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Warrior-Mentor · 03-26-2006, 15:13

U.S. News & World Report - 27 March 2006

Hard-Learned Lessons
The Army is rethinking how to fight the next war--and win the current oneBy Julian E. Barnes
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/ar...27military.htm

LESSON #1: Emphasize stability and security

LESSON #2: Study counter-insurgency

LESSON #3: Know the cultural terrain

LESSON #4: Gain trust and confidence

LESSON #5: Improve intelligence analysis

FORT IRWIN, CALIF.--The legendary Gen. George Patton first used a desolate stretch of California desert to train his tank units in the 1930s. Some five decades later, the Army returned to the area's harsh scrublands. The opening of the National Training Center here allowed heavy brigades to square off in large-scale exercises to prepare for the war that never came, the massive tank-on-tank battles against the Soviet Union. For an ambitious colonel, a war game at the National Training Center was very likely the climax of his brigade command. These days, it is merely the beginning. The real test comes afterward. The real test, of course, is Iraq.

After three years of roadside bombs, midnight raids, and sectarian strife, one can safely say that Iraq is not the kind of war for which the National Training Center and the U.S. Army spent decades preparing. In fact, Iraq is the kind of fight that, after Vietnam, the Army hoped to avoid. It is a messy war in an urban landscape against multiple insurgencies, a powder keg of ethnic tensions that the United States still does not completely understand.

It is a war that is forcing the Army to change. Today, combat veterans, military thinkers, and Army historians are beefing up the study of insurgencies. They are emphasizing tone, intelligence, and cultural understanding. They are training designated skeptics to question planned operations. And they are rethinking the way the Army trains and fights.

War stories. Most of America's top Army generals carry with them the almost-war stories of their trips to Fort Irwin. As the ridgeline known as the Sawtooth Escarpment comes into view from the window of a Blackhawk helicopter, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus is reminded of a long-ago rotation in which his light-infantry battalion squared off against a company of tanks. But the play tank battles that produced the almost-war stories are no more, a casualty of Iraq. Now, Fort Irwin is host to a different kind of drama. As the Blackhawk swings away from the ridge, the new training center comes into Petraeus's view. Two hundred feet below him is Medina Jabal, one of 12 simulated villages at Fort Irwin where 250 Iraqi-American "role players" from San Diego live during the two-week training exercises. This is the new battlefield. Now, brigade commanders must learn how to maneuver between the Sunni and Shiite imams and politicians. They must win friends and outfox an opposition force that has turned in its tanks, grown beards, and joined an insurgency.

The broad outlines of what went wrong in Iraq are becoming increasingly clear. Even last week there were new reports that the Pentagon focused too little on postwar planning and was ill-prepared for an insurgency. It remains to be seen whether the Iraq war, now passing the three-year mark, will go into history as a success or failure. But the Army can't wait for history's judgment; it has already begun to draw its conclusions, its military lessons, in order to learn how to better fight the current war and prepare for whatever may follow.

At the forefront of the effort to absorb the lessons and remake the Army are two veterans of Iraq. Gen. William Wallace, one of the first to raise questions about the potential for insurgent attacks in Iraq, began the hard look and the overhaul of the nation's training centers when he led the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Today, as the head of Army Training and Doctrine Command, he leads the effort to make sure that all Army schools are teaching counterinsurgency and new ways to fight. General Petraeus, who led the 101st Airborne Division during the first part of the war and then oversaw the training of the Iraqi Army, has more Iraq experience than almost any other American military man. As Wallace's successor at the Combined Arms Center, he is shepherding the effort to write a new doctrine and remake how soldiers train. Together the two men have helped put into motion a quiet evolution in Army thinking--one that seems to recognize missteps that have occurred in Iraq.

