured continuously with freedom of lawful movement established.
2. Host Nations Security Forces: Effective and self sufficient security forces are established.
3. Essential Services: Sewage treatment, potable water, electricity, transportation, schools and medical services are developed, restored, and refurbished.
4. Effective Governance: Local, regional, and national agencies, policies, enforcement and justice are established, restored, and/or improved.
5. Economic Development: A functional economy is re-established, and the freedom to conduct lawful commerce restored including commercial, industrial, and other economic institutions and an effective market.

A more detailed representation is provided by doctrine showing a typical sequencing of actions in a counter insurgency environment. While this doctrine was developed for counter insurgency use, it is not restricted nor primarily linked to counter insurgency. There “Whole of Government Approach” to diplomacy as well as military operations is hard wired to the wholistic intent of the Logical Lines of Operation. As such, it applies to our relations in troubled areas even without an active insurgency such as most of Latin America and Africa/

F4F aka “Indigenous Family Values” are intended for the Warrior to ask the Local, or the Egghead, questions that will effect his/her operations on these Logical Lines of Operation. Face questions should include: What really ticks these people off? What turns them on?

Answers might include: Don’t stare at a Turkish or Japanese woman! Or the correct bow or flourish may do wonders.

Face questions might include: To what or who do they believe controls their fate? Answers may be: the law, the family, the party, or none of the above.

Fame questions: What do they do to gain fame or recognition? Or not? Answers may include sitting in front, or coming in last, or first. Does family outrank accomplishment?

Fortune: What do these guys do for a living? Who gets the loot?

The questions on physical matters include their sense of time. Are they big on being on time, or does it matter, Is one day the same as the last, or is it subject to improvement? How close to each other is close? Arms length as with Americans, or nose to nose as in a Japanese subway?

What do they do to the land? Rice paddies, dykes, or irrigation ditches? What about the location and construction of buildings? Dense like the old parts of a Middle Eastern City or of China? Or spread out like US suburbs.

With respect to Arm and Hand Signals, or body language: How do they walk, sit, stand, and use their parts to signal submission, dominance, or just at ease?

The Warriors Guide to the Other Guy’s Culture is not intended to replace existing doctrine, but to sharpen the focus on that which really matters. It is a guide to asking the right questions, not a guide to revamp the sciences of sociology, anthropology, or psychology.

Full Spectrum Drama

2009-09-07T11:27:00.000-07:00

FULL SPECTRUM DRAMA

Acknowledgements:

While I have extensive and long standing personal experiences with foreign cultures, including that of California, Texas, Western Europe, China, and Japan, these experiences only provided a setting and materials for the analysis of the problems of a Warrior’s Guide to the Other Guy’s Culture. That which I use to bind military doctrine, psychology, anthropology and sociology include Transactional Analysis designed by Eric Berne particularly Karpman’s Drama Triangle, Cross Cultural Communications by Beyond Interactability.org, the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP) from the US Army, and the current manuals on Full Spectrum Operations.

http://www.beyondintractability.org/index.jsp?nid=1
http://www.karpmandramatriangle.com/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle
http://www.ccrsdodona.org/m_dilemma/1981/vir/berne.html

NORMALITY

The thrust of the works on Transactional Analysis(TA) and the Drama Triangle are focused on the individual and small groups. In TA each individual operates at any one point from one of three major ego states, Parent (Mother and/or Father), Adult (pure reason and facts), and the Child.

A normal (plus and minus one standard deviation from the mean) individual and small group functions with the Parental Father role as externally oriented to protect and provide for the family, the Parental Mother role is more internally oriented on nurturing the family and the child. The Child’s role is that of obedience to the parents, and the parents corresponding role of tutoring and nurturing the child. In a healthy group, reason and facts are routinely utilized,

ENTER DRAMA, HEROES AND VILLAINS

One drama enters the scene, these relations turn from survival to game playing. Game playing in TA relies on crossed transactions between the child’s version of mother, father and adult in which the reasoning “adult” become a hand puppet for the dramatic roles, and the expressions of parenting or childhood, masks for a bent personality.

The Drama Triangle posits three Roles: Victim, Prosecutor and Rescuer. In order to play the game, there must be Villains and Heroes. Villains who threaten the Victims, who in turn must be rescued, and the villain prosecuted by heroes.

Thus, the Child’s version of the three roles have two sides, Villainous and Heroic. The Heroic includes the Hero, Heroine, and Helpless. The Villainous counterpart includes the Bastard, Bitch, and Brat.

The more serious the game, the higher the likelihood is that both are played by the same player. It is called the Law of Inverse Attribution. The more the player becomes heroic, the more likely he or she is really a villain. This is portrayed in your daily in-box of your email account.

Being a Hero depends on creating an all powerful Villain. At present, Godless Communism is being replaced by Islam. Sample sites:

http://www.shariahfinancewatch.org/blog/
http://www.islam-watch.org/iw-new/index.php
http://www.atcoalition.com/
http://thejewinyellow.blogspot.com/2009/03/islamic-concept-of-al-taqiyah-to.html

The Party Faithful, however grey haired, is still around. Same sort of victim, rescuer, and prosecutors. The Global Ant-Globalization “Front” carries forward Communist claptrap undeterred by the failure of Communism and the conversion of the Communist State into a Capitalist state like that of China.

http://www.corporatewatch.org/
http://www.foe.org/

Their Victims include indigenous people not able or willing to cope with the world that is, and the Earth which can’t take care of itself. Eco Terrorists wage war against real estate developers, whalers, and the non-Russian oil interests to rescue helpless nature (whose voice on these matters in conveniently shut. Seen from the viewpoint of Western (US) oil interests, Japanese whalers, and home buyers, these self same Eco Terrorists should be locked away from any sharp instruments.

I hate to rain on so many parades, as it is so much fun to snort and stomp over the villainous and it is so cathartic to play out the violent side of it.

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Doctrine And Culture

2009-09-04T10:42:00.000-07:00

Warrior’s Guide to the Other Guy’s Culture –
Doctrine and Culture

The Commander’s business is mission accomplishment and the welfare of the troops, formerly stated as the Mission and the Men. In mission accomplishment we use the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP) which applies the factors of METT-TC (Mission, Enemy, Terrain, Troops Available, Time, and Civilian Considerations. Of these six factors, three deal with people: the enemy, troops, and civilians taken together or separately, each has culture which, for the Warrior, acts the same as doctrine in deciding what factors rank where in their cultural decision making process.

While anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, and art critics have their definitions of culture, the Warrior needs to stick to the concept of culture as doctrine, a set of rules, best practices, historical influences, sex, love, greed, and/or children. Like the military commander, the heads of family has the same two parental responsibilities (mission and welfare) found in the family, however defined. The children, troops,, of a family bear the same relations as troops in a unit: obedience to the (parental leader) and the corresponding expectation that that authority protects and nourishes the troops/children.

Thus family, when not even a biological entity, is the basis for any human organization however formalized. There are Brotherhoods of Boiler Workers, Social Clubs like the Tongs or Triads, the Viet Cong, the Skull and Cross Bones, and Sigma Phi Epsilon. Any group tends to adopt family like structures,

To deal with analyzing family, we use existing doctrine on occasion, like applying the Civil Affairs factors known as ASCOPE from FM 3-07

AREAS
2-27. This characteristic addresses terrain analysis from a civilian perspective. Analyze how key civilian areas affect the missions of respective forces and how military operations affect these areas. Factors to consider include political boundaries, locations of government centers, by-type enclaves, special regions (for example, mining or agricultural), trade routes, and possible settlement sites.
STRUCTURES
2-28. Structures include traditional high-payoff targets, protected cultural sites, and facilities with practical applications. The analysis is a comparison how a structure's location, functions, and capabilities can support operations as compared to costs and consequences of such use.
CAPABILITIES
2-29. Assess capabilities in terms of those required to save, sustain, or enhance life, in that order. Capabilities can refer to the ability of local authorities to provide key functions and services. These can include areas needed after combat operations and contracted resources and services.
ORGANIZATIONS
2-30. Consider all nonmilitary groups or institutions in the AO. These may be indigenous, come from a third country or US agencies. They influence and interact with the populace, force, and each other. Current activities, capabilities, and limitations are some of the information necessary to build situational understanding. This becomes often a union of resources and specialized capabilities.
PEOPLE
2-31. People is a general term describing all nonmilitary personnel that military forces encounter in the AO. This includes those personnel outside the AO whose actions, opinions, or political influence can affect the mission. Identify the key communicators and the formal and informal processes used to influence people. In addition, consider how historical, cultural, and social factors that shape public perceptions beliefs, goals, and expectations.
EVENTS
2-32. Events are routine, cyclical, planned, or spontaneous activities that significantly affect organizations, people, and military operations, such as seasons, festivals, holidays, funerals, political rallies, and agricultural crop/livestock and market cycles and paydays. Other events, such as disasters and those precipitated by military forces, stress and affect the attitudes and activities of the populace and include a moral responsibility to protect displaced civilians. Template events and analyze them for their political, economic, psychological, environmental, and legal implications

Examination of ASCOPE for the Commander is largely dependent on Civil Affairs, PSYOP, and for the present, the Human Terrain Teams made up of sociologists and anthropologists. These, however, don’t tell you what will effect the decision making of the culture, be they Templar Knight, Apaches, Romans, Taliban, or the villagers of Khost.

There are represented in the Warrior’s Guide to the Other Guys Culture as F4F (Fate, Face, Fame, and Fortune) like the Navy Fighter of WW 2, and the interface with temporal issues like time, place, and geography. ASCOPE is the where to look, F4F is what to look for in ASCPE/

The First F in F4F is family with the basics of who is in the family and who is not. It includes where this family sits with others. Is there a hierarchy like Spartans and Helots, or the Crips and Bloods, or the Normans and the Saxons? What are the normal parental roles represented by the Paternal which is concerned with external factors and the preparation of the family to face the outside world? What is the Maternal role which is internally oriented to nurture the children, like the First Sergeant concerned with the welfare of the troops? The parental roles can be cast in multiple generations, in multiple spin-offs of the basic structure like public schools are to the parents.

Family - Face, Fate, Fame, and Fortune

The Warrior is concerned with the structure of the family in terms of paternal (exterior), maternal (interior), and progeny (obey and grow). Under this framework the four value systems of Face, Fate, Fame and Fortune shape the behaviors of the family and of its parts.

FACE is honor, shame, duty, as seen by the holder of the expected view of self from the outside. Face is often a mask, sometime deeply felt, sometimes tossed at the first sound of trouble. Face issues in war, where the commander makes a foolish decision solely to maintain the illusion of control. Issues of motherhood, and the sanctity of their women as well as sex issues fall under Face.

The Taliban destroys girl’s schools, to protect the virtue of women. Gays get executed. The portrayal of rape, pillage, and/or plunder on the part of an invading enemy is a Face issue and is timeless. Likewise the use of rape to humiliate an enemy culture is found in current conflicts in Africa and the Balkans.

Face slapping is a military objective. Japan intended to destroy the Pacific Fleet on Dec 7 , 1941. The damage wasn’t as great as planned but the effect was that of an Asian slapping the face of a Caucasian, utterly sneaky, and the outrage thereafter lingers on today. FDR authorized the Doolittle Raid which was intended as a slap in the face which worked to the point in brining the Japanese Fleet out to it’s destruction at Midway.

FATE is consequence, Fate is authority, Fate is what is really in charge. Americans place a great deal of trust in self and the law. In other cultures fate is controlled by the family, the party, the Fuhrer, the Law of Gravity, or a responsive Will of God.

While Americans see their fate tied to hard work, diligence, and confidence in facing what comes, other cultures place their faith in family, tribe, Communist Party, or feudal lord. Those who come from a culture where family determines fate more than the actions of the self, don’t react to working hard for a wage. Many call this laziness, but it is due to a lack of connection of self and salary and a dependence on the family to care. Workers in the former Communist states have no faith in work for wages, as in the Communist system the state pretended to pay them, so they pretended to work. There is still a sentiment in those states where working hard is irrelevant to survival.

FORTUNE is in many cultures Godlike in status, and in others not. The Rich are routinely lambasted in political and religious treatise. And the poor elevated in status. That of course is Inverse Attribution, only the rich have the means to be charitable. And Charity is just another form of domination, or one ups man ship.

Most important in cultural analysis is the relation of people to the product and process. Farmers are different from miners, and cattlemen different from truckers. The relation of the work process and the values systems of people is a way to see how they tick. Sometimes, civilian skills have a military application, like cattle herdsmen turned to cavalry.

FAME is the expected external view of self, which if denied is a serious Face problem. Fame is reward, recognition. It’s awards and decorations and the adulation expected thereto. Fame is expected due to the shapely and the sharp. Yet Fame, like Fortune, resented.

Taken together, the array of Face, Fame, Fate, and Fortune of a given culture is the “terrain” that war is fought on no less than Critical Terrain, Observation, Obstacles, Cover and Concealment, and Avenues of Approach.

The Paraguayans in the War of the Triple Alliance in 1864 to 1870 fought Argentina, Brazil, and Chile resulting in the loss of three quarters of their population due to their savage but outnumbered resistance. No capture the flag or cutting off the snakes head here. The Bolivians in the 1930’s tried to cut their way across Paraguay to gain access to a port. They lost despite having a better trained and equipped. Paraguayans are inordinately proud of their country, yet will wait until your back is turned to strike back. The detest condescension and welcome compliments about their women.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Triple_Alliance

Cultural Sensivity Isn't About Being Nice

2009-08-20T15:44:00.000-07:00

There is a deep cultural aversion to cultural sensitivity amongst military practitioners and pretenders who think that killing or capturing the enemy, occupying the high ground, and rearranging the furniture is the sum total of the profession at arms. These cries and belches have diminished somewhat in view of the apparent success of the new counter-insurgency doctrine in Iraq. Will the new namby-pamby cultural sensitivity doctrine work against the Taliban?

Well, maybe. It depends on whether the pressure is against the sensitive parts of the Taliban sensibilities. And that’s why being culturally sensitive doesn’t mean being namby-pamby socialist liberal wishwashery. Take “Black Jack” Pershing in the Philippines for example..

There is an urban legend about Pershing that attributes a world wide halt in Muslim terrorism after he had executed some Muslims and buried them with pig parts. While even if the legend is false, it is nevertheless a good example of cultural sensitivity. Pershing was very keen on culture. There were a lot of old fashioned massacres in that campaign. A widely quoted slogan was “civilize them with a Krag”, a Norwegian rifle used by US troops.

Another example of Pershing’s sensitivity takes place in Mindanao, then as now, has been plagued with Muslim “Moro” rebellions. Moro ferocity in battle, aided with tight body bindings to stem bleeding and a toke of smoke, was such that the Luger 9mm pistol then being considered as Army standard, was rejected in favor of the .45 caliber pistol. The 38 caliber or 9mm pistol wouldn’t stop a charging Moro with a really big sword in hand. The 45 dropped them, then as now.

Pershing would supplement fire and maneuver with chess. He would enter a village, proceed to the center, set up a chess table, sit down and wait. He knew that the chiefs of the Moros, called Datos, loved chess. Sooner or later, someone would show up, sit down and play chess. During this exchange, Pershing would negotiate acceptable terms with the Dato, terms which were conducted in accordance with Moro sensibilities.

Pershing was called “Black Jack” as his early career was in commanding segregated black troops, including the 10th Cavalry, the Buffalo Soldiers at San Juan and Kettle Hill. This early experience in commanding black troops was clearly an opportunity to learn how to get the most out of a vastly different culture.

It isn’t about being nice. It’s about being effective.

Fame and Blame are the Names of the Game.

2009-08-15T05:53:00.000-07:00

“Street Creds”, awards and decoration, the golden resume, net value, trophy spouse, exalted position, all are symbols of fame. Symbols of success to attract attention, for good or bad, to add to the cut and thrust of survival of kith and kin.. And symbols of blame, of infamy, to divert, and displace anger, or expiate fault.

Fame for challenges overcome, enemies defeated, and feats of daring-do are the great social motivators to get things that need to be done in order for a society to survive, thrive and grow. History all too often turns on the acts of one person, just as often unaware of the consequences, only of the challenge or of the dangers. Horatio at the bridge held off Rome’s enemies, when running away would have been the safer play.

Society needs to know who can be counted on to stand in front, and expects that heroes from playing fields are those who can be trusted when the time in near when danger this way comes. And, it is not as odd a choice as it might be, for many who excel in games, excel on the battlefield. Jimmie Doolittle raced air planes, and led thousands in battle after his courageous attack named after him. He also was an aeronautical engineer.

Seeking out fame is a dangerous game, for some think it is a zero sum game, those whose excuses for existence themselves somewhat lame. For many, the reflected glow of a true hero acts as the light around which cowards and jackals tend to gather. Or, from the envious, arrows, come out from the dark and collect on the backs of the brave and creative.

Fame is also a warning, a cry for help, be it from a calf or colt in danger, or a toddler with a diaper full. At its roots, fame is a survival and enhancement tool without which life withers and falls. If help doesn’t come, generations and whole nations wind up with the toddler’s dump, over and over again. Sometimes it is a shitty world.

Hitler, Stalin, Shaka Zulu, Mao, MacArthur, Richard the Lion Hearted and Winston Churchill had abusive fathers and indulgent mothers. The dysfunctional family created highly motivated leaders, some good, some bad, depending on where one was when the fit hit the shan.

The Warrior’s Guide to the Other Guy’s Culture is the decoder that unravels who is dumping on who and why and for what. Cultural Centers of gravity are revealed, and depending on mission, can be turned on it’s head, or sent on it’s way. Do we want to cause them to get together to work better or to make them a better target? Do we want them to break it up, to weaken their will, or to strengthen their capacity?

Psychological Operation isn’t all about subornation and subversion, and surrendering of those who switch sides. It can be elevating their worst to the top of the pile. This was done in WW 2 by the British in fake radio broadcasts of a super hard line German officer criticizing the Nazi best and best practices, and lauding their worst. Many a fine field officer was sent to the desk pile, and idiots sent to command.

So much of the Fame Game is tied to, the rotation of the Heroic roles (Hero, Heroine, and Helpless) with the Villainous roles (Bastard, Bitch, and Brat) to produce an outcome, a result, or a payoff, such as a title and a feifdom. The Fame Game is rarely static, as hero becomes villain, and villain plays hero, with each flip flop gets something.

The Blame Game is the flip side of the Fame Game. The Heroic is the flip side of the Villainous. Both sound the same, speaking of rescue, rehabilitation, and revenge. It is easier to spot the game being played by the payoff, outcome or result in terms of warm fuzzy feelings or of cold prickly, of raging anger, or pompous posturing, as these outcomes are more the motive than any ideological one uppance.

The End State is the emotional buzz, the feelings, more than physical or ideological. These end states, sometime called payoffs, can be described a stamp collecting. Some collect anger stamps, some collect tragedy stamps, some collect failures, and as in trading stamp collecting, they can be turned for a big prize: a free murder, a free burglary, or, in some cases, finally getting around to do what needs to be done. In political lore, the propagandist stacks real or imagined injuries and insults to justify a free revolution, a free lynching, or stopping the barbarians at the gate. Sometimes it is hard to tell the good from the bad, right from wrong.

Such is the case of the current Jihadi terrorist. In the original sense, those who wage Jihad are doing what it takes to defeat the evil in and around us. At the hands of the devious, the Jihadi warrior serves evil, deemed justifiable by the unjustifiable. And that is the Warrior’s job when analyzing a culture, to pull apart the virtuous from the villainous.

The Seven Deadly Sins, and their opposite number, are found as the true motivators in disorder, chaos, and repression. The Seven Virtues are the alleged opposite, but these to excess are often better seen in their sinful array.

Fortune: Thy Daily Bread

2009-08-09T13:53:00.001-07:00

The usual briefing one gets on the area of operations to be usually includes some percentages of this kind of economic activity or how much it’s worth. When it comes to determining how a people fight, what their priorities are, and their capacity, that sort of numerology isn’t worth dick,

A better question is “how do they get their daily bread”, bread also meaning dough. If we are talking about loggers from Washington state or copper miners from Arizona, or fishermen from Alaska, we are talking about some tough people who don’t take to fancy airs, or PowerPoint. It doesn’t matter whether it is logs, rocks, or fish. A man’s Face is in his fists. Yours too, if he thinks you are looking down, when you should be looking up.

