Quantity, not quality: Gen Cartwright

Practical reasoning, as long as we are discussing programs which seem to be the focus of this article.  If personnel, their training, and/or the cost associated with them, are part of the discussion then I would offer that the sobriquet does not and should not apply.  Though stating the obvious, when discussing personnel the opposite should remain.... "Quality over quantity," rather than "Quantity has a quality all its own."

Regardless of what Stalin might opine. Schuehle



DoDBuzz.com
May 13, 2010

Quantity, Not Quality Says Hoss; U.S. Must Rely On Allies


By Colin Clark Thursday

³You are not going to have 300 to 500 ships. You are not going to have
thousands of fighters.² At the same time, America must try and reverse its
course of the last decade, which was bringing us to the point where we would
have one ship on each coast and one plane on each coast, and focus on
quantity to help reverse that stark reality: ³We need quantity more than we
need that exquisite capability.²

There you have it straight from the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen.
Hoss Cartwright, who pulled the curtain back a bit on what he and his boss
have been ruminating about for most of May. The Pentagon must heed the
nation¹s fiscal peril because, as Cartwright put it, “you cannot build
strategy in the absence of resources.”
He and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have spent much of the last two weeks
grappling with these fiscal realities, Cartwright said during an address at
the Center for Strategic and International Studies. And those fiscal
realities mean America must take our friends and allies into account as we
decide what weapons to buy. ³The reality is, we don¹t fight alone. We don¹t
deter alone,² Cartwright said. The U.S. ³cannot afford to do everything
ourselves. We are not an island.² And that means the Pentagon must ³include
the capabilities of those we will be partnered with² as it builds
requirements. The services first instinct ‹ the country¹s first instinct ‹
is to say, ³We have to have the only capability. We have to fill every wrung
on the ladder with the best capability in the world.² He paused, briefly:
³We cannot do it.²

As a strategist, Cartwright is always looking ahead and keeping his eye on
the center of power ‹ politics ‹ so he knows that ³people will immediately
say, we can¹t rely on² allies in a fight.² But the truth is that America has
not and will not fight alone, and in the face of fiscal constraints our
strategy must fit those resources we do have, he said.

Times UK: Army Food

I am somewhat surprised that so many in uniform have issues with the decision.  Perhaps just another indication of the sense of entitlement rampant in today's society.  Schuehle

Times (UK):  Army food: the battle of the bulge

Tom Coghlan and Jerome Starkey in Kabul

March 31, 2010

It was visions of Ambrosia that sustained the Spartans, while GIs in the Vietnam War imagined the culinary and sensual pleasures of Saigon. For the troops fighting in the Helmand desert, fantasies tend to focus on chilled milkshakes and Double Whoppers served up on a neon-lit strip of Kandahar airbase known as “The Boardwalk”.

Or they did until yesterday, when the famously ascetic commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, ordered that the Boardwalk — an ever-expanding cluster of fast-food joints at the sprawling airbase — be closed.

The feelings of General McChrystal, an intense, workaholic “warrior monk” who runs eight miles a day, sleeps four hours a night and eats only one meal every 24 hours, were made clear.

“This is a war zone, not an amusement park,” growled his Command Sergeant-Major, Michael T. Hall, on a military blog.

Among the outlets to be sent home are such cultural icons as Burger King, Pizza Hut, Subway and TGI Friday’s, the newly opened branch of which features a plastic scale model of the Star Wars character Yoda. US pilots were apparently in the habit of radioing ahead for pizza delivery when returning from bombing missions over Helmand.

Where the armed forces of America have gone during the War on Terror, the deep-fat fryers of America’s fast-food franchises have trailed doggedly in their wake. But the cultural variations inevitable in a 38-country multinational force are rarely more divisive than on matters culinary. A brief tour of the rations delivered to different Nato nations is instructive.

US forces survive on Meals Ready to Eat, shortened to the acronym MRE. They consist of sealed bags heated by flameless chemical heaters so that no flame is visible to enemy forces. The resulting “meals”, such as “country captain chicken” and “chicken breast — chunked and formed” are little loved but deliver a carefully balanced diet for the fighting man. As a nuclear option the American soldier carries the “first strike ration”, a ready-to-eat, lightweight 2,900 calories that promises to sustain soldiers through “multiple highly intense combat assaults”.

By contrast, French forces go into combat carrying elegant metal tins containing a selection of the dishes that define France’s rich culinary heritage: veau Marengo (named after the great battle won by Napoleon in 1800), navarin d’agneau, salmon terrine and duck mousse, to name a few.

The Italians get wine with their pasta. The British “rat packs” include lamb curry, all-day breakfast and lots of teabags. Often the different nationalities find some variety by swapping their rations for those of another nation. But sometimes food — and, in particular, drink — is a source of deep division.

American commanders have long taken an extremely dim view of the supply of alcohol on bases — it is strictly forbidden for US troops even in safe areas. The British base in Kabul has a loosely applied two-can rule but in Helmand booze is banned, and there have been crackdowns on attempts to send alcoholic drinks through the post to soldiers..