The School of Advanced Military Studies is an elite program at Fort Leavenworth that attracts some of the brightest majors in the American Army. Its students are often called the "Jedi Knights," because commanders in the field tap their innovative thinking. This month, inside one SAMS class, students refought the Iraq invasion with a whole different battle plan. In this war game, one team, playing the American military forces, moved into southern and northern Iraq to secure the oil fields. And then they used diversions to pull their opponents--the Iraqis--away from Baghdad. That allowed them to drop the 82nd Airborne Division into central Iraq so they could execute a raid aimed at forcing Saddam Hussein to surrender and replacing him with a U.S.-friendly strongman. The plan has nothing to do with creating a democracy in Iraq. It has everything to do with trying to preserve the systems that make the country work. "We want to get our guy in there and then try to transform the way that government works over time," says Maj. Kris Arnold, one of the students playing on the American team. "As opposed to shocking it, taking away the structure. Then we have a big mess on our hands."

Experiments. For the record, the American team's effort failed. In the war game, Baghdad fell into chaos and a guerrilla movement developed, forcing the team to execute a more conventional invasion. Up next for the class: an Iraqi civil war. James Schneider, a professor of military theory, notes that such classroom exercises are intellectual experiments designed to help teach the students to think the way commanders do. But what is interesting is how much emphasis the SAMS students' plan puts on stability. And the importance of preserving stability is one of the biggest lessons the Army has learned from Iraq, one the military is weaving into its official doctrine.

The office of the Army's chief doctrine writer, Clint Ancker, is filled with 350 military coins, the calling cards of commanding officers that are handed out in friendship or awarded for good work. The coins are a symbolic representation of the war stories Ancker has listened to, stored, taken apart, and assimilated. Ancker, a retired colonel, studies such war lessons and puts the best into the field manuals that tell soldiers how to win wars both big and small.

Fifteen years ago, Pentagon doctrine suggested there was a strict division between combat operations and peacekeeping, or stability, missions. The Army's experience in Kosovo, Bosnia, and, especially, Somalia, Ancker says, proved that during humanitarian operations designed to stabilize a country, there was still a need for military muscle.

But Ancker argues that the Iraq invasion showed that the Army did not grasp the flip side of the Bosnia lesson, that during combat operations there was a need for peacekeeping-style activities. "We did not have that down nearly as well as we thought we had," he says. The next operations field manual will tell commanders that even when engaged in combat operations they need to immediately focus on making the civilian population physically safe, establishing some sort of governance to allow society to function, and restoring essential services.

Stability. Embedded in the new doctrine is an implicit critique of how the Iraq invasion was conducted. The Army now argues that racing from city to city, with relatively little concern for security, is a mistake. "In particular, if you are conducting a major combat operation and you are thinking about the aftermath of how you are going to relate to the population after the fight, you are going to conduct the fight differently," Ancker says. "And part of that, frankly, is to decrease the opportunity for disgruntled elements to gain support from a population that is looking for things such as security, governance, and essential services."

Studying how to gain the support of civilians is a growing part of the curriculum at Fort Leavenworth's Command and General Staff College. Throughout the armed forces, military schools are gearing up their study of counterinsurgency. At the front of a classroom at Fort Leavenworth, Maj. Andy Johnson starts up a clip from the documentary film Gunner Palace. The clip shows an American unit raiding the home of suspected bomb makers. In the courtyard, as the Iraqi men try to explain something, the soldiers shout at them, "Keep your mouth shut!" and "Hey, shut up!" Crouching low, one of the Iraqi men says in English, "I know that 'shut up.'"

When the video ends, Johnson asks the class what they thought of the Americans' actions. "They weren't mistreating them," says one student, an Army major; "they didn't know what they were going to do." After more discussion, Maj. Christopher Schmitt, a teacher who helped design the course, pipes up from the back of the class. "These guys were just fence-sitters; these guys are noncommittal," he says of the Iraqis in the video. "But after being handcuffed in front of their wives, do we think these guys are fence-sitters anymore?"