Refugees from the Rust Belt sound like their counterparts in China, or India where the search for cheaper labor keeps moving along. Thiers is a sense of outrage, outrage which is political gasoline for political machines. Displaced farmers crowd into cities where exploitation is better than starvation. They take with them the traditions of former walks of life.

That’s why we have Country and Western music, decades after the country in the west was left for the lights, and paychecks of the city. And people like to hang with their people. Chicago is full of ethnic neighborhoods, once very tight. Cities in Africa and Asia are the same. Tribes hang together in the teeming cities. And the habits developed in the fields, forests, mountains, rivers and oceans carry forward intact or are adapted for life in barrios, favelas, or slums in Mumbai.

A smart warrior would be wise to find out the MOS structure of the economy and of the economic past that carries forward. MOS is Military Occupational Specialty, but rather than invent some goofy acronym to replace it, we can still use the idea/ Likewise branch, service, and rank are important to know.

There are “officer corps” in societies. Sociologists call them caste or class. Works out the same way. The butchery of years past in the Rift Valley of Ruanda, Burundi, Uganda, and Kenya are deeply rooted in an economic past of herdsmen versus farmers in which one tribe dominated another. Thus the tall Tutsi consider themselves the warrior class to whom the shorter Hutu (Bantu) owe obedience. The Hutu have more than once made the tall shorter, with machetes.

Then there is Golden Rule. Those who get the gold get to rule. One the other hand, Mao once said that power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Taken together it becomes a synergistic circle: guns to gold to rule OR guns to rule to gold Or … there are nine possible synergisms.

Central to survival is a sense of self, of self pride in providing, protecting, and presenting one’s self, and one’s family. It’s not uncommon that the rich can be bought off, but the poor won’t put up with it.

Such is the case in Mexico. Invaded by us, and by the French, it was the peon that wouldn’t suck up like the aristocrats of Ciudad Mexico. They still don’t like Gringos. But the cheap housing and cost of living between the Sabine and San Diego is built by the hard working peon, illegal or not. Their skill sets came from building their own villages and homes in Mexico.

Kismet, Karma, Fate and Firepower

2009-08-05T08:52:00.000-07:00

The bullet that has your name on it will get you, regardless. Most of the bullets zipping across the battlefield, however, are addressed “To Whom It May Concern”. It is those address “To Whom It May Concern” that training, equipment, and leadership will defeat. Trusting in God, Allah, The Fuhrer, or the Cause instead is a central issue the Warrior needs to know about those who are about to die. Including one’s own.

Knowing what Fate is is a personal issue. Knowing how the others see it is one of the big four aspects of Family Decision Values (looking for a better term here) of Face, Fate, Fame, and Fortune that guide the decision making process in allocating resources.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard in the Iraq-Iran war sacrificed hundred of thousands of lives whose courage was greater than their competence. Those that survived were the fittest and most dedicated. And now there is a well trained force accustomed to hardship.

The Iraqi Revolutionary Guard, however better trained, were no match for American firepower, and eventually decided that disappearance was the greater virtue to fight another day….and have, to our chagrin.

The Al Qaeda franchise emphasizes the suicide attack, which we often and foolishly attempt to dismiss. They combine sufficient technical and tactical proficiency to launch a suicide attack or campaign combined with the ability to disappear to fight again. Al Qaeda depends upon a cloak of legitimacy amongst the faithful, and acceptance of death by the attacker as a virtue. This is a values based strategy.

Face and Fate are often closely linked. One insulted, some feel it is an obligation, and honor which Fate requires a response. Action and reaction, and consequence. The Warrior who seeks the acquiescence or acceptance of her troops by locals, need to know what constitutes Face issues and the Fate that follows. There are parts of Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington DC, and East LA where one shouldn’t display the Stars and Bars of the Confederate Battle Flag from one’s pickup. Likewise, and ACLU bumper sticker won’t ft well where the Stars and Bars are prominently display.

Fate is consequence tied to circumstance, real and imagined. Fate is not to be tempted without acceptance of the consequences. The Presidential Unit Citation for Taffy 3 reads:

For extraordinary heroism in action against powerful units of the Japanese Fleet during the Battle off Samar, Philippines, October 25, 1944. ...the gallant ships of the Task Unit waged battle fiercely against the superior speed and fire power of the advancing enemy ...two of the Unit's valiant destroyers and one destroyer escort charged the battleships point-blank and, expending their last torpedoes in desperate defense of the entire group, went down under the enemy's heavy shells ... The courageous determination and the superb teamwork of the officers and men who fought the embarked planes and who manned the ships of Task Unit 77.4.3 were instrumental in effecting the retirement of a hostile force threatening our Leyte invasion operations and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.[19
]

Both the Germans and Japanese dismissed the capacity of Americans for sacrifice thinking that our dismissal of wanton disregard of our own lives was a weakness. In matters of Face and Fate, there is often a really big gap between words and actions. Santa Anna made the same mistake at the Alamo, and got his just rewards at San Jacinto.

We should do no less in fighting terrorism, and make a serious effort to find out what makes the other guy tick.

The Slaps that Shape the Face of War

2009-07-27T19:51:00.000-07:00

The successful use of the Warrior’s Guide to the Other Guy’s Culture is matter of culling from the information about a culture that reveals it’s Face. Face issues include duty, honor, country, family, be they individual or collective. Battles are fought to grab something, smash something and/or brag about it. It is the bragging and the humiliation that shapes the face of a war.

George Washington’s Christmas Eve attack on the Prussians at Trenton was intended to slap the British Face, to humiliate them and to announce to the Colonies that he intended to fight and win. The positive spin on this definitive Slap in the British Face induced thousands of militia in Pennsylvania and New Jersey to join the rekindled Revolution. A few months before, the British seemed to have the rebellion under hand. After all, Washington had lost ninety percent of his forces after the battles on Long Island.

The Hessian troops under British control were excellent troops, but in the European tradition in which they had been trained and accustomed to, rape, pillage and plunder were not only for service support but as job benefits. This was a Slap in the Face of those in New Jersey that over came their immediate drift to settle up with King George. George Washington’s Slap came as a welcome comeuppance.

Pearl Harbor was not only destructive, but it’s biggest impact on America was it was a huge Slap in the Face by Asians, who by the logic of the day, were inferior. In order to fit this attack into a culturally correct framework was to call the attack a “dastardly and unprovoked” sneak attack. To this day, the term “sneak attack” is ingrained in American culture. But, a Warrior knows that to attack without surprise, an “un-sneaky” attack would the attacker suffering some dastardly results.

FDR knew that this Slap had to be returned. The Doolittle attack was expected to do little in real military or industrial terms. It’s effect as a Slap was a real Face Saver for America, and the insult to Japan resulted in the failed attempt to take Midway.

Likewise did Churchill take the accidental bombing of the London docks by a stray Luftwaffe bomber into an opportunity to bomb Berlin. That Slap in Hitler’s Face shifted the bombing of RAF bases and factories to the bombing of London, the Blitz. This stiffened the resolve of the British, attracted American support, and gave the RAF precious time to rebuild.

Humiliation of an beaten enemy may make the humiliator feel warm and fuzzy, but the cold fury that it engenders has a nasty habit of blow back. The humiliation by Imperial Germany on France at Versailles in 1871 came back in spades at Versailles in 1919. That humiliation was returned in 1941 at the same railway car that saw the surrender of German forces in 1918. In propaganda one portrays the Villain (Bastard, Bitch and/or Brat) to provide fodder for the Hero and Heroine to protect the Helpless. And return the favors in kind.

Face issues are the first of the four “F’s” of Family (collective) decision values, the others are Fate, Fortune, and Fame. Taken together with the Temporal aspects of culture,
Time and Space, the Warrior learns when to slap, when to turn the other cheek, and when to kick back.

Gordon S Fowkes
Lt Col, US Army (Ret)

Triumph of the Will

2009-07-26T15:00:00.000-07:00

Catchy title.

About some German grunt who survived on the Western Front for the whole war having his regiment shot to smithereens several times. Had an uncanny ability to be somewhere else when incoming artillery hit where he had been. Earned an Iron Cross, he did. Name of Hitler, Adolf. He wrote a book about his battle. Mein Kampf.

Later elevated himself to Chancellor of Germany, then took the title of Fuhrer. His own military tried to kill him over forty times. His battle sense saved him far too many times as he took his beloved country into a defeat so devastating to rival the fall of Carthage. And at the end, he blamed Germany for having failed him as he killed himself, his wife, and his dog.

Despite clear evidence that Hitler would never negotiate, the Allies built strategies around unfounded assumptions that by destroying key industrial and military facilities and capabilities, Hitler would negotiate. His generals would have, and let the Allies know that they would. The Allies never took that seriously and suffered the division of Europe between the Soviet Union and an American led West. Hitler’s sense of his Fate was that death was preferable than a loss of Face.

Later Khruschev blinked in the Cuban Crisis and the world was led away from a nuclear holocaust. This time it appeared that despite long preparations for nuclear war between the US and the USSR, cooler minds prevailed. In this case, there was more to lose than gain by fighting. It was a clear instance where the Fate was too great to bear to save Face.

Then there war Vietnam, in which the loss of Face to the North Vietnamese by battle losses was of no concern so long as they stuck to their perceived Fate as the winners in their conquest of Vietnam. In the end, it was the Americans who lost Face, and Hanoi’s victory was a huge Face saver.

Desert Storm was a limited objective war, in which Saddam had an opportunity to postpone his ultimate Fate, and in part save Face by crushing the Shi’a after the cease fire with the Coalition. And keep his Fame and Fortune for a decade more.

In Operation Iraqi Freedom, Saddam was willing to negotiate, but we would have none of it. We assumed that removing Saddam would cause the Iraqi people to adopt American Neo-Conservatism as the salvation from the errors and shortcomings of Iraqi culture…all five thousand years of it, going back before the Bronze Age. Let alone the glory days of the Caliphate, once the pinnacle of human civilization rivaled only in China (maybe). That, despite good intentions, was a slap in the Face.

Despite Neo-Conservative confusion between secular Arabs like Saddam and religious zealots such as Al Qaeda, a modernized version of the Crusade era Hashashashin (deep cover Assassins) which had also operated from bases in the mountains. Like the Hasashashin, Al Qaeda soldiers (aka terrorists) would sacrifice their lives to take out a target.

Now it takes a real genius to assume that Suicide Bombers would be intimidated by Shock and Awe. There’s a case where the enemy’s Face (and that of relatives and compatriots) is enhanced by accepting death as his Fate. It is very hard to terrify a suicidal terrorist.

In order to defuse the bomber, it is necessary to prove that saving Face can be done with a less explosive Fate. Discounting those who have made the ultimate sacrifice is counter-productive. Likewise it is counter-productive for infidels to call the faithful, Islamo-Fascists. Besides being a mushy mouthful, it’s about as accurate as calling a Texan a “damnyankee”.

Before fusing the ordnance, one should find where the “line” is that pulls the trigger, what really pisses them off and where the buttons are that open doors and discussions. It is a matter of a Fate which saves Face, with a touch of Fame and Fortune.

Gordon S Fowkes

The Purity and Essence of Precious Gene Pools – La famiglia.

2009-07-18T10:07:00.000-07:00

The First “F” in F4F is the family as it is the root and branch of human organization and decision making, the key concern of a warrior in dealing with another culture. Even one’s own. Families may be traceable in the DNA, and be based on fornication of the literal kind, or they may be based on fornication in figurative kind. Regardless, the central organizing principle is the defense of the favored few. From this we get the concepts of bloodlines, both good and bad.

The nuclear family of mother, father and child is focused on the survival of the family by producing, on average, 2.1 children. Should this number drop, the gene pool, starts to dry up as in the case of North Europe, Japan, and of non-immigrant Americans.

The survival of the original threesome of mother, father and child assumes the child to be helpless and innocent and requires the protective role of the father against external threats and the nurturing role of the mother. There is considerable overlap in these roles between different cultures (and species), Add trauma and/or alcohol to these three essential roles and you get two major and dysfunctional variants, the heroic and the villainous. The villainous include the bastard, bitch, and brat, while their counter parts are the hero, heroine, and the infant.

Since the family unit does not meet reproducing status until 2.1 children are born as replacements, other children must be produced with special attention to those who illustrate survival traits. And therein begins the rub, sibling rivalry. This extends past just the original parental pair, and the competition extends unto multiple generations, which includes extended families, tribes, communities, ethnics, and races. Sibling rivalry is readily extended into a constant state of war within the branches of a blood line, or between them.
Families, extended or not, may also and are often not based on a gene pool or blood line. But they operate in much the same way in terms of the protection of the favored few, and rivalry between families of the tribe. Instead of a direct reliance on blood alone, other qualifications based on merit, wealth, or other qualifications. Thus an infantry company is no less a family than one based on blood.

The analogy of family is carried into criminal activity, and even the names associated with a blood family are grafted on to the organization such as God Father of the Corleone Family. Membership in the SS was partly based on genetic considerations, and their activities were clearly those of eliminating others whose crime was having the wrong blood lines.
.

The extension of the family model into other activities such as religion create opportunities for the mother, father, child trilogy as well as the two dysfunctional roles heroes and villains. Many African Bantu tribes. prior to Western occupation, had an immediate civil war on the death of a great chief between the surviving sons. The great migrations of the Bantu in East Africa in large part was due to the maneuvering of the tribal factions.

The same model exists in the US military establishment at the conclusion of a major conflict which required granting commissions to officers who were not of the chosen few chosen before hostilities. The creation of an All Volunteer (aka Regulars only) in the mid Seventies was occasioned by a purge of Reserve and Guard officers of extended active and combat duty, and without regard to their qualifications.

This sort of purge is not peculiar to the American military but to other nations with a similar tribal view. In order to retain the appearance of a superior “bloodline” it is essential to deny their reserve components sufficient funding, fuel, ammunition and equipment so that their failure in combat can be attributed to their inferior heritage.

F4F is triggered when the competition for blood, glory, gold, and career enhancing assignments reaches certain thresh holds or provides opportunities. In Desert Storm, the threat of four National Guard maneuver brigades being deployed to the desert was seen as a slap in the Face of Regular units, and those brigades were deemed not deployable as unqualified unlike the fighter squadrons, medical units, and field artillery units of the tribe of the Weekend Warrior. They were deemed not to share the fame, fortune, and fate of “real” warriors.

Such was the case in the creation of the Modular Army as those in the combat arms considered their “blood lines” aka career paths, worthy of the Order of the Green Tab (command) and increased the available field grade command and staff positions by fifty percent to increase the brass to boot ratio. Troublesome combat service support personnel was rendered irrelevant by hiring contractors who hired Guard, Reserve, and retired military personnel. The separation of Regular and Reserve commissions prevented pollution of the pure Regular blood, so that heroism, and competence would not contaminate the true bloods.

After all, even when a regular transfers to the Guard and Reserve, his blood turns to Muggle Blood, and rarely does the Half Blood Prince get a real chance. Such was the case in Stalin’s purges and those of Pol Pot in Cambodia. In the latter, a pair of glasses or soft hands got you dead quick

These examples are taken from real life and in terms that the Warrior can readily analyze the opposing, adjacent, and collocated tribal elements with a better chance to see which decisions they are likely to make and how they are different from outs.

Decision Values (F4F) and Sun Tzu

2009-07-03T09:55:00.000-07:00

It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle. –Sun Tzu

F4F is an acronym to recall the four Decision Values of Face, Fate, Fame and Fortune used by a given primary group or Family in the allocation of resources to workload, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Knowing these Decision Values (F4F) is at the heart of Cultural Competence and Cultural Awareness.

Our operations in Iraq were hamstrung by an overweening arrogance typical of QDR 2006 that ignored the impact of Islamic, Arab, and Iraqi Decision Values placed in the decisions of both our friends and foes. Placing an airborne boot on the neck of the head of an Iraqi family pushed the Face of the family into the dirt, which required American blood to expiate, a Fate required of the codes of conduct of the Iraqi family.

A slap in the face doesn’t have to be by a hand or in the face to efface the honor of the Family. Face is the sense of shame, blame, guilt or gloat coming from a myriad of factors including time, distance, posture, attitude that defines turf. Turf wars are examples of Face which Fate requires a response.

Turf wars can be so destructive that the very existence of the Family is forfeit. The Russian GRU recently exploited turf wars within Chechnya to bring that battle torn republic into some sense of order and should be noted as a major upgrade in Russian military capabilities reminiscent of Catherine and Ivan.

Bombing Pearl Harbor was a serious slap in the face which American notions of duty, honor, country and/or ego so devastating that popular opinion in American switched from over eighty percent against war to eight percent for. Japan, by not knowing our Decision Values lost the war on the first bomb dropped on Battleship Row.

The Afghan sense of honor, of Face and Fate can require a sacrifice of life and property, but their sense of Fortune can out rank resulting in the pay off of tribal leaders. In our Decision Values, that would be seen as a sell out, but not in the Middle East as the primary task of a tribal leader is to provide for his tribe, and that means material gain.

There are deep rooted Face issues, deep resentments, in the United States dating back to the Civil War in the South by both former masters and former slaves. The former for having their slaves, property and honor taken away at gun point, and the latter by being repressed before and after the emancipation. The Stars and Bars is a symbol of that deep fault line in our body politic.

F4F Decision Values are complex requiring detailed cultural anthropological information. The Warrior need not be an anthropologist any more than she needs to be a climatologist or geologist to determine trafficability of a proposed avenue of approach. But a Warrior needs to know what questions to ask. Just as a Warrior should ask what the Density Altitude is, he should what are the sensitive events, that trigger positive or negative Face reactions, she should also ask what Fate demands of the others, and what susceptibility to Fame or Fortune may affect military operations be they Offense, Defense, and/or Stability.

By taking these into consideration at the end of WW2, our most ferocious enemies, the Japanese and the Germans, have stood by us for over half century. We rubbed that Nazi’s Face in the dirt, not that of Germany or the Germans. It’s paid off.

Flipping Culture - MICE v F4F

2009-06-18T21:33:00.000-07:00

Why should a warrior give a flip about flipping culture? Just blow the flipper’s flipping head off, and his hearts and minds will follow, right? Well, it’s because the flipper’s got more than one flipping head, and they don’t think flipping logical! And, because that’s the flipping way it goes, the first flip you gotta give is what kind of flippers they are. And that’s a fact, Jack.

The cloak and dagger types got an acronym (who doesn’t) they use to flip some flipper around to the other side. It’s called MICE. Not the flipping squeakers rattling around in the walls, but M for Money, I for Ideology, C for Compromise, and E for Ego. In Gordon’s War, MICE is the flip side of a new and improved acronym F4F which isn’t the flipping fighter plane.

The Family in question is also known as (AKA) the primary group which usually maxes out at 150 people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number) . Primary groups are company sized groups. In modern times, an individual can belong to more than one primary group. The more primitive and rural, the customs, mores, behaviors, beliefs, and opinions are more cohesive and inclusive.

F4F includes the four factors of Family: Fate, Face, Fame and Fortune that favor cohesion of the family from flipping to the other side. Like MICE.

M for Money is the same a Fortune in F4F and that is the default motivator for most. Money represents food, shelter, health, and that which keeps the body, and sometimes the soul together.

Any one whose motives are not directed towards the niceties and necessities of life, have motives outside the norm, the middle two thirds of us. One out of six calls the shots for the rest and who cleans up the mess after the other one sixth left creates.

The middle two thirds is flipping arithmetic for one standard deviation plus and minus from the mean … that’s for a two tailed distribution. Pareto’s law says that eighty percent of the shtuff comes from twenty percent of the shtuffers. Either way you flip it, you deal with the minority, not the majority the majority of the time. The flipping few who run things are overly endowed with a concern for their flipping fame, and associated fate and face underlying the fame (and/or fortune).

A warrior’s concern is to know whether the other guy’s family (primary group) is going to fight, flee, or flake out. Once M for Money has been ruled out … or failed, the other guy won’t flip if his sense of Face requires to face us off. This is facilitated by his sense of who or what is his F for Fate is.

The Fate of a leader depends a lot on how his face (reputation, bravery, cowardice, etc) is seen by himself and by his Family. The Fate of a follower is likewise tied to the leader, and the Follower’s sense of his own fate under the leader. Saving Face is a really big face saver, even to the point of an unfortunate Fate.