Among the liberal Scandinavians there is a more relaxed attitude. The Norwegians in the north of the country built a club called the MiG Down Bar, serving spirits and beer, in which the 30ft-long bar was the salvaged wing of a Soviet-era MiG-25 bomber.

The kings of debauchery are the Germans, at whose camp in northern Afghanistan 1.7 million pints of beer were consumed last year, according to a German parliamentary report.

One Western journalist returned from the Italian base in Herat, western Afghanistan, with a lurid tale of a wine-fuelled late-night conga with Italian forces round an aircraft hangar while sober American troops looked on aghast — and no doubt a little jealous.

During the First World War the head of the US Food Administration, J. Edgar Hoover, encouraged the American public to give up meat so that troops at the front could have more — a programme known as “Hooverizing”. A century on, a very different food strategy to win the war has “McChrystallised”.

NYT: The Weakness of Taliban Marksmanship

New York Times:  The Weakness of Taliban Marksmanship (Blog)

C.J. Chivers

April 2, 2010

Last week, At War opened a conversation about Afghan marksmanship by publishing rough data from several dozen recent firefights between the Taliban and three Marine rifle companies in and near Marja, the location of the recent offensive in Helmand Province. The data showed that while the Taliban can be canny and brave in combat their rifle fire is often remarkably ineffective.

We plan more posts about the nature of the fighting in Afghanistan, and how this influences the experience of the war. Today this blog discusses visible factors that, individually and together, predict poor shooting results when Taliban gunmen get behind their rifles.

It’s worth noting that many survivors of multiple small-arms engagements in Afghanistan have had experiences similar to those described last week. After emerging unscathed from ambushes, including ambushes within ranges at which the Taliban’s AK-47 knock-offs should have been effective, they wonder: how did so much Taliban fire miss?

Many factors are at play. Some of you jumped ahead and submitted comments that would fit neatly on the list; thank you for the insights. Our list includes these: limited Taliban knowledge of marksmanship fundamentals, a frequent reliance on automatic fire from assault rifles, the poor condition of many of those rifles, old and mismatched ammunition that is also in poor condition, widespread eye problems and uncorrected vision, and the difficulties faced by a scattered force in organizing quality training.

There are other factors, too. But this is enough for now. Already it’s a big list.

For those who face the Taliban on patrol, the size and complexity of this list can be read as good news, because when it comes to rifle fighting, the Taliban – absent major shifts in training, equipment and logistics – are likely to remain mediocre or worse at one of the central skills of modern war. And the chance of any individual American or Afghan soldier being shot will remain very small. The flip side is that parts of the list can also be read as bad news for Western military units, because Afghan army and police ranks are dense with non-shooters, too.

Limited Appreciation of Marksmanship Fundamentals

Let’s dispense outright with talk of born marksmen. Although some people are inclined to be better shots than others, and have a knack, marksmanship itself is not a natural trait. It is an acquired skill. It requires instruction and practice. Coaching helps, too. Combat marksmanship further requires calm. Yes, the combined powers of clear vision, coordination, fitness, patience, concentration and self-discipline all play roles in how a shooter’s skill develop. So do motivation and resolve. But even a shooter with natural gifts and strong urges to fight can’t be expected to be consistently effective with a rifle with iron sights at common Afghan engagement ranges (say, 200 yards or more, often much more) without mastering the basics. These include sight picture, sight adjustment, trigger control, breathing, the use of a sling and various shooting positions that improve accuracy. (For those of you in the gun-fighting business, forgive this discussion; many readers here do not know what you know.)

Related skills are also important, the more so in Afghanistan, where distances between combatants can be long and strong winds common, especially by day, when most Taliban shooting occurs. These skills include an ability to estimate range, to account for wind as distances stretch out and a sense of how to lead moving targets — a running man, a fast-moving vehicle, a helicopter moving low over the ground. And there are many more.

We noted last week that our discussions about Taliban marksmanship rely on what can be seen and heard of incoming fire; this is because we don’t embed with the Taliban. Without being beside Taliban fighters in a firefight or attending their training classes, it can be hard to say exactly what mistakes they are making when they repeatedly miss what would seem to be easy shots, such as Marines and Afghan soldiers upright in the open at 150 yards. Two things are clear enough. First, for combatants who become expert shots, the skills that make up accurate shooting have formed into habits. Second, many Afghan insurgents do not possess the full set of these skills. This is demonstrated by the results, but also by a behavior easy to detect in firefights: they often fire an automatic, which leads to the next point.

A Frequent Reliance on Automatic Fire

Few sounds are as distinctive as those made by Kalashnikov rounds passing high overhead. The previous sentence is written that way – rounds and overhead – for a reason, because this is a common way that incoming Kalashnikov fire is heard in Afghanistan: in bursts, and high. Over and over again in ambushes and firefights, the Taliban’s gunmen fire their AK-47 knockoffs on automatic mode. The Kalashnikov series already suffers from inherent range and accuracy limitations related to its medium-power cartridges, its relatively short barrel, the short space between its rear and front sights, and the heavy mass and deliberately loose fit of the integrated bolt carrier and gas piston traveling within the receiver.