03-26-2006, 15:13	#2
Warrior-Mentor Quiet Professional Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: America, the Beautiful Posts: 3,193	Hard-Learned Lessons U.S. News & World Report - 27 March 2006 Hard-Learned Lessons The Army is rethinking how to fight the next war--and win the current oneBy Julian E. Barnes http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/ar...27military.htm LESSON #1: Emphasize stability and security LESSON #2: Study counter-insurgency LESSON #3: Know the cultural terrain LESSON #4: Gain trust and confidence LESSON #5: Improve intelligence analysis FORT IRWIN, CALIF.--The legendary Gen. George Patton first used a desolate stretch of California desert to train his tank units in the 1930s. Some five decades later, the Army returned to the area's harsh scrublands. The opening of the National Training Center here allowed heavy brigades to square off in large-scale exercises to prepare for the war that never came, the massive tank-on-tank battles against the Soviet Union. For an ambitious colonel, a war game at the National Training Center was very likely the climax of his brigade command. These days, it is merely the beginning. The real test comes afterward. The real test, of course, is Iraq. After three years of roadside bombs, midnight raids, and sectarian strife, one can safely say that Iraq is not the kind of war for which the National Training Center and the U.S. Army spent decades preparing. In fact, Iraq is the kind of fight that, after Vietnam, the Army hoped to avoid. It is a messy war in an urban landscape against multiple insurgencies, a powder keg of ethnic tensions that the United States still does not completely understand. It is a war that is forcing the Army to change. Today, combat veterans, military thinkers, and Army historians are beefing up the study of insurgencies. They are emphasizing tone, intelligence, and cultural understanding. They are training designated skeptics to question planned operations. And they are rethinking the way the Army trains and fights. War stories. Most of America's top Army generals carry with them the almost-war stories of their trips to Fort Irwin. As the ridgeline known as the Sawtooth Escarpment comes into view from the window of a Blackhawk helicopter, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus is reminded of a long-ago rotation in which his light-infantry battalion squared off against a company of tanks. But the play tank battles that produced the almost-war stories are no more, a casualty of Iraq. Now, Fort Irwin is host to a different kind of drama. As the Blackhawk swings away from the ridge, the new training center comes into Petraeus's view. Two hundred feet below him is Medina Jabal, one of 12 simulated villages at Fort Irwin where 250 Iraqi-American "role players" from San Diego live during the two-week training exercises. This is the new battlefield. Now, brigade commanders must learn how to maneuver between the Sunni and Shiite imams and politicians. They must win friends and outfox an opposition force that has turned in its tanks, grown beards, and joined an insurgency. The broad outlines of what went wrong in Iraq are becoming increasingly clear. Even last week there were new reports that the Pentagon focused too little on postwar planning and was ill-prepared for an insurgency. It remains to be seen whether the Iraq war, now passing the three-year mark, will go into history as a success or failure. But the Army can't wait for history's judgment; it has already begun to draw its conclusions, its military lessons, in order to learn how to better fight the current war and prepare for whatever may follow. At the forefront of the effort to absorb the lessons and remake the Army are two veterans of Iraq. Gen. William Wallace, one of the first to raise questions about the potential for insurgent attacks in Iraq, began the hard look and the overhaul of the nation's training centers when he led the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Today, as the head of Army Training and Doctrine Command, he leads the effort to make sure that all Army schools are teaching counterinsurgency and new ways to fight. General Petraeus, who led the 101st Airborne Division during the first part of the war and then oversaw the training of the Iraqi Army, has more Iraq experience than almost any other American military man. As Wallace's successor at the Combined Arms Center, he is shepherding the effort to write a new doctrine and remake how soldiers train. Together the two men have helped put into motion a quiet evolution in Army thinking--one that seems to recognize missteps that have occurred in Iraq. The School of Advanced Military Studies is an elite program at Fort Leavenworth that attracts some of the brightest majors in the American Army. Its students are often called the "Jedi Knights," because commanders in the field tap their innovative thinking. This month, inside one SAMS class, students refought the Iraq invasion with a whole different battle plan. In this war game, one team, playing the American military forces, moved into southern and northern Iraq to secure the oil fields. And then they used diversions to pull their opponents--the Iraqis--away from Baghdad. That allowed them to drop the 82nd Airborne Division into central Iraq so they could execute a raid aimed at forcing Saddam Hussein to surrender and replacing him with a U.S.