The Warrior must not assume that the other guy’s F4F is the same is her own. Different strokes, you know. We assumed that Hitler could be dumped by his people if enough cities were blow to shtuff. He killed himself with Germany in ruins about him, and condemning the German people for failing him. Hitler’s face was in his mirror.

We assumed that Shock and Awe and precision munitions would depose Saddam. He died well, unshakable in his personal Fate and Face as President of Iraq. Nasty fellow, though. And many a nasty is about whose sense of Fate, Face, and Fame is on a plane of existence not familiar to many Americans.

It is wrong for a warrior to favor insulting an enemy’s face and the cohesion of his hosts of warriors and sycophants, when enhancing it may serve better. That is the stuff of deception, of ambush, of bait and switch, and the pursuit to ambush so loved by the crafty warrior. A good insult, or a flipping of whatever passes for the bird, taunts, and obscene gestures has insulted many a ferocious warrior to rush to his doom, and those of his or her people.

Prior to battle, part of knowing one’s enemies (and allies) is to know what makes up his/her sense of Fate, Fame, Fortune and Face is prudence, if not absolutely essential. Assumption are the Mother of All F*ups.

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A Warrior’s Guide to the Other Guy’s Culture

2009-06-04T21:00:00.000-07:00

A Warrior’s quest for conquest, control, influence, and support of foreign folks is frustrated by the fact that foreigners don’t think or act the same way. Take map reading, for example, a light infantryman’s focus on hundreds of meters conflict with the thousands that either the artilleryman or tanker thinks in, while a four digit coordinate is useful to a tanker on the move, the artilleryman wants eight digits to shoot. Different frames of reference and different values.

Of significant import to the Warriors on the way or waiting, culture isn’t some exotic high order discipline concerning obscure tribal terrorists, or helpless refugees. It’s all around us, and we use cross cultural analysis just to get through the day. Try explaining that to a person of the opposite sex.

Unlike the academic, the Warrior has to make decisions regarding the allocation of resources on his feet, or in her hatch based on an hip pocket short list of factors like METT-TC. Whatever guide to action when one has to shoot and move has to be no more complicated than what can be written on the back of an envelope (letter size). Whatever acronyms should not have more than four different characters, five or more get forgotten. Other guides to recall need easy to recall.

The Family

To that end, the most important aspect that the Warrior has to deal with is the other guy’s inclination to adopt or decline a set of courses of action, and that depends on the other guy’s sense of self as the member of a Family. These can be real extended families or tribes, or the fact that the family or primary group is broken. And that sense of self comes out in Acronym F: Family – Fate, Face, Fame, and Fortune.

In our military one’s fate is sealed by the cohesion and competence of the unit, it’s training and leadership. Absent a sense of confidence, the unit falls apart. That which enforces the perception of Fate, is hard wired into the sense of Face, that of not letting one’s buddies, family, nation or tribe … down.

Fame and Fortune are not always linked, but usually are. If one’s unit succeeds, your paycheck continues, and your fame is recorded in the appropriate OER, EER, of Fitness Report.

That’s the way we look at it, but other cultures with me might fight, or support have different senses of Fate, Face, Fame, and Fortune. The concept of Family in Africa is far more comprehensive and compelling than anything a native American has experienced. In Africa and in most of the non-Western world, the cohesion of the family and it’s extensions as tribes is at the core of survival. One’s fate is decided by the status and success of the family, and the needs of the family over ride those of the individual. An that includes the cohesion of the family or tribal political processes that govern place to the members of the tribe.

We consider the practice of employing relatives to be nepotism, but in most of the world, nepotism is a necessity and an obligation. We see that in our own country where immigrants, both legal and not, send money home to their families. Remittances of this are major sources of income for many countries including Mexico, Philippines, Pakistan, et al.

From whatever source the four F’s of family, it affects the choices to take a course of action relative to that which the Warrior is embarked on. If a local loses face before a Warrior, his culture may require that his fate is revenge. Such was the case with the American practice of putting one foot on the neck of the head of a family, an insult so dreadful that only American blood could wash away.

The Temporal

Close after and underlying the Family are the perceptions of time, place, sight, sound, distance, and smell included in the sense of values of the Family.

Time is at the top of the list. Northern Europe, the US and Japan are time sensitive and expect time of things to be precise with an underlying assumption that time is a progression of events. In most of the rest of the world, time is repetitive. It is 1-2-3-4-5 in the US, Japan, and Germany, while in Africa and the Middle East it is more like 1-2-1-2-1.

In Germany or Japan, when a meeting is to be held at 1500, it doesn’t mean 1501. One’s watch can be set to the minute by the arrival of trains at the local train station. In warmer climes, a party to start and 2200 hrs means that the guest start getting dressed at 2200. In Kenya, it means the time one leaves for the party.

Sight and Sound are aspects that differ in importance. The US, China and Japan are big on visuals. The wrapping on a gift is at least as important as the gift in Japan. In both China and Japan, the signage on buildings is overwhelming, enough to drive American area beautification politicians bonkers.

In the Middle East and in Africa, sound is more important. An American housewife will use the appearance of a melon as a guide, or perhaps a squeeze. The African would thump the melon and judge the sound. We have billboards announcing church services, in Islamic countries it is the call to prayer. The chanting of lessons in Muslim schools is part of the aural aspect of culture.

It’s not what the other sees that matters, it is what he hears.

As for distance, there is nothing more disconcerting for an American tourist in Japan than to ride on crowded subways during rush hour. There isn’t a word in the English language to describe crowding on a Japanese subway. Sardines have more elbow room.

The Body

Each culture has it’s manual of arms for the use and maintenance of the human body. There are drills regarding how one sits, stand, walks, talks, eats and shts. The code extends to the use of the various parts of the body including hands, feet, eyes, nose, mouth, nose and stern tubes.

A woman’s hair in Islam is seen as a source of sexuality that is so powerful that it must be covered. To do otherwise is brazen hussyville and an offense to God. So powerful is the female body seen in many Islamic cultures, it must be covered up to preserve the sanctity of women and hence of the family. The crux of much of the opposition to Western influence in the Middle East is the perception that Women's freedom is an attack on the sanctity of women and therefore of the Family.

We are familiar with the importance of not showing the soles of one’s feet to a Muslim or Middle Easterner as it is the height of insult. And that goes to interesting and decidedly uncomfortable sitting when a chair is not available. Only Americans cross their legs while sitting in a chair. A fair number of US personnel escaping and evading in WW 2 failed for this error.

Staring at another person can get you killed in some cultures, while the lack of eye contact is insulting in others (like ours). The manual of the eyeball needs to be included in one’s notes.

Table manners, including seating arrangements are another key area. In Japan, the most important person in the group is last to enter, and whomever is speaking for the firm is not the boss. One does not eat with the left hand in Muslim countries. The fork in Europe is always held in the left hand, and the knife right hand is used to pile the food on the fork, Only Americans do the fork-knife shuffle.

The Family Feud.

The survival of a family, tribe, or village depends upon the success of the replacement system, as in reproduction. The replacement unit, a human child, takes a dozen years to develop to a stage where the reproduction unit (female) is capable of bearing the next generation. As this time is the longest time of all Gods creatures, the division of roles in between male and female to protect the infant calls for a protective role for the father, and a nurturing role for the mother so that the child grows. These are not mutually exclusive.

Thus the three essential duties of protection, nurturing and growing are the driving factors in family dynamics. Absent protection, the child becomes lunch. Absent nurturing, the child withers. The legends, the voyage of the hero, and fables of the family maintain the importance of a proper balance so that the child can grow up.

So much power is involved in the interface of duties, that some folks get wrapped up in the power and glory of a game of role switches and of exaggeration for its own sake. This is core of the psychological discipline of Transactional Analysis which is an awfully handy system of decoding BS.

For each of the key valid roles of Protector, Nurturer, and (Growing) Child there are a pair of dysfunctional counterparts. In short, the goody two shoes or Bright Side variety include: The Hero, the Heroine, and the Helpless Child. Everyone wants to be portrayed in Bright Side colors.

On the other hand, Heroes need to rescue a victim and prosecute a villain. Victimhood demands villains of whom there are three, the Dark Side of the Trilogy: The Bastard, the Bitch, and the Brat. The domain of the Bitch is manipulation, that of the Bastard is battery, and that of the Brat is fury.

The Hero must create a Villain without whom there are no heroics. Saddam Hussein was a bastard who cheated and retreated, and was crazy to boot. Hitler created the Jew as a sneaky underhanded (Bitchtype 2) inferior (brat type 3) race that was taking up too many of the jobs that took talent and brains.

The truly dangerous play role switches, acting as if from the Bright Side to justify operating from the Dark Side. The examples of this vicious game system are too numerous to mention. Consider the massacres in Ruanda, Sudan, and the periodic outburst on the Sub Continent.

Understanding the dynamic of the Game System are essential for the Warrior to anticipate the decisions of the players and gamesters in the current operating environment.

Hunters and Farmers

Recent work in the treatment of ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) has revealed the concept that ADD is not a “disorder” but an older dynamic that kept hunters from being lunch in the wild, and that the norm is what evolved from farmers whose survival was in plowing furrows in straight lines, and following orders from the glitterati and intelligentsia (Princes and Priests).

In India, ADD is called the “old mind” tuned to the hunt in which the individual had to be constantly on the alert for danger and for dinner. Once dinner was cited, the chase was on, depending on who was the dinner or the diner. Placed in the world of the farmer, a world of order and precision, the hunter doesn’t do well. The majority of criminals in our jails have ADD as they just can’t sit still in ordered society.

We know of really great warriors in the field who languish in garrison. Same thing. In dealing with more rural areas, it helps to determine the balance between hunters and farmers. It doesn’t take a genius or anthropologist to see that the Afghans are hunters and trying to make them farmers runs contrary to the hard wiring in their psyche.

Geography

The Warrior in the field in his analysis of METT-TC does the usual terrain analysis of avenues of approach, key terrain, obstacles, observation, and fields of fire, all of which are affected by the works of man, works that may be peculiar to the culture at hand.

Those cultures on flat land with water get big on canals for drainage and irrigation that will interfere or facilitate movement of troops and vehicles. Likewise, the terracing of hills for agriculture in China and it’s neighbors.

Buildings in some cultures are fortress capable, others as firewood. Roads, paths and the like are long recognized terrain features peculiar to a given culture. The Warrior needs to gather information of the effects of the culture on the land. Instead of relying on just the map symbols.

The reverse side of that is the effect the land has one the people. And that goes to Fortune, the making of a living, There are cultures based on trade routes on the land, and those based on water … as in piracy and robbery, a fundamental source of income in all too many parts of the world.

An ancient game, thousands of years old, between piracy and commerce is being played out in the waters off Somalia. This in an old culture that is not likely to be put out of action by the rattling of sabers … or for that matter military force until and honorable way for the pirates of old to earn money in a less dysfunctional manner. In Afghanistan, it is in the blood.

We have heard that all politics is local, and now you should know that all local politics has to do with who gets to do what on what land.

The Wrap Up

The Family – Fate, Fame, Fame and Fortune
Temporal – Time, Sound, Sight, Distance
The Body - Sit, stand, shake hands, or bow
The Family Feud – Heroes, Heroines, and the Helpless vs the Bastard, Bitch, and Brat.
The Hunter in a Farmers World - To lunch or be lunch vs the plow and the pitchfork
The Ground – All local politics is where to dig or not to dig.

This is a Work in Progress, a WIP, if you please.

FM 7-0 Half Fish Half Fowl

2008-12-21T09:21:00.000-08:00

The latest Field Manual on Army training, FM 7-0, is just out and represents a decisively equivocal stance between the Rumsfeldian Modular Rotational Expeditionary quick fix style of war and training versus a training system based on traditional factors of mission planning (METT-TC), concurrent multi-echelon training for a period of persistent conflict.

The good news is that the naming conventions of Transformational units (Unit of Action, etc) are scrubbed in favor of the traditional which has evolved under the pressures of wildly changing technological and operational environments for several centuries. Battalions, brigades, divisions and corps stay on.

Likewise, the good news is that training for Full Spectrum operations now requires training for stability operations as well as for defense and offense. The balance between the three depends on the situation for each unit.

More good news is that the company commander and the non commissioned officers are placed firmly in control of the training of their troops with a clear statement that the latter train the troops and officers train the unit as a whole. The Cold War paradigm had officers override and bypass the non commissioned officer corps.

The bad news is the retention of the force structure of rotational, modular, expeditionary force based in the States to be able to react quicker to foreign contingencies from Kansas than could be done from Germany or other forward bases. Likewise, brigades are seen as inherently more flexible than forces generated by task organization with a wider choice of units as has been done since before 1776.

More bad news is that ARFORGEN (Army Force Generation) based on the building block approach to training that failed to match the high order of training produced by the Battalion Training Management System (BTMS). BTMS gave the battalion commander the decisive and final say on training, a stance that was, however logical, was unwise as it cut out the rating and endorsing officers.

The building block approach of ARFORGEN not only cuts the battalion commander but the company commander from direct management of the training of their own troops. ARFORGEN also is based on a precise prediction of the conditions of METT-TC of a contingency several years in advance. This is also a direct conflict with the directives of the manual itself. The front end of the manual requires that the chain of command drive training, while ARFORGEN does not.

So far, I know of no study that proves or even illustrates the assertion that Modular Brigades are inherently more flexible or effective than a modernized traditional structure. Nor do I know of a study that explains how rotating whole brigades in a stability operation achieve the necessary unity of effort to overcome conditions and enemies that don’t rotate any further than the local mountain or forest hiding places.

Each brigade rotation gave our enemies a new lease on life during the time it took the new guys to get up to speed. This was particularly true for the first three years of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It took almost four years to get with the program, four years longer than WW2 but just as long as it took in Vietnam.

Rotations make sense for personnel reasons. Unit rotation preserves the cohesion of the primary group (the company or section) upon which combat survival depends. In no other war has the morale of our troops been tested for so long. The tricky part is figuring out how to maintain unity of effort on the battlefield over time and space. It won’t be easy.

Career management during Vietnam included the three “C” for young officers: Combat, Career Course, and Command. The current policies of the Pentagon is the match this same type of individual rotation in concert with unit rotations to match a kaleidoscope of missions, enemies, terrain, time, troops available, and civil considerations. Nice trick if your crystal ball works.

Hands on Little Round Top

2008-10-22T19:10:00.000-07:00

When in the course of human events, a force must force a valley or pass, the walls of the valley have themselves ridges and gullies (smaller valleys) at a sharp angle to the valley traversed. The movement up the main valley then can face direct fires from the head of the valley flanking fires from high ground down the gullies and along the ridges down into the main valley. Thus fingers have fingers and valleys of their own and are significant on fires and movement of successive levels of command.

There are corps sized valleys and squad sized valleys of a smaller scale. Those of us trained in ground combat in the not too distant past focused on hills defined by the size of the force to be deployed. There were squad sized hills for squad training, platoon sized hills to train platoons, and so forth. This was goose egg centric with successive positions designated by the appropriate goose egg, be it squad or division.

Avenues of approach were connected swatches of white space on a map leading to the appropriate goose egg which was fine so long as the tanks stayed in the white, and infantry in the green. In Germany I lead a mechanized infantry platoon in large unit field exercises through the network of logging trails that define German woods. In Vietnam, the unit I was attached with had little difficulty in busting jungle in pursuit of foot mobile Viet Cong.

During the many years of participating in training rotated annually from individual to division level exercises, I had to wait until the big exercises to train my unit in learning to fight on fingers, valleys, passes as well as hills and to maneuver both across and with the grain. Formal training at successive levels of command sought terrain that fit the preferred plan of maneuver, be it a squad maneuver left or a mobile defense with strength in reserve to delivery a devastating counter attack in a assumed penetration. Assumed!

In combat operations involving a lot of movement over unfamiliar terrain, one must have something more than goose eggs and white spaces to constantly update actions on contact which could occur before this sentence ends.

Our Civil War gives some fine examples. First at hand is the Battle of Little Round Top at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863. The day before saw the Army of Northern Virginia had nearly flanked the Union position on Missionary Ridge around Culp’s Hill. They would try again while Longstreet would launch his Corps against the southern end of Missionary Ridge with Hood leading the attack against the exposed flank of Meade’s line.

A few quick thinking Union officers saw the importance of Little Round Top at southern end of Missionary Ridge with provided clear fields of fire across the front of Missionary Ridge, and which, due to it’s concave slope facing the Confederates, provided clear plunging fields of fire well past the base of the hill, and grazing fields of fire on it’s southern slopes. The shape of this hill provided nearly 270 degrees of coverage from a small force firing from a centrally located small area/

Colonel Strong Vincent, MG Gouverneur Morris, and Colonel Joshua L Chamberlain, quickly saw the advantages of Little Round Top and moved troops on their own initiative to stop the Confederate attack in one of the most memorable battles of the War.

Later, at Appomatox Court House, Colonel Chamberlain would order his men to present arms to defeated Confederate forces at the surrender in the effort to pave the way for a just peace. A peace shattered by John Wilkes Booth and the vengeance of the Reconstruction.

The TImeless Effects of Terrain on War

2008-10-09T16:52:00.000-07:00

Despite radical changes in the technology of war on weapons effectiveness, the effects of the terrain remain relatively the same. A hill is still a hill and still provides observation of an resistance to movement. It is still easier to move on smooth ground which tends to use the corridors, valleys and ridges created by water erosion.

The changes in lethality in the land battles of the 20th Century brought to full effect the technologies of the last half of the 19th Century. While massed fires of massed troops were used against massed targets of infantry and cavalry of the Napoleonic era continued through the US Civil War until the net effects of barbed wire, machinegun fire, and the artillery shell forced troops formerly in the open to move out, spread out, dig in and/or hide. The trench and the tank afforded protection of fighting forces.

Artillery using shells detonating on impact in large numbers from breach loading howitzers spread shell fragments laterally across the impacted battle area in effect creating grazing fires while air bursts created plunging fires from shell fragments making areas distant from forces on the front lines as lethal as those in front. This caused dispersion of forces well away from the front lines.

By comparison, warfare prior to WW 1 preferred relatively level terrain in order to keep the closed ranks necessary for massed fires in order and not broken by the folds of the ground that now offers cover and concealment for dismounted infantry.

In conducting terrain analysis for units on the forward edge of the battlefield (that which is in direct eyeball and ear shot), the attractiveness (or lack thereof) of terrain is subject to the same effects throughout time. An avid student of self survival in combat can learn valuable lessons from the battlefields of over two thousand years.

Fighter pilots use their hands to depict air to air combat. I suggest the use of hands in a similar fashion showing the relations of terrain features, movement and fires.

Tactics By Hand

2008-09-30T08:33:00.000-07:00

Knowing how to use the terrain to advantage to block enemy movement or make your own easier depends on the ability to match the folds in the ground with the way troops move over the ground and how fires relate to the ground and to the enemy. There are five types of terrain classified by relative relief as taught in basic map reading: A hole, a hill, a ridge (finger), valley, and saddle (pass).

These five types of terrain can be illustrated by using the features of one's own hand with the knuckles representing hill tops, the space between as saddles or passes, and the fingers and spaces between the fingers representing ridges and valleys.

Water tends to cut up the slopes into ridges breaking off from ridges creating a complementary complex of dendritic patterns with ridges on the high ground and valleys through which water likes to flow. The appearance of a hand with fingers is easily obliterated but the basic structure remains.

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There are five ways to cross the five kinds of relative relief. Three follow the grain by moving along the ridges, or by moving along the valleys, or by going through the saddle or pass. Two go across the grain by running the hill tops which is a bit like ridge running except that the hilltops command the ridges on both sides, and by going cross corridor crosswise the ridges or fingers. This is the most common movement pattern as eventually one gets down the scale to a creek or stream.

In evaluating the application of fire over terrain to enemy movement, the relative slope of the terrain must be taken into consideration. There are three types of slopes: flat or even, convex, and concave. An even slope has the same effect on fires as does flat terrain.

The relation of fires with respect to the ground are classified as either grazing in which the fires graze at a level that engages the enemy for a distance away from the weapons. Plunging fires is when the area which hits the ground, called the beaten zone, is compact and the rounds strike the ground at an angle. In between the two the beaten zone becomes elongated.

Typically, plunging and grazing fires are used in conjuction with grazing fires covering the flat, even or along ridges. Valleys are typically covered with plunging fires from mortars or artillery.