For many shooters, the limitations resulting from these design characteristics are manageable at shorter ranges and with disciplined shooting. In certain environments and conditions, including in dense vegetation where typical skirmish distances shrink, the limitations are easily overcome. Add distance between a shooter and a target, and fire a Kalashnikov on automatic, and the rifle’s weaknesses can emerge starkly. There are reasons for this. One is perceptible to people who are shot at but not struck. When fired on automatic, the weapon’s muzzle rises. Bullets start to climb. At very short ranges, a round from a climbing muzzle might still hit a man. At longer ranges, which are common in arid Afghanistan, the chances of a hit decline sharply. Rounds travel over heads.

For decades, those who have trained Afghan fighters have cajoled, preached and drilled the importance of firing on semiautomatic mode (read: one shot for each trigger pull) for most situations. A Marine lieutenant colonel I served with in the 1980s and 1990s had been previously assigned to Pakistan to train anti-Soviet mujahedeen. His accounts of Afghan and foreign fighters who were impervious to instruction on the importance of single-shot fire would seem to describe many insurgents in the field in Afghanistan today.

Poor Condition of Rifles

While Taliban fighters commonly use Kalashnikov rifles, other firearms are in the mix, including PK machine guns and sometimes Lee-Enfield rifles. After one skirmish in Marja, Kilo Company, Third Battalion, Sixth Marines captured a single-shot 12-gauge shotgun with a collapsible stock and an assortment of buckshot rounds, in addition to two Kalashnikovs. The shotgun was notable not just because it was a battlefield novelty, but also because it was in excellent condition.

The weapons captured by Kilo Company were of types well regarded for reliability. But reliability and accuracy are different things, and these rifles pointed to another factor influencing Taliban marksmanship. Look below at two weapons that the company’s First Platoon collected during a long, rolling gunfight on another day. Their condition assured that they could not be fired with optimal accuracy.

The problem with the first rifle is easy to spot: it is missing its wooden stock. While this makes the weapon more readily concealable, it also makes it almost impossible for a shooter to hold steady while firing. A shooter who tried firing that rifle from his right shoulder would probably reconsider quickly, as the exposed and pointed base of the receiver would bruise his shoulder muscle. One likely way to fire this weapon would be to hold it away from the body while pulling the trigger.

That is not a preferred shooting position. At short ranges this rifle could still be nasty. It is more than ready for crime. But for a complex firefight at typical ranges against a conventional Western infantry unit? Beyond providing suppressive fire and making noise, it would not be of much use.

The problem with the second rifle is more subtle but still obvious – one of the original screws that affixed the wooden stock to the rifle’s receiver is missing. Its absence allows for wobble. Wobble assures inaccuracy.

Mismatched, Old or Corroding Ammunition

A post here in January discussed the mixed sources of Taliban rifle ammunition evident in captured rifle magazines.

In February, Kilo Company captured several Taliban chest rigs, which together held many more Kalashnikov magazines. The company allowed an inventory of all of this ammunition and an examination of its condition and head stamps, which usually tell where and when a round was manufactured. The inventory showed that Taliban magazines contained a hodgepodge of old ammunition and rounds of mixed provenance, along with ammunition identical to what had been issued to Afghan government forces.

The post in January noted that this blog would discuss how mixed ammunition might undermine accuracy. Here’s the short course. Rifle cartridges that appear to be identical but are made in different factories, nations and decades can have different characteristics that affect a bullet’s flight. Different propellants, for example, change muzzle velocities and therefore change a bullet’s trajectory. Moreover, as ammunition ages, it can degrade, especially when exposed to moisture over time and to extremes in temperature. Over many years, the effects of heat cycling – the ups and downs of ammunition temperatures between night and day, and the more extreme temperature swings between winter and summer – accelerate decay and can undermine consistent ballistic performance. And when ballistic performance becomes inconsistent, bullets aimed and fired in exactly the same way do not end up in the same places.

Units that are serious about marksmanship take their ammunition seriously. They train and adjust the sights of their rifles with the same ammunition they carry in combat. They try to store ammunition in ways that keep it clean, dry, and, if not at a stable temperature, at least within a narrower temperature swing.

The ammunition carried by Taliban fighters in Marja showed a wide range of ages and points of manufacture. Sometimes a single magazine would have more than 10 different sources. Many rounds were filthy. Others were corroded. This is not a recipe for accuracy.

Poor and Uncorrected Vision

Next on the list was a matter of public health. Many Afghans suffer from uncorrected vision problems, which have roots in factors ranging from poor childhood nutrition to the scarcity of medical care. One reader submitted a comment as thought-provoking on this theme as anything we might type. The blog defers to the reader, “Rosenkranz, Boston.”