-friendly strongman. The plan has nothing to do with creating a democracy in Iraq. It has everything to do with trying to preserve the systems that make the country work. "We want to get our guy in there and then try to transform the way that government works over time," says Maj. Kris Arnold, one of the students playing on the American team. "As opposed to shocking it, taking away the structure. Then we have a big mess on our hands." Experiments. For the record, the American team's effort failed. In the war game, Baghdad fell into chaos and a guerrilla movement developed, forcing the team to execute a more conventional invasion. Up next for the class: an Iraqi civil war. James Schneider, a professor of military theory, notes that such classroom exercises are intellectual experiments designed to help teach the students to think the way commanders do. But what is interesting is how much emphasis the SAMS students' plan puts on stability. And the importance of preserving stability is one of the biggest lessons the Army has learned from Iraq, one the military is weaving into its official doctrine. The office of the Army's chief doctrine writer, Clint Ancker, is filled with 350 military coins, the calling cards of commanding officers that are handed out in friendship or awarded for good work. The coins are a symbolic representation of the war stories Ancker has listened to, stored, taken apart, and assimilated. Ancker, a retired colonel, studies such war lessons and puts the best into the field manuals that tell soldiers how to win wars both big and small. Fifteen years ago, Pentagon doctrine suggested there was a strict division between combat operations and peacekeeping, or stability, missions. The Army's experience in Kosovo, Bosnia, and, especially, Somalia, Ancker says, proved that during humanitarian operations designed to stabilize a country, there was still a need for military muscle. But Ancker argues that the Iraq invasion showed that the Army did not grasp the flip side of the Bosnia lesson, that during combat operations there was a need for peacekeeping-style activities. "We did not have that down nearly as well as we thought we had," he says. The next operations field manual will tell commanders that even when engaged in combat operations they need to immediately focus on making the civilian population physically safe, establishing some sort of governance to allow society to function, and restoring essential services. Stability. Embedded in the new doctrine is an implicit critique of how the Iraq invasion was conducted. The Army now argues that racing from city to city, with relatively little concern for security, is a mistake. "In particular, if you are conducting a major combat operation and you are thinking about the aftermath of how you are going to relate to the population after the fight, you are going to conduct the fight differently," Ancker says. "And part of that, frankly, is to decrease the opportunity for disgruntled elements to gain support from a population that is looking for things such as security, governance, and essential services." Studying how to gain the support of civilians is a growing part of the curriculum at Fort Leavenworth's Command and General Staff College. Throughout the armed forces, military schools are gearing up their study of counterinsurgency. At the front of a classroom at Fort Leavenworth, Maj. Andy Johnson starts up a clip from the documentary film Gunner Palace. The clip shows an American unit raiding the home of suspected bomb makers. In the courtyard, as the Iraqi men try to explain something, the soldiers shout at them, "Keep your mouth shut!" and "Hey, shut up!" Crouching low, one of the Iraqi men says in English, "I know that 'shut up.'" When the video ends, Johnson asks the class what they thought of the Americans' actions. "They weren't mistreating them," says one student, an Army major; "they didn't know what they were going to do." After more discussion, Maj. Christopher Schmitt, a teacher who helped design the course, pipes up from the back of the class. "These guys were just fence-sitters; these guys are noncommittal," he says of the Iraqis in the video. "But after being handcuffed in front of their wives, do we think these guys are fence-sitters anymore?" Last edited by Warrior-Mentor; 03-26-2006 at 15:16.
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