A good commander uses the terrain to force the enemy to advance in column into enfilading fires, and plunging fires to fill in the gaps

Ad Hoc, Hellish, and Hectic

2008-09-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

The movie, We Were Soldiers Once, shows the courageous fight of the 1/7th Cavalry Bn. The book of that same name told of that battle and the one that followed in which the 2/7th Cavalry was virtually wiped out. The 2/7th wasn’t rotated stateside, it was filled up and send back into battle. And that is the way a serious war is fought.

The VC/NVA against whom we fought along the Saigon River south of the Fish Hook in 1969 formed special anti-tank battalions to ambush the mechanized and armored cavalry units operating in those jungles and rubber plantations. They would set up an elaborate ambush, knock off one or two armored vehicles out of a company or troop before being mowed down by the armored troops like a line of Kansas reapers. The enemy then returned to “dwell” for about two or three months, then be back for more

During WW 2, German units often were battered beyond resemblance to their tables of organization, but did not dwell but reorganized on the fly under the nearest able leader who had the initiative to take charge.
These were called “Kampf gruppe” (Battle Groups) under the name of the commander such as Kampgruppe Peiper that operated in the Battle of the Bulge. These formations were ad hoc and mission oriented.

Historically, combat units that were badly shredded in battle either stayed in contact with an ad hoc structure or were taken to the rear only so long as they could be refilled, reequipped, and a short period of training to shake out the new arrivals. This is the way war is normally fought by competent forces. Those less than competent usually lost troops through desertion or defection. In the War Between the States on both sides, battered units were not refilled with replacements but simply reduced in size still under their original colors.

This then is the single most important Action under adverse Conditions to achieve battle Standards that any unit, be it combat, combat support or combat service support to master and maintain be they stateside or hell side, A commander must be able to fight whomever is presented by the fates or the will of God, with what is in hand. This includes the creation of new chains of command from whoever is left standing.

Ad hoc task organization is the norm in combat operations, except that it is done to meet the conditions of METT-TC. Reports from the field in Iraq and Afghanistan show a remarkable adaptability of our troops in a very eclectic and hectic operational environment. This constant state of shifting task organization to fight with what one has to do what needs to be done is simply keeping the edge of the sword sharp.

This process focuses on the fundamentals of whatever line of endeavor the fates have cast. It requires a firm understanding of the fundamentals of the trade. It means that combat arms personnel must understand the fundamentals of fire and maneuver, and the use of terrain given the weapons at hand to deny the enemy movement or enhance your own over the terrain in place. And it must done under severe pressure. There is no dwell time, no time for reflection. It is a time for action and decision making by command and staff on the fly.

To train to this standard, one never leaves collective and concurrent training. There are no stepping stones, building blocks, or rotations. And the edge of the sword never is allowed to get dull as one never knows when, where and how fast it must be drawn.

PentaThink and the Emperor's New Clothes

2008-09-22T15:32:00.000-07:00

As Hurricane Ike knocked the power of for ninety percent of Houston, I found the time to catch up with my reading, while listening to the gentle thrum of my Honda 2000 generator. At the top of my reading stack were The War Within, by Robert Woodward, the Coldest Winter by David Halberstam, and “The March of Folly” by Barbara Tuchman.

After a while I found that all three are the same story, echoing down through over two millennia endlessly repeating “pursuit of policy contrary to self-interest” as defined by Barbara Tuchman. She illustrates self-interest as the “greater good” of the body politic which is further defined in the British comedy, “Hot Fuzz” in which a local cabal used homicide to enhance their standing for their local village for Britain’s “best village award” contest.
The local police chief used this cabal as an extension of his grief of the loss of his wife, while the rest of the town clowns followed in the manner described by Hans Christian Andersen in “The Emperor’s New Clothes” also known as Groupthink which is defined in Wikipedia as:

Groupthink is a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. During groupthink, members of the group avoid promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of consensus thinking. A variety of motives for this may exist such as a desire to avoid being seen as foolish, or a desire to avoid embarrassing or angering other members of the group. Groupthink may cause groups to make hasty, irrational decisions, where individual doubts are set aside, for fear of upsetting the group’s balance. The term is frequently used pejoratively, with hindsight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

Groupthink is also illustrated in George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty Four” with such concepts of NewThink, Good Think, and Double Speak as in the mantra “Peace is War, Love is Hate, Freedom is Slavery” which denies the citizen the ability to think critically.

In Gordon’s War, we propose that the underlying cause of folly in Tuchman’s sense is more a conflict between what people believe is the greater good and that which is the objective reality. The conflict is heavily weighted in the sense of the in-group of their own sense of power and control of the group itself. It is intensely selfish and depends on Groupthink to develop the “Greater Good”

The Confederacy seceded from the Union in order to protect their peculiar institution, slavery, when secession was the only possible way for the Union to abolish slavery was through a Constitutional Amendment which the South could have blocked forever. Japan attacked the US when the US was so committed to isolationism that only an attack on our soil could have forced the US to fight. Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union repeated the defeats of Napoleon in 1812 and that of Charles XII of Sweden in 1709, and those two make the short list of great commanders.

Ego triumphs over the Greater Good with dreadful regularity.

Group Folly depends upon Groupthink, which is characterized by Irving Janis as:

1. Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.
2. Rationalizing warnings that might challenge the group's assumptions.
3. Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.
4. Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, disfigured, impotent, or stupid.
5. Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of "disloyalty".
6. Self censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
7. An illusion of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.
8. Mindguards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information.

Groupthink is the dominant form of decision making in ordinary life, while it’s more rationale and objective counter is done as an exception once groupthink becomes group folly so disastrously as to force reconsideration. As in the Real World (RW), there is more than one group and within any one group there are subsets of groups each bound by the dictates of its own group think. Each group is fighting for survival for the group and the control of other groups.

Within each group is an inner group, the Gold Old Boys/Girls whose group think dominates the rest, and sets the tone for the group as a whole. This statistically is about ten percent of the group at the top of the pile, or one percent of the group plus its affinity groups of like minded or self interested.

This phenomenon is the default for groups of all kinds, and those of us involved in various associations and societies including the ROA know which groups and which persons to which and to whom I refer ... without naming names.

The worst example in American military history is the fable of MG Willoughby, MacArthur’s G2 between 1941 and 1951, who acted as the ultimate gate guard by repressing any intelligence contrary to his or MacArthur’s preconceived notions and whose greatest contribution to MacArthur’s defeat by the Chinese in 1951 was the denial that there were hundreds of thousands of Red Chinese troops in Manchuria and North Korea prior to the Battle of Kunuri on November 1950.

Once groupthink becomes formally established by law or custom, it becomes virtually ineradicable, worse than crab grass or herpes. Such is the case of our military establishment as exemplified by the denizens of the Pentagon as it has descended into dysfunctionality and irrelevance to the defense of the nation.

What Bob Woodward did not sense was the Good Old Boy attitude of the Active Components of the various services that became unsettled by the specter of operationally effective Guard and ReServe units, particularly in fire support and logistics. The storm came to a head when four National Guard separate brigades were poised for deployment to Desert Shield/Storm. While brain surgery and avionics repair were readily accepted as within the capabilities of RC (ReServe Component) units and personnel, the very idea of a “Weekend Warrior” wearing Green Tabs in a combat zone was too much for the Good Old Boy ego, and sense of group survival.

Shortly after Desert Storm, the operationally competent ReServe Components were functionally organized to avoid the opportunity for the leadership of RC units to gain operational experience. The administrative nullification of Federal Law that required units to be trained and deployed as units that followed further nullified the available operational environment necessary to train both units and individuals in the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP). The word went out in the Sea Services that deployable units are anathema and that the proper role of RC naval and USCGR personnel was as replacements for “the Fleet”.

The Army’s ARFORGEN (Army Force Generation model) is clearly the nuttiest notion in military training in all military history, which history includes the use of surveying equipment to dress and cover a military formation. ARFORGEN poses a five year cycle of training starting with individual training escalating to company level training five years hence, with combat in the sixth year.

This assumes that the individual skill sets in years one and two will be valid in battle six years hence. It does not take into account that in a six year cycle there will be two or three different company commanders none of whom has the opportunity to take full control of the combat effectiveness of their own troops. The six year (five plus one at war) is longer than any enlistment contract and ignores the progression of those in the ranks from E2 on up. I went from E-2 to E-5 in less time at the end of which I was a platoon sergeant.

The six year cycle (including the combat year) also assumes that the task organization, tactics, techniques, and technology derived from an analysis of METT-TC can be accurately predicted six years hence and is unchanging lest it screw up the training cycle. It is hard to imagine anyone with real combat experience accepting this nonsense, but they do knowing that it is nonsense and knowing that should they point out that the Emperor has no clothes is most likely to get a McMasters Award (Passover) for excelling above and beyond the limits imposed by the Good Old Boys/Girls.

Likewise the restructuring the Army into Brigade sized units instead of Divisions has no basis in any array on military contingency based on any array of the conditions of METT-TC. It also was manufactured “in flight” without regard for an operational structure above brigade, leaving this (fortunately) for the commanders in the field to recreate.

The fundamental rational for brigading the Army from divisions was that the ROAD Army division had too few Colonel Command positions for Combat Army officers, particularly since one of the three divisional brigades under the Roundout concept was a National Guard Brigade. The reinvention of the Battle Group (five line companies with a Colonel commanding) as a Brigade Combat Team is evocative of the Regimental Combat Team of the Korean War with the shortage of O-5 command and staff slots of the Battle Group corrected resulting in an overall thirty percent increase in high value field grade assignments.

Despite the obvious nonsense of building units based on our “adaptive enemies” not adapting for a rolling six year period of time, in order to provide high value command and staff slots for field grade offices is proceeding with fanfare in accordance with the dictates of Groupthink.

DoD wide, the word is out that the Long War is in. This has been a popular budget builder for DoD which evades the risky effort to figure how to win against those whom we fight. Victory, for the permanent party, is counter productive to career survival and the survival of the Good Old Boy/Girl group.

The Long War then is an admission of defeat which is another word for the evasion of victory. The concept of non-state actors as an excuse for planning for victory is central to group survival for the irrelevant or misaligned. Groupthink doesn’t need much of a push to keep this state of ineptitude going for decades.

The Founders knew this would happen, having experienced the worst of cronyism from within and from without. They know the folly of favoritism, nepotism, and cronyism was inherent in palace politics and deliberately put the decision making process for the form and substance of our military establishment in the Congress (Article I, Section 8, clauses 11-16) and default military force in the states under the Second Amendment as modified by Article I, Section 10, clause 3.

The Founders were very leery of a large standing professional military establishment, which did not occur in American military history until the passage of the Defense Officers Personnel Act (DOPMA) in about 1980. Previous military establishments for war were of a temporary nature which included temporary rank structures for war. DOPMA came about as the product of the Cold War for which the Long War is a clear extension.

At present the Pentagon’s own collective groupthinks have the bit between it’s teeth, which bit needs to be yanked out, teeth and all lest we fall into the abyss created by intrigue within the Palais Pentagon or by the overzealous and under decorated in the field get us into another fine mess.

POST SCRIPT: While the above is the considered and objective opinion of a rabid ReServist, it should be noted that the synergy between GroupThink, Parkinson's Laws, and Haga's Law that lead an organization to expand regardless of demand or resources is a normal human frailty, and should be taken into consideration in organization design and operation.

Full Spectrum Readiness

2008-09-01T06:16:00.000-07:00

The reemergence of armored warfare in Georgia is a gentle reminder that the Battle of the Fulda Gap has been on a lunch break. In spite our success in armored warfare in the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon has been breaking up this winning team in readiness for a type of warfare extant only in fantasy (future war-itis) and unrelated to the counter insurgency war at hand. Now that the full attention of the requirements for counterinsurgency and stability operations are being realized, the invasion of Georgia pr
esents an interesting dilemma.

The task organization at tactical levels for counter insurgency and armored warfare are very different. Counter insurgency requires distributed and eclectic tasking of hard and soft power over a wide area, while armored warfare calls for concentration of fast moving firepower in avenues of approach. One calls for constancy of indirect effort over time in a large area, while the other calls for moving across the ground rapidly against an enemy force directly.

Historically, forces trained for one paradigm do poorly in the other. British and French troops seasoned by war against Arabs in the Middle East before both World Wars, were under-gunned for peer to peer warfare. Full Spectrum warfare requires that troops must retain the ability to switch from one end of the spectrum to the other in short order.
..

Full Spectrum Readiness depends on the establishment and maintenance of the linkages between units, subordinate, superior, supporting, lateral, and just in their area peculiar to the specific mission. Linkages are the nervous system, both the somatic and autonomic nervous systems of a military body. Linkages between people in a team, known as teamwork, operate as the nervous system of the team. In football training, this is done in football scrimmage. And no coach would dare delaying scrimmage to the week before the season opens.

The urge for team management to micromanage the team is bane of many a coach. Since the military only faces game time only in wars or other live fire deployments, it is easy to fake readiness by a focus on the paint on the helmets.

Military scrimmage consists of a team of teams

• The coaches train as a team of coaches, working in context of the rest of the school and it’s supporters (and detractors).
• Troop training is NCO business
• Unit training is the commander’s business.
• All train for a big change of mission,
• Scrimmage proceeds from the simple to the complex as individual and collective skills improve.

The first law of warfare is Murphy’s, and that the battle deemed least likely is the most probable. While “plug and play” is an important contingency, as a default it risks Murphy’s Revenge as every rotation is a new pick up team. Rotating large units to and from the battle area also doubled the time for the learning curve to adjust to a new form of warfare than previous wars.

Contingency focused operational training increases operational efficiency and effectiveness, and the readiness to adapt to changing circumstance and task organization/

METT-TC = Mission, Enemy, Terrain, Troops available, Time and Civilian considerations.

.. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/25-100/chap2.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/25-100/25100007.GIF
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/25-100/index.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-0/ch5.htm

Zen and the Warrior Mind

2008-08-25T23:43:00.001-07:00

“Zen” is a word recently used to criticize counterinsurgency doctrine, as if “Zen” were some kind of touchy feeling kind of thing. One thing is clear is that the author of these remarks is that he knows zip about Zen, ground warfare, or for that matter warfare itself, in particular that of the fighter pilot.

Zen Buddhism was adopted by the Japanese Samurai during the twelfth century as a formulation of a comprehensive philosophy of life including earlier techniques to quiet the mind for effective combat. These techniques exist to combat adverse body reactions to stress such as hyperventilation, narrowed field of view, muscle strain that slows reaction time, and the misdirection that an excited mind has on combat efficiency. The most common techniques include deep breathing, lowering the center of gravity (both used to maximize air intake using the diaphragm instead of the chest), and clearing the mind of distracting chatter. The breathing techniques are called “Zazen” and involve mental visualization to assist in calming the mind.

These techniques are also included in Western medicine in such practices as bio-feedback, and have been described for athletic endeavor as being “in the zone”. The deep breathing and visualization processes in Zen are used in the Lozanov accelerated language learning used successfully in the Soviet Union, and at the University of Houston.
The use of these techniques is counter intuitive for what one expects for combat. It is very much of the mythical role of the “Warrior” to be red eyed blood mad and ferocious. Aside from the Nordic Berserker, this sort of madness is a good way to be cut down by the cold eyed (Zen) killer.

As a Military Channel addict, the accounts of fighter pilots recounting their exploits display far more accuracy and detail concerning what happened when and who did it to be from a maddened mind. The simple fact of the Zen state of mind is that time appears to slow down. This is exactly what most of us have experienced in accidents, a sudden awareness that time slowed down, and a corresponding feeling that the body isn’t moving fast enough … the latter is a matter of training.

This is the state of mind that fighter pilots live or die on. It has saved my life a number of times
at the edge of death. And,

Beware of the opponent who calms down before the fight.

Plug and Play Not

2008-08-23T22:00:00.000-07:00

The tepid response of the Pentagon to the Russian invasion of Georgia should not have come as a surprise to readers of my humble blog for it has been obvious that the Rotational Expeditionary Modular force which was created without regard to changing conditions of battle wouldn’t fit facing bears in Georgia. It should be equally obvious that the Russians took this into consideration. In short, it’s time we ought to review the usefulness of the “plug and play” rotational modular mentality.

The fact that the US failed to act decisively in this particular case has added to a growing sense in the world that the US isn’t up to it anymore. As a corollary, many are going through the decision process of whether to rearm, or realign. Kazakhstan is considering pumping their oil and gas through Russian pipelines instead of the BTC pipeline to the Mediterranean. Some of the other “stans” are less inclined to host US forces in the War on Terror. Even some of our older NATO allies have allowed their military establishments to wither, and are no longer able to posture with power, while the newer East European NATO members are feeling threatened.

Aside from my diatribes against the Light Transformational, the key question professionals should ask is why did we take so long to adapt to counterinsurgency warfare? It usually takes two years to get up to speed and another to start running the table, based on our record since the Mexican War through Vietnam. The learning curve in Vietnam for conventional forces started in late 1965 and by the Tet Offensive in January 1968 had stabilized and by the end of 1969 had driven the enemy main force units out of Vietnam.

The US started to mobilize for WW 2 in the summer of 1940 after the Fall of France with the passage of a National Defense Act calling for a 35 division Army and a two ocean Navy. The draft started and the National Guard mobilized in October 1940. After Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Midway was in June 1942, and the Marines landed on Guadalcanal in August a month later. A year later, we invaded Sicily. From a sleeping start to Sicily in three years!

We had a running start at Iraq, plus experience in counterinsurgency, and it took from March 2003 to late 2007, four years, to adjust, and another year to start running the table. The failure to plan for a post invasion strategy, of governance, and for counterinsurgency was not for the lack of experience or trained units in those areas, but of the adaptation of the Light Transformation of plug and play modules.

Consider how long it took to plug the brigade communications systems to higher levels to give both reach back and reach down information access for those in the field and in the chain of command. Consider how long it took to get a truly responsive fire support system by using UAVs in the traditional role of the FAC in a bird dog.

Relocating combat forces from forward areas where they were mission oriented to stateside bases brought them closer to the flagpole than the battlefield. This becomes an open invitation to micromanagement and competing staff driven requirements that can render an infantry unit inert. It took less than four years for our victorious and mighty forces of WW 2 to become poorly trained, led and equipped on deployment to Korea.

This degeneration was repeated after Korea which was arrested by JFK to prepare for a more vigorous Soviet presence. After Vietnam, the Army adopted mission oriented performance based training that stressed a holistic tactical environment described as Condition, Action, and Standard for Mission Essential Tasks. Training was concurrent, as opposed to the failed concept of the building block approach.

Were it not for the constant stress of battle over the last six years and of the operations in the Balkans, our forces would not be combat ready in any realistic sense. The concept of plug and play modules makes it difficult to deploy forces quickly at levels larger than a brigade and most likely would result in “pick up” teams, the kind the Navy found wanting in the early stages of WW 2.

War is an awful mixture of the profound and the profane, of genius and the idiotic, and it is hard to tell then or later which was which.

Bears and Cossacks

2008-08-17T16:56:00.000-07:00

The bear that invaded Georgia isn’t the same bear that we faced during the Cold War. It’s much older and shaggier bear, a bear that Catherine the Great would recognize. This bear doesn’t follow orders from the Kremlin like the Cold War Red Bear. A couple of calls on the Red Phone or over coffee in Georgetown, and nuclear submarines or border guards would respond immediately. Both Kremlin and White House knew that in a few minutes, both could be incinerated under nuclear mushrooms.

What makes this different is the use of irregulars from outside Georgia. In the Cold War, irregulars would have been taken from disaffected elements inside Georgia as was done when the Red Army conquered the Caucasus during the Russian Civil war. This time, a call went out for the Tsar’s favorite irregulars, the Cossacks. This time, even the Chechens were invited as well as the familiar thuggery of Serbian irregulars used in ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.

The open invitation for Cossack participation in the “return” of the Caucasus to Russian hegemony is a significant signal of the Kremlin’s interest in restoring the historic connection between Russian ambition and the Cossack Hosts that served well in the original conquests between the Ukraine and the Caspian region. Under the Romanov’s the Cossacks formed special units for internal security and personal protection of the Tsar.

During the Russian Civil War, the Cossacks fought on both sides, with a majority favoring the White forces. At the end of the war, the Cossacks were persecuted savagely by Stalin in what were called Decossackization, a classic Soviet style genocide of death and deportation. During WW 2, many of the surviving Cossacks joined the Germans in revenge, and others joined the Russians to regain some post war benefits. After the war, thousands of Cossack POW’s were returned to the Soviets in accordance with an Allied-Soviet agreement where they were promptly executed.