A substantial percentage of individuals worldwide suffer from myopia, which probably is the case among the Taliban as well; in general, the developing world has limited or nonexistent prescription eyewear use, and I think it’s generous to consider Afghanistan “developing.” I doubt the Taliban’s health care coverage, such as it is, has a very generous prescription policy. Additionally, the high altitude of Afghanistan increases the likelihood of cataracts due to increased ultraviolet exposure and again, there are probably limited cataract extractions, Ray-ban or Oakley options as well. Lacking extant shopping malls replete with optical shops and sunglass kiosks, and often squinting, half-blind, and sun burned, it’s amazing that the Taliban do as well as they do.

Thank you, “Rosencranz.”

Using the iron sights on an infantry rifle requires a mix of vision-related tasks. A shooter must be able to discern both the rifle’s rear and front sights (directly in front of the shooter’s face) and also see the target (as far as several hundred yards off). Then the former must be aligned with the latter. This is difficult in ideal circumstances for lightly trained gunmen; for some people with bad vision, it might be almost impossible. Over the years many officers and noncommissioned officers who train Afghan police and soldiers have said that a significant number of Afghan recruits struggle because of their eyesight. The Taliban recruit their fighters from the same population; poor vision can be expected to be a factor in their poor riflery.

The Difficulties of Organizing Training

The Taliban are a far-flung organization, and operate in decentralized fashion. As Afghan and Western troop levels have risen, and as more drones and aircraft have been flying overhead, insurgents have effectively blended into the civilian population. The shift from being an open presence to being an underground force has consequences. The old training camps in Afghanistan long ago disappeared; as a result, opportunities to provide formal instruction to new fighters are not what they were. The Taliban claim to run camps still. That may be so. Their camps are unlikely to be as robust as the network that existed through mid-2001. Areas of Pakistan also provide training sites, but again, the drone presence makes this more difficult than before. And without ample opportunities to train, the Taliban’s rank-and-file cannot be expected to master marksmanship. It is true that war can sharpen the fighting skills of surviving combatants, and so it is likely that among the Taliban there is a core of veteran and more effective fighters. But it is also true that as a combat force is pressured, attrition constantly steals its talent. Over time, without fresh recruits who have undergone sufficient training, a fighting force’s skills, as a whole, diminish. In a long war, it is not enough just to hand out ammunition and guns. History is full of examples.

Fighting on Taliban Terms

Nothing discussed above is necessarily surprising if the Taliban are considered in context. They are an insurgent force, not a conventional outfit supported by the resources of a Western government and economy. Their state of equipment and readiness are naturally lower than those of their Western foes.

Can the Taliban correct all of the problems contributing to their poor marksmanship? To do so, they would have to develop a marksmanship curriculum and the training to support it. They would have to examine their rifles and repair or replace many of them. Ammunition would have to be standardized, and eyesight problems diagnosed and treated. These ambitions have proved hard to achieve in the Afghan National Army and for the Afghan police, both of which have been supported for nearly a decade by the Pentagon. There is little reason to expect any of it to happen. Taliban rifle shooting will almost certainly stay bad.

What does this mean? The previous post ended with a quote about poor Taliban marksmanship from Capt. Stephan P. Karabin II, who commands Charlie Company, First Battalion, Third Marines. This post will wind down with the help of one of his fellow company commanders, Capt. Thomas Grace, of the battalion’s Bravo Company. Captain Grace sent an insightful e-mail here over the weekend. His note summarized many things.

First, a fuller look at his Marines’ experience with Taliban rifle fire.

[Bravo Company] has participated in over 200 patrols and been in countless engagements over the course of six months with actual boots on the ground. We have been in over a dozen actual Troop-In-Contact (TICs) warranting Close Air Support (CAS) and priority of assets because of the severity of the contact or pending contact. The only weapons systems the insurgents were effective with were machine guns, and only at suppressing our movement. We only had one instance where Marines reported single shots (possibly a “sniper” or insurgent with a long-range rifle) being effective as suppression. [Bravo Company] had no Marines struck by machine-gun or small-arms rounds, some really close calls but no hits.

Later, Captain Grace discussed how the Taliban, in spite of such unmistakably poor marksmanship skills, adapted and managed to be a relevant fighting force, and have at times elevated shoddy shooting from harassing fire into part of a complicated and lethal form of trap. Afghans who might not be able to settle into a gunfight against a patrol with superior equipment and training have learned to herd Western forces toward hidden bombs, which the military calls improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.s.

We operated the entire deployment, on every patrol, in the horns of a dilemma. Insurgent forces would engage our forces from a distance with machine-gun fire and sporadic small arms and carefully watch our immediate actions. From day one, at the sound of the sonic pop of the round, Marines are taught to seek immediate cover and identify the source/location of the fire. Cover is almost always available in Afghanistan in the form or dirt berms, dry/filled canals and buildings. Marines tend to gravitate toward the aforementioned terrain features. So what the insurgents would do was booby-trap those areas with I.E.D.s. Whether they were pressure plates or pressure release, they were primed to detonate as Marines dove for cover. Back to the horns of a dilemma. Do I jump for the nearest cover? Run to the nearest building? Jump in the nearest canal? Do I take my chances and stand where I am and drop in place? Not necessarily the things you need to be contemplating as rounds are impacting all around you.

