ARFORGEN - DEATH OF AN ARMY

ARFORGEN – DEATH OF AN ARMY

Gordon S Fowkes, KCTJ

October 16, 2015

For a decade now, the US Army has been training and deploying forces absent an effective collective spinal cord, nervous system and battle mind.  That this combination has failed is evident in the collapse of all that was put in place in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places oft classified.  The root causes of the deterioration of the collective combat capacities goes to rotational training and deployment of units (ARFORGEN) of an Army in which the General Officer Corps was excluded, or marginalized.

A root cause of transformational rotation goes to the concept of a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) which has been driven off the battlefield by the counter revolutions in warfare from insurgency to full spectrum environments.  Like ISIS and the Russians.   The concept of a fixed revolution or form of warfare readily predictable in fantasy or crystal ball, is sadly, the norm and normally wrong to the extent of national extinction. 

The ARFORGEN model had a multi-year rotational cycle starting with individual training, ending with collective training in a minor fraction available for collective training, and that according to fixed scenarios instead of the come what may.  This produced a steady stream of well-trained troops with inexperienced leaders, inexperienced in the hurly burly of wartime operations. In short, the quality of collective combat operations showed a serious degradation from that quality found routine in the Army from 1942 until Baghdad. 

Training cycles are inherently defective while continuous collective and concurrent operations is the norm on the battlefield, and hence the model for training.  Rotation of units breaks the collective competence of the forces committed, which does not translate to successive generations in the fashion of commands in continuous combat, oft for years.  Those commands matured and evolved while the rotated withered.

 The exclusion of General Officers from the Chain of Command was the product of “Transformation”, a process which broke up the Army Corps (XXX, LTG Commanding), the Army division base (XX, MG Commanding), and the disappearance of the Separate Brigade (X, BG Commanding).  That disassembly broke up the logistics and fire support commands (Corps and DIVARTY; COSCOM, DISCOM) and parceled up suboptimal elements to modular brigades (COL Commanding). The modular brigades default had two maneuver battalions and an artillery battalion of two batteries.

 The dilution of field artillery lead quickly to the degradation of effective fire support of committed units from the old war standard from interlocking fragmentation and flame to that of intermittent if at all. Too many medals for valor have been awarded because the artillery was not there, or was ineffective.  

The fire request radio nets tied the forward observer or grunt directly to the Corps air-ground support center.  All echelons in between monitored and the rule was that “silence was approval”.  This removed the delays in fire support from getting to where it was needed.  Two minutes from call to “shot out” was the minimum to preclude unnecessary casualties.

The Army’s distrust in the capacity of General Officers in command extended to the colonels, full and light by task organizing their forces by table of organization (MTOE) instead of in accordance with the Principles of War and the Estimates of the Situation regarding mission, enemy, terrain, troops (technology), time and culture.  

The “combined arms battalions” were intended to be committed without regard to the situation on the ground by denial of the options to the commander. Fortunately, those in charge over there did what they needed to do without regard and in spite of lunacy to the contrary.  Headquarters units were busted up to provide enough boots on the battlefield. 

This normal process of developing doctrine traditionally begins in the field or combat in which the experience of those at the cutting edge as it is passed on to successive replacements and carried back to the Service School Systems for post basic training for officers and noncoms.  Thus the interface between experience and doctrine is tied to the ground instead of fantasy.

 

What has changed from before when we used to win battles, is the introduction of transformation and rotational warfare, which was not developed in the field and refined in the service schools. It has been dictated from a Pentagon in which the uniforms of the uniformed services were marginalized and ticket punched.

ARFORGEN - A PACK OF LIES

LINK TO

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2014/08/rewriting-military-history-to-fit.html

The ARFORGEN concept limits the size of the force deployed to that fraction of the ARFORGEN cycle designated as such.  The size of this force compared to all available forces ranges from a fourth to an eighth of the total forces on hand.  The concept of fractional commitment inherent in ARFORGEN would have reduced the effective combat strength in combat in WW 2 of 98 of 100 combat divisions to 33 divisions.  Or equivalent.  In Vietnam from ten to three divisions.  