The Kremlin’s best interests lie in controlling the delivery of oil from the Caspian Sea basin, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, control they lost to enterprising oilmen from the West returning to the birthplace of global oil, and the newly unchained people of those lands who wish to benefit from their own oil. The Kremlin’s objective is to force the delivery of that oil through Russian pipelines. The actual destruction of a key railroad bridge that controls the delivery of oil by rail cuts the Georgians out of the fuel delivery business, at least for now.

But the control of pipelines does not need ethnic cleansing, terror tactics, or direct confrontation with the West. The addition of Balkan, Chechen and Cossack tactics is a terror tactic, and terror tactics often backfire. Britain did not fold in the face of the Blitz, nor did Hanoi fold in the face of massive B-52 strikes, nor did Hitler fold in the face of the Mighty Eighth Air Force, nor of the Red Army at the gates. Pearl Harbor was intended to scare the US to negotiate a peace with Japan, which was done …, in Tokyo Bay.

That Georgia bit off more than it could chew is clear, but whether the bite was induced by desperation, deception or delusion, is of less importance than maintaining an open global market for oil. This time, diplomacy with the Kremlin may not work as well as in the old days, as it appears that the Kremlin doesn’t have the control of the military establishment which has been expanded by the use of independently minded Cossack, Chechen, and other factions in the fractious Caucasus region.

Georgia needs to be rearmed, reinforced, and admitted to NATO posthaste and forthwith. Nothing less than a Western military presence will do, be it NATO and/or US. The Soviet’s Kremlin could be dealt with given harsh alternatives, but this Kremlin doesn’t have the same control and, as a result, is relying on the unreliable, unpredictable, and irrepressible in a strife addicted mountainous region. And mountain people are notorious for contention and conflict. Even ours.

The Tail's Tale Tells

2008-08-16T20:58:00.000-07:00

The rapid deployment of Russian mechanized forces into Georgia was clearly the results of long preparation and planning of which the deployment of railroad troops to rebuild the rail lines of communication into Ossetia was a necessary step to support Russian offensive operations. The Russian logistic tail depends heavily on rail as the Russian road network is less dense than in Western Europe or North America.

Conventional (peer to peer) military operations depend heavily on artillery and its ammunition. Planning figures for artillery in support of offensive operations range from five to fifteen tons of ammunition per gun per day, or one ammo truck for every gun. Depending on weighting the offensive by maneuver unit, there can be as much as one gun per rifle squad/tank to one gun per platoon that is actually at the forward edge of the battlefield.

Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan call for fewer guns and ammunition, although some say that more are needed. There has been criticism in the professional press that artillery assigned to Brigade Combat Teams instead of to a Division or Corps artillery as is the custom, has led to a degradation of the quality of fire support compared to conflicts of this kind in the past. A de-emphasis on artillery and its supply lines may also lead to similar downgrading of its significance when watching Bearish preparations.

I have found that military intelligence analysts worry about watching avenues of approach for the arrival of tanks and infantry moving towards friendly positions. Waiting for enemy maneuver forces to show up on templated overlays is waiting too long. By the time the enemy has been spotted deploying, it is very difficult to shift priority of fires and reserves to counter the threat.

At the tactical level, the guns move first. The movement of guns forward plus ranging shots into the forward area is a good sign that the Bears are restless. The activities along the South Ossetian borders fit this profile.

At higher levels, the tail moves first before the guns and the tail is carrying ammo, ammo, gas and spare parts. Included will be maintenance personnel, engineers, and military police to sustain the lines of communication. As an old photo interpreter aka “squint”, I would have looked for ammunition handling equipment, ammo trucks, bridge components and vehicles. Preparations for crossing gaps and rivers is essential for sustaining a rapid advance.

The “Hail Mary” in Desert Storm was preceded by a cloud of trucks and the placement of supply points forward of the line of departure. The VC and NVA in Vietnam built supply lines with food, fuel, and ammo dumps positions at ten kilometer intervals along their axis of advance from Cambodia into Vietnam. The movement of railroad engineers in Ossetia plus road construction of tank trails is classic examples of preparations to build an offensive capability.

It is not unreasonable for analysts to look for alternative explanations for these obvious Russian moves, since the Russians haven’t done this outside Afghanistan since the operations to keep Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and East Germany in the Soviet Bloc. To do so violates an old intelligence dictum to deal in capabilities instead of intentions. Dealing with intentions gets into guessing happenstance, idiosyncrasies, coincidence as well as one’s own biases.

In this case, it appears that the Georgians may have read the indications correctly and tried to move to better positions to confront the Russians forward of their attack positions. This is a very tricky operation, as it depends on forces equipped and trained in meeting engagements on unfriendly positions. The alternative would have been to defend in place, hope for a chance to maneuver against a superior force and call for help. Neither option was good.

It leaves the question of how much did we know of Russian capabilities, and what our assessment was. Properly done, it should have called for both diplomatic preemption, and military counter-preparations. In both cases, Turkey would be a major player.

The Turkish proposal for a Trans-Caucasus union is along these lines, and which may have encouraged the Russians to move first. This is a very old game in these parts, and one which for the sake of oil, needs to be addressed.

Bear's Trap

2008-08-13T07:52:00.000-07:00

The speed at which the Russians reacted not only suggests that the Putin reforms of the military are bearing fruit, it suggests that the Russians trained for this mission over a period of a bunch of months.

Included in their preparations must be considered that the whole thing was a set up from the start, that Ossetian provocations, and disinformation to the Georgian and US command and intelligence systems and personnel.

It is a wakeup call to US intelligence as to why we didn't know of the readiness of the Russian military. If my experience is any guide, it is most likely that there were those who read the signs accurately and that thier conclusions were dismissed as not fitting the predetermined estimates of the situation, or was too threatening to the respective milicrat's sense of self.

Douglas MacArthur ignored the warnings of the Chinese incursion into Korea as did Westmoreland ignore the signs warning of the Tet Offensive. Hitler ignored warnings of the Normandy invasion. Each respectively believed in no Chinese in Korea, a conventional NVA threat up north,and that the Allies would land at Calais.

Of concern also is the degree to which the Georgian high command was snookered into advancing into South Ossetia. It would not have happened if there was a reasonably accurate estimates of the political, governmental and military situation did not convince them that the South Ossetians would fold, and that the Russians would not counterattack.

As for what kind of response the US could have used, the first factor is that Turkey could have been approached to allow US fores to move or that Turkish forces could mass and move around.

The US Army's ARFORGEN training cycle for US combat units dumbs down the returning units for two of a three year cycle for Active Army units, and a four of a five year cycle for Guard and Reserve units. The reduces the forces trained to deploy on short notice are reduced to roughly a third or less of the forces not deployed overseas already.

The concept of maintaining a short fuse reaction time for all units of all components of the Army was abandoned under Rumsfeld to favor a training cycle approach which had failed when it was on a yearly basis before Vietnam to one where that cycle is stretched out for years. Deployments under the ARFORGEN concept are predicated on the precise prediction of enemy actions five years hence, and which actions are divisible into Brigade Combat Team (BCT)bites, and which are evenly distributed over time. The Russians probably read our training and rotation schedules.

The Pentagon inner circle (GSF 15 super grades and their clerical phalanx of civil servants) will likely trumpet this event as justification for bailing out of Iraq (and earn favor from an Obama Administration).

During my half century of military exposure (33 in service), there has always been a strategic force available for take off for deployment anywhere in the world in a matter of hours. At one time there was an infantry company at the airfield at Ft Bragg ready to go in minutes to be followed by the rest of the battalion in a few hours. One might look to see if this capability still exists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Army_Corps

Rumsfeld set a standard for strategic reaction of 10-30-30 (ten days to deploy, thirty to win, and thirty for awards and decorations). This is far below the standard in place in the time of Ike and JFK.

Pictures from Stratfor.

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Bears in the Pipeline

2008-08-12T23:38:00.000-07:00

The gloom and doom scenario bandied about for Georgia may very well turn out as predicted. There are other scenarios quite different, given the unmistakable fact that the Russian Bear has bared it's claws ... again. This is shaking those who thought that Russia could join the global family of nations formed on the realization that economics is not a zero sum game as it was, or was seen to be, for thousands of years where land ownership was a zero sum game. If you had it, some one else didn't.

For the last couple of decades, the developed nations have been disarming, reducing the size of their regular military establishments, reducing or eliminating their reserves, and selling off military equipment. This trend may very well come to a screeching halt with the prospects of a resurgence of an expansionist Russian bear and all the images of Tsarist and Soviet conquest.

At present, serious discussions of what to do about the Big Bad Bear are going on in capitols east, west, and in between. Should the Bear be appeased, pleased, or confronted. Unlike ages past, the value of European, Baltic, Caspian and Black Sea nations isn't their land or booty, it's their markets for Russian oil. or products needed in the Russian economy. This blatant attempt to strangle the BTC pipeline in conjunction with other manipulations of gas and oil delivery may backfire on Russian long range interest.

Those nations formerly behind the Iron Curtain have clear reasons not to return, reasons once for plain freedom, are now rooted in their own economic success once out of the oppressive blanket of socialism, and Russian imperialism. And not all of these nations are as exposed as they once were.

One issue to watch is Georgian admission to NATO which isn't as dead as many think. An accelerated admission would check the Bear without the need for direct confrontation.

A NATO membership might facilitate Turkish backing, which is also in their national interests, the Turks having some experience in these matters.

The disconnect during the operation between Russian official pronouncements of a limit to Russian advance or of intentions and the actual movement of Russian forces in Georgia, is not unique to this conflict or, for that matter, of Russians in general. It is a good bet that Russian forces exceeded their orders. The chance to redeem the honor of Russian arms after the debacles of Afghanistan and Chechnya is far too tempting by any red blooded Russian to ignore.

Conquering armies, like wild horses or bears, do not like the constraints of reins, chains, and home office blather. Admiral Dewey was directed to destroy the Spanish Fleet on the orders of Teddy Roosevelt the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, given without the approval of the Secretary of the Navy or of State Department or White House.

The Japanese sinking of the USS Panay in China on December 12, 1937 was done by Japanese Naval on the orders of the Operations Officer in defiance of the orders of the Imperial Chain of Command. The Japanese incident at the Marco Polo bridge incident on June 7, 1937 was also done contrary to orders from Tokyo and of the orders of Japanese flag rank officers at the time, but the incident was used by the Japanese Army to justify conquest of Central China. .

In the winter of 1846, John C Fremont on a mission to map the sources of the Arkansas River, made an unauthorized detour to California to stir up American settlers which eventually added California to the Union over some circumstances not taught in California history books.

The French governm

ent repeatedly ordered French troops in Africa not to take this town or that by name, to which the towns were renamed by the troops in the field.

The end results of these adventures are rarely overturned by the national government, but it does happen. This is the situation faced today. If allowed to stay in the open, too many egos, and national sentiments will be aroused.

What we should look for is how Condi and Gates handle things, which they have been very much behind the curtains and in smoke filled rooms. For those on the outside looking in, we can only watch and wait and hope those on the inside can play some serious poker.

Full Spectrum Victory

2008-07-21T05:57:00.000-07:00

Capturing the enemy’s capitol is a very important move, one which symbolizes the collapse of the enemy’s political center. But sometimes the symbolism isn’t enough to make the other guy stop fighting. Napoleon found that at Moscow, and we found it a Baghdad. Moscow was merely the place from whence Muscovite power emanated, but the command and control system was in the hands of the Tsar. The capture of Bagdad did mean the end of effective Saddamite governance, but that governance was based on a tricky balance of power between the various Iraqi components of Iraqi political power, to wit, the Shiites, the Sunnis, Kurds and Baathists diehards. Without an effective central power to wheel deal and confuse these factions, the political order returned to chaos.

Fortunately for the good guys, the troops cycling through the military school system brought back the now familiar story of the resurrection of counterinsurgency and stability operations doctrine now published in FM 3-24, FM 3-0, and in the upcoming Field Manual on Stability Operations. The last two publications at the time of this writing from Ft Leavenworth call for Full Spectrum military operations in which firepower and soft power are complementary and supplementary in achieving effective governance, essential services, and economic viability deemed essential to define a victory in terms of the end state achieved whereby the vanquished aren’t.

Gone are the halcyons days of marching the enemy’s army under the yoke on their way to the slave market, or of the carting off of art works and other attractive plunder as marks of victory. It appears that in order to win, one must both break up the enemy’s cohesion, then stitch it back again in order to call it a victory. Odd, but the lessons of Post WW 2 Germany, Japan, and Austria show exactly that.

Military victory then is not the end, but a mid point. The Soviets clearly understood that as there was a well defined post victory process of elimination of private property, and the creation of all encompassing totalitarian institutions. The whole process took a few short months in Latvia when that country fell under the Soviet yoke at the beginning and again at the end of WW 2. This old Soviet program is identical to that which Hugo Chavez has been trying to implement in Venezuela. And Chavez is not a Lenin nor is he a Stalin. The failure of the Soviet model crippled the attempt in the Peoples Republic of Vietnam in emulate it, so the new model is Capitalist Communism along Chinese models.

The Soviets in their heyday knew exactly what form of governance and economics their military action was geared to. The political commissars and apparatchiks knew where to go and who to lock up. The foundations of the new order was already built both outside the target country in inside.

We did something similar in WW 2 by adhering to the claims of legitimacy of the exiled governments of Europe and the support of their return to power. The same principle in Asia didn’t work as well as the incoming structure had to compete with a nascent native military and governmental structure either built by the Japanese or in opposition thereto. The Indonesian Army was originally created by the Japanese and opposed the returning Dutch, and the Viet Minh in Vietnam were in opposition to the Japanese and opposed the returning French. In Myanmar the Japanese created Burmese Army switched sides and is still in power.

The immediate occupations of Germany and Japan recognized the legitimacy of the police and courts, and were run in tandem for the first few years of occupation. The collapse of Iraqi police and governance is a situation found rare in the annals of wars from the Enlightenment on. But this all was understood in the old Civil Affairs and Military Government establishment. Plans were laid in anticipation of occupation and the preservation of order, and economic vitality were prepared, at least by the forces in the field.

The US government’s policy for Germany was originally based on the Morgenthau Plan which was aimed at reducing Germany to an agricultural state bereft of its industrial muscles. Likewise insufficient planning was made, but the capacity to put a plan in place by the Shogun Douglas MacArthur by distributing the tons of excess food and supplies left over from the preparations for the assault of the main islands of Japan. Lucius Clay did also, defying orders from on high to crush Germany.

The Russian way of war is to place deep cover agents in high places in their enemy’s military and political structure. This approach prepares cracks in the enemy’s inner structure which military power is applied for leverage. Even former SS troops were quickly brought into the Volks Polizei, and some German formations switched sides at the end. This also happened in Portugal when the Salazar dictatorship folded when some Portuguese Army units turned out to have deep cover Communist commanders.

Part of any plan to go to war, even in defense of the Homeland, should include provision of plans and plants in the enemy structures to frustrate their efforts and enhance our. This requires a deep understanding of the group dynamics within the prospective enemy. The British ignored a feeler from the German Army at the beginning of WW 2 to support a coup. This was ignored and millions died as a result.

Even if the inner circles of a potential enemy are impenetrable to deep cover agents of our own, the structure of group dynamics, of mores, customs, behaviors and buzz words should be kept on the ready rack.

Normally it is not practical to determine a peace time end state until the tide has turned for sure. The nuts and bolts of the WW 2 end state weren’t crafted until the Casablanca, Cairo, Tehran, Quebec and Yalta with a final deal at Potsdam after the German surrender. And even after that the Carthaginian and Draconian edicts of the US government had to be scrapped and replaced by the Marshall Plan. One might wonder what might have happened if a Marshall plan had been offered in late 1944.

The losing side has to gain something out of the agreement, something that would be useful for the losing side after an occupation. Germany and Japan got a viable economy and functioning governance, of the type recommended by FM 3-24 and FM 3-0.

We left Vietnam in the lurch in 1973 without the symbiotic logistic and fire support link between the US and Vietnam necessary for national survival as in that case, the enemy was still undefeated even though their imminent defeat brought about by Rolling Thunder had brought them to peace talks. There was nothing for the North to gain from not completing their ambition of conquest.

Likewise in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no end state on the table that would benefit the Taliban and/or Al Qaeda. As Al Qaeda is a non-state actor, no viable end state that is useful to us viable. The same is not the case with the Taliban, as effective governance or participation in governance is very much an end state desired by the Taliban, and which other parties in the area are willing to consider. This would mean an end-state like that which might have appeared should Hitler been assassinated on June 20, 1944. That would have been a very different peace than that which was imposed in 1945.

Impromptu Force Generaton

2008-06-27T05:23:00.000-07:00

Those of us familiar with career management within the military likely know of the step stone ladder of promotion showing a progression of assignments and schooling leading up through company and field promotions. Career managers and personnel gurus delight in pointing out to the assembled postulates the predictability of challenges leading to the A-Ring, and the prospects of competition for flag rank. This ladder typically shows where the postulant commands a company, serves on battalion staff, goes to professional schools, and if lucky commands a battalion and serves on high level staff.

Likely the career progression indicates the requirement to go to sea, serve overseas, or even have a tour in combat, or service in some godforsaken clot of dirt on the ramparts of freedom. And we take for granted, this programmed climb to fame and fortune.

The natural extension of this concept is an underlying factor in Transformation, that of providing a predictable platform for progression upon which the postulant includes service on the ramparts and, at the same time, provide this predictability for family life. The All Volunteer military is a married force, and the rotation of assignments now is linked to the progression of units in harms way.

Thus we now are familiar with the terms “dwell time”, “rotation”, and “reset” in the process of force generation. The Army calls it ARFORGEN, the Army Force Generation model. And to make it work, Army tactical organizations have modularized into chunks that are intended to optimize personnel progression of assignments, schooling, promotions, and deployment. Likewise the Navy and Air Force clump units into “expeditionary” task organizations to attempt the same.

The underlying assumption is that threats to national purpose will also be made to mesh with the needs of promotion, stateside assignment, and command tours in field conditions. In order to make things fit, the enemy must be programmable and predictable to serve the needs of promotion timing and opportunity.

It must be extremely annoying to personnel planners that the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and others of the same bloody ilk, do not mesh their terror campaigns with the needs of career progression. And we hear today much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the services being stretched, and of the paucity of Captains in the Army, a condition which precluded 9-11.

Ordained theoreticians of the Order of the A-Ring call this concept, “capabilities based” planning to replace the old, outmoded, Cold War paradigm of “threat based” planning, that is, planning force development in terms of Mission, Enemy, Terrain, Troops Available, Time and Civilian considerations (METT-TC).

The tension between capabilities and threat based planning in the War on Terror has some interesting trade-offs: the creation of a well trained, combat hardened, and experienced force at the expense of a decisive victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. The positive side effect of rotational capabilities based operations has been to build a generation of superbly qualified junior and mid rank officers and noncoms with the know how to know how to fight an extremely complex form of military operations, that of counterinsurgency and stability operations.

It is of considerable interest that the revolution in military doctrine has come from the training and education establishment, which in the Army is the Combined Arms Center at Ft Leavenworth. Therein lies the roots of tragedy. Ft Leavenworth is not the Pentagon, and the various factions within the Pentagon which formulated capabilities based planning are still there, and likely are either frustrated or fuming over the loss of control over the future mind set of the Army and likely the Marine Corps to forces beyond the E-Ring.

The failed attempt by the Pentagon to move General Petraeus from Iraq to Germany is an example of the sense of desperation within the Pentagon. The ascension of Secretary of Defense Gates to the central sanctum of the Puzzle Palace is a clear indication that the President has lost faith in the capabilities based paradigm which has gutted his efforts in the Middle East, and which has generated a groundswell of discontent and loss of confidence in the American electorate in national leadership not seen since the Sixties.

Unlike the Sixties, and as a result of the Abrams doctrine that one should never go to war without the Guard and ReServes which brought the hearts and minds of the American electorate in support of our troops. This is in sharp contrast with the contempt that was expressed against the veterans of the Lifer-Draftee Army of Vietnam. It is fortunate that the combat effectiveness of the Citizen-Warrior is now accepted by the Fair Haired and /Full Time warrior.