Three of Bravo Company’s Marines were killed, on three separate patrols, as a result of this tactic. The captain’s descriptions, and those deaths, carry an implicit message. Just because a man can’t shoot well, does not mean he is stupid or unable to fight. Western forces might be fighting an enemy with run-down equipment and comparatively primitive conventional skills. But they are fighting people, like themselves, men who think and adjust, and who can force a fight to be fought on their terms.

Again, Captain Grace:

There is no textbook countermeasure against this tactic, only constant attention to your surroundings — up, down, left and right — and over time realizing historical areas of contact and thinking about things from the enemies’ perspective.

That returns this post to its context. For the Taliban, bad shooting sometimes has proved to be good enough. For all of their shortcomings, the Taliban’s level of training and state of equipment have thus far been more than sufficient for waging a patient, low-intensity war for years, and for fighting Afghan government forces, which exhibit similar skill deficiencies. They are also more than capable of exerting influence over the Afghan civilian population, which for an insurgent is a large part of the war.

If you’ve made it this far, you deserve a fresh cup of coffee. Go get one. Check back later. It’s not just the Taliban who struggle to shoot straight. Next, At War will look at the poor shooting skills of the Afghan government troops, and provide an example of wild American rifle fire, too.

New National Security and Military Strategy

I was so certain that the MG knew more than I about National Security, Military Strategy, Counterinsurgency and the like that I re-read his article repeatedly searching for the the link I was missing (as opposed to me just being the missing link).  I have cautiously  come to the conclusion that perhaps I wasn't so lost in the sauce after all.  While the General offers a couple of valid observations, certain of his facts regarding jihadists, terrorirsts and insurgents are oversimplistic and unsupportive of his conclusions.  From personal observation we have not lost sight of the Principals of war... at the tactical and operational levels (while they may not unfold as we would wish is the nature of the beast, but not the same as losing their sight).  While there are numerous points to pick the most disconcerting to me is his characterization of "victory" and political goals.  While we may be in violent agreement regarding his thoughts on conventional forces, counterinsurgency and nation-building I am fairly certain that the General remains fully aware of the role that politicians as well as military leaders play in war.  The General certainly doesn't need me to parrot Clausewitz (but I will anyway):
" No one starts a war--or rather, no one in his sense ought to do so--without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it. The former is its political purpose; the latter its operational objective. This is the governing principle which will set its course, prescribe the scale of means and effort which is required, and make its influence felt throughout down to the smallest operational detail."


New National Security and Military StrategyPublished on 02/27/10
By Paul E. Vallely

Why do the United States and its military/political leaders and strategists still languish in failed strategies from World War II to the present?
Fact: Jihadists with small arms and IEDS in faraway places cannot harm the United States so there is no reason to order massive armies that require large and extensive bases and massive logistical support to fight them on their home turf. But that is the essence of failed “counterinsurgency” (COIN) strategies that have bewitched US military political leaders. Yes, we have made great and innovative technological advances in weapons systems in the air, sea, and ground, in communications, in advanced intelligence systems and command and control systems.

Yes, we have operational war planners at all levels of command, senior policy and politicos in the White House and Department of Defense, a National Security Team and a multitude of military commands positioned around the globe to guide and lead us in national security. But where are the common sense and rational senior General and Admiral Strategists that we have trained and schooled to be innovative, aggressive and win our nation’s wars quickly and decisively? I rarely hear any of them talking about the valued Principles of War that successful combat leaders in the past have used to achieve success and victory. They cannot even talk in terms of victory, winning and bringing the troops home. Or maybe, they do not want to for politically correct reasons at home.

Unfortunately, American leaders are increasingly trying to transform this force into one optimized for counterinsurgency missions (when, in fact, we are not, in my opinion, fighting insurgencies but rather, Islamic Jihadis and a fomenting global Caliphate) and conventional war followed on by long-term military occupations. Track back if you will to Korea, Vietnam, and now Iraq, and Afghanistan.

It is true that not all political goals are achievable through the use of military power. However, “victory” in war appears lost in the world of political correctness and appeasement. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan – often seen as proving the necessity for COIN-capable forces as well as a commitment to nation-building demonstrate in reality that the vast majority of goals can be accomplished through quick, decisive joint military operations. Not all political goals are achievable this way, but most are, and those that cannot be achieved through conventional operations likely cannot be achieved by the application of even the most sophisticated counterinsurgency doctrine either.

We cannot seem to be able to discern between the differences in conventional and non-conventional warfare. The war against mainstream Islamic Jihadist forces and a sick ideology has been, and will continue to be, one requiring unconventional solutions. This is a point that the White House and the Pentagon fear to call this war against a pronounced ideology. It is not a war on terror as we first analyzed; it is a war against people subscribing to Jihad and a derived ideology from the Koran that has evil global intentions as much as the Nazis and Third Reich.

