Too Uptight to Fight to Win

Someone quipped on LinkedIn that there was no cogent plan in Afghanistan.  Cogent plans don't work anyway.  There are two and only two planning strategies that work: Done by the Book, or Completely Wing it.  Half is half too short or too long.   The key to understanding the penchant for incompetence in the military profession I got from a seriously important book:

Dixon posits that there is a definite profile to the commander that freeze up in the clinch, Or they stick to a bad decision regardless,  His profile places the blame on the Anal Retentive.  This is Freudian which relates the Anal personality on bad potty training.  Unfortunately Ass Holes act exactly the same everywhere, where the English Public School Potty Training System does not apply.  Regardless, the typology is worth memorizing for your own protection.

The Anal Retentive obsessed with messes, seeks to put reality in something measurable,  Adrian Monk comes to mind, except that Adrian's obsession with neatness did not defeat his quest for the missing parts,

ADRIAN MONK THE OCD PI

In my experience in Vietnam metrics were God.



One could report the number on enemy KIA by the number of rounds fired into the presumed enemy positions.



1st AIR CAVALRY DIVISION DTOC 1968



Contact with the enemy had to be parsed into two sets of reports, G2 and G3,  The G2 could only report enemy initiated attacks,  All attacks or contacts as a result of friendly action were sent up G3 channels.  While in the DTOC, 1st Air Cavalry we two and three got the story straight before transmitting to IIFFV.

After Tet, we had a working operational schema although differences between flag rank units often precluded lateral contact.  The hide and seek games between G2 and G3 was discouraged by MG George I Forsyth, the Unflappable

G2-G3 OPERATIONS DESK, 1ST AIR CAV DIV 1969

The important thing to remember about any war is that the Freudian typology of Oral, Anal and Phallic applies to Stafflophucupus if not treated with a real shit storm.    Being Oral, I write and brief to the point of screaming fits heard in my CEP.

1/9th AIR CAVALRY SQUADRON - 1ST AIR CAV DIV

 Anal types have two flavors, expulsive and retentive.   The Retentive make order out of chaos, but everything not dressed right and covered down is a mess. Those whose forte is cleaning up messes is a battle cry, and recognition for excellence.  The Retentive clean up anything, and looks for messes about to happen. The Expulsive (expletive) shits on anything and anywhere.  Between the two, the rest of us emote. 

DECEMBER 6-7, 1941

Their cleanups create serious messes. At Pearl Harbor, the weapons were locked up (as they are now) in order to retain a proper count and inventory.   The airplanes were lined up neatly in the center of the fields to defend against Nisei sabotage.  The neatly lined up ships on battleship row had their hatches open to cool the  ships interior so that the expected inspecting officers would not get sweat stains on the white,

 

ONE BRIT SURVIVED AT ISANDLWANA  1879

 

The Battle of Isandlwana in Natal on January 22, 1879 the British under LTG Lord Chelmsford was wiped out by the Zulus under Ntshingwayo Khoza.  The Quartermaster had ordered the boxes of ammo screwed shut to prevent pilfering.

FIRST RANK FIRE!

Then came the Battle of Roark's Drift where real professionals defeated a world of deep shit.   The thing is knowing what is going on, what is on hand, what the troops can do, and  have things already rigged for unexpected action.

The symptoms of Dixon's Duds are here.  Like in artillery, the round doesn't detonate on contact.  The Dud aren't always duds, as they can be inspiring, brave, brilliant, innovative but freezes when the situation gets out of hand. Paulus at Stalingrad and McDowell at Antietam, are good examples.  These officers, obsessed with detail are critical as war is very messy, and without the compulsive neat freak, the ammo doesn't get there.

DR DIXON'S SYMPTOMS OF PENDNG DOOM

 The US Army has been hamstrung by the Personnel Pukes once known as the Adjutant General (AG) who place the neatness of accountability and micro managed career rotation algorithms.   In Vietnam, AG would not put a replacement to a unit (rifle companies included) until the trooper had departed on DEROS.  This added at least three months to the replacement arriving.  I never saw a rifle company in the field with more than 110 troops. This particular problem was addressed by the concept of a personnel float that is assigned to fill a slot about to happen.

WHY IS THIS IN CHINESE?

This AG Stuck Up reared it's head as a prime motive or ARPERCEN (rotational expeditionary modular brigades) spent two years doing what should have been done in concurrent training before addressing the unit,  These units were projected to arrive in a published (Army Times) schedule.  What the Taliban, Insurgents, and Al Qaeda were doing or about to do wasn't addressed until the unit was inbound. 

 Efforts to provide overlap between commanders and by constant and extraordinary update  of the tactical milieu reduced the FUBAR potential somewhat.  In Vietnam, every individual had a short timer's chat, but the units was staying in country.  This individual rotation created a penchant for being seriously killed or wounded for the FNG, Achilles and the Short (not knowing, over confidence, overly cautious).

TON SUN NHUT 1968

On the other more important hand, the  advantage of the individual rotation rota was the steadily increasing combat effectiveness kept up to date by enemy action and at the end of the war came a corps of officers and noncoms that built the Army we have today.  The increase in sophistication survived several decades.

On the other hand, after  WW 2 the quality of the US Army virtually disappeared as the NKPA crossed the 38th.  It had only been less than five years since the same Army had defeated the Japanese and Germans,

THESE ATTACKED

AND ATTACKED

YOURS TRULY IN WARZONE C 1968

Zen and the Warrior Mind

“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.

The Real Incredibles - Our Troops

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

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.

The Ghost of Failures Past - ARFORGEN

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”.