Perhaps it is time to implement a force generation model that is matches capabilities to threats, instead of the other way around.

Some basic principles:

Murphy’s Law is the first law of war. Traditional task organization for ground warfare calls for “two up, one back”. That refers to the default assumption that one third of one’s ground power be held back for contingencies, the kind at which Murphy excels in. The composition of forces forward is based on the best guess at what will needed up front. The underlying assumption for this task organization is that the one thing that is predictable is change.

Force development at the strategic level must also plan for Murphy’s Law, for uncertainty and change. This is at the root of the “Full Spectrum” doctrine emerging now and in play in combat. A Full Spectrum force development and personnel strategy calls for a dynamic and eclectic mechanism for keeping reserves in depth for skill sets and units that focuses on full time forces keyed to full time threats, and reserve forces stepped in order of the best estimates of Muphy’s antics.

Full time force planning must include provision of forces of a type and number not anticipated by the best of planning. The extraordinary ability of the our training base and of our troops to change radically to match the needs of fighting in the Middle East is remarkable, and shows that such changes should be made an expectation of all forces in times of relative peace. This isn’t all that new an idea. We took cavalry off of horses and into tanks, and infantry into planes and gliders in two years between the initial mobilization of the Armed Forces in 1940 and their deployment in 1942.

The 1st US Volunteer Cavalry AKA “the Rough Riders” was made up of cowboys and polo players by Teddy Roosevelt to adapt the capabilities he knew to the war at hand. Likewise, individuals in the Civil War raised units of unique qualities, given the charter to do so. The existence of private military companies like Blackwater shows that exotic and highly qualified units and troops can be stomped out of the populace at hand without the need for elaborate career stepping stones.

The capability of impromptu force generation can be made into law by the Congress, and should be brought to the attention of the new Congress and new Adminstration.

GWOT and the Second Amendment

2008-06-26T17:23:00.001-07:00

The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the District of Columbia’s gun law as it pertains to guns in the home has been heralded as the liberation of a long repressed personal Constitutional right to own guns. This misses the point of the Second Amendment as it was intended by the Founders and those who ratified the original Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The original Constitution as written did not include certain rights that the states and citizens had taken for granted, and insisted that those rights were spelled out as a condition of their passage of the Constitution. Those rights included Freedom of Speech and Religion, preservation of the Common Law as the rules of engagement in court, and others as well as the Second Amendment concerning the right of a state to have a well regulated militia.

It is ironic that those who herald the current ruling as if it were some great blow for freedom while the worst assault on the Second Amendment in our history has been waged by the Pentagon on the state militias, of which most are in the National Guard, and which are emulated in spirit by the ReServe forces of the military services.

The Founders and the legislatures of the original states of the union were fearful of a large standing federal military force that would provide the national government with a military capability to suppress Willy nilly the states. Their fears were not only based on the depredations of British troops and Hessians in British pay to repress the rights of Englishmen as known under the British Constitution at the time of the start of the Revolution. What they fought against the British, they did not want from a Federal government.

The political tradition of concern with a large standing long serving professional national Army was dealt with in the United Kingdom by a reliance on a large long serving professional Royal Navy, a small highly professional British Army, and loads of Colonial and Imperial troops who weren’t stationed in Jolly Auld England.

The experience of a large professional long serving army, the New Model Army of Oliver Cromwell, was that of a military dictatorship in which Britain was broken up into military districts managed by Major Generals who enforced Puritan bans on cosmetics, gambling, dancing, fornicating, and other basic rights of the people. After Ollie died, his son wasn’t up to the job and the military brought the Stuart Kings back. See the film “Restoration” with Meg Ryan and Robert Downey for historical details.

The Stuarts tippled too much in the other direction and a solid Hollander was brought in to smooth things over. Their brief dynasty was succeeded by bringing in a King from Hannover, Germany, but directed that no German troops under the King’s control would be allowed to serve in Britain, Ireland, and/or Scotland. The King’s German Legion provided good service to the UK well through the Napoleonic Wars.

Given that colorful background, the Americans who ratified the Second Amendment thought they were making sure that no one would interfere with the Basic Rights of an American as had the New Model Army. Our default military establishment was that of reliance on a very small regular long serving professional force to man the coastal fortifications, and the forts and patrols in the Wild West. This was expanded courtesy of Teddy Roosevelt acting without any real authority when he ordered Admiral George Dewey to attack the Spanish Fleet in Manila Bay. That brought the US into the Far East big time and in short order we had garrison’s in the Philippines and Shanghai, and an Asiatic Fleet of mostly brown and green water vessels ….including the Panay.

The World Wars brought us to build a seriously big standing temporary force to defeat the Hun and Hirohito. The usual dismantling after WW 2 was interrupted by the Cold War, Korea, and Vietnam. Once the Cold War ended, and with no need to man the forts in Indian Territory or coastal batteries of really big cannons, or of stationing troops overseas, the rationale for a long serving permanent force has not yet been justified in terms of the kinds of contingencies used in previous mobilizations and deployments.

President George HW Bush recognized that the Cold War establishment was no longer justified, and started the dismantling process continued by Bill Clinton, a move heralded by business conservatives as the “peace dividend”.

It was necessary to invent a replacement for the Cold War, or any serious flare up by the minions of evil on the frontiers of freedom. And thus was born, Transformational Rotational Modular Expeditionary Objective personnel and toy centric Whack-A-Mole Warfare in which the legions of liberty on the frontiers of freedom were to be repositioned in Festung Kansas in order to be closer to Pentastan, but without checking out the enemy and terrain thereof.

Feeling threatened by the dread possibility of a Return to Normalcy that would put too many field grades in the unemployment lines, the Pentagon resorted to the time honored tool of killing off the competition. Thus ensued the War on the Guard and ReServes waged through the elimination of sexy stuff like fighter planes and combat units, to be replaced by replacementalism as it played out in the Balkan and Early OEF/OIF partial mobilizations, likely known as the Great Cherry Pick AKA “Operational Reserve”.

Fortunately, even the Pentagon is learning, albeit at a glacial pace that Guard and ReServe forces due to Dual Careerism are likely better at Full Spectrum warfare in which experience in a real world outside the gates of Ft Swampeigh.

While the Service School systems are adapting to a new and vital doctrine to apply to the full spectrum of needs for which the military is best suited. What is missing, is the reason, in objective terms to justify a large standing long serving professional force after Terror is defeated (if ever). Will we need to keep inventing threats or crises to maintain promotion flow point and opportunity for the field grades of tomorrow?

While I believe there is a need for a response to a definable array of threats and crises which would include long serving professional standing forces, we need more justification for the size and composition than the needs to maintain a crop of field grade officers and career progression, or to maintain the toys of the favored few in the competition for the A-Ring.

Erasing the Red Line between Military and Civilian

2008-06-10T09:48:00.000-07:00

I believe in the principle of civilian control of the military, but only if the civilians are in uniform. The fact that military operations are, and have always been, a mix of hard kinetic firepower and softer kinder activities such as building roads, schools, markets and providing health, security, economic, governmental assistance. Military and civilian skill sets are integrated vertically and horizontally, particularly in stability operations in the Arc of Instability on both sides of the battlefield. Islamic terrorism starts with building schools, clinics, and charities backed by a beheading or a bomb or two.

The very notion of vertically separation military and civilian authority has no objective or subjective basis in reality or in our laws. The Constitution makes no such rule. The President is an elected Commander in Chief. Militia units of old used to elect their own company commanders. The Congress, elected by the voters, have the specified authority under Article 1, Section 8, clauses 11 through 16 in addition to the money clause to determine what kind of military the nation should have and under whatever kind of leadership structure they want. Neither is there any such principle that applies to the state “militia” known today as the National Guard whose chain of command stops at the Governor unless in Federal service.

The belief in the superiority of the civilian structure over the military is political mythology, a mythology we pander to other nations as if this were a core democratic belief. The subordination of military personnel to a civilian authority in some cultures is a mortal insult to the very essence of their local warrior spirit.

One can no longer separate what is military from civilian solely based on the application of firepower as gentle persuader. “Civilians” from the intelligence community and contractors outside the government apply firepower just as dexterously as a uniformed trigger puller. Nor can it be divided vertically as civil considerations are a part of the Strategic Marine Sergeant or Tank Company commander’s responsibilities are essentially the same spectrum dealt with at the Three Star level.

What’s the real basis for the myth of civilian authority? In part it is due to the political necessities of placing the people the boss can control in the subordinate positions after the takeover. Basic Merger and Acquisition theory. That is why both military and civil service experienced people come under the thumb of political hacks.

In addition, the civil service structure which is based on position and turf unlike the military service which is resume centric and approbation based. Defense of the rice bowl for a civilian is to assert superiority over the temporaries in uniforms that pass through the local maze of cubicles. For the military it is to such up and move up hopefully with an enhanced resume.

The sad side of this silliness is that the military’s personnel grooming is to produce a well rounded, experienced, and educated leader capable of handing the unexpected as a matter of routine. The civilian needs predictability and turf protection, and is not bound by the need to exceed. The national interest in defense calls for the cultivation of the flexible over the fixed which mitigates towards keeping what civilians needed for stability in their place … under military control.

Having a civilian with commensurate military qualifications would allow the flexibility when needed in emergencies and provide stability in between, reserving the ReServes to provide the reserve capabilities for both contingencies.

A National Defense Primer

2008-06-07T10:41:00.000-07:00

There is always some damn fool who thinks that using force and violence is going to get something out of it. And there are just enough examples where it does, although the outcomes of the use of force usually have only marginal relation to the original causes. And this paper isn’t going to agonize on that issue but focus on the fundamentals of what is needed for the defense of the USA.

The factors used in military planning are covered in the acronym METT-TC: Mission, Enemy, Terrain, Troops available, Time, and Civil considerations.

The Mission of an American national defense is rooted in the oath taken by the military and all public officials, and that is to defend the Constitution and all lawful orders. The Constitution is a rule book which means that the first principle in defense planning is to follow the rules and to ensure that the rules are protected.

It is an old adage that a standing military force is a standing threat to civil authority, regardless of the merits of that civil authority. The Founders divided the responsibility and authority for the military between the President who acts as Commander and the Congress who have the authority to determine what kind of military the President gets to command. It is also divided between State and Federal.

The Second Amendment establishes the “well regulated militia” of the states as the default military establishment. Article I, Section 10(3) restricts the states from having a standing (full time) military force of ships of war in time of peace. The Congress has the specified authority to determine the “regulations” known today as doctrine or discipline of the militia and all other military forces in Article I, Section 8, clauses (11-16) as well as the authority to raise and equip all military forces. The State militias have the right to appoint their own officers in clause (16).

The President is Commander in Chief of state militias when actually under Federal Control and of all other Federal Forces.

One cannot separate; try as they may, diplomacy from kinetic (military force) and in that regard the Founders gave the President original jurisdiction over treaty making and relations with foreign nations. But the Congress in Article I, Section 8, (3) to regulate commerce with foreign nations. That divides the use of national power between the President and Congress to the effect that the Congress can’t conduct wars, but determines the economic aspects of foreign relations over which is the breeding ground of national objective.

The Congress regulates the purse strings of Federal power and retains the right to declare war. These powers are vastly over rated as a means of controlling the military as the President’s authority over foreign affairs and military forces allow considerable latitude for the President to get into mischief.

A more effective tool is found in Article II, Section 2 (1) which requires the Senate to approve by advice and consent the officers appointed by the President. All commissioned officers cannot pin on their new rank until the Senate says so. The Goldwater-Nichols Act that is responsible for the current success in joint service operations, versus some really big screw ups of the past, by stating that no candidate for flag rank (Generals and Admirals) will be considered for approval without joint service.

Forces Available

In addition to the default force of State Militias, the Congress has created the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Air Force. Most, but not all state militias are paid by the Federal government but the states may raise additional force or use state forces for state missions using state funds. Each of the services has a ReServe establishment which for the Air Force and Army there are two “components” of which one is Federal and the other is state. There is an Air National Guard, and an Army National Guard as well as an Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Coast Guard ReServe commissioned and paid for by the Federal Government.

The US Army and Navy were miniscule in the Nineteenth Century and the state militias were funded by state or private funds. Until after the Civil War, the Congress would issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal to private ship owners to wage war on the enemies of the nation. If used today, one could envision Blackwater with a blue water fleet.

Guard and ReServe forces today are heavily staffed with veterans of active service and whose civilian experience offer a richer mix of talents that the force made up of solely full time military. It is not uncommon for Guard and ReServe forces to outperform their full time counter parts. Once upon a time, Guard and ReServe Forces trained one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer, but now make up half the forces in combat in the War on Terror with many a ReServist re-serving more than twice.

Attempts to combine Federal and State Forces in times other than war hang up on the Constitutional provisions of Article I, Section 8(16) giving the states the right to select their own officers and of the Second Amendment that guarantees the states to have their own Army and Air Force plus what other police forces needed.

The Founders were very keen on dividing the control of military force based on their experiences going back to the Magna Charta, and the recent unpleasantness in the English Civil Wars. As such there is no “Royal” Army, but the British Army which is the descendant of the New Model Army of Oliver Cromwell. The Founders were leery of letting the President appoint officers whom the Founders reserved to the Senate through advice and consent.

The Founders concern over dividing the control of military and political power goes back to the Roman Republic in which the command of each legion was divided between two Tribunes who alternated each day and by the division of executive power between two Consuls. Sparta had two kings.

The division of military from political power is at the root of a great deal of mischief. The feudal system was based on a fusion of both. During the English Revolution, various members of Parliament also commanded troops in the field. This cluttered both military and political considerations so that the Parliament, at Cromwell’s insistence, required all its members to give up one or the other, except for Oliver Cromwell who made himself military dictator of the English Republic. Members of Congress may not also be serving officers on active duty due to the Founders concern over the likelyhood of another “Rump Parliament”.

In determining how big a military we need, both full and part time, the model of WW 2 shows one end of a spectrum, the Big War which mobilized ten percent of the total population in uniform and another forty percent in defense industries. We had a population of 120 million with twelve million in uniform. We had one hundred combat divisions and 102 aircraft carriers. Today that would be thirty million in uniform.

Full time military establishments have a preference for short wars which all too often devolve into Big Wars or worse, Long Ones. Both Long and Big Wars require a flexible structure to develop the needed forces, equipment, and methodology to meet with a dynamically and unpredictably changing battlefield.

Due to our physical isolation from hostile neighbors has allowed us the luxury to buy time to raise the ten percent and in WW 2 it took three years to get to the ten percent figure starting in the summer of 1940. One year of that was still in peacetime.

In order to reach the ten percent figure, I suggest that one percent of the population be able to be deployed in stages in under six months. That does not mean that all or even a major portion of the force be full time active duty.

In the absence of a clear and present danger to the Continental USA, the forces needed to adequately defend the continent may be done by Guard and ReServe Forces. In that the economic interests of the US are dependant on trade by sea, there is the requirement for a naval blue water force with a capability to operate in green water and in selected limited shore operations which is the traditional role for the US Navy and the USMC.

It is the existence of those clear and present dangers that dictates the creation and maintenance of full time (standing) forces. Further, those forces which may threaten the Continent from afar need to be placed afar also. The Roman Republic took a dive when the Rubicon was crossed.

Terrain Considerations:

I divide the Continental US into six regions for the purposes of terrain analysis: The Old Union, the Confederacy, the Mississippi River, the Great Plans, the Mountains, and the West Coast with the Union and the West Coast being the most important. The geographic center of gravity is around St Louis which may be considered the Stalingrad of CONUS with the Boston-DC megaplex being the Leningrad/Moscow complex.

The physical control of the US is viable so long as either the Union or the West Coast is retained with two of the other parts are contiguous.

The approaches to the Continental US (CONUS) from Asia must control first Japan, Eastern Siberia, Alaska, and the Alaskan archipelago and which then is in a position to seize California but little else beyond the formidable barriers of the mountains. Approaches from Europe likewise have to secure Iceland, Greenland, and Northeast Canada before reaching a vulnerable New England.

The fastest avenue of approach is from Canada down the Great Plains, but getting to Canada is a bitch. Likewise an invasion route from Mexico has the desert to contend with, and from the Gulf has a bunch of islands to contend with.

In all cases, a very strong naval capability is critical for an assault on CONUS. Right now that seems remote, but in the period between the Fall of France and the Invasion of the Soviet Union, the prospect of a united German, French, Italian and a part of the Royal Navy was a real possibility and a concern to FDR. Even the isolationists deemed it prudent to be prepared for war and the movement was called “Preparedness”. Ninety percent of the US population was opposed to war as late as September, 1941.

The Preparedness movement started with a huge armaments buildup and mobilization of the National Guard, and a peacetime draft in September 1940. The mobilized force was kept on active duty in September 1941 by a margin of one vote in the Senate.

The formidable terrain obstacles between here and out there plus the ability of the US to raise a thirty million person military force will force a potential enemy to take time to build humungous land, sea and air forces and to deploy them in position to assault the US is enough to give us the time to raise and train that force. The time to go from one to ten percent available for combat is dependant upon a trained cadre of mid level officers, noncoms, and technicians in place to provide the backbone and nervous structure of a mobilized force.

Additionally, the clear and present needs for standing forces starts with the needs of securing out lines of sea communication, and with a focus on those areas which constrain or define sea commerce. As such there is a short list of places in place to causes mischief to water born travel: The Cape of Good Hope, The English Channel and the Straits of Magellan, Hormuz, Malacca, and the Skagerrak, the Horn of Africa, the Panama and Suez Canals, and the exits from the Sea of Japan, Caribbean, and Okhotsk seas. Control of the major rivers of the world include the Rhine, Danube, Amazon, Mississippi-Ohio, Niger, Nile, Euphrates, and Ganges which control by brown water small boat forces and by control of land features that control river traffic.

Our focus is on the locations of markets and resources that affect our economy that are sensitive to denial by hostile forces. It is the analysis of these locations, likely enemy forces and access thereto that should be the focus for planning for projectable forces be they full or part time, and should be contingency based.

Jaw/War

2008-05-30T05:59:00.000-07:00

Capturing Moscow didn’t help Napoleon, and in fact, set him on a downhill slide that ended in Paris. Capturing Paris was a fleeting victory for Hitler. Capturing Philadelphia and New York didn’t help the British either. Certainly capturing Baghdad didn’t help us, and in fact was about as useful as stomping on a Texas ant hill. Battle may be like capture the flag, but war isn’t. Battle may have it’s odds like craps, or poker, but war is more like 52 pickup with three incomplete decks of cards from different games.

While battle is often waged not only to smash something, or grab something, it is also used to make a statement. The Thirteen Days in October 1962 recognized the notion of negotiating with displays of kinetic force, like a blockade and a saber rattle. The Alamo made a statement about Texian resolve. The Doolittle Raid made a similar statement about American resolve, and in fact prodded Admiral Yamamoto into losing four aircraft carriers. Bombing Ghaddafi’s home in the desert seems to have brought him into a reversal of his support of terrorism regardless of stripe.

Sometimes, however, the other side isn’t listening. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor to induce us into negotiations, which negotiations were completed on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Hirohito listened and pulled a coup to overthrow military control of the Japanese government when faced with the real possibility of Soviet Occupation and American nuclear annihilation. Hitler didn’t listen at all, and died in his bunker. Ho Chi Minh didn’t listen either. It remains an interesting “if” if we had taken the Plain of Jars by 1968 and seen whether Ho Chi Minh would have let the Chinese come into Vietnam like the Chinese in Korea.

Occupying Richmond and defeating Robert E Lee ended the War Between the States, but only temporarily freed the slaves which slavery continued under other guises until Brown vs the Board of Education, and with Affirmative Action action. The resentment of the white Southerner to Reconstruction wrecked Reconstruction, and the resentment of the white Southerner to heavy handed Federal aka Yankee interference in local events still plays out in our elections.

It is probably useful to be able to establish some form of military doctrine about the non-kinetic effects of battle which itself has kinetic and non-kinetic means. Psychological Operations has a history of interesting effects of non-kinetic energy.

Operation Moolah in Korea was an offer of a payment of $30,000 to any Chinese or North Korean pilot that flew a Mig-15 to South Korea. While we did get a Mig, the real effects were the stripping of Communist air cover over North Korea for several weeks while the Communists grounded their planes for fear of the defection of any of their pilots. The Poles caused the Germans to lose one full day of war production by issuing a fake proclamation allegedly by Nazi headquarters giving Hitler’s birthday off for Polish war workers.