Why can we not understand that our military is for national security, defending our country and defeating our enemies before they bring havoc and harm to our citizens? Why can we not understand how important our resources are in terms of our trained Armed Forces and assets of our country and not to drain them across the globe in futile nation building operations but to leverage the military to counter threats to our country? And, as well, to realize and understand in a profound way that you cannot Nation Build in an area of conflict until the enemy is defeated.

The COIN principle is not based on winning; it is based on political whims and is not a true tenet of warfare. Warfare is, and always should be, about WINNING. Once the war is won, then, like Japan after WWII, real and substantive changes can be enforced. We were able to change Germany and Japan from tyrannical forms of government into thriving democracies with real constitutions and a real change in thinking of the indigenous peoples.

A fundamental challenge in devising a strategy for the use of future American military power is that the world has literally never seen anything like our capability. The U.S. today has military capabilities at least equal to the rest of the world combined. There is virtually no spot on the globe that could not be targeted by American forces, and at most a small handful of countries that could thwart a determined U.S. effort at regime change – and some of those only by virtue of their possession of nuclear weapons. This is the driving point; why are we so worried about what others think? Did these so-called allies not have to be bailed out numerous times for their failed thinking? Why do we want to kowtow to the same intellectual vacuity that caused the greatest conflicts on earth?

As a consequence, the U.S. must adopt a national military strategy that heavily leverages the core capability to break enemy states, target and destroy the enemy’s capability to bring harm to America. Such a strategy could defeat and disrupt most potential threats the U.S. faces. I will discuss in detail, in later follow-up articles, where the strategy of joint strike operations and the unheralded “Global Lily Pad” strategy prove to be the best method for success.

While America’s adversaries today may prefer to engage the U.S. using proxies and develop radical Islamist organizations and jihadists, there is no rationale in declaring to the people of the United States that we are in a long war and accept that as a reason to not achieve a quick and decisive victory. It appears we fight more in agreement with the so called United Nations, allies, and the likes of China and Russia than to stand up for own sovereignty. It is time to relegate these so-called allies to the sidelines. Let them wail and whimper as we achieve the success that is necessary; wiping out and neutralizing radical Islamism and nation states that support it.

Because our capability is so novel, American strategists lack a clear framework to guide the utilization of this force. They have sought to match capabilities to conceptions of the use of force from a different era, one in which the Cold War made regime change unpalatable due to the risk of escalation and that tended to make localized setbacks appear as loses in a perceived zero-sum competition with the Soviets. Like Reagan, it is time to call their bluff. They know we hold the big cards, so why are we so timid? This only fosters eastern thought that placation is a sign of weakness. A weakness they will turn into an asset and a political card to play to the uneducated masses they control.

Phrasing it another way, insurgents with small arms and homemade explosives (IEDS) in faraway places cannot harm the U.S. and there is no reason to fight them directly. Based on superb intelligence, we can launch required strike operations from any number of secure global sites and bases. True, these radical Islamic forces pose a major terror threat abroad and at home but we can defeat those efforts as well. The American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan – where insurgents have been able to build and deploy more than 80,000 IEDs while under occupation – calls into question the ability of occupying forces to root out terror networks without hitting the sources and sanctuaries that supply them like Iran.

Many describe our efforts as helping to recruit more fighters and more ideologues. This is no way to stop all the threat to our homeland. The only true way to stop that threat is to give them what they respect; pure force of arms and will. Otherwise, they sit in their sanctuaries and count up the moral victories they have achieved, and embolden future efforts. However, significant threats to the U.S., ranging from the military capacity of regional powers to weapons of mass destruction development programs to significant terrorist infrastructures, can be targeted and destroyed by conventional and unconventional military capabilities.

Again, we must stop thinking like westerners, and understand the way our enemy thinks. A lily pad is much more preferable because it gives them no moral high ground to propagandize, but at the same time instills sheer terror in their hearts as they guess at what is coming next. Force of will and resolve is required by our leaders that our enemies indeed respect and understand. Only when we understand that one objective of Global Jihad is imposition – by force or by stealth – of Shari’a (Islamic law) and the other is the re-establishment of the Caliphate/Imamate), can we even begin to formulate the enemy threat doctrine and strategic concept to DEFEAT THE ENEMY and WIN the GWOJ (Global War on Jihad).

MG Paul E. Vallely, US Army Retired, is the Chairman of Stand Up America and co-author of “Endgame “ and “Operation Sucker Punch”http://standupamericaus.com/new-national-security-and-military-strategy:26640

Who would run the Pentagon if Gates died?

 Evidently a return to the historical norm and nothing else. Schuehle 
Who Would Run The Pentagon If Gates Died?
By Anne Flaherty, Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Who would act as defense secretary if the 66-year-old Robert Gates died or resigned and his deputy, Bill Lynn, couldn't do it?

President Barack Obama has decided the Army secretary - a position now held by former Republican Rep. John McHugh of New York - should get the job.