The concept that a combat experienced unit is suddenly fully dumbed down to require a repeat cycle wastes the experience, the time, and the mission.  That the most experienced now become the dumbest is a seriously crazy notion.  And given the duration of the dumb down cycle, the rotation of personnel out of the collective environment does in fact dumb the force until whomever gets the command starts to learn his/her job. 

Despite heroic efforts of TRADOC to bring the essence of the battle to the training base, does not include the full spectrum of forces tied to the battle, as is the case in concurrent and collective operations.  Everyone tied to the battle must be tied to the training, for real or replication. Any link left out, breaks the chain.  It is only in large scale collective and concurrent training that the small unit understands the larger context that is the default in combat.

The concept of a hierarchical evolution of skills in any field presumes that the human mind is a file cabinet similarly structured.  This is a logical conclusion except that the mind-body is not a filing cabinet nor does it rely on logic. The mind-body is primarily analogic, by comparison of analogues to what seems to be the case. This includes arithmetic.

And it is concurrent and collectively a full sensory experience, with the oldest of senses is smell.  A major part of the combat related skills are already coded into the DNA which only requires certain triggering events, normally called play.  This is proven conclusively by the fact that recess and lunch room are the most valuable of activities.   Games such as hide and seek, keep away, sports and extra-curricular are fundamental combat skills to survive in an earlier world when that was combat survival vs being lunch.  This is where combat training should start.

At any point of time and place, a tactical milieu consisting of a rapidly shifting array of tactical imperatives creates a change in means, modes, tactic, technique, and procedures:

http://templarmilitaris.blogspot.com/search?q=tactical+imperative

Recommendations:

1.     1.  All units must have one or more real world missions (as opposed to DARPA fantasies). All training must be related to these missions including all units related laterally as well as vertically to the mission. What is not there must be replicated.  That means artillery and resupply.

2.      2.  All training must replicate combat missions as spelled out in action, condition, and standards dictated by the mission.  Subject matter orientation must be replaced by concurrent and collective training

3.     3.   Only “officers of the United States” whose commission or position has been confirmed by the US Senate shall command and/or rate.  This means putting the Generals and other officers in the chain of command and coordination.

4.      4.  The Congress has the specified power to “provide for the regulation” of the forces, and as such require and authorize direct communication with Service School Systems.  Command interference with doctrine is performed by the determination of the assigned missions as determined by the President.   In short, the President commands the force the Congress give him/her.

5.     5.   Only uniformed personnel should be authorized to command, lead and/or rate uniformed personnel. This may mean the creation of new uniformed services, but under the UCMJ.

6.       Further use of deceit, fabrication and misrepresentation in the uniformed services to members of the services and/or the Congress and President result in criminal charges pursuant to provisions of law, custom and the UCMJ.

Early indicators suggest that many of the problems noted above are in the process of correction, albeit without the bullshit. 

Is St Barbara Dead or Asleep?

Is St. Barbara, patron saint of the artillery, dead, or asleep? I hear of our troops in Iraq being ambushed repeatedly by Iraqi insurgents and terrorist, and do not hear evidence of prompt and accurate artillery fire in support of our troops. I hear of troops pinned down and waiting for aerial support which takes what appears to be an excessive period of time based on my own expectations in Vietnam under similar conditions. If rounds were not on the way (“shot out”) in two or three minutes, some one failed to do their job. I hear further than artillery battalions are now patrolling the streets as riflemen.


The reason presented for the failure to protect the grunts, guys and dolls on the ground is that artillery is “too indiscriminate”. This is can understand with the ballistic bullet of olden days, but isn’t this the day of the precision munition? Based on the advertising of the “Revolution in Military Affairs”, artillery can be put in the back closet of the second floor of any offending real estate. Proper fusing, shell selection and terminal guidance to do this isn’t rocket science anymore.


Perhaps the dissolution of Division Artillery and devolution of firing batteries to support the resurgent Battle Group of Pentomic fame, the Brigade Combat Team, has something to do with it. Even in the Pentomic Division, Divarty controlled the guns. The reversion of cannon to grunts is a throw back to the WW2 and Korean War “cannon company” of the Regimental Combat Team.