The analysis of this apparent anomaly leads us to make a serious change of how we define victory and how to get it. What separates a Hitler from a Hirohito? What separates the successful occupations of their lands from our attempts to Reconstruct the South or of Iraq? How do we know we have won?

I suggest we define victory or success in war is when the other side enforces our wishes with their own police and courts and other agencies of political, economic and social power. I suggest that victory comes when the other side sees a long term advantage in their own interests in cutting a deal.

Germany and Japan benefited from our occupation and were a non-belligerent ally in the Cold War. The South took over a century to recover from Reconstruction economically. In both those cases victory was dictated from the barrel of a gun. What would have happened if Lincoln had missed the play, and what would have happened if we had flooded Germany and Japan with Carpet Baggers and Scalawags?

The approach to a victory, then depends on the carrot and stick offered to those in the opposing side’s structure who have a dog in the game. Sometimes this isn’t the Boss, but someone willing to sell him out, or culling the Boss to cut and run. And it is often those closest to the Boss who are his weakest point. Himmler tried to pull off a coup and cut a deal with the Allies, Hitler wound up appointing Admiral Doenitz as Fuhrer, while Doenitz wasn’t hard core Nazi.

When it gets down to defeating the enemy, however defined, it is the informal structure of power, and the role of personality that counts.

Some leaders such as Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam were brilliant practitioners of the art of survival by divide and control within, but not so hot in managing combat forces. Each of these three applied the Law of Inverse Relevance by touting their military infallibility which, if a virtue, was the least of them. The confidence of nations under leadership of this nature is based on a lie.

Incurring defeatism and division in the enemy’s ranks is the most popular way to achieve non-kinetic victory. Accordingly, President Wilson took no chances with pro-German elements in America nor was he tolerant even of the slightest hint of defeatism. Wilson established the Committee of Public Information (CPI) under George Creel to operate as a de-facto ministry of Propaganda. Wilson’s Sedition Act banned “uttering … any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the United States government or the military” (this from Goldberg’s book ‘Liberal Fascism’). Breaking into this form of psychological control is a tough nut to crack.

The trick is to identify the segments of the other side who are willing to cut a deal and who are willing to implement our policies afterward.

These segments aren’t always the same bunch. We reduced Germany and Japan to smoking wreckage in hopes of inducing them to kick their leadership out for it was assumed that killing civilians would be a positive motivator for the civilians. That didn’t work in bringing down the regime in charge, but it certainly made a splendid motivator to keep out of the business of conquest afterward. Likewise, the Russians didn’t venture into hot wars until Afghanistan.

It is popular to demonize the demon in charge of the enemy as a snake. Cutting the head of the snake is also a popular sound bite in planning for victory, but sometimes you don’t have a snake, but a can of worms, or an ant hill … like in the Muddle East. It might have worked if Hitler had been killed on July 20, 1944. But killing Osama Bin Ladin isn’t likely to end Islamic terrorism as this movement grows heads as fast as they are cut off. Snake analogies don’t help when there is no snake.

Since Secretary of Defense Gates has taken charge, there is less of Rumsfeldian bombast, and a ripple of curtains behind which deals are being cut. In this current drama, fuss and fury are theatre. Helzbollah was suckered into dropping it’s cloak of invisibility and showed it’s hand as a meddler in Lebanese politics than a partisan of Palestinian liberation. Syria is talking to Israel about peace while calming the Iranians and Palestinians with promises not to be kept.

In short, I hope that it is the Gates paradigm that appears to be positively engaged in engaging the key players of the Muddle East with the traditional mix of jawing and warring at the same time. Call it Jaw Wars. It’s also as deeply engrained in Chinese government and politics as it is in the Muddle East, or in Chicago.

Middle Heavy Weights

2008-04-17T00:03:00.001-07:00

The Employment section of your typical local newspaper is peppered with two kinds of placements requiring a large number of applicants to find the best of a large number of candidates for jobs with a wide range of qualifications, and those for jobs that have a narrow range with little in between. Sales and computer jocks are big users of advertising space.

In the military, the same principle applies to strategic personnel planning for combat operations. Armies are always short good infantry, in no small part due to the high casualty rates, but even without high casualties, combat needs boots and rifles on the ground. On the other end of the spectrum are the technicians for which time is required to train and gain experience. Top of the lists of these are doctors and pilots.

The Germans and Japanese ran out of good pilots to man the planes they produced. They keep their best pilots in action which ran up some impressive scores, but the quality of the pilots that followed couldn’t match the pilots the US produced. The US produced so many pilots that some were transferred to fight as infantry.

The Army Reserve was originally formed to build a pool of medical personnel right after WW 1. Army and Navy Reserve pilots called to active duty in WW 2 included Jimmie Doolittle. The same occurred in Korea where recalled pilots flew against the Chinese and North Koreans.

The experiences of WW 1, WW 2, Korea and the current unpleasantness show that the depth of the strategic personnel reserve wasn’t big enough for big wars or long ones. Fillers beyond the initial commitment of Capstone aligned Guard and Reserve units were to be drawn from a draft or from a massive recruitment program to fill from the bottom.

In Vietnam and in operations today, the middle ranks got stretched with the grade of O-3 nearly invisible it’s so thin. In 1970, the time in service for an Army Captain was less than 24 months. It is dropping fast today because of the length of combat and voluntary nature of a voluntary force. In Vietnam the stretch came early as the twentieth anniversary of WW 2 years came and went at the same time the Army expanded for the war.

The same thing happened in Vietnam for the NCO ranks. Sergeants used to being squad and platoon leaders were thrust into First Sergeant jobs, while privates with extra training were fielded with E-5 stripes. Needless to say, there were weaknesses in the cohesion and expertise of small units. It’s a good thing that much of the shortage of expertise was addressed with NCO formal education that grew out of the “Shake and Bake” Instant NCO program.

A strategic personnel program then should focus on in depth backup for skills and grades that take time to produce. That means middle grade officers and NCOs, technicians, pilots, medical personnel and a host of others familiar to the needs of the service. Tables of organization should make room for more in the middle and expert ranks as well as other programs to maintain this experience. The Reserve forces (Federal) should be middle heavy and exercised in leadership positions under operational conditions.

The immediate impact of a program to build, preserve and maintain combat essential skill sets is that the career programs for Reserve forces should not mirror the career patterns traditionally associated with the Active forces. The aggregate skill sets for mobilization, full or partial should match those contingencies requiring rapid and/or sustained fill.

And, we need pools of qualified infantry.

This means a paid and trained IRR. It means drill pay for individuals and a system to provide opportunities to train with units of any component.

Magic v Murphy

2008-04-15T08:35:00.000-07:00

Our military is often criticized for always preparing to fight the last war. That criticism might have worked in the Nineteenth Century, but by the end of the Twentieth, the dominant form of preparation has been focused on the kind of war wanted to fight based on extrapolations of what might be the war of the future. A corollary of this has been to prepare to not fight wars that the military didn’t want to fight.

After Vietnam, the US decided not to prepare for Counterinsurgency, turned its back and focused on the defense of West Germany with the expectation that an invasion could occur on short order. During this period, US ground forces trained to fight a Soviet model army at Fr Irwin in the desert. It must be considered that Desert Storm where a Soviet modeled army was fought in the desert is a freak of nature, and it is very rare in US military history that our enemies will fight us in the manner that we like to fight. We are still dealing with fact that this time the Arabs are fighting us on their terms and not ours.

We entered WW1 with tactics originally perfected in the Napoleonic Wars, by attacking in successive waves of infantry in close order, despite the lessons of colonial wars which had already showed the effectiveness of barbed wire, machine gun, and exploding shells. The resulting carnage is legendary. But it wasn’t until late in the War that a new tactical system was developed by German general Oskar Hutier using fire and maneuver at the lowest tactical levels as we know it today. He successfully seized Riga in September 1917, and his tactics were used successfully to defeat the Italians in October at Caporetto. General Hutier was transferred to the Western Front and these tactics were used in March 1918 at Amiens.

By the end of WW1, US Armed forces had developed combined arms tactics and organizations complete with close and strategic air power. Crude as they were, we had tanks, armored personnel carriers, armored recovery vehicles, and logistics of the type later reinvented to fight WW2. Doctrine, however, reverted to what had been developed in mid war, which was dominated by trench warfare, massive bombardments, and mass assaults in waves. My father was criticized for training his 105mm battery for meeting engagements, which meeting engagement he won in Mindanao against a Japanese battery going south on the road he was going north on.

Fortunately for us, the lessons of early WW2 based on the operations in Poland, France, and Russia were not lost on General Marshall and our doctrine was more up to snuff than it might have been had we gone to war before. His organization of the Army was based on two types of battalions, divisional and non divisional, with headquarters over division allocated non divisional battalions as needed. This structure remained viable until Transformation focused on brigades to the exclusion of everything else.

Marshall’s organization was used successfully in every form of mission, enemy, terrain, technology, time and civilian impact from his time through Desert Storm. Like the Roman Legion, it had a structure designed to be task organized at multiple levels.

Despite having an Army designed to fight an imaginary war, the troops in the field have been able to perform pure magic in adapting to the needs of counterinsurgency, and an incisive view of the principles of a shifting kaleidoscope of mission, enemy, terrain, troops available, time, and civilian considerations. As it lacks a name, for the moment, it should be called Magical Warfare as it defies conventional constraints and uses the genius of our troops to adapt.

There is something very magical about the way the forces have adapted. We hear of artillery battalions converted to a population control and stability operations capability, of Navy officers conducting electronic warfare while attached to Army units, of infantry and tank platoons deploying with civil affairs, PSYOP, intelligence and often medical attachments. It’s never been done on that scale and complexity before while some precedents exist in our occupations of Germany, Japan, and the Philippines and in CORDS and the Marines in Vietnam.

Today the concept of “Full Spectrum Warfare” is a reminder that Counterinsurgency won’t be the only kind of war we may have to fight. The rise of India and China as major powers with a capability of providing the “near peer” scale of warfare, is raising it’s unwelcome face to face. Given that counterinsurgency/stability operations aren’t going to go away any time soon, the kaleidoscope of METT-TC will continue to expand.

The challenge is how to prepare for a much wider array of responses effectively given the resources at hand. Our strong point as a nation is the ability to adapt to unforeseen circumstances, that is the substance of the magical level of war being fought now. We have to be able to take a force experienced in counter insurgency and wage another kind of war. This calls for training a force to change though application of task organization and training to multiple and changing conditions of METT-TC, and with shifting METL (mission essential task lists).

Contingency based training provides not only a reduced time to deploy, but the experience in planning for contingencies for it is the planning that counts more than the plan. Commanders at all levels should be accustomed to major changes in contingencies based on realistic assessments of risk as a Mission Essential Task.

Contingencies should be developed by each major Command (Centcom, Northcom, etc) and used to prepare training and future operations with an eye to making sure that the major variants in METT-TC are covered by some command somewhere.

While this may seem wild, so is war. All predictions of future combat will be wrong in some significant way. We should train with that as a central theme in our planning. Murphy’s Law is the first law of war.

Letter to LTG McCarthy on an Adequate National Defense

2008-03-31T14:33:00.000-07:00

Dear Sir,

I am in the process of distilling my previous articles into a short compilation of recommendations for the Adequate Defense of the Nation as you requested. Most of the ideas below have been treated in greater detail on my blog.

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/

The main issues are not entirely limited to the Reserves, but include all components.

1. The size of the Reserve Components should be a multiple of the Active Components with a floor of the combined percentage of forces deployable in a short time (say, six months) be tied to the size of the population at large such as the one to ten percent figures mentioned on my blog and which have been emailed to you earlier.

2. Adjustments of the size and readiness of the forces above the floor level combined should be threat based as opposed to capabilities based and in accordance with contingency and operational plans prepared in accordance with a National METL based on the analysis of METT-TC in accordance with current doctrine.

3. The forces of the Reserve Components should be, by law, divided into units and individuals ready to deploy in short notice. History historically shows that it is the individuals that go first, and that absent a viable IRR, means cannibalization of existing units. I suggest a statutory requirement for the sum of units and individuals in this category be equal in the aggregate of all components and services. The exact composition to be determined in the budget process by the Congrss.

4. Training of the forces is a balance of the location of the military population base, the availability of training facilities, and the location of threats. Active components normally position themselves with regard to the last two, but the Guard and Reserve should be positioned first with regard to where they live. Not only should the flags be moved to the troops, so should the training.

Using virtual reality in metropolitan bases eases many of the requirements for large maneuver areas, as is command post exercises which can span continents and seas./

This means a focus on metropolitan areas.

a. Every major airline hub should be a Reserve and/or Guard base.
b. Every major port should have a major presence of sea services.

5. The experience of troops in operational environments is the most precious asset for current and future operations. Experience in TOE units should be rated higher than in TDA non academic staff positions. Of this experience and expertise, the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP) and basic small unit collective activities (survival, movement, etc) are the most critical. While some technical fields (aviation,medical, etc) require specific technical skills that take time, the majority of skill sets can be learned in short order by a competent group of experienced troops as evidenced historically and currently in GWOT.

a. The Up or Out system should be abolished in order to preserve a mobilization base of experience by keeping talent in grade instead of forcing folks out of their areas of competence and expertise.
b. There should be a mechanism, under law, to call into military service personnel whose civilian experience is the primary operational need, such as medical and mechanical.

6. The imbalance between the Pentagon and the Congress, between Federal and State, due to the elephantine effect of Parkinson's Laws needs to be corrected.

a. The QDR should be approved by law, appropriation or resolution by the Congress in keeping with their specified powers in this regard.

b. The distance between the highest military position (Joint Chiefs) and the President and Congress should be reduced to no more than one civilian. All civilians, be they civil service or appointed must, by law, be qualified educationally for a comparable military ranks.

c. The size of the Pentagon staff should be fixed with relation to the size of combat forces. This to avoid the common absurdity in the UK of it's Colonial Officer and Admiralty becoming larger as the size of the empire declined in numbers of colonials and ships.

7. National Defense planning.

a. The state, by the Constitution, is the lead "first responder" to disasters natural or man made through the provision of well regulated militias and of the police power of the state. While military power can be shifted to Federal level, the shifting of Federal power should be done in accordance with the National Incident Management System (NIMS).

b. Mobilization planning must be multi-departmental including planned regulation of human and natural resources. DoD lacks the authority and interest in running an entire nation as did the German General Staff in WW 1.

More to follow

Parkinson's Laws and the Pentagon

2008-03-27T08:09:00.000-07:00

The Founders of our country had a clear and near experience with the abuses and uses of power and were keen on the idea that a balance of power was needed in the affairs of our nation state. We are keenly aware of the balance of power between the branches of our national government: legislative, executive, and judicial. Likewise a balance exists between state and federal powers as the former has the ability to abolish the other, so long as the right to alter the Constitution rests in a three quarter majority of state legislatures to ratify. When Congress created the Defense Department of the three major services, however, the balance tipped, and is beyond the tipping point.

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2006/12/quadrennial-defense-rubbish.html

While amongst conspiracy theorists, this imbalance is proof of a vast evil conspiracy bent on sinister purpose. The truce, however, is considerably more mundane. C. Northecote Parkinson, noted political theorist and wag, postulated that organizations grow, regardless of purpose or workload. He cited that the British Admiralty and Colonial Office grew in inverse proportion to the number of capital ships and colonies of the British Commonwealth. He also stated that work expands to fit the time available

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law

The driving mechanism of the expansion of bureaucracy is described by William J Haga in his book “Haga's Law: Why Nothing Works and No One Can Fix It and the More You Try to Fix It the Worse It Gets” because of the basic principle that “anxiety begets organization, and organization begets anxiety”. To relief anxiety, managers hire assistants to spread the work load, but fearing rivalry hire two more to manipulate.

http://www.amazon.com/Hagas-Law-Nothing-Works-Worse/dp/0688004679

When Haga’s anxiety strikes, Parkinson’s Laws are invoked to the point where an organization of thirty five (according to Parkinson) can be fully engaged with internal processes and produce nothing of value. As a retired City of Houston civil servant, I have seen it done with as few as a dozen. My studies of the budget and acquisition process in local government show that more money is spent in acquiring, accounting and paying for the goods and services that government uses than the total value of the contracts for the goods and services themselves. The military doesn’t have the locks on this nonsense, it’s everywhere.

The phenomenon of full time military establishments working to undermine part time militaries is not restricted to the land of the free and home of the brave, but endemic and persistent making the dire prediction that reserve forces are poorly equipped, trained, and led, a self fulfilling prophecy based more on job security than national security.

An article today (March 27, 2008) from the Associated Press cites that the Joint Chiefs of Staff have informed the President:

Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Behind the Pentagon's closed doors, U.S. military leaders told President Bush March 26 they are worried about the Iraq war's mounting strain on troops and their families. But they indicated they'd go along with a brief halt in pulling out troops this summer.

The “mounting strain” is often blamed on the (small) size of the Regular services, and the leading candidates for President’s staffs candidly report favoring a larger Regular service, The truth, however obvious, evades observation. The Reserves and Guard weren’t large enough to face a Big War or a Long one.

Two large steps are required for those committed to an “Adequate National Defense”. First, make the relationship between the Congress and the Pentagon much closer, and to increase the distance between the troops and the Pentagon. And second, make the Guard and Reserve forces a multiple of the strength of the Active forces by law, tying the sum of them all to a percentage of the population at large.

The Constitution’s balance of powers extends to military power, with a balance between state and federal enshrined in the Second Amendment to the effect that the security of a free state in ensured by a “well regulated militia”. Knowing that a state, left to it’s own devices would raise standing armies or allow it’s militia to become unregulated (meaning trained in accordance with doctrine), the Founders prohibited the states from having ships of war, and standing troops in time of peace, and dictated that the Congress provide for the regulation (know today as doctrine) for the states. The Founders also split the providing forces and the command thereof between the Congress and the President, largely based on dreadful experiences in the English Civil Wars and the confusion of command in our Revolutionary War.

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2006/12/modest-proposal-for-resetting-force.html

At present, the Congress perceives its mandate regarding the military as one solely concerned with the budget. Reading the Constitution’s allocation of specified powers to the Congress, it is far more comprehensive. The Pentagon is, according to the required reading for the Industrial College of the Armed Services (little blue books), contemptuous of Congressional process and only critical of Pentagon process while the errors of both are in accordance with both Parkinson and Haga. The distance across the Potomac needs to be closer, at Congressional dictate in order to ensure that doctrine, organization, and equipment are in the interests of the national defense.

Likewise, the Congress needs to distance itself from the conduct of foreign relations (save trade) and the conduct of military operations which are the specified prerogative of the President.

The size of the Pentagon, due to the influence of natural laws, has become too large and needs to be trimmed, cut, sliced and/or diced to reach sub-critical pre-tipping point balance. It doesn’t matter parts are affected, only that the dominance revert to the Constitutional balance. Perhaps separating the services, the components, or command vs. administration might do the trick.

The natural tendency of the Pentagon to distance itself from the Congress is complemented by the equally natural tendency to micro-manage the troops. This micromanagement of the minutia of military endeavors is cited as the number one reason for Captains (O-3) to have left the service even before the war on terror creating a huge shortage that now strains and stretches the forces as reported. Congress should limit the size of the Pentagon as a minor fraction of the forces available for deployment. There should be fewer admirals in the British fleet than capital ships.

In as much as the natural tendency to secure job security overrides national security vis a vis the Reserve Components, the Congress should enact laws specifying the relative size of the components and services in accordance with the size of the active force with floors established and relative to the size of the population of the nation as modified by the perception or reality of threats to the national security.

As an example, the size of all forces available for deployment in six months should be not less than one percent of the national population as determined in the last census. This would mean that today’s military establishment of all services and all components that ready to move out should be not less than three million.

Deployability, however, must be something more akin to wartime needs which often are unpredictable in detail. The essence of deployability is the competence of the forces in the military decision making process and basic collective battle skills regardless of table of organization. Our forces have demonstrated in Iraq the ability to convert artillery and armor units to security forces involved in stability operations in short order due to competence in basic military skills. In short, individual and collective deployability means that one is warm, can take orders, shoot, dig holes, drive, and survive and Uncle Sam owns the contract.