Obama's little-noticed March 1 executive order reverses President George W. Bush's doomsday plan, which bumped the service secretaries and elevated the most loyal advisers to the defense secretary at the time, Donald Rumsfeld.

Under the December 2005 order, the Pentagon's intelligence chief was third in line to be defense secretary. At the time, the position was held by Rumsfeld insider Stephen Cambone.

At the time, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Bush changes were made because defense undersecretaries, such as Cambone, had a "broad knowledge and perspective of overall Defense Department operations," whereas the service leaders focused on training and equipping troops in their particular service.

But Whitman did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment on why Bush's order was reversed.

Bush had moved the Army secretary to No. 6 in the line of succession. Now, if Gates and Lynn were unable to fulfill their duties, next in line would be the Army secretary, followed by the Navy and Air Force secretaries. The undersecretary of defense for intelligence was dropped to No. 9.

The Price of Protecting Civilians

Despite his "Ranger" roots I remain a huge fan of "Kid Ex" (mostly because he's still playing Rugby and I'm not, though I do have more than one Ranger "Buddy!").  He makes some valid points, though I am concerned slightly with with his closing observation that "short-term dangers endured by our troops contribute to long-term prospects of the mission."  Do we need to make every reasonable effort to minimize POTENTIAL civilian casualties?  Absolutely; not only as a moral obligation but also as an operational necessity.  My contention is that doing so, as Ex knows, has to be balanced very carefully in order to ensure that the pendulum does not swing too far away from protecting our forces or handing too many of our tools away to the Taliban.  Nothing in the "Art of War" mandates that we have to fight the enemy according to his rules.  Schuehle   

The Price of Protecting Civilians

by Andrew Exum
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/author/andrew-exum/>

Andrew Exum is is the author of the memoir This Man’s Army and a fellow at
the Center for a New American Security. He served in Afghanistan with the
U.S. Army in 2002 and 2004.

Limiting civilian deaths in Afghanistan is a worthy goal. But is it leaving
the U.S. vulnerable? Andrew Exum, who advised Gen. McChrystal, on why the
short-term risks are worth the long-term gains.

For the past week, the U.S. and allies' offensive in Afghanistan’s Helmand
Valley has put war back on the front pages of America’s newspapers. Even
after eight years of fighting, though, and an additional seven years of
combat in Iraq, the U.S. public and its military still struggle to
understand the dynamics of war as it is being fought. These political fights
in Iraq and Afghanistan do not resemble the large-scale industrial wars of
the 20th century. No matter what happens in the Helmand Valley over the next
few weeks and months, there will never be an “Armistice Day” or “Victory
 Day” the likes of which signaled the ends of the First and Second World
Wars, respectively. The United States and its allies had defeated the Nazi
regime mere months after landing in Normandy, yet in Afghanistan the NATO
alliance seemingly labors without end.

The U.S. military and its allies have now effectively overcorrected and are
too reticent to use overwhelming firepower even when warranted.

• Richard Wolffe: How the Afghan War Is Testing NATO
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-23/how-war-tests-the-allies/>
Most confusing, perhaps, for both the lance corporal fighting in Marja and
her father back home, is the way in which the war in Afghanistan is being
fought with unprecedented restrictions placed on the kinds of firepower U.S.
tactical leaders can employ against their Taliban foes. The restrictions
placed on the uses of artillery and air power seem to needlessly endanger
U.S. troops and to violate a fundamental principal of war, mass, which
dictates U.S. units employ as much combat power as possible against their
enemies. (Another principle of war, surprise, was similarly waived when U.S.
commanders announced NATO's intentions in Marja well in advance of the
commencement of hostilities.) Opinion
columnists<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/opinion/18dadkhah.html> and
bloggers<http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2010/02/denial-of-artillery-support-this-is-betrayal.html>
have denounced the restricted rules of engagement as military malpractice,
even as civilian casualties in Afghanistan continue with the
deaths<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/world/asia/23afghan.html?hp> of
several dozen on Monday.

What U.S. military officers have come to learn through the course of these
conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan—and what the parents of soldiers back home
need to understand as well—is that in fundamental ways, the conflicts in
Iraq and Afghanistan do not resemble the conventional conflicts the U.S.
military fought in the 20th century and trained to fight in the 21st. The
U.S. military, then, has taken a pragmatic approach to fighting these wars
that increases the short-term risks to soldiers and Marines on the ground
but also increases the long-term chances of strategic success.