Until Transformation, artillery was rarely attached, but in support: direct, reinforcing, or general support. When the Queen of Battle wanted some balls thrown in harms way, they came from anywhere within range regardless on any specific command relationship. There was a thing called the Fire Support Net and a guy called the FSCOORD who wielded the most deadly hand held weapon on earth … a radio handset.


In Korea and Vietnam, an isolated and besieged outpost could be defended by a veritable ring of interlocking grazing fragments of steel. My father, a WW2 105mm battery commander, told me to get everyone into holes and walk the rounds in until the steel whizzed overhead. In Vietnam, we called that Danger Close. What we could do then with a battalion of guns, precision munitions could be handled by a battery or less.

It was considered a career terminator to commit troops outside an artillery fan in Vietnam, and it should be today. With precision munitions and a geographically based array of guns netted with today’s net technology, any potential sniper better have more than one layer of homogenous steel over head.

What with Predators and the new lethal toy airplanes in the hands of troops, there should be no one committed outside eyeball range, large or small.

Square, Triangular, and Modular Madness

Modularization of Army divisions is a reversion to a type of organization last used in combat in the Spanish-American War which also was the last war before Desert Storm in which mobilized Guard and Reserve troops were not incorporated into the Army of the United States which was a single structure covering all components. The US Army combat division came into being in the run up for the Great War (WW1) with an organization called the “Square Division” of 27,000 men (40,000 with attached elements) consisting of two brigades of two regiments of three battalions of four companies each (48 companies compared to a ten battalion division today of thirty companies). The Square Division was replaced in the run up for WW2 in a formation more familiar today with three regiments of three battalions of three companies each. The brigade structure with two regiments disappeared but the two BG brigade commanders stayed on as Assistant Division Commanders.

The triangular division came in two types: Armored and Infantry. The armored division had three “Combat Commands” instead of regiments and the battalions of the division were attached to Combat Commands as needed. This structure later became the “ROAD” division applicable to all divisions during the Kennedy Administration and is the one being phased out now.

After the Korean War, the thought was that the new battlefield would be a nuclear “atomic” battlefield which was thought to need smaller and more nimble units than the regiment and a new “Pentomic” division was born with five “Battle Groups” of five companies each was born. The Battle Group was commanded by a Colonel which left no command positions for Lt Colonels, which fault doomed the Pentomic. The return to a triangular division structure added at least ten O-5 command slots at the expense of two O-6 slots. The new modular brigades fixes the O-5 problem and gains back the missing O-6 positions as well as ending the dominance of the Armored division by moving the Armor School to Ft Benning.

George Marshall organized the Army in the field into two kinds of battalions, divisional and non-divisional, plus headquarters companies to manage all sorts and manner of battalions. This structure served us well from WW2 through Vietnam and was designed to be adaptable to all manner of mission, enemy, terrain, and weather. All that was required was the task organization by attachment to fit what was needed. It worked in desert mechanized war, jungle war, trench war, and counter-insurgency war.

Characterizing the “cold war” division as solely designed for fighting the Soviet hordes on the plains of Germany and in the Fulda Gap is misinformation if not disinformation. The so-called revolution of precision munitions and sensorized battlefields and netted intelligence systems were fielded and used in Vietnam, set aside for the resumed Cold War which was suspended for Vietnam, and rediscovered in Desert Storm. But the triangular division transcended all that change.

The rush to field modular brigades without figuring out what the fielded combat and combat support structure has tasked the organizational abilities of the commanders in the field more than was needed. This has been exacerbated by the resistance of the Pentagon to mobilize the requisite structure as organized and trained for thirty years as that structure was predominately in the Army Reserve and National Guard. The Pentagon has preferred to send civilians and contractors paid from Operations and Maintenance funds (O&MA) instead of Guard and Reserve troops on Military Pay (MPA) funds.