Within that one percent (or larger percent determined by the Congress), the size of the reserve components at such readiness shall be not less than twice that of the active services in with one half of that Reserve/Guard allocation be for the purposes of individual or small unit rapid mobilization and the other half be in trained units. The balance between Guard forces and (Federal) Reserve forces in king favor the location of a trained and deployable “personnel reserve” in the (Federal) reserve forces with the traditional focus of units extant in the Guard remain so with (Federal) reserve units be focused on the needs of the deployed forces of all components mobilized.

Forces beyond the six month deployability window may also be in “drill status” but be beyond the one percent window.

An example of a force at current national population calling for three million deployable in six months may require a small regular force, and by such law, the size of the Guard/Reserve deployable force would be increased directly not less than one for one. A three million deployable force might have one half million on active duty with two and a half million in reserve., but if more than a million were required on active service, the size of the deployable reserve would have to be increased proportionally.

The balance between capabilities and components under such laws would be determined in budget considerations.

Forces needed beyond the six month window, for both individuals and units must also address raising forces from scratch so as to have a prepared mobilization schema to reach the Big War contingency such as a war calling for something akin to a World War in which the forces on active duty were over ten percent of the population and another forty percent in war production industries.

These proposals set in terms of percentages are set as an example only, but close to today’s needs. Any such law and subsequent budgetary constraints would be negotiated n terms of ratios and percentages.

The Real Incredibles - Our Troops

2008-03-16T05:18:00.000-07:00

GWOT in perspective – Five years later

The War in Iraq and Afghanistan, triggered by 9/11 hasn’t been won, but neither has it been lost, the final verdict may take years to assess, and even then there will be arguments over the verdict. Saddam has been removed from power, but the Baathists and the Republican Guard haven’t given up yet despite the proudly display “blue finger” of those who voted. The Taliban is like St Augustine grass in the flower bed.

But that is more the rule than the exception in war, there being a tangential connection between what caused a war, what were the objectives (if any save survival), and the results:

The American South seceded over slavery, when staying with the Union would have preserved slavery in the South as the South had enough states to stop the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.

The British opposition to Imperial Germany was triggered by a German threat to Britain’s naval superiority defined as equal or greater than any two opposing fleets, yet gave up this notion of superiority to parity in the Washington Naval Treaty on 1922.

Japan went to war over it’s desire to get their “fair share” of China, then divvied up between the English, French, Italians, Germans and Americans in extra-territorial “concessions”. FDR and the China Lobby on the Hill sent supplies and the Flying Tigers to “save” China for US commercial and Christian interests. The Communists won, everyone else lost. But after forty years of Communism in China, China has reverted in fact to more open markets than were the object of their enmity.

The victory of the North Vietnamese over the French, the Republic of Vietnam and the US failed to establish communism in Vietnam shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed and the Chinese went capitalist.

The United States Congress was unwilling to declare war on Germany on the December 8, 1941 despite Japan’s attack. Hitler solved that problem for us. There were serious objections within the US over the wisdom of the war on Germany until the Holocaust was uncovered in the Spring of ’45. WW2 is now justified on evidence found at the end of the war. The political results were determined at Casablanca, Tehran, and Potsdam, while the course of combat had it’s own logic of fire and maneuver.

The contemporary babble over whether there was or was not a connection between Saddam and Bin Ladin, and over whether there were or were not weapons of mass destruction (WMD) sounds like a domestic squabble over who did what to whom first. It isn’t useful in determining what has actually transpired, what effects there have been, or what needs to be done in the future. As usual, intent and effect are marginally connected. This is also known as the Law of Unintended Effects.

The effects of the war have had substantial impact on military doctrine, theory, and practice. Of the most significant are the role of women in combat, the recognition of the military and political value of the Guard and Reserve, the evolution (resurrection) of a new paradigm of military doctrine called Full Spectrum Warfare, and the evolution of a new paradigm in the sophistication of military operations in and beyond battle.

The old argument that women have no place in battle loudly proclaimed five years ago is silent today. Women, it has been found, can be more deadly than the male. Many volunteered for the gunner’s position on HUMMV’s and due to their lower center of gravity, holistic view of the world, and maturity have caused the early transfer of many a terrorist to Paradise.

At the beginning of expanded military operations in the Balkans and early on in Iraqi Freedom, Guard and Reserve (RC) personnel were deployed as a personnel reserve for the Active military. It has been found, however, that often RC personnel have more combat experience than their full time counter parts and additional talents from civilian life immediately useful in the protracted war of insurgency. Defense against cell phone detonated IED’s was crafted by a Reservist who worked with the cell phone industry as a civilian.

Military doctrine in place at the beginning of the war was focused on Expeditionary war which called for a quick solution for small conflagrations deemed the dominant for of battle after the Fall of the Wall. It took four years for the US military establishment, mainly it’s school system, to realize that “Protracted War” of Mao and Giap had returned with a turban and AK47.

Protracted war is multi dimensional and multi leveled including military, economic, political and social operations. This was the dominant form of war in the religious wars between Catholic and Protestant, and of the Communists until Pestroika. The new Army Field Manuals FM 3-24 on Counterinsurgency and FM 3-0 on Full Spectrum operations stress a multi handed approach in which economic stability, essential services (water, sewer, roads) , effective governance are just as important (often more) than combat operations.

LTG William Caldwell, Commander of the Combined Army Center where Army doctrine is developed appeared in the Daily Show with Jon Stewart on March 10, 2008 and described both the eclectic nature of counterinsurgency protracted war as requiring our troops in any one given area (town, village, province) to be, at the same time surveying for a water well, having tea with a tribal sheik, fixing up a market place and engage with a hostile foe with firepower.

That’s the doctrine, and that’s the new paradigm. Never in American military history have troops been required and been able to function on so wide an array of missions and skills. In short, the real “Incredibles” are our troops.

From an Operational Reserve to a Personnel Reserve

2008-03-13T06:35:00.000-07:00

The Committee on the National Guard and Reserves report (aka CNGR) is an illustration of the folly of placing Reserve Affairs under the Secretariat for Personnel and Reserve Affairs (M&RA). The CNGR recommendations to disarm the National Guard and reduce the Reserves to that of a Repple Depple (Replacement Depot) for individuals and units no larger than a company are consistent with the actions of those secretariats even before the Bush 43 Administration. The CNGR report continues to beat a drum that is broken and already halfway into the dust bin of military history.

The grouping Reserve Affairs under M&RA transformed an Operational Reserve into a Personnel Reserve. The concept of contingency planning expressed in Operation Plans (OPLAN) is not that of the Personnel World of rotating assignments for career management and of replacing losses. In short, Transformation which is billed as an Operational concept is in fact more personnel driven. The National Guard and Reserves were an Operational Reserve and the effort has been to convert them into a Personnel Reserve.

The Laws of Inverse Attribution dictate that the new Personnel Reserve be labeled an Operational Reserve and the old operational reserve be labeled a Strategic Reserve as if such concept actually existed before (which didn’t). The Laws of Inverse Attribution call for emphasis on the worst of one’s virtues, and project the strongest of one’s vices on one’s opponent. Rewriting the Past is also a very old gimmick used to redirect the future.

In the days when BDU’s were new, I was a USAR tactical MI Battalion Commander with a Capstone alignment with the 49th Armored Division TXARNG which was aligned to III Corps at Ft Hood which had a contingency mission with NORTHAG in northern Germany. We trained to that mission. As a member of the 75th Division (then called the 75th MAC) I participated in dozens of exercises in which Guard, Reserve, and Regular units of all services and a few foreign forces worked together to test and refine doctrine, operating procedures, and tactical prowess.

These exercises ranged from Brigade and Group to that of Corps and Theater Army and exposed flaws in assumptions and trained several generations of officers and troops in what was expected in case of war. It is this expertise that sustains our combat operations overseas and, had there not been these exercises, our forces could not have done what they have done particularly given the ad hoc nature of the War on Terror. The announcement that these “Big” exercises were a thing of the past back a few years ago were a harbinger of the conversion of a highly competent operational reserve into one used for personnel.

It is obvious that the first thing the next Administration and Congress do to restore a real operational reserve is to break the link between Personnel and Reserve Affairs except for those issues dealing with personnel. Operations and Training of all components should be under the same staff supervision.

That leaves the question of Reserve Advocacy up for grabs, but it has been a disaster of major consequence to lump it with Personnel.

ARFORGEN - not the dumbest idea, but close

2008-03-08T06:48:00.000-08:00

ARFORGEN, the Army’s force generation model, isn’t the dumbest thing ever to come out of the Pentagon; it is one of the most unrealistic ever devised. ARFORGEN adopts the failed strategy of a training cycle in which skills of an already trained unit repeat on a cycle from individual skills to collective skills in ascending order of organization. The training cycle approach has the capability of dumbing down a sterling combat experienced Army to one incapable of effective collective action focused on eye wash and administrivia in about five years as was done by the Army to itself after WW2 and after Korea. This approach was wisely abandoned after Vietnam.

Unique amongst training cycle approaches, ARFORGEN is predicated on fixing the personnel turmoil continuum by fixing it in place in year one of three for the Regulars, and year one of five in the Reserve Components (RC). This assumes that no one gets promoted within the cycle, no one goes off to school, no one is transferred to another unit, no one is rotated out of key positions for career advancement purposes, and everyone reenlists. If such stasis is not achieved, the concept of a multi-year training cycle never gets skill competence at any and all levels.

Reserve units with a longer five year cycle face the likelihood that the company commander changes due to command tour limitations at least twice, and at least once for Regular units. To the normal turmoil found in all components must be added the turmoil of the Citizen Soldier’s civilian job, or lack of it. ARFORGEN assumes that all civilian careers can be synchronized with the needs of the service. No one gets a new job out of town, no one’s spouse gets transferred likewise, no one graduates from college who doesn’t get a job in the same town and that all career requirements are met with the current assignment.

At the bottom four grade level, enlisted folks cease to be bottom four grades in the five year cycle and a large number in the three year cycle. The bottom four grades are also the least stable in both components, with a high turnover rate in the Reserve Components due to job changes, and loss of interest and commitment.

The dumbest idea I personally am aware of actually didn’t come out of the Pentagon but out of FORSCOM for training Reserve MI units. It was a cycle of seven years in which companies were built from the bottom up, leaving out the company commander until a following year. Even the idiots at the 90th ARCOM, then in San Antonio were smart enough to arouse the two star level and scratch it. This idea was called the “living TO&E”. It died.

The Living TO&E was, however, based on a Pentagon idea that intelligence skills were “perishable” alone amongst skills, attitudes, and knowledge than in any other field of endeavor including flying and brain surgery. This was welcomed by the MI community as it garnered additional funds for training and allowed the MI units to opt out of many of the nonsensical “mandatory training requirements” invented by strap hangers at higher level to serve as the basis for their OER and end of tour chest lettuce.

The core discipline of intelligence, the intelligence cycle is known in academic circles as “critical thinking”. The best proof that critical thinking is perishable is widespread as demonstrated in the current election cycle, and in the very idea that critical thinking is perishable is self proving. That it is unique amongst skill sets in a fine example of academic arrogance so prevalent on the Viet Cong base campuses. While such nonsense is appealing for the internal PSYOP, it isn’t verified by scientific evidence, be such science be intelligent design or evolutionary.

What is most distressing is the support for the ARFORGEN fantasy is that well trained and experienced officers to accept it at face value. Unlike the enlisted evaluation system in which the rating system of superiors has minor impact, that of the officers is more dependent on pleasing one’s superiors (rating and reviewing officer) than is found in civilian life and with near permanent effect. The net result of such requisite sycophancy is analogous to that described in the “Emperor’s New Clothes” by Hans Christian Andersen. But with a potential impact far more serious than a naked emperor prancing about in the streets.

The Facts on Tranistioning to Civilian World

2008-03-05T07:23:00.000-08:00

Veterans of extended active duty operate at a disadvantage in the other Real World:

1. There isn't anyone in charge out here, and those that are don't know what they are doing.

2. There is no such thing as a mission statement.

3. Staff coordination is a battlefield.

4. The paranoids are out to get your job.

5. "Double dipping" is resentment for getting a real retirement when everyone else isn't going to get one any time soon.

6. Free medical care is an oxymoron.

7. Nobody gives a sh*t about the time the bad guys almost got your scalp in the Battle of U Phuc 2.

8. "Responsible for", on a resume, means you sat on your A$$ while someone else did the job.

9. Seeking out and taking responsibility is poking your nose into what is some one else's turf. Something to indulge in while blaming others is, however, essential to a paycheck continuum.

10. Divide and Conquer is a key management tool and skip the "one for all"bit.

The Ghost of Failures Past - ARFORGEN

2008-03-04T07:52:00.000-08:00

One of the programs cited by the CNGR report as an example to be emulated is the Army’s program for generating troops units which program is called ARFORGEN. This program is a throw back to training theology that failed to provide adequately trained forces for combat in Korea and Vietnam, and was dropped as Army doctrine after Vietnam.

The training cycle approach assumes that there is a hierarchy of skill sets that build on each other in a logical fashion with individual skills upwards. I experienced this model when I was stationed with the 3rd Armored Division (Spearhead) posted on the Hessian Corridor opposite the Fulda Gap. My sectors as a platoon leader on the FEBA (what we used to call the “front line”) was about two kilometers long overlooking Bad Hersfeld and one just north of Fulda itself. Hardly a speed bump for the swarms of Soviet tanks.

Our training cycle started in the Spring with NBC and marksmanship, upgrading to squad training and platoon training before we went to our “summer camp” at Hohenfels or Grafenwohr. By the time we were training companies, our skills at squad and individual levels were already deteriorating. When the ground froze, the time for battalion, brigade and division level training had arrived and we spent increasing amounts of time being deployed in a more realistic set of Conditions (as in Action, Condition, Standard) that provided the proper mix for the effective training at lower levels.

Our perception of maneuver for a training model for squad, platoon, and company done at those levels was the same scheme: lay down a base of fire and maneuver on the flanks. We didn’t know it then that Soviet defensive doctrine was designed to create fire pockets on the flanks of their squads, platoon, and companies. ARVN was trained with this model only to be shot to pieces after our retreat from Vietnam when they had to go up against a peer force of NVA in places like the Iron Triangle and Michelin. Our favored maneuver plan worked only with isolated pockets.

All training in successive levels for the attack were based on hill tops fit for whatever unit level was being trained. There were squad sized hills, platoon sized hills, etc. The problem was that squad training was rarely done in the context of a platoon formation, but alone.

The favored plan of maneuver at battalion to division level was the “mobile” defense with a presumed penetration in the center of the sector to be followed by a smashing counter attack by the reserve which accounted for at least half of the deployed units combat power. I never saw this plan ever successfully used.

The environment for platoon training improved as the size of the exercise increased as the tactical environment became more eclectic with lots of rapid movements determined on the fly. Unlike Ft Benning’s concept of troop leading steps, I rarely saw my company commander more than once or twice a day except in a laager in between movements. We typically would put fifty miles a day on our odometers switching from one part of the battle to the other.

My platoon rarely sat still for more than four hours. All training was focused on battle drills from which only a verbal frago was needed to modify a standard maneuver. It was only in the context of a platoon maneuver that the squad’s tactical environment started to evolve. The only meaningful training that still sticks in my mind, was that done in the context of the division level exercises. I used this experience in the Third Herd to train my MI Battalion in it’s role as a division tactical intelligence battalion some twenty years later.

After Vietnam, the Army dropped the training cycle approach, and adopted what became known as BTMS (Battalion Training Management System) which gave the battalion commander the primary authority to determine the training requirements of his/her command. Unfortunately this cut out the control freaks on higher level staffs, and ARFORGEN has returned mini-micromanagement back from it’s Pentomic grave.

As an instructor at USAICS (the intelligence school) at Ft Hootchy Kootchy on the Mexican Border, the concept of “systems engineered performance oriented training” was stolen from SAC and applied in the Service Schools, later morphing into BTMS. In this approach, all jobs for soldiers and unit were broken out spread sheet wise, and lumped into skills, knowledge, and attitudes, further parsed into whether these were appropriate to school or unit training.

The fusion of these approaches also gave primacy of training to the leader at the level being trained. It put squad leaders in charge of training their troops and required all leaders to have “hip pocket” lists of tasks to train for when the optempo allowed it. Every time my battalion paused in the conduct of training operations (fully deployed in the field) the lower unit commanders and leaders were expected and did train those skills on the spot.

As a trainer in the 75th Division in the early eighties, this program was working in all of the components Army wide. I watched as Guard units reach heights of excellence above that which I experienced in either Germany or Vietnam with Regular Army units. This approach is responsible for creating the best trained Army this nation has ever fielded.

ARFORGEN, by returning to the failed policies of the past threatens the sustainment of the “band of excellence” necessary for forces to retain to meet the historically persistent need to drop what you are doing and go to war “as you are”.

Put the Troop Units where the Troops Live

2008-03-01T08:10:00.000-08:00

This last month saw the last F-16’s of the 147th Fighter Wing TXANG leave Ellington Field located close to the Houston Ship Channel which is not only one of the top four ports of the nation, but the home of a couple dozen petrochemical plants. Houston, not only is the world capitol of the energy industry, it is the fourth largest city in the nation. The loss of these fighter aircraft, replaced by a more expensive fighter element from out of state, and unaware of what’s worth defending.

It makes too much sense to place troops in places where something dangerous this ways come for the Pentagon to grasp such subtleties. The stationing of troops stateside to be able to react faster to threats overseas than forces already overseas is a bit of Rumsfeldian quixotry hard to match in the annals of military lunacy.

The stationing of standing troops is typically based on the location of threat(s) first, followed by the location of adequate training facilities, security, and sustainability. To that, RC units need to be based geographically near where the troops live. While a fair number of officers and noncoms travel long distances to attend drill (aka training assemblies, et al) the bulk of a unit needs to live nearby, like less than an hours commute for rapid activation and deployment in emergencies.

The 75th Division (TS) in Houston is commanded by an MG from Chicago. My former stock broker in Hoston, a Navy Commander, used to drill in New Orleans now drills close by in San Antonio. I know other Houstonians that drill in Florida and in San Diego. This testifies as to the professionalism of the troops in the Guard and Reserves. But you can’t rely on long commutes to field large units, and despite the call for funds to support such commutes by the CNGR, those funds will be diverted to pay for TDY for strap hangers to advise the lowly unit commanders on how to save training money.

More fundamentally, one takes advantage of the geographic dispersion of the talents needed to fight and win wars in stationing RC units and activities. Houston is a town full of aviators and aviation mechanics, yet the aviation assets of all services are conspicuous for their absence. This should be the first principle of stationing Guard and Reserve units, that of being close to the talents needed for both state and national needs.

Units that are boat based should be stationed where there are boats and sailors, and other boat handlers even if those boats are really big and carry airplanes. Current combat in built up areas show that urban troops survive much better than rural troops when the bullets start to fly. Historically, rural units have specialized in combat roles which needs to be enhanced by combat units in cities. One never has enough infantry and never enough cargo craft (air, land or sea).

Yet, the BRAC commission specialized in moving units far from where the troops live. This is a process started long before BRAC, which I noted when my intelligence battalion moved from Houston to be closer to the training facility in Austin originally designed to give employment to unemployed reservists in the San Antonio-Austin area. Houston could raise a brigade of linguists in six months to meet all the requirements for critical language and cultural sensitivities. So could New York City, Chicago, LA and the San Francisco Bay area. Those cities should also be home to major units based on water craft and aircraft.

The over-all stationing of units beyond the needs of the states for military units, needs to be based on an overall assessment of mobilization staffing requirements for a full out peer to peer showdown such as was planned before the Pentagon decided not to fight guerilla wars and those they did could be handled 10-30-30. This would work out as additional Guard units that fit traditional Guard proclivities and additional Reserve units to meet the need for critical masses of specialties found geographically.

Of particular note is the requirement for a Green Water and Brown Water “navy”. The US Navy is by default Blue Water and only reacts to the Green and Brown when embarrassed and when career advancement is served thereby. In short, the Coast Guard needs to regain it’s units, and naval small boat units restored (where there is both water and the need).

Of a heretical cant, there is need for water craft under state control to meet the various needs of flood, hurricane and man made disaster handling, and the best way to do this is for the National Guard to get into the Brown and Green Water game. While it is too much to expect that a Navy National Guard to have traction, those same boats and personnel could be assigned to the Army National Guard which is not far from where things are in the Army Reserve units with boats.

Let’s put the troops where the talent is, as well as where the danger is, and fund the training areas to fit.

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