I led U.S. troops in two deployments to Afghanistan and one in Iraq from
2000 until 2004. (The last time the U.S. military embarked on as large a
campaign in Afghanistan as this one, in fact, I was a green first lieutenant
leading a platoon of light infantry in 2002’s Operation Anaconda.) This past
summer, after spending most of the previous five years living in the
Arabic-speaking Middle East and studying the conflict in southern Lebanon, I
was invited by Gen. Stanley McChrystal to participate in his initial review
of operations in Afghanistan. From the beginning, Gen. McChrystal made clear
that he was going to pursue a population-centric counterinsurgency strategy
in Afghanistan because he did not feel anything else, at that point, would
work. This was not the conclusion of a scholar who had studied war from the
comforts of a library, but rather the words of a student-practitioner of
combat who had seen everything else in Afghanistan tried and fail. By 2006,
when Gen. McChrystal gave up command of the U.S. military’s most elite
Special Operations task force, his units were killing the enemy at a
cyclical rate—as fast as they possibly could—and it was not making a
difference. A friend of mine likes to say that you cannot kill your way to
victory in counterinsurgency campaigns, and that is precisely what Gen.
McChrystal learned at the helm of the Joint Special Operations Command.

By the time I arrived to advise him in Afghanistan as part of a team
comprised of other scholars and military officers, Gen. McChrystal had grown
convinced that Afghan civilian casualties were taking an immense toll on the
NATO mission in Afghanistan. This conclusion was well supported by the
research being done in Kabul by a young Harvard Law School graduate, Erica
Gaston, on behalf of the Campaign for Innocent Victims in
Conflict<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erica-gaston/losing-the-people-the-cos_b_170084.html>.
A U.S. Army unit taking fire from a compound in rural Afghanistan may be
well within its legal rights to call in air strikes on the compound, but any
civilian deaths resulting from the air strike largely negate the immediate
tactical gains. “Proportionality and the letter of the law,” Gen. McChrystal
observed last July, “will allow you to do a lot, but you will be
operationally ineffective as a result.”

Put another way, the conflict in Afghanistan required U.S. and NATO units to
go above and beyond the laws of land warfare in order to minimize civilian
casualties and safeguard strategic aims. Units could not afford to be
technically clever but strategically foolish. The United States and its
military officers in effect realized something our Israeli allies never
have—that being legally correct in the execution of combat operations
matters little when held in contrast with television images of civilians
being exhumed from the rubble of an air strike which might have also killed
a terrorist leader. This is not the elevation of some high-minded
human-rights ideal—it is a reflection of the hard realities of modern
conflict conducted in the age of 24-hour satellite television.

Insurgencies, as Lieutenant General Sir John Kiszely told me in 2007, are
like staircases. At the top are the hardcore insurgents. Below them are the
facilitators, and below them is the neutral population. At the bottom is the
friendly population. Reckless counterinsurgency tactics cause the staircase
to become an elevator—everyone moves up until you have alienated your
friends and made more new enemies than you can possibly kill, capture, or
convince to reconcile with the government.

The insurgent uses four basic tactics against an opponent such as the United
States and its allies—provocation, intimidation, protraction, and
exhaustion. The first of these tactics, provocation, aims to provoke the
counterinsurgent forces into using those incoherent levels of force that
turn Sir John’s staircase into an escalator. Gen. McChrystal and his
subordinate commanders seem determined to deny the enemy effective use of
this tactic.

In addition, U.S. and allied commanders in Afghanistan feel that even
without unlimited use of air power and artillery, the United States and its
allies should be able to defeat the Taliban, as one commander put it, “with
our hands tied behind our back.” The Taliban’s greatest—and only
effective—weapon thus far has been the improvised explosive device, or IED.
In direct-fire engagements, the Taliban is either ineffective or quickly
routed by superior U.S. riflemen.

At the same time, though, commanders recognize a balance must be struck
between expected effects and the risks taken by troops. It may well be that
after years of downplaying the strategic effects of collateral damage and
civilian casualties, the U.S. military and its allies have now effectively
overcorrected and are too reticent to use overwhelming firepower even when
warranted. The junior officers and noncommissioned officers now leading U.S.
troops in combat have some combat experience—they must be trusted to use
force when they deem it necessary and be supported by commanders when
warranted force results in the unfortunate death of innocents alongside the
enemy.

Overall, the U.S. public and veterans of campaigns past must understand the
ways in which contemporary conflict differs from war as it exists in memory.
This is not a clash between the armies of two industrial states on the
battlefields of northern Germany—this is a conflict fought, as Sir Rupert
Smith would put it, “among the peoples” and for the people of Afghanistan.
Officers have always been required to balance the needs of the mission with
the welfare of the troops, and in the case of Afghanistan, the short-term
dangers endured by our troops contribute to both the long-term prospects of
the mission—as well as the eventual homecoming of U.S. and allied soldiers
from Afghanistan.

Andrew Exum is is the author of the memoir This Man’s Army and a fellow at
the Center for a New American Security. He served in Afghanistan with the
U.S. Army in 2002 and 2004.



http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-23/the-new-rules-of-engagement/full/

Mesothelioma Center

Gnomes:  Been scanning various sites for worthy content to post, usually looking for security related topics, especially if they have anything to do with the Corps or Naval Services.  Change of pace for you tonight, as I've added to my blogroll the Mesothelioma Center.  I never before realized while watching all those related cancer ads that 30-40% of all cases are veterans who were exposed through there service.

Food for thought.  Schuehle

http://www.asbestos.com/