Unfortunately, the units and their command structures included certain critical functions relevant to the conquest and stabilization of unstable states such as the logistical command and control structures (movement control centers, material management centers, rear area operations centers) and the military police, civil affairs and psychological operations commands that would have protected the lines of communication, preserved the structure, treasures, and order of the state (Iraq and Afghanistan), and facilitated the establishment of a stable government. The fact that the Active Component has just established Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations as branches is testimony to the realization of that error.

A return to the structure of the Army of the United States (AUS) would have been far more efficient but would have required the usual messy Reduction in Force procedures to flush out those pesky Guard and Reserve combat vets from amongst the ranks of True Warriors. And, most importantly keep them from retiring with a twenty year retirement.

On the bright side, those missing O-6 positions have been restored.

FT Article on US Army

Jacob Weisberg’s article in the Financial Times “the International Way forward in Iraq” incorrectly asserts that “US troops are not trained or experienced at peacekeeping”. The truth is that the US does, but they were committed piecemeal as individual enhancements to Regular Army units not designed for peacekeeping, nation building, consolidation operations or, for that matter, no other foreseeable contingency. They were not committed in the battalions, brigades and groups that they have been configured in early WW2. I am referring to the Civil Affairs, formerly Civil Affairs and Military Government, units with the institutional memory of the successful occupations of Austria, Germany, and Japan. They are also staffed with Army Reservists who civilian occupations include local and state government and the skills not possible to replicate in a garrison bound Regular Army. One of the principle jobs of Civil Affairs is to secure public facilities such as power plants, museums, hospitals, police stations, and such. If they had been used in accordance with existing doctrine and training, the looting would not have taken place.

A Civil Affairs plan to rebuild Iraq was presented to Bremer’s staff but was rejected and GOP activists and friends of Dick used this opportunity to try to convert the Muddle East into the Middle West.

In a similar vein, it is widely understood that the expectation of the Pentagon that the Iraqis would welcome the US with flowers instead of IED’s. Any competent Psychological Estimate of the Situation would have readily discounted this wishful thinking. And the PSYOP capability of the Army is in the Army Reserves.

We continually read of our convoys being ambushed on roads and the initial attack into Iraq was stalled for a few days when Fedayeen irregulars attacked the lines of communications. The National Guard had light infantry brigades and Military Police brigades trained specifically to protect the lines of communications and Rear Area Operations Centers and logistics control centers to orchestrate the whole movement of troops and supplies in the rear. These were not called up as such. Initially the Guard Brigades were used to guard US bases in Germany and in other Gulf states.

The underlying cause for this failure to commit the proper forces to meet the mission, enemy, and terrain inherent in the War on Terror is a military fad called Transformation in which such factors as who are going to fight, with whose help, where, and for what reason are deemed irrelevant. All efforts in the Army is to form “modular brigades” configured in identical formats to be rotated to and from foreign battlefields without regard to maintaining a stable presence to stabilize unstable regions. The grip that Transformation has on the Pentagon is a perfect example of Hans Christian Andersen’s “Emperor’s New Clothes”.

Imagine if WW2 had been fought by rotating the 98 combat divisions sent over seas, thirty at a time. Or without the flexibility that allowed US forces to adapt to war in mountains, jungles, deserts, and urban areas against Asians and Europeans.

The US has only had a large standing Regular military force since 1980. The earlier Cold War army was a temporary force with large numbers of draftees and reserve officers. After we withdrew from Vietnam, it seemed likely that the Cold War would continue and a large force would be needed and that could be done with an “All Volunteer” force which the Pentagon interpreted as an All Regular Army. Unsexy, un-warrior skills such as maintenance, logistics, intelligence, PSYOP, and Civil Affairs were sloughed off to the Reserves and out of sight, became out of mind.

In short, the Pentagon views the military as a closed union shop run by the personnel department. The Reserves are deemed non-union suitable for seasonal and part time work at best and scabs at worst. The Pentagon’s full court press to disarm the Guard and reduce the Reserves to replacements is motivated by the revelation that Guard and Reserve troops have more combat experience plus extra life experience that makes them better suited for the eclectic war on Terror.